GTD Reasons: Why I GTD
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by John Kendrick
I have been both a student and teacher of time management and daily planning strategies for the last two decades. My journey began when I read a book by Hyrum W. Smith, creator of the Franklin Day Planner, entitled, The 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management. That book was such an eye opener for me that I have read it several times, shared it with others, and taught several courses with the information I learned from that book. Of course, like most others alive during the last two decades, I have also studied Steven Covey’s Seven Habits and other books, listened to many tapes and attended seminars on time management. And I have used Daytimers and Covey planners for nearly two decades. With this background I am fastidious, if not fanatical, about the use of my planner and am rarely (read never) seen at work without my planner at my side, as anyone with whom I work will attest. And while I have used my email and notes applications on my desktop and iPhone to contribute to my task tracking, I have always preferred a paper-based planner to its electronic competition. 
So it was with a great deal of surprise that earlier this year I discovered and read the 2001 national best selling book entitled, Getting Things Done by David Allen. It was so different, yet so simple, that in a very short time it has revolutionized my daily task and project tracking. Yes, I was a bit late in finding David’s treasure, but I’m so glad I did. Here are a few of the most important life changing ideas that have made such a profound difference in my business and personal productivity.
- We are so busy, and such a multitasking lot these days that we cannot possibly remember everything that we receive, are told about, and especially think about; and if we do not immediately enter that information into a trusted system, we are doomed to think about it over and over again as our mind tries to keep us from losing it. This is a major contributor to daily worry and stress, and plays a major role in keeping us "thinking about work" even when we’re not at work.
- Some of us (this was me before GTD) spend way too much time planning, prioritizing and writing everything down in our planners, knowing that we cannot possibly accomplish everything we have spent time planning at the beginning of every week. And then we spend more time carrying the unfinished tasks over day after day – which is in itself a de-motivating, if not truly demoralizing and time wasting exercise.
- Most of the stuff we have to do, consists of more than one action, and looking at the entire elephant (project) can keep us from doing anything at all. The only thing that is important to the project is that we take the next action (small bite of the elephant) in furtherance of its completion.
- In order to work efficiently with our time, we need to learn to work in "context" instead of priority order. If we are sitting in a cafe with only a cell phone, our context is the cell phone. If we are in a meeting with someone, they are the context, or sitting at our computer, it becomes our context. If our tasks are organized by context, it is simply a matter of selecting the context we’re currently in, to see the actions (tasks) that can be completed at that time. It is a waste of time to look at our entire task list, regardless of priority, since the other tasks require a tool, person or other context that is not available at that time.
- While tracking daily tasks in a planner can be done with success, we are sometimes tripped up by the longer term tasks, the "maybe someday" lists and reference information that we don’t need at the moment, but which needs to be stored and reviewed on a periodic basis.
For me, GTD has solved these five major issues. 1) Having one system in which to enter and retrieve all of my actionable tasks, keeps me from forgetting, and dramatically reduces my stress level. 2) I now spend less time planning and more time doing. 3) Concentrating on the Next Action, instead of everything I have to do, makes it easy to move my projects forward without feeling overwhelmed. 4) Working in context allows me to multitask like never before. 5) I finally have a place to store the wish lists and reference information that I collect where they can be reviewed on a regular basis. There you have it, my why for GTD. Thanks for reading, John
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John retired from the Washington D.C. Police Department in 1997 after 24 years of service, and has been working in the IT industry since 1985, primarily as a corporate and government software trainer. He currently manages a computer training center for a large local government maintaining five training labs with 70 Windows workstations, and is responsible for the technology training of approximately 10,000 active and retired employees. Visit John Kendrick’s blog at http://johnkendrickonline.com
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