Is GTD a passing fad? [Hack Your Day]
This is a question I saw somewhere where I read an article about why GTD is so bad. There are some points in there I agreed with, but in general I am totally against putting GTD down so much. Despite that I do think it’s a passing fad, but not in the sense that people usually think.
Fads and passing trends are usually items which become very, very popular, and after an amount of time, become almost totally gone, forgotten. The tamagochi, altavista, IRC, were once all huge. Yes, IRC is still out there, but a few years back that was the only way to chat, now compared to that very few use it.
I don’t think however that GTD will go out of trend in the sense that it will be forgotten. GTD provides some guidelines and basic principles which are sound, and very sensible. I agree that sometimes people get pretty anal, and follow GTD to such an extent that it becomes a burden, but the framework built by David Allen is extremely well thought out and has a good change of resisting time’s arrow.
The fact that to be stress free and productive you should be focusing on a few things instead of a hundred is globally true for most, the fact that you should decide what to do with an item right away (even if you defer it) is still good practice, whatever method you use.
I would go so far as to say that there is nothing groundbreaking, even nothing new in the book so many people have read and come to adopt as their own. The book can be divided into to sections, the theoretical section and the practical section. The theory certainly contains nothing new, only common sense, but no one before has said these, joined them and connected them in such a way. Write things down so you won’t forget. Organize yourself so you can find everything. If the burden is too much, delegate or defer. These aren’t Allen’s ideas, this is common sense. Sure, the practical side is a way of organizing all this, but you can utilize the theoretical aspect of GTD in any method, weather you strictly use lists, or simple notes to organize.
In conclusion I think GTD may pass, but the way David Allen has grouped common sense ideas, joined them and connected them to each other will never go out of fashion because they embody common sense thinking.
Original post here: Daniel
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