Danny Bader is a senior presenter with the David Allen Company. Danny, who describes himself as “not a naturally organized guy” brings a fresh perspective to GTD. We hope you enjoy his contributions to GTD Times. You can listen to teleseminars Danny has done and read his articles on http://www.gtdconnect.com
A GTDer asked:
Do we write down only immediate tasks, or also long term tasks? How to track a long-term task?
My reply:
I am assuming that by long-term tasks you mean an action that cannot be taken now, but will need to be done in the future. One of the keys of GTD is to develop an action list comprised of only actions that are actionable now. If one places actions they know need to get done in the future – but cannot be acted on now – on their list, then every time they looked at it they would have to filter the actionable vs. the non-actionable. This would likely slow the person down, and in many cases cause them to abandon GTD.
Understanding this, there are a few options:
Getting Things Done® is an approach applied to managing the commitments we make to ourselves, our colleagues, our family, community and the world. An assumption many folks make as they inquire about bringing GTD to their organization is that the GTD workshop must be “customized.” There is a big difference between the art of work (what GTD teaches) versus the work you do (your job).
People will tell us, “You don’t understand, we’re different.” Well, yes…and maybe not. We at the David Allen Company define “work” not as that place you walk into carrying your expensive cup of coffee/mocha java late’ (skim). We define “work” as anything that needs to be different than it is. So while your jobs may be different, that fact that all folks have things that need be different in their lives is not different. [Read more →]
A basic principle of the Getting Things Done approach to managing your commitments is to keep nothing in your head. We here at David Allen Company believe our head is a “great place for having ideas, but a bad place to attempt to hold on to them.” This is true because we believe you’ll forget something stored in your head – we call it psychic RAM – as new inputs show up in your life and compete for your valuable mental real estate.
When I present this concept in GTD classes, it’s without exception that someone makes a humorous remark about age, saying something like, “Oh, I thought it was just happening to me more when I hit 40.” No, I remind them, it’s not so much about age as it is about the design of the brain. Most of you’ve heard or seen the research that the average person can only hold onto 7 concepts (+/- 2) in their head at one time.
Last week I was reminded again of the unreliable nature of our brain to hold onto simple tasks…by my 14 year-old son. It goes like this. My youngest child lost a tooth, a molar to be specific. As you can imagine she was very excited because in the Bader house – perhaps like your own – the Tooth Fairy pays a visit to exchange some cash for the tooth. Any of you that have or know 8 year-olds will agree this is a big deal. Plus my daughter’s tooth was a molar, a larger back tooth. Somewhere in her beautiful mind she developed the reasonable – to her – assumption that the larger the tooth, the more money she gets. This did turn out to be the truth, but not because of her reasoning, and you will see why.
