Just another Mac guy

I’ve dabbled in GTD since it became hip for the IT crowd, but found it required more time to organize tasks and understand the system than it would have taken to simply do the task or make a quick note to do it later.

I’m seeing posts lately from people who seem to be getting overwhelmed by the very systems that are intended to organize our way into blissfull, stress-free productivity.

Not Nurse Ratched writes:

I wish I didn’t have this urge to constantly mess around with my productivity systems. I would get a lot more done, but the grass always seems greener on the other to-do list. I think it’s the irresistible mixture of ‘cool things you can do with technology’ and being able to keep track of what I’m supposed to be doing, because I have a dread of missing things and am quite fogheaded if left to my own devices.

Brett Kelly writes:

The amount of time and effort it takes to (according to the book) manage a list of tasks, a calendar and some filing shit has become prohibitively long for me. I look at a scrap of paper in my in-basket, and I’m positively put off by the effort it will require to add it to the project list, choose the next action, pull out a blank folder, label it and file it away. Perhaps I’m just being lazy, but that’s the freaking honest truth. Built-in anxiety is almost a guarantee. Unless you’re a poster child for GTD, you’re going to have shit slip past the defenses of your system.

Merlin Mann writes:

Thinking about the work and habits that help industrious people repeatedly create things they love still obsesses me in the best way. And, I still want to contribute whatever I can to helping other people identify and remove the barriers to doing their best work. Obviously, to a certain point, this helps me very much, too. But, I also need to chug giant glasses of my own medicine by practicing these ideas every day — not just burning cycles on retyping them for a fucking web site.

I’m currently using OmniFocus for iPhone, which I like because I can keep multiple lists organized by different areas of my life from wherever I am. I look at OmniFocus every morning to see what’s coming up, and review periodically when I get a minute to do something.

As simple as possible, but no simpler.