People make GTD complicated, not GTD

Gaspard Bos
Sep 4, 2018 · 2 min read

It’s really good how you’ve described these issues. I started implementing GTD in March 2015 so I’ve been acquainted with it for a while. However, since a year or so my “system” had become so big that I felt a resistance to actually go through it on a weekly basis to keep it up to date. FYI: I am using Evernote to store my notes. I had gotten really good at capturing every thought that occurred to me in a “hold that thought” list, my name for the “inbox” of incoming stuff from the world. I have made containers for all the commitments that those thoughts might belong to or for the ones without a real commitment; those can go in the ‘brainstorm’ section of a project or into a someday/maybe. Right now, I’ve started on the audiobook of Getting Things Done for a refresh of the method and I find that I’ve let some things slip or morf into my own version. As you also pointed out, this is a slippery slope. David didn’t spend 20+ years perfecting this method for nothing. As he also states somewhere in the latest version of the book, these digital apps create a real danger because there’s unlimited storage space for us to store stuff. This is what has created the resistance for me to keep using the system in Evernote and I have found myself switching back to paper-based notes and also making more use of Sticky Notes on my desktop; where there is also limited space, or at least the visual clutter will make you want to clean up. This is what I am doing now; purging a lot of stuff. After coming back from a long holiday I am currently blessed with new insights so this is the perfect time for that. And time to re-read the book and re-implement the method correctly.

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