Me and GTD

I am a perennial fan of being organised. In my dreams I have my stuff together, with everything neat, directed and purposeful.

In reality I don’t seem to have time to be organised, the stuff won’t let me. Merlin Mann describes it well:

Stuff is bouncing around in our heads and causing untold stress and anxiety. Evaluation meetings, bar mitzvahs, empty rolls of toilet paper, broken lawn mowers, college applications, your big gut, tooth decay, dirty underwear and imminent jury duty all compete for prime attention in our poor, addled brains. Stuff has no “home” and, consequently, no place to go, so it just keeps rattling around.

Worst off, we’re too neurotic to stop thinking about it, and we certainly don’t have time to actually do everything in one day. Jeez Louise, what the hell am I, Superman?

So you sprint from fire to fire, praying you haven’t forgotten anything, sapped of anything like creativity or even the basic human flexibility to adapt your own schedule to the needs of your friends, your family or yourself. Your “stuff” has taken over your brain like a virus now, dragging down every process it touches and rendering you spent and virtually useless. Sound familiar? (Getting started with “Getting Things Done”)

A while ago I read the book Getting Things Done (or GTD). I succeeded in getting the system to work for a while, electronically, based around Microsoft Outlook, both on Windows and the Pocket PC. Then I got an iPhone, which lacked task synchronization and now recently my work has abandoned MS Exchange for gMail, which doesn’t support Outlook Tasks. For a while I tried OneNote, but is iOS unfriendliness has killed that too.

So here I stand, GTSless.

Pretty lame. I guess I should have tried the paper system again like Dave Allen wants me to, but my inner futurist is repulsed by the idea.

The whirlwind of stuff is becoming overwhelming, so it’s time. I just don’t know where yet.

Stay tuned.