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Ask YC: Is anyone here using GTD?

5 points by papersmith ↗ HN
David Allen's system for organizing tasks from "Getting Things Done" was fairly popular on reddit in the early days, then the name seemed to have fell into oblivion.

At first I thought it might be a fad, then I gave it a read and the system does make a lot of sense. It may be an overkill for most people, but for things like running a startup, the amount of juggling may be able to justify the system's complexity.

I was wondering if anyone else here is using some form of GTD to organize your work and/or non-work related tasks. Why and why not? How do you use your GTD system? How do you organize if you are not using it?

10 comments

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raju
I use my own hacked version of GTD, albeit very simplified, partly because, well, I guess I don't have that much to do :D. GTD still has a cult following and has several sites that cover it a lot (http://www.43folders.com and http://www.lifehacker.com among several)...

There have been several discussions regarding GTD at YCNews (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15450) and I am sure these should answer your question.

My approach has been explained well at lifehacker (http://lifehacker.com/software/feature/practicing-simplified...). I came across another article (http://www.emaginacion.com.ar/cym/get-organized-with-hipster...) and currently trying to build that into my system.

If you were to use searchYC.com you will find several discussions regarding GTD (http://www.searchyc.com/GTD)

At the end of the day, GTD is merely another tool that aids in keeping track of everything you do. But its __effectiveness__ lies in your ability/dedication to sticking to the system. Although over time my simplified system has served me well, I do occasionally find myself slipping. A little tweak here, a little tweak there, wash, rinse, repeat...

Hope this helps.

papersmith
Thanks for all the info. I kind of have the feeling that in the end it depends on how much you can stick to it, like every other time management methods. :)
stillmotion
I find the best way to get things done is to write them on a notepad (Moleskine highly recommended) and do them. My weakness is procrastination (which I am doing now) and I the only advice I will give is don't even think about trying to get over procrastination, just do what ever you need to do.
drcode
Yes, I've used it for years. I think it's pretty good. Here's the biggest problems with it, by my observation:

1. It's easy for your "next action list" to keep growing and growing and... until your head explodes and you fall off the system. I guess the only way to avoid this is to be ludicrously conservative about what you commit yourself to do.

2. You have a deadline on a project that is falling behind, so what you decide to do is postpone all your other todos and just work on this one thing for a few days. In this time, you're not really "on the system" and it again falls apart.

3. You're in a lazy period and just plain don't care about the system and it falls apart.

If you can avoid those three problems, it may work for you.

In terms of technology, I recommend you sit down with Y combinator startup appjet.com and write your own implementation- that's what I did... If you don't customize it to your own quirks it doesn't work as well, from my experience.

slim
can we use it? or is it private?
drcode
It's too idiosyncratic so I have it as private- Just writing all the instructions for the non user friendly commands would take me too long and the program would be incomprehensible without knowing them. I want to strip it down and make it usable to others as a starting point for writing their own app, but don't have the time right now...but it is a plan I have...
modoc
I use iGTD (a great GTD-style application for the Mac) to manage most of my life. For real dev tasks I use Jira, everything else goes into iGTD: Phone calls I have to make (call mom, return recruiters message), errands I need to run (pickup dry cleaning, drop off library books), work tasks (write arch doc for phase 5, review code for project X), personal projects, home tasks (run laundry, spent an hour reading a book and drinking tea), etc... Being able to switch between viewing tasks by project and by context is a HUGE win for me, and having a single repository for my tasks, with easy hot key input from any application is great.

My stress level has gotten so much lower since I started using iGTD.

thorax
I touched on a bit of my process here recently:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=122203

I use a Google spreadsheet (or Excel) and sort/execute it all according to its value divided by its cost (ROI).

papersmith
That was a great post. Actually that post is the reason it got me thinking and started this thread. I sounds like it would fit every well with GTD. The book gave a very general idea of how to prioritize tasks, and you method would plug in very well for work-related tasks. Thanks for sharing!
cvx
I've incorporated GTD into my daily workflow (I use Emacs and have written a GTD module). Personally, it's worked very well for me - especially in reducing my stress levels.

The key (I've found) is to capture _everything_ in buckets. You can then process each bucket based on your energy-level/schedule.