What a co-inky-dink I read this post TODAY--the day I finally finished designing and implementing my very own GTD "inspired" (Tao based) system. The "spending time to save it" paradox discussed in this post is precisely what compelled me to revise GTD in a few ways...

I religiously followed GTD for over a year when the book was released using Outlook on the desktop, and Agenda Fusion for Outlook on a Pocket PC. It worked for awhile, but then I noticed how much time I was spending just to get things done with GTD.

So I tried a different path: TODO lists in a moleskin ONLY. Suffice to say, things got crazy in a hurry. So, I went about looking for a middle ground. First, I had to see--foundationally--where GTD went wrong the first go-round, and also why a simple written TODO list is not enough to actually boost productivity.

Here are some insights I came up with after many, many hours of journaling and thinking (time well spent IMHO):

1) "To BE is to DO"--anon. So focus on the doing, not the system behind it.

Implications:

a) Buy a stopwatch and religiously log exactly where your time is going, down to the smallest action. Better yet, get the Allnetic Working Time Tracker to automate this process with software (quite nicely and simply). This single tip alone has at least quadrupled my productivity.

b) Come up with some kind of "standard" for performance, at least for the most important actions you do regularly in the course of completing your most important projects. For example, I'm writing a novel write now. So using the stopwatch, and MS Word's word-count feature, I can easily calculate a words-per-minute measure. Every time I sit down to write, I give myself a "timeboxed" duration of say, an hour (or whatever I have available in between appointments), and I try to beat my previous best words-per-minute. At the end of the timebox, I reward myself with 5-10 minutes of web surfing or whatever, but if I beat my previous best performance measure, I double the reward. It goes without saying that MS Excel will allow you to take all this data and do a fairly good job at projecting project deadlines based upon past performance instead of (un)educated guessing...which brings me to the next insight:

2) Know the differences between Planning, Organization, and Productivity, and don't confuse them!

Implications:

a) Organization: "collect-tag-store." But if the "tag" step can't be automated in some hands-off way, then I simply put the "stuff" (emails, voicemail) into a "staging" area that I can come back to later in the day. In other words, I don't spend a lot of time on the "Processing" step of GTD, because I don't like the interruptions of asking myself if something is actionable or not, and then trying to decide whether it can be done in 2 minutes, needs to be delegated to my cat, or deferred. I basically like to get up in the morning knowing my most important actions for the day, and then doing them without interruption for as much time as possible. This also means I do much of the "Collecting" step in the evening along with my daily Planning (the "review" step in GTD--stuff like clearning my email inbox, reading a filing mail, and going through voicemail messages). Also, try and limit your storage to just 2 units: a harddrive(s), and 1 "PileSystem" (google pilesystem for more on this).

b) Productivity: "Do-Track-Improve." Do actionable work related to your most important Projects as much as possible. Track your performance. Fight to constantly Improve it.

c) Planning: "Review-Allocate-Schedule." Review your Values and associated Projects / Goals. Review how much time you're actually spending toward each Project (this will tell you what's really important to you better than what you tell yourself when you write down goals). Allocate Time based on what your Review tells you. Then, Schedule accordingly. And if you haven't yet stored everything in its proper place and cleared your "staging" area, do that as well before you sign off for the night.

d) Do as little Project Planning as possible in advance. To do otherwise is to be a fortune teller. Instead, determine your performance measures (ala words-per-minute example above), and then plan out the fewest number of steps possible to realize a meaningful milestone on your project. Using your average performance measure, and the time you can realistically spend on the primary actions associated with a particular Project, calculate a "projected" deadline. If it's after when you need the Project done, then you better improve your performance, or increase the amount of time you spend on this Project at the expense of others. Do NOT try and work longer hours--drop something. This is like taking Xtreme Programming and applying it to your life.

e) "DO 1st Things First"--Covey. But what I mean when I quote him, is that you should DO actionable, energy-intensive things early in the day, and slowly transition to Planning and Organizing type activities later in the day.

3) "3:1-80/20." Focus on no more than 3 important Projects / Goals at any one time, and spend 80% of your time on only one of them, 20% on the other two combined. It's the popular "rule of 3" and Pareto Principles combined.

4) Organize ideas, reference material, and anything that has "meaning" with liberal use of "tags" ala del.icio.us or flikr. Organize meaningless objects, like clothes, hardware, tools, and other boring nouns with "categories" or by location.

Implications:

a) Don't use folders or other categories to organize information. You end up wasting too much time trying to remember the names of your categories, and too much time remembering which category you stored something under. Use tags + search. It's what computers are good at after all.

b) If it can be automated, use a computer. If it requires creativity which can't be automated (for example, painting or creative writing), use paper and the implements of your art, at least in the drafting / raw creativity stage. The work will be better for it.

...Wow. Just wrote a novel here. Sorry about that. But this whole conversation has me itching to start a new blog about all of this myself.

Love the site and these conversations. Kudos to all who participate!