Will Getting Art Done be called “Getting Art Done”

I’m still not sure that I’ll call Getting Art Done Getting Art Done. The title is inspired by David Allen’s Getting Things Done, a productivity book that has changed many lives, including my own.

Why have I been working with the title Getting Art Done anyway? It’s because I believe creative energy is the next productivity resource to be optimized.

Here’s what I mean by that.

I think Allen’s book is the best thing out there when it comes to “attention management.” There are always new things being optimized.

• Land has been optimized. Most usable land is already inhabited.
• Human labor has been optimized. Machines make us more efficient. You can press a button, and a machine makes widgets.
• Time has been optimized. Just about everyone manages a calendar to manage our time. Most of us have full calendars.

Allen’s GTD optimized attention. Calendars gave way to todo lists. But the information revolution brought too much stuff into our lives. A todo list wasn’t enough anymore.

Using GTD, every “input” in your life has a place to go. Even if you find yourself daydreaming about renting a cabin in the woods, you can simply put it in your “someday maybes” list.

You’ve now delegated your attention to a future version of yourself. If you have the right triggers in your “trusted system,” you can be confident you won’t forget about this fantasy, and that you’ll act appropriately. Now you have attention free to be in the moment.

Getting Art Done will optimize creative energy. The powerful thing about Allen’s GTD is that it frees up creative energy. This is something many of his readers and clients report. As I reviewed Allen’s book in preparation for interviewing him on my podcast, I experienced this burst of creative energy all over again.

Allen alludes to creative energy a few times in Getting Things Done. For example:

We are naturally creative beings, invested in our existence to live, grow, express, and expand. The challenge is not to be creative — it’s to eliminate the barriers to the natural flow of our creative energies. —David Allen, Getting Things Done

On my podcast he also said (I’m paraphrasing from memory), “It doesn’t take any time to have an idea,” and “GTD frees up your creative energy. What you do with that energy is up to you.”

Also, consider Allen’s “Four-Criteria Model for Choosing Actions in the Moment” (from the GTD book).

If you have some time free and are trying to decide what to do in order to be productive, Allen recommends you use these four criteria to decide: Context (where are you and what can you do in that context?), Time Available, Priority, and Energy Available.

For the criterion of Energy Available, Allen offers this guidance: “Some actions you have to do require a reservoir of fresh, creative mental energy.”

In my experience, you have control over that well of free and fresh creative energy. There are ebbs and flows in that energy. There are ways to keep it from running dry, and to fill it back up (Hemingway called it his “juice”).

Additionally, creative projects go through a somewhat predictable progression.

If you reconcile those ebbs and flows with the predictable progression of creative projects, and if you reconcile that with the constraints of your own life, you start to get a system for making the most of your creative energy.

If you time things right, you can start behaving like a perpetual creativity machine. Each action feeds another action. Even the sometimes-unpleasant details of life that seem to get in the way of doing your creative work start to serve that creative work.

Imagine if you were always able to do the tasks for which you needed a “reservoir of fresh, creative mental energy” during a time when you had that creative energy. Imagine if you could do that predictably and consistently. That’s what GAD is about.

When I started implementing this concept into my life and work, I quadrupled my creative output.

Which brings us back to this name. I myself am not sold on the name of Getting Art Done. I do have Allen’s blessing to use the name. As I just illustrated, I have a clear conceptual picture of why it makes sense. But I’m still not sure it’s the best packaging for the ideas in the book. Here’s the pro/con:

Pros of the title Getting Art Done:

• Search. The title would work on Amazon’s search engine. The word “art” is a popular search term. If I add the subtitle Creative Productivity Through Mind Management (Not Time Management), I also bring in terms like “creativity,” “productivity,” and “time management.” I may even pick up some searches from people searching for Getting Things Done.
• Piggybacking. Getting Art Done is a clear play on Getting Things Done for anyone familiar with GTD. Some GTD fans have responded very positively to the GAD name. GAD would piggyback on GTD’s brand equity.

Cons of the title Getting Art Done:

• Rigidity. While some GTD fans have responded positively to GAD, some of those GTD fans have later been disappointed to not find a rigid and rigorously-tested system like GTD is. I do not aspire to be a consultant like Allen is. Also, Things can be handled more rigidly than Art can. The GAD name may be inappropriately rigid.
• Piggybacking. This is the classic dilemma in naming something. If you nail a search keyword, what you’ve created becomes less cool and less sticky. I dealt with this while naming my podcast, Love Your Work. I went with something general that would allow me to grow. I think it not being called Online Business Make ‘Dat Money or the like is why I’ve been able to attract high-quality guests. On the other hand, I don’t get much search traffic. This is to say that “piggybacking,” or binding the name of GAD to GTD, may help with growth but it makes it unlikely for the book to really take off. Alluding to a name of another well-recognized book prevents your book from really puncturing a vacuum in the collective consciousness the way titles like Deep Work or The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck do—or, for that matter, Getting Things Done.

Allen even alluded to the “con” of piggybacking in our podcast conversation. He said that he almost called GTD Zen and The Art of Inbox Maintenance, but he decided not to because it was “too derivative.” That may have been a subtle hint to me, or a pure coincidence. In any case, this drawback has stuck with me.

I’ll continue to write about GAD concepts under the GAD name. Creative work doesn’t happen linearly, and I have no qualms about changing the name further down the road as I get a better understanding of what the book is and what its ideas mean to readers.

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