{"id":11,"date":"2009-08-25T09:14:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-25T03:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prhconsulting.com\/blog\/?p=11"},"modified":"2019-11-01T18:49:03","modified_gmt":"2019-11-01T12:49:03","slug":"what-i-dont-like-about-gtd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prhconsulting.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/25\/what-i-dont-like-about-gtd\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Don’t Like About GTD"},"content":{"rendered":"
Originalily posted on November 1st, 2007<\/span> by Pete | Edit<\/a><\/div>\n
\n

Well actually, GTD is great. (GTD is a personal productivity system by David Allen\u2026sort of like time management for the internet age.) I bought the book on CD and have listened to it multiple times. (Partly because one hearing was not enough\u2013it is hard to grasp this kind of information by listening\u2013but also because the information was useful.) I have implemented a bunch of the ideas.<\/p>\n

But the very first listen flagged a problem for me and it still nags at me. The presumption is that we really can\u2019t control how we spend our time (or, in GTD parlance, the actions we perform). Again, the system works pretty well because capturing everything makes it all visible and then you can \u201cintuitively\u201d make a decision \u201cin the moment\u201d about what you will actually work on. But it seems like this approach still puts you at the mercy of demands and requirements that you can\u2019t control. Which, in many ways, is real. But that is the crux of why people want time management systems in the first place. So they can get out from under outside demands that cause stress and take you away from getting your goals met.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the danger of deciding \u201cin the moment\u201d and \u201crenegotiating commitments\u201d when we can\u2019t meet them is that deadlines get missed. When you don\u2019t plan ALL the steps you need to take to get you to the finish line, you are building in guaranteed future slippage. If everyone is overbooked and only worries about the next action, the entire organization will eventually grind to a halt when they look up at the deadline and only have half the actions completed.<\/p>\n

In the end, the only options still end up with us needing to either do things faster or to do fewer things. The key is not<\/em> to continuously renegotiate commitments (like an endless chain of continuances in a court case) but to make them more carefully in the first place. Ultimately, it means the job of leadership is to provide focus and to exclude unproductive activity so that the time and energy can be applied to meeting the organization\u2019s goals. This is difficult. It is risky. But it is vitally important work that only leadership can do.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: David Allen does talk about project planning and commitment management. I\u2019m pretty sure his focus on the next action is really a strategy to get people to stop talking about things and start doing them. We\u2019ve all been in (usually large) companies where meetings are endless discussion of big picture ideas with little specific next steps to move things forward.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originalily posted on November 1st, 2007 by Pete | Edit Well actually, GTD is great. (GTD is a personal productivity system by David Allen\u2026sort of like time management for the internet age.) I bought the book on CD and have listened to it multiple times. (Partly because one hearing was not enough\u2013it is hard to grasp […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trends-and-fads"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7FCNy-b","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prhconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prhconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prhconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prhconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prhconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/prhconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":584,"href":"https:\/\/prhconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prhconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prhconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prhconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}