Continuing my GTD Exploration

Yesterday I wrote about how I was struggling with using GTD and actually getting something done. Like a lot of developers I have tons of projects I want to get done. Personal projects, client work, day to day coding tasks, tasks that you have to complete when running a limited company and all the jobs you need to do at home (family, house, finances etc). So there is a lot.

GTD is aimed at helping you obtain ‘stress free living’ a nice idea, but when you first go through the collection phase of GTD, where you sit down and write out all the things you need to do it looks really overwhelming, this can put you off starting anything.

As part of my getting better at GTD I’ve been watching the Todoist videos by Carl Pullein where he shows how to use the features of Todoist with GTD. His latest video is on dealing with projects that are overwhelming, projects that have a large number of tasks. Through using uncompletable tasks, he sets up stages within a project that tasks for that project can be added. So you can split up your project into more manageable stages. This is a great idea and really helpful.

I’ve also been reading about others who use GTD with Todoist. One article I found was by a JavaScript developer Justin Hill. Who in his article Organising a Life of Learning and Action makes a good point, that people express the desire to be ‘productive’ like we are machine’s just sitting in a factory producing stuff. This is a good point. With the world of start-ups, entrepreneurs, app developers and people who seem to make new products every week. We can easily get caught up in the idea that if we aren’t productive or building something, we’re not moving forward with our lives.

I think the we, as people who work with the internet (developers, designer, freelancers, entrepreneurs) can get caught up in having the best system for managing all the tasks, ideas and content we get exposed to everyday when on the web. For example I think we’ve all used every known task app there is. We all have several social media accounts just sending tons of content our way. All this on top of general day to day living can be very overwhelming.

So I think worrying that the system I have in place for managing the tasks I need to do is just adding to the problem or having so many things to do. GTD’s main aim is to provide you a way of taking all that is floating around in your head and getting it written down. Then you can sort through it when you have time and using the technique shown by Carl creating projects that aren’t overwhelming seems a possibility.