Clif Notes: Why GTD Doesn't Work
And there you go. Without making it to even the first line of the article text, I have succeeded in alienating several hundred geeks. ("So what else is new," I hear you say.)
For those of you who possibly do not know, GTD is a common abbreviation for Getting Things Done, developed by David Allen around 2005. It is currently one of the most popular time management methodologies in use, especially among geeks (possibly because of how glowingly geek websites like Lifehacker and 43 Folders describe it).
Over the last 40 years, I have tried numerous time management systems. As a matter of fact I have used GTD… numerous times. Believe it or not, I am back to using it now. So perhaps a more accurate title for this column might be , "Why GTD Only Works for a While." Or possibly, "Why GTD Works But People Stop Using It." I am guessing that this is about the tenth time I've come back to this system. Maybe when it comes to behavior modification I'm just a slow learner. Or I lack the meta-discipline necessary to discipline myself to use a particular discipline. But for whatever reason, I think I finally figured some things out about GTD.
One of GTD's key concepts is that of "ubiquitous capture." The idea is that anything you have rattling around in your head that you are trying to remember to do something about — be it an individual task or a series of tasks necessary to launch a new project — is effectively burning up processing cycles in your biocomputer. (Okay, they call it a "brain" like everybody else does. But you can see how the concepts translate to geek-speak.) In order to offload this stuff, you have to be able to dump it into a trusted system that can remember it for you, so that you don't have to. This can be a Moleskine notebook, index cards, a pocket voice recorder, or any other device or collection of devices that will make sure it gets captured as it happens. I happen to use a MacBook computer, an iPad, and an iPhone — all running a product designed specifically with GTD in mind called OmniFocus that keeps everything synced between all the devices. Hey! I'm nothing if not thorough.
This is the first problem with this methodology. It encourages you to capture everything, all the time, everywhere. That sounds good in theory, but in today's world of the Information Explosion, we just have way too much stuff flying at us. You're sitting at your desk web surfing. You read something that talks about a new programming language, database, or maybe content management system. You think you might want to look into this in more depth. Capture it. The phone rings, and your spouse asks you to go by the dry cleaners on your way home from work and pick up the clothes. Capture it. You remember that you wanted to stop by that new gym that just opened and pick up some information about membership plans and check out their facilities. Capture it. (This is obviously your list we're talking about here, not mine.) The shop calls and tells you what this lastest repair bill on your car is. You decide it's about time to buy some other vehicle. That's more than one step. So that's a project. The first action step in a project is to plan it out. Capture it.
You are getting the idea. Anything that is not just a passing thought but something that you must, should, or want to do that you cannot handle right now needs to be captured so you don't lose it. This also includes things that you have not even decided to do but might want to do "someday/maybe." I don't know about you, but if I have to stand in line at the post office for five minutes, my brain is still ticking. By the time I get out of there, I can have at least ten more items stuffed into my GTD system.
There you see one of the first problems. There is an emphasis on capturing things for fear that we will forget them and miss a necessity, obligation, or opportunity. But there is little, if any, thought given to take a small amount of time to make a moment-by-moment decision of whether or not this item even needs to be captured. (Hard-core GTD-ers will probably want to jump in and point out that you deal with this in the Weekly Review — something else a lot of people never get around to doing. But that's another column.)
And then your boss walks in. Within a minute and a half you have now added seven edicts to your system. So you're not only capturing everything that your brain can churn up, but you also have to capture everything somebody else's brain can churn up and dump on you.
If you enjoy other people and like doing things to help, you probably are one of us who has trouble saying "no." So again, you start adding items to your system that other people come up with because you willingly accept the responsibility for it. It's called overcommitting. But at least it's captured. Of course, sometimes we overcommit because we just want to be nice and helpful, and sometimes we do it because we don't have a very good handle on how much we can really accomplish in a given period of time. It comes from having unrealistic expectations not only what we can do but how much time a particular task would realistically take a normal person. (Underestimators Anonymous. A Twelve-Step group with only seven steps.)
You might try to imagine how many things you would have down on your list if you took a full day, or even two, to go through every physical inbox, piece of paper, wallet, purse, smart phone, refrigerator cork board, bar napkin, plus a sweeping brain dump and put it all on a paper list or word-processing document. And I would be willing to bet that you would be shocked at how wrong you were. One of the times that I went through this exercise and got to "Inbox Zero" (GTD slang for having gone through all of your in boxes initially and either processing the items or capturing them in your system), I was stunned to find that I had over 650 entries. Sure, a large number of those items were on the Someday/Maybe list, but still!
And that, I think, is where a lot of people start — with an illusion of being "in control." And then after a few weeks, or maybe only a few days, of trying to work these lists, a feeling of being totally overwhelmed sets in and depression soon follows. And that depression leads to just giving up.
That's why I think GTD doesn't "work," at least the first several times some of us attempt it. It is all tied back to a misunderstanding of one of the fundamental concepts of the methodology — that of "ubiquitous capture."
Based on the nature of all of the unfiltered stuff that it seems to encourage us to collect on tour lists, I think a more accurate term might be "Ubiquitous Crap-ture."
