Tools for Thought

GTD is often discussed as time management, but the two approaches have fundamental differences. Time management consists of making summary judgements on goals considered to be high priorities, and commits to them over lower priorities in the name of good triage. Calendars are used to block out time for tasks that may or may not contain time dependencies, and arbitrary deadlines are used as often as ones committed to by and with others.

In GTD, everything in a person’s field of attention is collected and processed into a reminder system, primarily using a list manager rather than a calendar. The calendar is reserved for externally committed schedules, like meetings or draft submissions, and tasks that don’t fall into this “hard landscape” scheme are kept off the calendar to reserve as much slack as possible for unplanned activities, which are as inevitable as planned ones.

Closed Loops

But the main difference between GTD and time management, or other task management paradigms in general, is that the former is a closed system. GTD tracks everything that’s considered to be worth thinking about on some level, or acted upon. Commitments are placed in lists for projects and next actions. Items for ongoing consideration that aren’t actual commitments are either listed in a category designated for periodic reevaluation, like “Someday/Maybe,” or deferred using a calendar or tickler file. It’s a closed system by virtue of the guideline that if something is likely to be thought of again and claim attention, it gets tracked; otherwise it doesn’t.

Having a closed system that tracks everything relieves the mind of the compulsion to track anything. Once everything is in the system, and the brain knows that every single thing that’s worthy of attention is offloaded to that system, the resulting sense of clarity and focus is astounding, whether or not someone opts for quasi-religious descriptions like “mind like water.”

A consciousness free of static is a plateaux that requires constant care and feeding. It means writing down anything the moment it seems likely that it will come to mind in the future. It means putting incoming paperwork directly into an in-basket rather than the edge of the desk; or handling it immediately if it takes less than two minutes; or filing it if knowing where and how to file it is obvious; or throwing it away.

It means making written decisions on what to do with each email, each thought or verbal agreement written down, each memo, etc. — the first time it’s processed, so that when it’s time to do something in a given context, it’s a matter of choosing which action to do rather than thinking about it.

It means establishing the discipline of reviewing the reminder system regularly, to the point where the behavior is automatic enough for the brain to trust that it doesn’t need to hold on to anything. Thinking about what to do at a computer instead of referring to an @Computer list will cause the mind to revert to using itself for remembering and reminding, which is fairly low-level thinking. Just as mathematicians use calculators to handle arithmetic and use their minds to think about mathematics, external tools — lists, calendars and files — are better suited for remembering what tasks need to be tracked, so that those using the tools can use their minds for engaging with the task they’ve chosen.