GTD - Life isn't about Productivity

Recently I spent a few weeks trying to "implement" a system to help me be more productive at work and at home. There's a guy named David Allen who seems to have cracked the secret of helping people live with a "mind like water." His system is called "Getting Things Done" (GTD). Google it and you'll find something nearly like a cult following for GTD. (Computer geeks seem to love it.)

The "mind like water" thing comes from having gotten everything out of your head and into a system, thereby allowing you to think clearly about one thing at a time. You don't have to keep trying to remember everything that you need to do--you have a handy system in place and you relate to it with something like trust.

I'm all for having a mind as smooth as calm water, but it nearly killed me to try and put this thing together. It's all about identifying the "inboxes" of my life (email, desktop, stacking trays, workbenches, etc.), putting everything into them, identifying the next step required for each item, and then doing those steps, top to bottom. Virtually no regard for priority--simply boil everything down into its basic tasks (things that require multiple steps are called "projects") and do them one at a time.

I've never really been a "task list" kind of guy, so this was going to require a Herculean effort to simply get all my "open loops" (stuff that needed action) into my "inboxes." He suggested that to kick off this GTD it may take three full days to simply gather everything and put it all into my inboxes and then identify the next tasks (and create projects for things that require multiple tasks)--never mind actually getting down to doing some of the tasks.

Once you set up your life with inboxes, then you do it every moment of every day. Everything that comes at you is dealt with immediately.

Everything gets identified, gets acted upon or delegated or filed.

The net effect is that every aspect of your life gets broken into and dealt with in its smallest fraction--a task. Allen says that "you must start at the very bottom--with the smallest unit--to truly maintain a high level of productivity." Productivity systems based upon "priorities" (top-down) fail, he says, because your mind still gets cluttered and foggy with all the little tasks that you have to remember.

So, I tried it. Read half of the book. Read a bunch of people's blogs and forums about it. I even bought a label making machine and a whole bunch of file folders.

And I heard the sound of class five rapids ahead.

I tried, and I failed. Achieved a mind like whitewater. Ok, I succeeded in getting a few things filed and organized a couple rooms. I even learned a few things about mentally identifying things as they come to me. But I simply could never imagine actually practicing this system every day, every week, month after month, year after year.

And frankly, if I can't imagine it, I can't do it.

It suddenly occurred to me that I was more curious as to why I couldn't imagine it than I was in actually Getting Things Done. Typical, eh.

According to Myers Briggs, I'm an INTJ (if you know what that stuff is about), so I wondered what other INTJ's felt like about it. Of course, I googled INTJ and GTD. And I found a lady who, like me, forgot who she was while trying to do GTD. Her explanation schooled me--

"GTD boils all of life down into tasks, and disconnects me from the story of my life."

Holy smokes. "Life is a story." Suddenly, my mind was like water again. How could I have forgotten?

Life isn't measured by productivity. Life isn't the sum of all the tasks in my life. Life isn't projects. Praise God that my value isn't determined by how much I get done or how effective I am. There's no job review in the kindgom of Heaven.

Life is knowing what's going on and knowing my role within it. A mythic cannot live without context--because the story is what gives meaning to every task I put my mind to.

And meaning is what it's all about.