One thing I’m learning as I get more and more involved in the GTD community is the vast array of activities to which people are applying David’s principles to improve their ability to perform at the highest level possible. Hardly limited to work, we know that household management can be radically improved using GTD tactics, while my own “ah ha!” moment came at the recent Road Map Seminar when I suddenly saw GTD through the eye of my old athlete self and realized that it was much like a periodized training approach to work and life.

As novel as those are, they pale in comparison to Mark Crump’s very creative approach to something that may be quite unfamiliar to many readers; the world of Massively Multiple Online Role Playing Games or MMORPGs. If you’ve never heard of this before, ask your kids if they have and you’re sure to get that eye roll that can only mean “get a clue, dude, you’re like so totally out of it”. MMORPGs are incredibly popular. So popular in fact that were the economy in one of the most popular games, World of Warcraft a real economy, it would have a GDP greater than all but a handful of the world’s largest and most powerful countries.

There are entire companies devoted to helping build up powerful characters that can then be purchased by well heeled but time-shy participants who are likely to watch that expensive purchase be summarily disemboweled by a precocious 11 year old female who, lacking the bucks, has been building her character organically since she was nine.

Given that time is something that we all agree is at a premium, any strategy that can help an individual be more efficient at anything, from pedaling a bike, to getting the kids off to school to slaying dragons is going to be highly valuable. What’s interesting also is that if you take the time to read the comments on Mark’s post you’ll see two things; the number of people that are using some kind of list to help keep themselves organized for better play and also that a number of people were so intrigued by the GTD approach that they commented as much with more than one even saying that they were planning on using the GTD system in their “meat-space” environment as well.

Do YOU have a unique way in which you are using GTD? Or perhaps you have a unique job or lifestyle in which GTD figures prominently? If so we would love to hear from you. Tell us how GTD is helping you in your every day life. The most interesting and novel uses of Getting Things Done will be written up here and maybe, just maybe I can find some interesting prizes for the really “out of this world” uses of GTD.

Tags: Novel Uses of GTD, Oliver Starr //