Comments on: Getting (Unremarkable) Things Done: The Problem With David Allen’s Universalism

By: Lessons I’ve Learned: Get Organized | Kelly Business Advisors, LLC

Lessons I’ve Learned: Get Organized | Kelly Business Advisors, LLC — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:12:11 +0000

[...] Getting (Unremarkable) Things Done: The Problem With David Allen’s Universalism (calnewport.com) [...]

By: David

David — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 21:39:35 +0000

It seems like people are confusing planning, with the experience of flow and the experience “deep work”. To me, as Cal, describes it, deep work is very different from flow.

By: Jakob Schenker

Jakob Schenker — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:25:43 +0000

Hey Cal,

Found this post interesting, since I have been thinking about it a lot myself. I agree with you that GTD gives you a structure which can be healthy and good, but maybe not up to the level that achieves more. I consider all of this in a recent post of mine: http://t.co/awibj4QsMf. Maybe incorporating these analyses will help us all soon!

By: David

David — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 00:51:44 +0000

I think maybe the people defending GTD on grounds that they’ve managed to make it work for “deep tasks” are missing the point entirely. “Deep” here does not refer to the length of a project, nor how long its list of sub-projects and tasks, nor how blocked or protracted it can become. It refers to a type of task or project that is made poorer by a complete breakdown into discrete steps, and about a person whose strength in such projects is rapid, clever, creative combinations of many disparate types of ideas and resources as an idea evolves. Personally, the problem I had with GTD was that I could never get to a place where I comfortably had cleared the “open loops” – as I sat and thought about how all my tasks and projects were inter-related and what priorities and tasks they were really composed of and how they related, a huge paralysis and frustration would descend upon me as an explosion of tasks, projects, and ideas of all sorts flooded into my consciousness. Sure, if I had a very discrete, well-defined task or project to complete, especially with a well-defined priority, great, GTD would work. Otherwise, I would feel compelled to make long, comprehensive lists of everything in my head, and would spend all my energy simply writing my thoughts down in sub-project after sub-project and trying to organize the long tail of tasks. Exhausted, I would usually revert to the most urgent thing that demanded my attention, leaving all else alone. I would end up having to make *more* decisions about what’s important, not *less*, and being able to devote far less time to anything involving planning for the future. Quite the opposite of the stated goal. Worse than nothing! At least with franklin covey, the intense focus on the ritual of daily review and priorities was clarifying and abbreviated. I tried to make GTD work for years, and I’ve finally given up.

By: jane

jane — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 18:21:11 +0000

If you ever listen to Allen speak, he is obviously suffering from OCD. IMHO. His system is designed to keep you working the system. While becoming a hoarder of files and folders.

I just use a very big round file. works for me.

By: Gary J Bowles

Gary J Bowles — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 09:05:51 +0000

Thanks for writing this. I read it several months ago and now I plan to start using it to structure my daily tasks.

By: Gaurav

Gaurav — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 04:17:38 +0000

Finally I had someone thinking on the same lines. I just couldn’t get GTD to work for me. Other than normal work, I have to write papers and read lot of things which I was difficult to do with GTD.

By: Bojan - Alpha Efficiency

Bojan - Alpha Efficiency — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 11:58:46 +0000

Recently I wrote about my personal stance on GTD, and why I believe it’s not the way to go. That system was developed during the 90ies, when the scale of tasks in the regular working environment was fairly simple.

30 years later, you find the system that is crude, and can’t maintain huge number of tasks without heavy maintanance. Hence I came up with some good epihphanies that lead me to completely abandon GTD as a way to manage my tasks.

These are my thoughts:

http://alphaefficiency.com/quit-gtd/

By: Diane

Diane — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 19:23:23 +0000

I distinctly recall David Allen saying that the purpose of his capture-everything-that’s-on-your-mind system is to get those things *off* of your mind, so that they don’t distract you. He also says that it’s perfectly OK to look at your lists and decide not to do anything on your lists that day. The point is, having made that decision (perhaps, to do some “deep thinking” instead), you can actually focus on your deep thinking instead of constantly being interrupted by nagging feelings that you need to buy dog food, etc. That’s the value that I see in GTD – that it frees you from the tyranny of all those little things, so that you can actually focus on the big things.

By: John Kim

John Kim — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 01:23:29 +0000

I agree that GTD doesn’t work too well with deep work. The GTD method works best when I have trivial yet important matters to take care of, like dropping off some books in the library, checking and prioritizing email, and listening to a podcast. It also works for school.

I’m a high school student. During the past few weeks of winter break for me, I have been able to apply it to break my long-term work and review into daily chunks. And I usually finish my work within 3 hours daily, always fresh.

GTD doesn’t work so well with exploration. For me, it’s programming, and I agree that not all tasks are equal. Learning to program requires not just lots of exercises, video lectures, and books, but also a community to discuss and interact with. Not as straightforward as school work. Deep work can take more time than expected.

But GTD is powerful in creating habits of tasks. It sets a long-term goal concrete if done appropriately and consistently.