Getting Around to GTD
Two years ago, it was suggested to me that I submit the stacks and stacks of tattered yellow and white legal pads that had served as my social calendar for the better part of five years to be part of an exhibit called Instant Messaging: An exhibition of the debris of communication at San Francisco's Gallery 16.
Sure, they looked like the scrawlings of an insane person, written as they were in many colors of ink, a function of the random and immediate nature of calendar upkeep. But apparently, I was one of the ever-decreasing number of people, becoming such a novelty as to warrant museum treatment, who still write extensive to-do lists, schedules and calendars on legal pads and index cards as the world at large works in the era of Outlook and the PDA.
These are a fiercely independent bunch, often disdainful of or almost even disheartened by the new, much ballyhooed ways of doing things. They cling to their own means of organization, no matter how arcane, involved or, well, disorganized. I know these people. These are my people.
Above all, these are people who pride themselves on doing most things in their own way. I, for one, well into my thirties, tie my shoes like a three-year-old. No one has been able to move me to learn how to do it properly. I'm almost perversely proud of it.
Why then, do so many of this type swear by the life management system developed by one man, David Allen, called Getting Things Done and trademarked under the acronym GTD? And is it the kind of system that can lead stubborn and cynical separatists to finally surrender their own tried-and-not-so-true methods for a hugely popular self-help lifestyle?
Keep in mind, we're talking about people that have actively ignored systems and self-help books like this for years. After all, Allen's book has been in print since 2001, and this is the first I've heard of it. I must admit I'm intrigued. So in a series of posts, I'd like to look at the appeal of David Allen's GTD system to the obstinate among us, and why some of us gravitate toward the ideas of GTD more than others.