Fallen Off the GTD Wagon
My inbox is overflowing. I’m making do at work, but in my personal life, I’ve fallen off of the Getting Things Done bandwagon. Our large suburban home is full of clutter. My website is stale. My personal development projects and writing are stagnant. I’m living in the middle of half a dozen incomplete home improvement projects, and I’m having trouble keeping up with which kid is doing what which night of the week. I’m always in a rush, reacting to things blowing up, rather than planning and being prepared.
In some sort of a not-getting-things-done addiction cycle, I skip one, and then another, weekly review. And, like junk mail, the stuff keeps piling up. By then it would take a big sweep to get started again, which I convince myself I can’t do until I tweak my GTD system some more. At which point I give up and waste my evenings mindlessly surfing the internet, watching youtube, avoiding the piles around me, and feeling depressed about all of the above.
This isn’t about feeling guilty for not worshiping at the alter of GTD, it’s about not accomplishing the things that matter in my life. So, over the next couple of weeks I’m going to crawl out of my self induced pile. I’m going to use a simple system, and force myself to change only what’s broken.
Less fiddling, more doing.
Posted Thursday 6 November 2008 in gtd.
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November 7th, 2008 at 1:39
Here here! I am in the same boat sometimes. I recently wrote this: http://blog.pelotonics.com/the-discipline-of-doing.html
I think it echoes your sentiments!
Thanks for sharing.
November 7th, 2008 at 16:14
When I’ve helped others get back on the wagon, the first thing I recommend is to start recording exactly what you are doing each day. I’ve written how to do this, as well as several other GTD related articles on my blog.
You can access the post at http://johnkendrick.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/journaling-your-way-to-gtd/