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GTD and the creative life...possible?
kenzi | Mar 28 2006
Just getting started with GTD and what has me most excited is the possibility to get to my creative projects finally. I run my own business, plus have a full-time job to pay the bills. In addition to that I am spilling over with creative ideas for things I want to do, make, paint, etc. My schedule doens't really allow me the time to realize many of these projects, and they often get forgotten, or I forget to do the little steps that will help me realize them eventually, or when I do have free time I can't remember what projects I wanted to do. I am hoping that GTD, correctly applied, will help me keep track of all this, and hopefully organize my bill-paying lives so that I have time for the creative. Are there any artists or creative types (even wannabes) either full or part time who use GTD to help them toward their creative goals? What works for you in the system? Do you have to tweak it to make it fit the creative stuff, or can you just plug it all in together? 13 Comments
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 Hey Kenzi. Fellow artist here. ...Submitted by Chrome47 on March 29, 2006 - 7:45am.
Hey Kenzi. Fellow artist here. Anyway, I've got a really huge list of Someday/Maybes, and a big portion of them are art and design projects. I've got my S/Ms sorted into categories. These are the ones that would probably be of most interest to you:
Right now a lot of the creative stuff is pending my getting a house with a room to do my art stuff in. So once I move, I'll be doing a LOT of painting and drawing, and hopefully typeface designing. I think a lot of the problems with combining art-making and GTD is that while art is a process, it's not always a linear one. GTD is somewhat linear, but it allows for a bit of flexibility. Although I suppose if you are doing a portrait of Madame X, which would be a project, your first Next Action would be to arrange a sitting, so that would most likely initiate a phone call and writing down an appointment time on your calendar. Then you would create an NA to "Draw a dozen sketches for portrait of Madame X." You could put that in a "Think" context, like Merlin talks about in his Dr. Contextlove article. Likewise, in my Next Action contexts, I have an @Studio context. I don't have a studio per se, but it works. It just says "when I'm in my art-making environment, here's what I need to be working on." Back to the "Madame X Portrait Project," your next step would naturally be to pare that down to 2 or 3 sketches, then to draw that full-size on canvas or paper, and then start painting. I've actually written myself post-its for things to tackle on a particular canvas, like "Finish shadows in the trees" or what have you. So I think the real moral of this story is to figure out what your contexts are, and work from there. Which I think is a lot of what GTD is about. David Allen wrote his book for project managers and CEOs, but I think once you grasp the whole context concept it applies for everybody. If you're at your easel, what do you need to do next? If you're in a place to think about your upcoming projects, what do you do next? (Pick up your pencil and sketchbook and start drawing!) Thanks for making me think about this! I think I've about got it figured out, but I'm interested to see what other people will say. » POSTED IN:
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