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Postponing things

When we deliberately choose what is most important to do right now, other things are going to get postponed or even fall by the wayside.

That’s why postponing things is a necessary component of doing focused work.

GTD, or whatever reminder setup you choose, is a bookmark for all of those thing so that you can have them out of sight and out of mind and instead be 100% with what you’re doing. I’m grateful for that.

It’s also true that a stitch in time saves nine. Something our elected officals seems to have been neglecting for far too long since climate stuff is gonna get a heck of a lot more expensive to fix later than sooner.

A weakness of GTD?

GTD is good at turning your goals (probably better known as your projects) to concrete actions.

It then sorts those actions by context, like “these are things I can do at the grocery store”, “these are things I can do by the phone”, “these are things I can do in the kitchen”, and so on. (And it deliberately tries to limit stuff you have to do at a specific time to actual appointments. It's not normally a "daily lists" type system.)

There are two good things that come out of this sorting system.

One is that it helps you be efficient. Imagine having to take a separate trip to the grocery store for every item. That’s what the context lists helps you avoid.

The other is even more amazing. The act of sorting things into contexts helps us actually clarify exactly what it is we wanna do. It turns a lofty and vague goal to something concrete and specific. “OK, the first step of this is a phone call and I need to call Mrs Brady at 555-0199. I’ll put that on my call lists.” (Or do it right away if it's under two minutes.)

But there’s a drawback to this sorting, too.

It can get in the way of choosing the right things to do, the most proactive, stitch-saving things, the most important things, the things most key to saving the planet or to our art or our hearts or putting food on our tables.

We see a list of calls or emails to send or widgets to crank and that list is, by design, supposed to be detatched from the underlying projects, which makes it hard to see which of those things are the actual most important ones.

GTD’s response to this is that the idea is that you are supposed to be really deliberate about what projects you have on your lists that week, and that every week you go through and weed out some projects, move them over to a larger horizon where you then can bring ‘em back on another week (or someday, maybe... or never).

That’s a fine response, it doesn’t solve everything but it’s OK. Being aware about this limitation of GTD also helps. I try to keep the relative importance and stitch-savingness of projects in mind when I dot and do things.

GTD basics

The two-minute rule in GTD

Dot & Do