The following are what I think are the core ideas of GTD 1. Your brain is good for having ideas, not holding them. Therefore, store your ideas in an external brain. External brain is whatever system you use consistently enough that you trust the system to tell you what to do when. 2. Clarity is important. Store your ideas and to dos in your external system as though you are giving instructions to a 10 year old kid. This way you will be able to resist procrastination as one of the reason you procrastinate is the mental energy needed to figure out what you need to do 3. Review. This is a crucial part of maintaining trust in your system. Because if you don't trust your system you will get back into the habit of tracking your tasks using your brain, rather than the external brain The rest are just details as far as I'm concerned. You may discard agendas, contexts and the 2 minute rule. But as long as you adhere to the core ideas of GTD I listed above, you are using GTD So given this, I think GTD is timeless. At least until technology makes our brain work differently.
I thinks it’s so arrogant GTDers and even David Allen itself claiming stuff like REVIEWING, CLARIFYING and HAVING A SYSTEM TO STORE YOUR STUF belong to GTD to a point if you do one of those you are practicing GTD. Weather you want it or not. It sounds hilarious to me. It’s just those stuff weren’t there before David come up with his system.
@@felipeoliveira8464 Those things definitely existed before David Allen wrote his book. He was the one who popularised it though. Besides, the point isn't whether or not David Allen deserves credit for writing down things, having a system, clarifying and reviewing. The point is that the most important take away from the GTD book are those things. You may call those things whatever you like
Hmm the GTD community are a funny group. For years I've been told I am not a GTDer because I do not organise my lists by contexts and I prioritise my daily tasks. Now I finally accept I am not following GTD, and they tell me I am, but calling it by another name. The thing is you cannot have it both ways. It's like the song Hotel California. "You can check out anytime you like but you cannot leave". But I disagree. If I take the first six chapters of the GTD book (the 'bible') I am not following a single suggestion. There's no way I can be following anything GTD now.
Exactly, i don't use the list he claims GTD is about. I got a more organised workflow thanks to GTD-principles Talking about it like a bible and Carl Pullein response on your comment makes me feel he is just wanting to make his own religion (and make money off it). It's about idea's you can work with and GTD brought that to a lot of people. This man is talking about a time-based list --> such a revolutionary idea: it's not like the calender with a daily time schedule has been invented yet :) Carl, don't feel offended. That's how I feel, if you want to go ahead and use "your" calendar, then you should. Meanwhile i'm gonna browse youtube some more to get some real inspiritional ideas on increasing productivity.
Carl, I respect your journey and I know you use GTD since forever. But the fundamental idea is about “what’s a next action”. How you’ll organize your actions, it should be something that works for you - not only by contexts. A lot of GTD users organize their actions by areas of focus, time, feelings, this week etc. In essence, everything is context, but contexts are not only place or tool. ;) Thank you for all your videos.
Hi Thais, for me it's less about the next action and more about what's the outcome I want for the day, week, month year etc. A lot of time the next action won't deliver the outcome I want as fast as I want it. But I do understand there will always be a next action. I think fundamentally, the problem I have with GTD today, is the time cost involved in reviewing, organising and thinking about the tasks. I want to focus more on the deliverables and outcomes and the less time I spend organising and reviewing and the more time I spend focused on achieving the outcomes the faster I will get there.
Thaís, você por aqui! Ampliando horizontes! A abordagem do Carl é ótima, a do GTD também, e eu optei por um meio termo entre elas! Nada de engessar! Obrigado por todo seu material, aprendi muito com você sobre GTD.
eu to assistindo a sua série de implementação do GTD e vim dar uma olhada em outros vídeos, pq não me adaptei muito bem aos contextos. q grata surpresa encontrar seu comentário aqui
unfortuntaley there is a simple misunderstanding here. Contexts are simply conditions you want to be remembered of in case that you do not know the TIME. if you know the time (or you can set it because your calendar is empty) - put it in your calendar. If you do not know the time, define the condition (actually link it to a future event / condition). those conditions can be extremely variable (and yes in the book the most frequently used ones are given - place/person/tool - but they are not exclusive - you have to find yours) imagine being a gardener - being the whole day in the garden an "in the garden" list is NOT LIMITING enough = just does not filters your many options enough. But e.g. "when the weather is dry over 20 °C" can be a useful one... or "when its raining" 🙂
GTD is just a concept, but it is all-encompassing & highly complex. It can be made simple or complex depending on our requirement, that is why it is priceless
“I think” - that you have used GTD system and over time have learned how to manage yourself by tweaking and even revolutionising your productivity organisation that you have now transcended the model. However, I think that many people lack this skill and the GTD method gives them a structure in order to build the skill that you have now come so proficient at.
GTD would be great for me because I have ADHD inattentive type. Even with minimalism, I still have kids and aging parents to care for and documents to keep up with.
5:44 This is something I've learnt through hardship. GTD should be taken as individual disciplines that you can mix and match to find your own system: you shouldn't feel it's necessary to adopt GTD in its entirety, each individual discipline works as itself and can be used and adopted independently from the others. If time-based contexts work for you and help motivate you towards project completion, then that's great. I value spontaneity, so time-based contexts or setting schedules don't work for me. I did try your system for a little while though.
@@BrianColborne1 Hey, late response, though 2 years later I'm using a mix of time-based contexts for more urgent tasks and then location-based contexts for things that are not so urgent. I will move tasks over to my Saturday list, for example, and go through them one at a time. I work from a plan. I also have actions with little times next to them, so (2:19) Send message to X person, and attach a reminder 5 minutes before I have to go do that. Carl Pullein knows what he's talking about; if you can get to that core understanding of lists, list-making, and the concept of 'logistics', you can create your own reviewable lists that are useful for the kind of scenarios you find yourself in.
Thank you, Carl, for this video. I just got the GTD book, 2015 edition, and I'm working my way through it. I do have my own "GTD" system, but I'm always looking for ways to improve it. I'm just finishing up chapter 2, and I'm already finding myself resisting going further. I'm finding it a bit overwhelming with different lists, and whatnot. I do like the idea of getting everything out of my head and onto a list. I like the weekly review, inbox, and tickler file ideas, and plan to adopt them. I sort of pick up a "you have to be all-in" message from other GTD enthusiasts, so your video was a bit of a relief. Anyway, I plan on watching more of your videos. Thank you!
Great thoughts. Thank you. Some personal thoughts: I think GTD allows for contexts to be used as much or as little as you want. In his book, I believe David Allen gives some examples where you would minimize your contexts-for example if you work from home, then you could combine work and personal into one because you can do it all together. I usually have all my context lists open at once (using Workflowy) because I often want to switch among them, but there are indeed times when some of the contexts I just can't do tasks. For example, I usually can't do work from home, so I leave that list closed when I'm at home. I can't call during business hours to business during the weekend, so I close that "call-business hours" context then. I do think another benefit of contexts is that while yes, I can change contexts, I often do get in a roll and crank through a bunch of computer tasks (usually personal rather than work) from my laptop. While I'm sitting on my couch at home, I usually don't want to get up and switch a context. In other words, I think they still have utility, but only use them as much as you need. Contexts is only one small part of the GTD model. I think Dave Allen probably could've done a little better job of explaining this. Only need one context? Great. Just have one action list. Also, if you account for all of you tasks in the calendar, and you're able to keep all the appointments and you finish those tasks, then you're probably right. You don't need a projects lists. If perhaps you forget to reschedule a follow-on task or don't finish the whole project during one time block, then a projects list can be helpful...unless you just review the past week's appointment to jog your memory. If the latter, then that is essentially a projects list, just organized differently. I also think GTD allows you to schedule as much or as little as you want, but he doesn't do a great job of stating that either. It is only is his podcasts and some more off-hand comments that this is touched on. I don't think GTD is for everybody. It requires a lot of work. Mark Forster's time management systems are interesting also and more minimalist. I think GTD is a system of practices that doesn't work for everybody, but some of the principles of it can be applied in other ways for other people. I applaud you for developing your own system. I've had similar thoughts, but only have the contexts I need, and schedule whatever I want to schedule. I think that is still within GTD principles.
Carl .. i totally agree. . .all our 'systems' we've tried to relie on for decades nowadays seem much too complicated with unnecessary steps. . .glad to see that others are thinking the same way and tweaking their productivity to suit their current needs.
Carl! I just happened across this video that I must have watched at some point because I was doing the same thing in my reminders for some time. I recently saw Amplenote was free and over the past two days have been trying to make it work while I'm reading GTD for the first time (although not new to the concept). I find your way much more applicable for me and can happily say that I'm not missing anything with all the "contexts" and tags that need to occur in other idea capture softwares. Although I use Obsidian for my slip box, I've been happy with reminders and now I can just add more in there and put them on my calendar like you did. Anyways, thanks for reading and keep it up brother!
@@Carl_Pullein You're welcome. So much relief lol. And I get what people are saying in the comments how there's more to contexts, and GTD just being a frame work of system and there's as many systems as there are people. I just have Mac everything so it works best for me not to go outside those. Now, if Apple notes could have backlinks... There's something!
I don’t think that the contexts that David Allen listed in the original book - @office, @computer, @calls, etc - were ever meant to be the only way for thinking about your next action list. Instead, they were examples that you were then meant to adapt or discard depending on your own situation. If the bulk of your work takes place @computer, then your focus should shift to the time you have available, your energy level, and your overall priorities in deciding on what to do next (as is outlined in Chapter 2 of the book). While you’re obviously free to use this method or something else, i’m not sure the criticisms you point to here are in fact flaws in the GTD approach.
Hi Chris, I think, for me, the biggest criticism I have of GTD is the amount of time it takes just to maintain the whole thing. The processing, the reviewing, the having to decide whether a task is a project or not and creating lists based on context, which in 2020 is something that is so fluid it would mean changing your lists every few months. All that maintenance just takes you away from being able to spend time doing. And for me, that is what I want to do.
@@Carl_Pullein Hi Carl, yes that certainly is a challenge. I find it difficult to recognise that point at which maintaining the system descends into unnecessary fiddling and tweaking. Your emphasis on deliverables seems a useful way of keeping things focused. I look forward to seeing how you develop these ideas in future videos.
For me combining Desktop+Cell makes sense. As does Car and other locations. It's just one way to bundle ideas. I use Google Tasks and Taskboard to map projects and work breakdown structure. I then use Google Calendar to slot the tasks vis a vis time blocking. It's pretty much drag and drop.
David himself tells us to personalize the contexts… on the GTD podcast, one of the examples were actually contexts like emotions, time, situations and stuff. 👍🏽
I'm only now specifically studying GTD, but I feel like the system I've come up with is pretty convergent to it. Adapting GTD for what is needed is fine.
I don't use contexts anymore either, though projects are still useful for me. I'm changing Todoist to drop my contex labels. Thanks for the encouragement.
Context lists are just a small part of GTD. If you're following these principles, you're not moving away from GTD, you're just using/prioritizing different tools. 1) capture 2) clarify 3) organize 4) review 5) engage That's essentially what GTD is. If you're doing that, you are not moving away from it. Those are, I believe, timeless principles.
my two cents; everyone has their own definition of Everything, including GTD 😊 I envy you that your world is so simple straightforward and clear that you can do everything by volitional calendar scheduling, and your mind is so disciplined you remember what you need to only when you need it and that you always know exactly what the next thing you need to do on any project (goal/outcome/desire... whatever 😊) is. GTD is not a set of practices as it is a set of principles, aimed as DA repeatedly says, at getting and maintaining clear mental space. To draw an analogy from my own experience and industry (IT), GTD is almost a restatement of problem solving: define where you are, work out where you want to go/be , decide how to start moving in that direction...then take that step ... and repeat until you're somewhere you want to be ... capture all that on something external to your brain, so you don't waste precious mental energy just remembering it when you don't have to - spend thay energy engaged in the doing (living) As you and he says, whatever works for you 😊 I am very curious though - maybe I don't know enough of your material but do you really not review or reflect on your progress or plans, ever?
Hi Daniel, I think I have an allergy for anything complex. I just turn off. So for me, I have a lot of multiple projects ongoing at any one time, but there is always something to see how progress is going. It could be a presentation file, an online course file, a half painted room in my home.There's always something telling me where I am with a project. So, no, I do not need to review projects in a GTD sense. I just decide what needs doing and when and get on with it. The problem I had with GTD was there was far too much processing and organising and not enough time doing. For me at least, it's obvious what needs doing so I just do it.
thanks for replying and I would say... exactly. even DA would say only do what you need to. I recall once he effectively recanted being against having a hot list, but his world changed and he started using one, accepting that it could and would be incredibly fluid and changeable. I think the main points are to apply some real critical thinking to what work you need to do, and offload the results of that thinking so you can then focus on the actual doing. The volume and nature of what that thinking is differs for everyone. For me for example my work is far too fluid to make extensive use of a calendar, but it is also relatively abstract, so lists, effectively bookmarks, are needed 😊 As a side note it's also been my experience that not overthinking is also important (a very bad habit of mine).
Glad it works for you. Understand @contexts from the original book have not aged well over time, yet I could not live without a projects list and knowing what the next action is. I just looked, and I have 78 active projects for me and my team at work. There is no way I can keep the status of all of those moving parts in my head, especially with hard deadlines on 70% of them. If I had less than 20, or maybe less hard deadlines, maybe I could forgo a project list. For personal work, it may work just fine.
As someone who has to be analog, a GTD method for my thesis seems to be working. However, I am new at this. Thus I have a lot of next actions and projects, and project tasks. I have adhd and thus a reminder only works if I see it often. A reminder is easily ignored and forgotten about.
...and the lightbulb came on! No wonder I was buried under tasks and couldn't get any traction. I immediately watched your Reminders video and changed my lists and reorganized according to time instead of project. Wow! I have clarity now! Thank you!
You should read through the revised GTD book, the system is a LOT more flexible than i think youve made ot out to be in your mind, for example, your context catagories COULD BE time frames, but "task context lists" are a VERY small component of the system anyways....
These days, I've realised projects are the wrong way to look at things. Projects are slow and cumbersome, and most of the work people do is repetitive. We actually have very few real projects. However, what we do have are processes for doing our work. And the great thing about processes is all they need is a trigger.
@@Carl_Pullein I agree that for large ongoing projects, one may have only a few at any one time. But for many shorter term (say a few minutes to a few hours) projects, project lists are necessary to keep track of them all & not let anything fall through the cracks. I think David Allen says usually people have 50-100 at any one time. It seems like you only use GTD for managing your work rather than everything in your life, that may be why you consider project lists unnecessary for your purposes as you'd only be tracking a few things.
@@User24x I just don’t buy into David Allen’s definition of a project. I look for the process. Processes are faster, tried and tested ways of getting work done. In any given year, I might have 2 or 3 projects and I don’t need a list to manage those.
I'm thoroughly enjoying this. I had the privilege of reading something similar, and I was thoroughly enjoying it. "The Joy of Less: A Minimalist Living Guide" by Matthew Cove
As always common sense Carl. I have just been working on transferring all my Evernote and goodnote notes into Apple notes! Saving on a subscription to Evernote and taking away some more app clutter!
@@Carl_Pullein I am tempted here, but have also used EN forever (10,000+ notes.) Migrating to Apple means paying for more iCloud storage, I would think, with *similar* monthly expense. (It's almost as if they have done the math.) I have also read that Notes doesn't export to a format like .enex, so once I move over I'm sort of locked in. Thoughts on these two points? Thanks. - Almost Ready To Leap
I like GTD a lot (although I haven't read the book itself), but I agree that it can be overwhelming and hard/not pratical to follow on a consistent basis.
I liked using GTD as a starting point and then ignoring/replacing the elements that didn't work with my brain such as contexts & the way GTD limits calendar use.
You focused a lot on contexts but I think that isn’t really the biggest aspect of what makes GTD work. They’re more like the icing on the cake. The most important aspect of GTD is getting everything out of your head and processing and clarifying them into clear next actions. Projects don’t have to be these big complicated things, they could literally just be a one line item on a list that states a desired outcome. In your weekly review it just takes a moment to say, is this done? Is there something left to do in this? Do i have to brainstorm more about this?
I would have to disagree with you there. All time management and productivity systems are based on 'getting things out of your head and into a trusted place'. David Allen just expressed it in those terms and it stuck. The biggest differentiator with GTD and others is the way you manage your lists. Not by project, as many systems do, but by context. That made sense twenty years ago, but times have changed, the way we work has changed and the tools we use have changed.
the way you can tell if you're doing gtd is if you skip any of the 5 stages ... capture - clarify - organize - reflect - engage ... it doesn't matter what method or how little of each step you do as long as you do it, that's the system compressed to its absolute smallest form, you can't make it any smaller or it's no longer gtd.
== translate by google == Interesting your point of view, took me out of the comfort zone. I use GTD, I had a lot of difficulty due to an immense amount of details, but I persisted in the method and found that it works for me and leaves me under control of the projects, but GTD in a more simplified version. What I don't use are the contexts, but I think projects and tasks are fundamental, because everything is a project or a task, and seeing everything this way has broadened my understanding of everything that needs to be controlled. In my daily review, each project must have one of three things: A next action, a "waiting" request, or a next scheduled action. In this way, I make sure that all projects are moving forward. I made an adaptation based on your videos, I have the focus today, the list of the next items of the week, and I took my projects from Todoist and put them on Trello, which allows me to graphically and very visually do a good project management. Evernote is project support and just like you don't manage projects in todoist, I don't manage projects in evernote, todoist for tasks, evernote for notes and trello for projects. I also got to use all in one on TickTick, but unfortunately it is still very unstable in synchronization and not very visual. With the extra fields feature of Trello I put a status field, where I know at the moment how each project is doing. I started using filters using your tips and solved a problem that I hated in todoist, which was tomorrow's recurring task to keep appearing on the list, and the filters solved this issue. So this mixed GTD with your tips, without using the contexts has considerably increased my productivity. I believe in a middle ground between his minimalist method and the GTD's detailed method. Thanks for the amazing videos. I had a lot of insights with your way of thinking about tasks. Thanks. == original em meu idioma == Interessante seu ponto de vista, me tirou da zona de conforto. Eu uso o GTD, tive muita dificuldade devido a uma quantidade imensa de detalhes, porém persisti no método e descobri que funciona pra mim e me deixa sob controle dos projetos, mas GTD numa versão mais simplificada. O que eu não uso são os contextos, mas acho fundamental projetos e tarefas, pois tudo é um projeto ou é uma tarefa, e enxergar tudo desta forma ampliou meu entendimento sobre tudo o que precisa ser controlado. Na minha revisão diária, cada projeto tem que ter uma destas três coisas: Uma próxima ação, uma solicitação "aguardando" ou uma próxima ação agendada. Desta forma me certifico que todos os projetos estão andando. Fiz uma adaptação baseada nos seus vídeos, tenho o foco de hoje, a lista dos próximos itens da semana, e tirei meus projetos do Todoist e coloquei no Trello, que me permite de forma gráfica e muito visual fazer uma boa gestão dos projetos. O Evernote é apoio de projeto e só, assim como você não gerencia projetos no todoist, não gerencio projetos no evernote, todoist para tarefas, evernote para notas e trello para projetos. Também cheguei a usar tudo em um no TickTick, mas infelizmente ainda é muito instável na sincronização e pouco visual. Com o recurso de campos extras do Trello eu coloquei um campo status, onde eu sei na hora como está cada projeto. Passei a usar os filtros usando as suas dicas e resolveu um problema que eu odiava no todoist, que era a tarefa recorrente de amanhã ficar aparecendo na lista, e os filtros resolveram esta questão. Então este misto GTD com as suas dicas, sem usar os contextos aumentou consideravelmente minha produtividade. Acredito num meio termo entre seu método minimalista e o método detalhista do GTD. Obrigado pelos vídeos incríveis. Tive muitos insights com sua forma de pensar sobre tarefas. Obrigado.
Hi Carl, As usual, I am amazed by your clarity of thought, and a little impressed by you move away from the GTD bandwagon. The core ideas of GTD are sound, and support your approach, but the recognition that contexts and locations may no longer work is both inspired and a little worrying. Thank you for yet again challenging the norm.
Hi Phil, the only thing that has changed for me is the way I organise things. I realised that the most important tasks-my priorities-we getting lost in a sea of project folders and contexts. That was not serving me. Organising by date brings a lot more clarity and focus on tasks I decide are priorities.
Can you check out Notion and Review it for COD and productivity. I really like it but can be overwhelming. Hoping you like it too and will help us organize our Notion for COD and Journaling
Sadly no. I tried Notion a while ago and immediately deleted it. It's a procrastinators heaven with so many bells and whistles and customisable settings, I would spend far too much time playing around with it I would never get any work done.
That's not how GTD is meant to be used, it's going to be different for everyone. You're suppose to use it more as a guide and customize it for yourself however makes most sense for you. The things you are 'debunking' are not 'GTD rules'
Love your content. But you're missing the key element of GTD and context... That is batching tasks together... So much easier to make all calls one after the other; and run all errands whilst the car is hot and you're out.
You still make calls today? WOW! I can't remember the last time I had to call someone by phone. It's not just about contexts. It's the time it takes to review and organise everything. I just don't have time for all that. Instead, I prefer to make a simple decision. When will I do this? 90% of my work can be done on any device now.
@@Carl_Pullein plenty of people make calls. I’m disabled and constantly have to manage medical appointments and insurance calls. What a weird thing to say “wow” about.
Thanks for sharing your new system. It's cool to see how you have set things up. But I really think you should consider how you have worded a lot of the stuff in your video.. One of the core principles of GTD is placing appropriate reminders about what you need to do so that you can see them when you need to see them. Your new setup still follows this principle - all you have done is changed the 'contexts'. I imagine that you haven't stopped using capture tools and I imagine you haven't stopped clarifying or emptying your inbox either. As a productivity 'guru', I really don't think you should be saying that GTD is outdated or say anything that dissuades anyone from checking out GTD, especially when it has clearly influnced so much of your work and your understanding of productivity. All you've really done is modify two of the suggested best practices from the book. The principles and practices from the book are not outdated.
Hi James, it funny, I've had so many people comment to me how I must have misunderstood the concepts of GTD, how I don't understand what David Allen meant when he wrote about this or wrote about that and how I have copied GTD. The laughable thing is these people are interpreting GTD so wildly that by their interpretation if you create a list of any sort you must be using GTD. That not true, of course. Lists were around long before GTD was conceived. The same applies for collecting (capturing) - Tony Robbins was doing that as part of his RPM system in the mid-80s. The original Franklin Quest system (the forefather of the Franklin Planner) was born in the 1970s--long before David put pen to paper. The truth is GTD is outdated. GTD is built around the concept of you can only do work when you are in the right place, with the right person or with the right tool. You no longer need to be in the hardware store to buy a hammer. You can order it online from Amazon. You no longer need to be with a person (in fact you probably can't today anyway) to have a meeting with them and you no longer need to be at your comptuer to reply to an email. These "contexts" just don't have any meaning today. I could write a novel on how the Time Sector System is different from GTD, but I won't bore you with that. The fact is, GTD cannot lay claim to adding something to a list and using a to-do list as their propriety idea. Collecting and making lists have been around long before David Allen was born.
I think you've summarised perfectly how I've felt for a few years. I have never got on with GTD in the modern workplace and always struggled with it. What applications do you use in your workflow at the moment? Are you still using evernote? Do you have any intentions of moving to Notion like the rest of every other productivity expert around?
Hi Matt. Yes, Evernote is there, but resting at the moment until it gets updated. (The iOS app is shockingly bad at the moment) So, my tools are Todoist, Apple Notes and Apple Calendar. Notion didn't work for me. I spent far too much time playing around with all those amazing features I never got any work done. I want something with few feature, few options to customise so I can focus on the work and not how I organise the work.
@@Carl_Pullein That is a very minimal approach, I struggle to separate work from home. We use office 365 at work and I must say that OneNote is very good although the syncing could do with some work and search is nowhere near Evernote but then I use other tools to try and pull everything together from home and I'm getting myself overawed by everything I'm using. I don't know how the guys like francesco d'alessio and ali abdaal use so many apps in their work flow and know where they have stored a certain item. Your videos are definitely the ones I always come back to and i'm looking forward to seeing more of this approach.
3 textfiles; inbox.md, today.md, someday.md. I then use a zettelkasten (like a personal wiki/knowledge base) with neovim and if things 'stick around' on any list they end up going into that.
I have only just come across GTD and even just watching videos about it was making me feel stressed! Lists upon lists when all one really needs to do it either do a task or diarise it to be done later. These days I think managing emails is as imporant as anything in most professions. Stumbling on GTD has left me a bit bewildered, it all seems very ra-ra and a bit of a cult/pyramid scheme. GTD acolytes will not hear a bad word said against it, as if it is some sort of religion. Very odd!! Glad I found this video, albeit 5 year after you published it.
David Allen continually said that GTD is a blueprint, but you have to make it your own. It just contains the fundamentals. Its great that you perfected your own productivity system.
Indeed. The question is when is a system not a GTD system? I have no contexts, no projects. What's left? I don't "review", I plan. I time block sessions of work. There's nothing recognisably GTD in anything I do anymore.
My impression is that my perception of what the GTD method is and yours are completely different. And that what I do of the method isn't related to what you tell us. It might be the case because you do not organize your work in projects, (you admit on that in your video) contrary to me. Not doing projects in my opinion is bad practice. But everyone has his own ways, and if your new systems work for you then it's all for the best.
Yeah, it seems GTD is everything to all people... Apparently. I even discovered that some people claim Tony Robbins' RPM and The Franklin Planner is just another form of GTD, which is quite incredible since GTD was published in 2001 and the Franklin Planner and Tony Robbins' RPM systems were published in the 1980s!
@@Carl_Pullein these are your words , not mine. One just needs to read the book to find out that sorting next actions by context is only one part of GTD. No need to cite Ben Franklin and others
@@samuele.marcora You're right, GTD is more than contexts. But, managing projects is nothing new and it was being managed by many different systems before GTD (see Hyrum Smith's Franklin Planner and Tony Robbins's RPM systems for example) The key difference between GTD and systems before it is the unique way lists are generated by context. That was a fantastic idea in 2001 when we had to be at our computers to send and reply to emails. But today, that no longer applies. I can reply to emails anywhere. I even write my blog posts on my phone. Contexts just don't make any sense today.... To me.
@@Carl_Pullein I get your point :) I am also reading the 2005 book, but from what I understand about contexts list, they don't need to be about the tools and places. Context lists are abstract enough so that you can use them to filter by anything you want to filter during your day-to-day activities. Not just tool, place, energy, or time available. I use them to filter my mood for example. Also, my big insight so far from the GTD methodology is keeping everything out of my head so that I can be present at the current moment, and that its a great (and dificult) habit to develop Cheers :)
Funny, I can't stand using my calendar as a project manager. A lot of that comes from my job. Previously I'd block calendar time but I'd either under estimate or have to constantly reschedule. So GTD works for me but the secret sauce is it doesn't require any specific technology beyond pen and paper. While being flexible enough to adapt to elements from another system.
Hmm contexts that don't work in the 21st century, weekly reviews that take forever (when they don't need to), daily processing that also tasks too long. I just wasn't spending enough time actually getting the work done. It just isn't a system, framework, or set of guiding principles that works for me anymore. Certainly wouldn't say that is won't work for everyone. I'm sure there are people who can make it work. But, not for me.
I agree with GorillaPhoto. Managing one's actions by context is but one small slice of GTD. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Horizon's of focus is as powerful or more than the "control" side of the GTD equation. I like his idea of minimizing and simplifying, but disagree that "GTD = context" as it's far more than that. It's been nothing short of life-altering for me and millions of others. I could do away with context and still get much of the power.
@@roberthendriksen6490 I do understand that, Robert. GTD is more than just contexts. But, and this is really my point, "horizons of focus is not unique to GTD. They have been around since the early 1970s. Tony Robbins's was teaching that back in the late 80s, Jim Rohn was teaching in the 1970s and I'm sure many others were teaching it before then. What makes GTD unique is managing your lists by contexts. And that's where in 2020 GTD completely falls down.
You know, you can and should change contexts over time as your life circumstances change. You don’t need to abandon a whole system just because you don’t want to update your contexts. I think you threw out the baby with the bathwater and didn’t really understand parts of GTD in the first place.
Hi Christopher, it wasn't just contexts, it was the time it took to organise everything (with the powerful search functionality we now have with cloud services and notes apps a lot of that is time wasted) and the amount of time needed for weekly reviews. When I calculated the amount of time I was spending just servicing my GTD system I realised, in 2021, it's a system that's no longer relevant for me. After all, GTD was developed in the late 1980s and 1990s. There are better, faster and more focused systems today that work better with the way we work in the 21st century.
GTD was essential reading and very influential to me but never was very realistic to how I worked. It had lots of nuggets of insight but was way too divorced from ideas like energy and real human behaviour. It kind of had a flat view of tine and personal energy that was too robitic for me. If here then do this, etc. just lacked that sense of priorities and resourcefulness that we all have. It was good for filtering out things we could not advance, but kind of treated planning like a super logical thing and did not offer that much insight about how to prioritize etc. Good for reminders and minor actions but not good for mission and meaning, in my view.
Getting things done has a lot of flaws, and its beyond complicated and not easy to remember. When it was released in 2001 it was revolutionary, but its not great for today (despite its 2015 update) in my opinion. There needs to be a system that you can literally teach to child, something that can handle an immense workload while being agile. I saw a video of David Allen helping this woman in Amsterdam, and she got overwhelmed when she saw what she had to do with the system, and started crying. And David Allen was giving her this arrogant attitude like some how she was incompetent, it really pissed me off. Id say the 5 choices of extraordinary productivity from franklin covey (a simplified version of gtd) is 100 times more effective, and simple that GTD. But that's just my opinion.
@@Carl_Pullein The other thing I really hated was how his first book didn't explain the system as a whole. Like he breifly touched on the 5 horizons, but he left that for his other book, "making it all work." So basically I had to read one of the most dry and boring books i've ever read, and on top of that, another dry and boring read. And the lack of imagery literally makes me super confused on how the workflow actually works. I had to actually call one of their coaches, who was actually nice enough to get me some free stuff and guide me through because she had some empathy for me. But I honestly was completely lost. If this is the crap they teach the US military, and other major corporations, I can see how there are so many mistakes. If you can't explain it to a child, and make it easy enough to learn, with videos and real world examples, you're wasting your time. But that's just my opinion. The concept is brilliant, but the actual learning process is a living nightmare.
He should have written a book containing different levels of difficulty. 1 system is for people who have never used a productivity system before like high school kids and young adults, the other system is for people who are working a 9 to 5 job at McDonalds, the next one would be for people working desk jobs that require degrees, and then after that, for executives who are running massive companies. The reason I say this, is that he basically made the system for people who work a desk job or an executive who is dealing with a company. If you are used to working in cubicle hell, then you will probably understand the book much better than a person who has never done anything like that. Again, just a suggestion.
David Allen's GTD is like Bruce Lee's JKD, here's why: 1) David Allen has always said that the concept is more important than the GTD process. 2) Since 2001, he's coming with diff editions, this time he'll add "time-based" in the latest edition, that's all ! 3) David Allen, the man is bigger than his method GTD. Eg: he never mentions using martial arts into GTD though he practices himself. So, does this mean GTD doesn't have martial arts OR "calm amidst chaos"? 4) Over 2-3 decades, folks, CEOs & software architects have tried to decode GTD into a system, but couldn't !
Great content, but maybe there is an improvement to be made in your deliverance. You repeat your point many times up to the 4-minute mark. I mean this in a constructive way. On youtube, less is more.
That is deliberate having been teaching for nearly 20 years. Say it once, say it again and say it a third time. In the very distracting world we live in today repeating yourself is even more important than ever before.
It seems to me. You didn’t capture what the essence of GTD is. If the system works for you. I’d challenge you to realize you’re not operating with a clear mind 🤓
The following are what I think are the core ideas of GTD
1. Your brain is good for having ideas, not holding them. Therefore, store your ideas in an external brain. External brain is whatever system you use consistently enough that you trust the system to tell you what to do when.
2. Clarity is important. Store your ideas and to dos in your external system as though you are giving instructions to a 10 year old kid. This way you will be able to resist procrastination as one of the reason you procrastinate is the mental energy needed to figure out what you need to do
3. Review. This is a crucial part of maintaining trust in your system. Because if you don't trust your system you will get back into the habit of tracking your tasks using your brain, rather than the external brain
The rest are just details as far as I'm concerned. You may discard agendas, contexts and the 2 minute rule. But as long as you adhere to the core ideas of GTD I listed above, you are using GTD
So given this, I think GTD is timeless. At least until technology makes our brain work differently.
Rashad Razak exactlly
I thinks it’s so arrogant GTDers and even David Allen itself claiming stuff like REVIEWING, CLARIFYING and HAVING A SYSTEM TO STORE YOUR STUF belong to GTD to a point if you do one of those you are practicing GTD. Weather you want it or not.
It sounds hilarious to me.
It’s just those stuff weren’t there before David come up with his system.
@@felipeoliveira8464 Those things definitely existed before David Allen wrote his book. He was the one who popularised it though.
Besides, the point isn't whether or not David Allen deserves credit for writing down things, having a system, clarifying and reviewing. The point is that the most important take away from the GTD book are those things. You may call those things whatever you like
Hmm the GTD community are a funny group. For years I've been told I am not a GTDer because I do not organise my lists by contexts and I prioritise my daily tasks. Now I finally accept I am not following GTD, and they tell me I am, but calling it by another name.
The thing is you cannot have it both ways.
It's like the song Hotel California. "You can check out anytime you like but you cannot leave".
But I disagree. If I take the first six chapters of the GTD book (the 'bible') I am not following a single suggestion. There's no way I can be following anything GTD now.
Exactly, i don't use the list he claims GTD is about. I got a more organised workflow thanks to GTD-principles
Talking about it like a bible and Carl Pullein response on your comment makes me feel he is just wanting to make his own religion (and make money off it).
It's about idea's you can work with and GTD brought that to a lot of people.
This man is talking about a time-based list --> such a revolutionary idea: it's not like the calender with a daily time schedule has been invented yet :)
Carl, don't feel offended. That's how I feel, if you want to go ahead and use "your" calendar, then you should.
Meanwhile i'm gonna browse youtube some more to get some real inspiritional ideas on increasing productivity.
Carl, I respect your journey and I know you use GTD since forever. But the fundamental idea is about “what’s a next action”. How you’ll organize your actions, it should be something that works for you - not only by contexts. A lot of GTD users organize their actions by areas of focus, time, feelings, this week etc. In essence, everything is context, but contexts are not only place or tool. ;)
Thank you for all your videos.
Hi Thais, for me it's less about the next action and more about what's the outcome I want for the day, week, month year etc. A lot of time the next action won't deliver the outcome I want as fast as I want it. But I do understand there will always be a next action.
I think fundamentally, the problem I have with GTD today, is the time cost involved in reviewing, organising and thinking about the tasks. I want to focus more on the deliverables and outcomes and the less time I spend organising and reviewing and the more time I spend focused on achieving the outcomes the faster I will get there.
@@Carl_Pullein I understand, but it's customizable too. Thank you for answering.
Thaís, você por aqui! Ampliando horizontes! A abordagem do Carl é ótima, a do GTD também, e eu optei por um meio termo entre elas! Nada de engessar! Obrigado por todo seu material, aprendi muito com você sobre GTD.
eu to assistindo a sua série de implementação do GTD e vim dar uma olhada em outros vídeos, pq não me adaptei muito bem aos contextos. q grata surpresa encontrar seu comentário aqui
unfortuntaley there is a simple misunderstanding here. Contexts are simply conditions you want to be remembered of in case that you do not know the TIME.
if you know the time (or you can set it because your calendar is empty) - put it in your calendar. If you do not know the time, define the condition (actually link it to a future event / condition).
those conditions can be extremely variable (and yes in the book the most frequently used ones are given - place/person/tool - but they are not exclusive - you have to find yours)
imagine being a gardener - being the whole day in the garden an "in the garden" list is NOT LIMITING enough = just does not filters your many options enough. But e.g. "when the weather is dry over 20 °C" can be a useful one... or "when its raining" 🙂
I feel Now the context is around how you feel and time of day. Creative tasks vs analysis what is your brain and body best to do at that time.
GTD is just a concept, but it is all-encompassing & highly complex. It can be made simple or complex depending on our requirement, that is why it is priceless
Indeed.
I have observed that you have replied to most of the comments and it’s really nice to see this and is quite rare.
Hi Raghu, Thank you. I feel it is important to respond to people who have taken the time to comment.
Yes! This show respect! Thanks! 🤗
“I think” - that you have used GTD system and over time have learned how to manage yourself by tweaking and even revolutionising your productivity organisation that you have now transcended the model.
However, I think that many people lack this skill and the GTD method gives them a structure in order to build the skill that you have now come so proficient at.
GTD would be great for me because I have ADHD inattentive type. Even with minimalism, I still have kids and aging parents to care for and documents to keep up with.
@@bevtapp76 same here
5:44 This is something I've learnt through hardship. GTD should be taken as individual disciplines that you can mix and match to find your own system: you shouldn't feel it's necessary to adopt GTD in its entirety, each individual discipline works as itself and can be used and adopted independently from the others.
If time-based contexts work for you and help motivate you towards project completion, then that's great. I value spontaneity, so time-based contexts or setting schedules don't work for me. I did try your system for a little while though.
David Allen himself says we should personalize it. I think people that follow GTD are more strict than David himself hahaha
Hi @Markimus, I am curious what is your system, what works most effectively for you, I'm asking cos like you I am also spontaneity oriented!
@@BrianColborne1 Hey, late response, though 2 years later I'm using a mix of time-based contexts for more urgent tasks and then location-based contexts for things that are not so urgent. I will move tasks over to my Saturday list, for example, and go through them one at a time. I work from a plan. I also have actions with little times next to them, so (2:19) Send message to X person, and attach a reminder 5 minutes before I have to go do that. Carl Pullein knows what he's talking about; if you can get to that core understanding of lists, list-making, and the concept of 'logistics', you can create your own reviewable lists that are useful for the kind of scenarios you find yourself in.
Thank you, Carl, for this video. I just got the GTD book, 2015 edition, and I'm working my way through it. I do have my own "GTD" system, but I'm always looking for ways to improve it. I'm just finishing up chapter 2, and I'm already finding myself resisting going further. I'm finding it a bit overwhelming with different lists, and whatnot. I do like the idea of getting everything out of my head and onto a list. I like the weekly review, inbox, and tickler file ideas, and plan to adopt them.
I sort of pick up a "you have to be all-in" message from other GTD enthusiasts, so your video was a bit of a relief. Anyway, I plan on watching more of your videos. Thank you!
You're welcome, Tom. I would suggest finishing the GTD book. It is a good book, but you do need to adapt things so they work for you.
Great thoughts. Thank you.
Some personal thoughts: I think GTD allows for contexts to be used as much or as little as you want. In his book, I believe David Allen gives some examples where you would minimize your contexts-for example if you work from home, then you could combine work and personal into one because you can do it all together. I usually have all my context lists open at once (using Workflowy) because I often want to switch among them, but there are indeed times when some of the contexts I just can't do tasks. For example, I usually can't do work from home, so I leave that list closed when I'm at home. I can't call during business hours to business during the weekend, so I close that "call-business hours" context then. I do think another benefit of contexts is that while yes, I can change contexts, I often do get in a roll and crank through a bunch of computer tasks (usually personal rather than work) from my laptop. While I'm sitting on my couch at home, I usually don't want to get up and switch a context. In other words, I think they still have utility, but only use them as much as you need. Contexts is only one small part of the GTD model. I think Dave Allen probably could've done a little better job of explaining this. Only need one context? Great. Just have one action list.
Also, if you account for all of you tasks in the calendar, and you're able to keep all the appointments and you finish those tasks, then you're probably right. You don't need a projects lists. If perhaps you forget to reschedule a follow-on task or don't finish the whole project during one time block, then a projects list can be helpful...unless you just review the past week's appointment to jog your memory. If the latter, then that is essentially a projects list, just organized differently. I also think GTD allows you to schedule as much or as little as you want, but he doesn't do a great job of stating that either. It is only is his podcasts and some more off-hand comments that this is touched on.
I don't think GTD is for everybody. It requires a lot of work. Mark Forster's time management systems are interesting also and more minimalist. I think GTD is a system of practices that doesn't work for everybody, but some of the principles of it can be applied in other ways for other people. I applaud you for developing your own system. I've had similar thoughts, but only have the contexts I need, and schedule whatever I want to schedule. I think that is still within GTD principles.
Carl .. i totally agree. . .all our 'systems' we've tried to relie on for decades nowadays seem much too complicated with unnecessary steps. . .glad to see that others are thinking the same way and tweaking their productivity to suit their current needs.
Thanks, Brianna.
Carl! I just happened across this video that I must have watched at some point because I was doing the same thing in my reminders for some time. I recently saw Amplenote was free and over the past two days have been trying to make it work while I'm reading GTD for the first time (although not new to the concept). I find your way much more applicable for me and can happily say that I'm not missing anything with all the "contexts" and tags that need to occur in other idea capture softwares. Although I use Obsidian for my slip box, I've been happy with reminders and now I can just add more in there and put them on my calendar like you did. Anyways, thanks for reading and keep it up brother!
Thanks, Aaron. Glad you've found a better way to manage your tasks.
@@Carl_Pullein You're welcome. So much relief lol. And I get what people are saying in the comments how there's more to contexts, and GTD just being a frame work of system and there's as many systems as there are people. I just have Mac everything so it works best for me not to go outside those. Now, if Apple notes could have backlinks... There's something!
I don’t think that the contexts that David Allen listed in the original book - @office, @computer, @calls, etc - were ever meant to be the only way for thinking about your next action list. Instead, they were examples that you were then meant to adapt or discard depending on your own situation. If the bulk of your work takes place @computer, then your focus should shift to the time you have available, your energy level, and your overall priorities in deciding on what to do next (as is outlined in Chapter 2 of the book).
While you’re obviously free to use this method or something else, i’m not sure the criticisms you point to here are in fact flaws in the GTD approach.
Hi Chris, I think, for me, the biggest criticism I have of GTD is the amount of time it takes just to maintain the whole thing. The processing, the reviewing, the having to decide whether a task is a project or not and creating lists based on context, which in 2020 is something that is so fluid it would mean changing your lists every few months. All that maintenance just takes you away from being able to spend time doing. And for me, that is what I want to do.
@@Carl_Pullein Hi Carl, yes that certainly is a challenge. I find it difficult to recognise that point at which maintaining the system descends into unnecessary fiddling and tweaking. Your emphasis on deliverables seems a useful way of keeping things focused. I look forward to seeing how you develop these ideas in future videos.
For me combining Desktop+Cell makes sense. As does Car and other locations. It's just one way to bundle ideas. I use Google Tasks and Taskboard to map projects and work breakdown structure. I then use Google Calendar to slot the tasks vis a vis time blocking. It's pretty much drag and drop.
Question - carl - why not have your GTD folders by times instead of place.
They are. I manage all my tasks by when they need doing.
David himself tells us to personalize the contexts… on the GTD podcast, one of the examples were actually contexts like emotions, time, situations and stuff. 👍🏽
He did. Sadly, life is never as simple as that.
I'm only now specifically studying GTD, but I feel like the system I've come up with is pretty convergent to it. Adapting GTD for what is needed is fine.
Absolutely. Good luck with the reviews.
100% agree. GTD is classics. Everyone should know it then move to his/her own system👍
I. guess they do in the end.
I don't use contexts anymore either, though projects are still useful for me. I'm changing Todoist to drop my contex labels. Thanks for the encouragement.
You're welcome.
The grey backdrop looks good.
Thank you, Tanya.
Carl “Way back in 2009” Pullein. I can’t believe 2009 is way back then! Man does time fly!! 😂🤪
It does indeed.
At least in the 2015 edition of Allen’s book, everything you discuss here Allen touches on, he has a broader definition of contexts than you use here.
Even more relevant now after the viral outbreak. Most contexts are now 'at home'
Good point. LOL
Have you tried taskade
No. I Loe my Todoist. It does everything I need and so I don not need to find another app.
True about location and context and GTD sounds complicated and Zaharides method also complicated though helpful
All that matters is what you will do today.
Context lists are just a small part of GTD. If you're following these principles, you're not moving away from GTD, you're just using/prioritizing different tools.
1) capture
2) clarify
3) organize
4) review
5) engage
That's essentially what GTD is. If you're doing that, you are not moving away from it. Those are, I believe, timeless principles.
My contexts are usually by time blocks, not place or tool
GTD doesn't work for you and now you are using time based folder
so the bottom line is that you're still using GTD?
my two cents; everyone has their own definition of Everything, including GTD 😊
I envy you that your world is so simple straightforward and clear that you can do everything by volitional calendar scheduling, and your mind is so disciplined you remember what you need to only when you need it and that you always know exactly what the next thing you need to do on any project (goal/outcome/desire... whatever 😊) is.
GTD is not a set of practices as it is a set of principles, aimed as DA repeatedly says, at getting and maintaining clear mental space. To draw an analogy from my own experience and industry (IT), GTD is almost a restatement of problem solving: define where you are, work out where you want to go/be , decide how to start moving in that direction...then take that step ... and repeat until you're somewhere you want to be ... capture all that on something external to your brain, so you don't waste precious mental energy just remembering it when you don't have to - spend thay energy engaged in the doing (living) As you and he says, whatever works for you 😊
I am very curious though - maybe I don't know enough of your material but do you really not review or reflect on your progress or plans, ever?
Hi Daniel, I think I have an allergy for anything complex. I just turn off. So for me, I have a lot of multiple projects ongoing at any one time, but there is always something to see how progress is going. It could be a presentation file, an online course file, a half painted room in my home.There's always something telling me where I am with a project.
So, no, I do not need to review projects in a GTD sense. I just decide what needs doing and when and get on with it.
The problem I had with GTD was there was far too much processing and organising and not enough time doing. For me at least, it's obvious what needs doing so I just do it.
thanks for replying and I would say... exactly. even DA would say only do what you need to. I recall once he effectively recanted being against having a hot list, but his world changed and he started using one, accepting that it could and would be incredibly fluid and changeable. I think the main points are to apply some real critical thinking to what work you need to do, and offload the results of that thinking so you can then focus on the actual doing. The volume and nature of what that thinking is differs for everyone. For me for example my work is far too fluid to make extensive use of a calendar, but it is also relatively abstract, so lists, effectively bookmarks, are needed 😊 As a side note it's also been my experience that not overthinking is also important (a very bad habit of mine).
Glad it works for you. Understand @contexts from the original book have not aged well over time, yet I could not live without a projects list and knowing what the next action is. I just looked, and I have 78 active projects for me and my team at work. There is no way I can keep the status of all of those moving parts in my head, especially with hard deadlines on 70% of them. If I had less than 20, or maybe less hard deadlines, maybe I could forgo a project list. For personal work, it may work just fine.
As someone who has to be analog, a GTD method for my thesis seems to be working. However, I am new at this. Thus I have a lot of next actions and projects, and project tasks. I have adhd and thus a reminder only works if I see it often. A reminder is easily ignored and forgotten about.
The important thing is to develop your own way of doing things.
...and the lightbulb came on! No wonder I was buried under tasks and couldn't get any traction. I immediately watched your Reminders video and changed my lists and reorganized according to time instead of project. Wow! I have clarity now! Thank you!
You're very welcome, JLC
You should read through the revised GTD book, the system is a LOT more flexible than i think youve made ot out to be in your mind, for example, your context catagories COULD BE time frames, but "task context lists" are a VERY small component of the system anyways....
I've been advocating for this for years.
So glad you finally realised that GTD is actually more time-hungry than it seems and now minimising 🤓👍
Took a while, but the journey has been wonderful :-)
You'd still need a list of all your projects so you know what your options are?
These days, I've realised projects are the wrong way to look at things. Projects are slow and cumbersome, and most of the work people do is repetitive. We actually have very few real projects. However, what we do have are processes for doing our work. And the great thing about processes is all they need is a trigger.
@@Carl_Pullein I agree that for large ongoing projects, one may have only a few at any one time.
But for many shorter term (say a few minutes to a few hours) projects, project lists are necessary to keep track of them all & not let anything fall through the cracks. I think David Allen says usually people have 50-100 at any one time.
It seems like you only use GTD for managing your work rather than everything in your life, that may be why you consider project lists unnecessary for your purposes as you'd only be tracking a few things.
@@User24x I just don’t buy into David Allen’s definition of a project. I look for the process. Processes are faster, tried and tested ways of getting work done. In any given year, I might have 2 or 3 projects and I don’t need a list to manage those.
I'm thoroughly enjoying this. I had the privilege of reading something similar, and I was thoroughly enjoying it. "The Joy of Less: A Minimalist Living Guide" by Matthew Cove
As always common sense Carl. I have just been working on transferring all my Evernote and goodnote notes into Apple notes! Saving on a subscription to Evernote and taking away some more app clutter!
It's a great feeling isn't it, Johnny?
@@Carl_Pullein I am tempted here, but have also used EN forever (10,000+ notes.) Migrating to Apple means paying for more iCloud storage, I would think, with *similar* monthly expense. (It's almost as if they have done the math.) I have also read that Notes doesn't export to a format like .enex, so once I move over I'm sort of locked in. Thoughts on these two points? Thanks. - Almost Ready To Leap
I like GTD a lot (although I haven't read the book itself), but I agree that it can be overwhelming and hard/not pratical to follow on a consistent basis.
That is certainly an issue for many.
I liked using GTD as a starting point and then ignoring/replacing the elements that didn't work with my brain such as contexts & the way GTD limits calendar use.
I think that's how I migrated over time too.
You focused a lot on contexts but I think that isn’t really the biggest aspect of what makes GTD work. They’re more like the icing on the cake. The most important aspect of GTD is getting everything out of your head and processing and clarifying them into clear next actions. Projects don’t have to be these big complicated things, they could literally just be a one line item on a list that states a desired outcome. In your weekly review it just takes a moment to say, is this done? Is there something left to do in this? Do i have to brainstorm more about this?
I would have to disagree with you there. All time management and productivity systems are based on 'getting things out of your head and into a trusted place'. David Allen just expressed it in those terms and it stuck. The biggest differentiator with GTD and others is the way you manage your lists. Not by project, as many systems do, but by context. That made sense twenty years ago, but times have changed, the way we work has changed and the tools we use have changed.
📹 this video is very well explained, helpful, interesting and insightful. 💡
Muito obrigado for sharing 🤝
Glad you found it useful, Teelock. 🙏
the way you can tell if you're doing gtd is if you skip any of the 5 stages ... capture - clarify - organize - reflect - engage ... it doesn't matter what method or how little of each step you do as long as you do it, that's the system compressed to its absolute smallest form, you can't make it any smaller or it's no longer gtd.
Then I an definitely not doing GTD anymore. I only do three of those things
== translate by google ==
Interesting your point of view, took me out of the comfort zone. I use GTD, I had a lot of difficulty due to an immense amount of details, but I persisted in the method and found that it works for me and leaves me under control of the projects, but GTD in a more simplified version. What I don't use are the contexts, but I think projects and tasks are fundamental, because everything is a project or a task, and seeing everything this way has broadened my understanding of everything that needs to be controlled. In my daily review, each project must have one of three things: A next action, a "waiting" request, or a next scheduled action. In this way, I make sure that all projects are moving forward. I made an adaptation based on your videos, I have the focus today, the list of the next items of the week, and I took my projects from Todoist and put them on Trello, which allows me to graphically and very visually do a good project management. Evernote is project support and just like you don't manage projects in todoist, I don't manage projects in evernote, todoist for tasks, evernote for notes and trello for projects. I also got to use all in one on TickTick, but unfortunately it is still very unstable in synchronization and not very visual. With the extra fields feature of Trello I put a status field, where I know at the moment how each project is doing. I started using filters using your tips and solved a problem that I hated in todoist, which was tomorrow's recurring task to keep appearing on the list, and the filters solved this issue. So this mixed GTD with your tips, without using the contexts has considerably increased my productivity. I believe in a middle ground between his minimalist method and the GTD's detailed method. Thanks for the amazing videos. I had a lot of insights with your way of thinking about tasks. Thanks.
== original em meu idioma ==
Interessante seu ponto de vista, me tirou da zona de conforto. Eu uso o GTD, tive muita dificuldade devido a uma quantidade imensa de detalhes, porém persisti no método e descobri que funciona pra mim e me deixa sob controle dos projetos, mas GTD numa versão mais simplificada. O que eu não uso são os contextos, mas acho fundamental projetos e tarefas, pois tudo é um projeto ou é uma tarefa, e enxergar tudo desta forma ampliou meu entendimento sobre tudo o que precisa ser controlado. Na minha revisão diária, cada projeto tem que ter uma destas três coisas: Uma próxima ação, uma solicitação "aguardando" ou uma próxima ação agendada. Desta forma me certifico que todos os projetos estão andando. Fiz uma adaptação baseada nos seus vídeos, tenho o foco de hoje, a lista dos próximos itens da semana, e tirei meus projetos do Todoist e coloquei no Trello, que me permite de forma gráfica e muito visual fazer uma boa gestão dos projetos. O Evernote é apoio de projeto e só, assim como você não gerencia projetos no todoist, não gerencio projetos no evernote, todoist para tarefas, evernote para notas e trello para projetos. Também cheguei a usar tudo em um no TickTick, mas infelizmente ainda é muito instável na sincronização e pouco visual. Com o recurso de campos extras do Trello eu coloquei um campo status, onde eu sei na hora como está cada projeto. Passei a usar os filtros usando as suas dicas e resolveu um problema que eu odiava no todoist, que era a tarefa recorrente de amanhã ficar aparecendo na lista, e os filtros resolveram esta questão. Então este misto GTD com as suas dicas, sem usar os contextos aumentou consideravelmente minha produtividade. Acredito num meio termo entre seu método minimalista e o método detalhista do GTD. Obrigado pelos vídeos incríveis. Tive muitos insights com sua forma de pensar sobre tarefas. Obrigado.
Estou muito feliz em ver que você encontrou uma maneira que funciona para você. É disso que se trata.
Hi Carl,
As usual, I am amazed by your clarity of thought, and a little impressed by you move away from the GTD bandwagon. The core ideas of GTD are sound, and support your approach, but the recognition that contexts and locations may no longer work is both inspired and a little worrying. Thank you for yet again challenging the norm.
Hi Phil, the only thing that has changed for me is the way I organise things. I realised that the most important tasks-my priorities-we getting lost in a sea of project folders and contexts. That was not serving me.
Organising by date brings a lot more clarity and focus on tasks I decide are priorities.
Can you check out Notion and Review it for COD and productivity. I really like it but can be overwhelming. Hoping you like it too and will help us organize our Notion for COD and Journaling
Sadly no. I tried Notion a while ago and immediately deleted it. It's a procrastinators heaven with so many bells and whistles and customisable settings, I would spend far too much time playing around with it I would never get any work done.
That's not how GTD is meant to be used, it's going to be different for everyone. You're suppose to use it more as a guide and customize it for yourself however makes most sense for you. The things you are 'debunking' are not 'GTD rules'
Really imo Biggest factor of GTD is the Weekly Review everything else I follow loosely.
Completely agree there.
Love your content. But you're missing the key element of GTD and context... That is batching tasks together... So much easier to make all calls one after the other; and run all errands whilst the car is hot and you're out.
You still make calls today? WOW! I can't remember the last time I had to call someone by phone. It's not just about contexts. It's the time it takes to review and organise everything. I just don't have time for all that. Instead, I prefer to make a simple decision. When will I do this? 90% of my work can be done on any device now.
@@Carl_Pullein plenty of people make calls. I’m disabled and constantly have to manage medical appointments and insurance calls. What a weird thing to say “wow” about.
Thanks for sharing your new system. It's cool to see how you have set things up. But I really think you should consider how you have worded a lot of the stuff in your video.. One of the core principles of GTD is placing appropriate reminders about what you need to do so that you can see them when you need to see them. Your new setup still follows this principle - all you have done is changed the 'contexts'.
I imagine that you haven't stopped using capture tools and I imagine you haven't stopped clarifying or emptying your inbox either. As a productivity 'guru', I really don't think you should be saying that GTD is outdated or say anything that dissuades anyone from checking out GTD, especially when it has clearly influnced so much of your work and your understanding of productivity. All you've really done is modify two of the suggested best practices from the book. The principles and practices from the book are not outdated.
Hi James, it funny, I've had so many people comment to me how I must have misunderstood the concepts of GTD, how I don't understand what David Allen meant when he wrote about this or wrote about that and how I have copied GTD. The laughable thing is these people are interpreting GTD so wildly that by their interpretation if you create a list of any sort you must be using GTD. That not true, of course. Lists were around long before GTD was conceived. The same applies for collecting (capturing) - Tony Robbins was doing that as part of his RPM system in the mid-80s. The original Franklin Quest system (the forefather of the Franklin Planner) was born in the 1970s--long before David put pen to paper.
The truth is GTD is outdated. GTD is built around the concept of you can only do work when you are in the right place, with the right person or with the right tool. You no longer need to be in the hardware store to buy a hammer. You can order it online from Amazon. You no longer need to be with a person (in fact you probably can't today anyway) to have a meeting with them and you no longer need to be at your comptuer to reply to an email. These "contexts" just don't have any meaning today.
I could write a novel on how the Time Sector System is different from GTD, but I won't bore you with that. The fact is, GTD cannot lay claim to adding something to a list and using a to-do list as their propriety idea. Collecting and making lists have been around long before David Allen was born.
I think you've summarised perfectly how I've felt for a few years. I have never got on with GTD in the modern workplace and always struggled with it. What applications do you use in your workflow at the moment? Are you still using evernote? Do you have any intentions of moving to Notion like the rest of every other productivity expert around?
Hi Matt. Yes, Evernote is there, but resting at the moment until it gets updated. (The iOS app is shockingly bad at the moment) So, my tools are Todoist, Apple Notes and Apple Calendar.
Notion didn't work for me. I spent far too much time playing around with all those amazing features I never got any work done. I want something with few feature, few options to customise so I can focus on the work and not how I organise the work.
@@Carl_Pullein That is a very minimal approach, I struggle to separate work from home. We use office 365 at work and I must say that OneNote is very good although the syncing could do with some work and search is nowhere near Evernote but then I use other tools to try and pull everything together from home and I'm getting myself overawed by everything I'm using. I don't know how the guys like francesco d'alessio and ali abdaal use so many apps in their work flow and know where they have stored a certain item. Your videos are definitely the ones I always come back to and i'm looking forward to seeing more of this approach.
This video does explain how your system evolved, but what did it evolve into?
Good question. I don’t know. Evolution never stops.
3 textfiles; inbox.md, today.md, someday.md. I then use a zettelkasten (like a personal wiki/knowledge base) with neovim and if things 'stick around' on any list they end up going into that.
I have only just come across GTD and even just watching videos about it was making me feel stressed! Lists upon lists when all one really needs to do it either do a task or diarise it to be done later. These days I think managing emails is as imporant as anything in most professions. Stumbling on GTD has left me a bit bewildered, it all seems very ra-ra and a bit of a cult/pyramid scheme. GTD acolytes will not hear a bad word said against it, as if it is some sort of religion. Very odd!! Glad I found this video, albeit 5 year after you published it.
It does appeal to those who like organising a lot of lists and playing with tools. Not so good for people who want to get work done.
David Allen continually said that GTD is a blueprint, but you have to make it your own. It just contains the fundamentals. Its great that you perfected your own productivity system.
Indeed. The question is when is a system not a GTD system? I have no contexts, no projects. What's left? I don't "review", I plan. I time block sessions of work. There's nothing recognisably GTD in anything I do anymore.
Very good...
Glad you like it.
My impression is that my perception of what the GTD method is and yours are completely different. And that what I do of the method isn't related to what you tell us. It might be the case because you do not organize your work in projects, (you admit on that in your video) contrary to me. Not doing projects in my opinion is bad practice. But everyone has his own ways, and if your new systems work for you then it's all for the best.
Great Video ⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️
Thank you.
You may be right that the classical contexts of gtd are no longer so relevant. But gtd is a lot more than traditional context lists
Yeah, it seems GTD is everything to all people... Apparently. I even discovered that some people claim Tony Robbins' RPM and The Franklin Planner is just another form of GTD, which is quite incredible since GTD was published in 2001 and the Franklin Planner and Tony Robbins' RPM systems were published in the 1980s!
@@Carl_Pullein these are your words , not mine. One just needs to read the book to find out that sorting next actions by context is only one part of GTD. No need to cite Ben Franklin and others
@@samuele.marcora You're right, GTD is more than contexts. But, managing projects is nothing new and it was being managed by many different systems before GTD (see Hyrum Smith's Franklin Planner and Tony Robbins's RPM systems for example) The key difference between GTD and systems before it is the unique way lists are generated by context. That was a fantastic idea in 2001 when we had to be at our computers to send and reply to emails. But today, that no longer applies. I can reply to emails anywhere. I even write my blog posts on my phone. Contexts just don't make any sense today.... To me.
@@Carl_Pullein I get your point :) I am also reading the 2005 book, but from what I understand about contexts list, they don't need to be about the tools and places. Context lists are abstract enough so that you can use them to filter by anything you want to filter during your day-to-day activities. Not just tool, place, energy, or time available. I use them to filter my mood for example.
Also, my big insight so far from the GTD methodology is keeping everything out of my head so that I can be present at the current moment, and that its a great (and dificult) habit to develop
Cheers :)
Funny, I can't stand using my calendar as a project manager. A lot of that comes from my job. Previously I'd block calendar time but I'd either under estimate or have to constantly reschedule.
So GTD works for me but the secret sauce is it doesn't require any specific technology beyond pen and paper. While being flexible enough to adapt to elements from another system.
I don't use my calendar as a project manager either. My calendar is used to allocate my time. Nothing more.
Reducing GTD to that one aspect is a very strange view of GTD.
Hmm contexts that don't work in the 21st century, weekly reviews that take forever (when they don't need to), daily processing that also tasks too long. I just wasn't spending enough time actually getting the work done. It just isn't a system, framework, or set of guiding principles that works for me anymore.
Certainly wouldn't say that is won't work for everyone. I'm sure there are people who can make it work. But, not for me.
I agree with GorillaPhoto. Managing one's actions by context is but one small slice of GTD. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Horizon's of focus is as powerful or more than the "control" side of the GTD equation. I like his idea of minimizing and simplifying, but disagree that "GTD = context" as it's far more than that. It's been nothing short of life-altering for me and millions of others. I could do away with context and still get much of the power.
@@roberthendriksen6490 I do understand that, Robert. GTD is more than just contexts. But, and this is really my point, "horizons of focus is not unique to GTD. They have been around since the early 1970s. Tony Robbins's was teaching that back in the late 80s, Jim Rohn was teaching in the 1970s and I'm sure many others were teaching it before then. What makes GTD unique is managing your lists by contexts. And that's where in 2020 GTD completely falls down.
You know, you can and should change contexts over time as your life circumstances change. You don’t need to abandon a whole system just because you don’t want to update your contexts. I think you threw out the baby with the bathwater and didn’t really understand parts of GTD in the first place.
Hi Christopher, it wasn't just contexts, it was the time it took to organise everything (with the powerful search functionality we now have with cloud services and notes apps a lot of that is time wasted) and the amount of time needed for weekly reviews. When I calculated the amount of time I was spending just servicing my GTD system I realised, in 2021, it's a system that's no longer relevant for me. After all, GTD was developed in the late 1980s and 1990s. There are better, faster and more focused systems today that work better with the way we work in the 21st century.
GTD was essential reading and very influential to me but never was very realistic to how I worked. It had lots of nuggets of insight but was way too divorced from ideas like energy and real human behaviour. It kind of had a flat view of tine and personal energy that was too robitic for me. If here then do this, etc. just lacked that sense of priorities and resourcefulness that we all have. It was good for filtering out things we could not advance, but kind of treated planning like a super logical thing and did not offer that much insight about how to prioritize etc. Good for reminders and minor actions but not good for mission and meaning, in my view.
It's like Steve Jobs 2.0
You don't need all this, when you have toxic shame, that binds you...
?
@@Carl_PulleinNothing personal. You make a very good job by sharing all this. Keep it up
Getting things done has a lot of flaws, and its beyond complicated and not easy to remember. When it was released in 2001 it was revolutionary, but its not great for today (despite its 2015 update) in my opinion. There needs to be a system that you can literally teach to child, something that can handle an immense workload while being agile. I saw a video of David Allen helping this woman in Amsterdam, and she got overwhelmed when she saw what she had to do with the system, and started crying. And David Allen was giving her this arrogant attitude like some how she was incompetent, it really pissed me off. Id say the 5 choices of extraordinary productivity from franklin covey (a simplified version of gtd) is 100 times more effective, and simple that GTD. But that's just my opinion.
You've got a point there NomaD. The complexity and time it takes to maintain the system was the biggest problem for me.
@@Carl_Pullein The other thing I really hated was how his first book didn't explain the system as a whole. Like he breifly touched on the 5 horizons, but he left that for his other book, "making it all work." So basically I had to read one of the most dry and boring books i've ever read, and on top of that, another dry and boring read. And the lack of imagery literally makes me super confused on how the workflow actually works. I had to actually call one of their coaches, who was actually nice enough to get me some free stuff and guide me through because she had some empathy for me. But I honestly was completely lost. If this is the crap they teach the US military, and other major corporations, I can see how there are so many mistakes. If you can't explain it to a child, and make it easy enough to learn, with videos and real world examples, you're wasting your time. But that's just my opinion. The concept is brilliant, but the actual learning process is a living nightmare.
He should have written a book containing different levels of difficulty. 1 system is for people who have never used a productivity system before like high school kids and young adults, the other system is for people who are working a 9 to 5 job at McDonalds, the next one would be for people working desk jobs that require degrees, and then after that, for executives who are running massive companies. The reason I say this, is that he basically made the system for people who work a desk job or an executive who is dealing with a company. If you are used to working in cubicle hell, then you will probably understand the book much better than a person who has never done anything like that. Again, just a suggestion.
David Allen's GTD is like Bruce Lee's JKD, here's why:
1) David Allen has always said that the concept is more important than the GTD process.
2) Since 2001, he's coming with diff editions, this time he'll add "time-based" in the latest edition, that's all !
3) David Allen, the man is bigger than his method GTD. Eg: he never mentions using martial arts into GTD though he practices himself. So, does this mean GTD doesn't have martial arts OR "calm amidst chaos"?
4) Over 2-3 decades, folks, CEOs & software architects have tried to decode GTD into a system, but couldn't !
Hmmm it seems there are multiple different definitions about what GTD is or isn’t.
That in itself can be confusing for many people.
Doesn’t really offer any alternative just slags off GTD and then repeats himself. eight minutes of my productive life wasted.
Great content, but maybe there is an improvement to be made in your deliverance. You repeat your point many times up to the 4-minute mark. I mean this in a constructive way. On youtube, less is more.
That is deliberate having been teaching for nearly 20 years. Say it once, say it again and say it a third time. In the very distracting world we live in today repeating yourself is even more important than ever before.
It seems to me. You didn’t capture what the essence of GTD is. If the system works for you. I’d challenge you to realize you’re not operating with a clear mind 🤓