Is Your Next Action Making You Money$
Or are you just watching your tasks pile up in a never ending list.
All to often people confuse GTD (Getting Things Done) with an organizational system, instead of an overall productivity solution. Yes, knowing where to put your historical data and actionable items is a component of GTD, but providing a means of completing actions is a bigger part. I stumbled upon a post last week which is a perfect example of the misinterpretation.
Beyond GTD: How to Keep Productivity Simple
Scott Young
GTD is too complicated. When I first tried to set up GTD, I found it clunky and hard to stick with….
Keeping a notepad and calendar was a great idea. Keeping a set of dozens of folders to track action items over a period of months wasn’t.
My suggestion is to adopt a leaner productivity system.
It’s a way of thinking about how you organize things, so you can always have the most effective organizing system tailored to your needs.
The principles of the Branch Method are simple:
- Start with the simplest organizing system possible.
- Reorganize your tasks, files or items into this system.
- When a folder becomes too large, branch it off into component systems.
- Review your system every month.
- If a folder isn’t being used, merge it back into the other folders.
By “folder” I mean any location for storing elements of your productivity system.
The “Branch Method” as Scott describes in his post is nothing more than an organization method, it is by no means a replacement for a productivity systems such as GTD. His illustration of the BM does not outline any methods for acting on the data collected; it discusses storing the information and tasks.
Simply organizing data from your various inputs does not move your projects along. The key is action. If you are a disciple of GTD, that means determining the next action for each piece of incoming data, and only handling it once. In GTD, tasks are completed more often that not by performing actions within the same context. If you have several tasks that require an email message to complete, why not do them all at the same time? The same theory applies for phone calls, searching on the web, or running to the grocery store. Contexts also provide a way to highlight activities that fit your current environment or available time. Without a method for completing your tasks all you have is a glorified filing system.
When I here folks say that “GTD is to complicated” or “I spend more time organizing than doing”, my first inclination is that they only read the first few chapters of David’s book (you guessed it) Getting Things Done. I think if you take the time to read the entire book, you will find that it is not difficult, and can greatly improve periodicity in your life. Yes, I know I am preaching here, but it does work-I have seen it time after time. Your time is money, make the most of it.
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