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GTD Cafe: Teflon Productivity
March 12th, 2008 by thedailysaintPosted in GTD, Productivity |
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Today’s post is from Mike St. Pierre of The Daily Saint.
It’s generally a good thing when folks criticize David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology because it stands out from the crowd and grabs your attention. Yesterday’s post from Organize It was titled 9 Reasons why Getting Things Done Sucks and struck me right out of the gate. I read the article, half with a sense of, “How could anyone be critical of GTD,” and then realized that it’s not that bad after all. A little bit of criticism might be a good thing, or so I tell my students at school.
Criticism, as long as it’s honest, is often a healthy sign of critical thinking. How does GTD stand up to attack? Pretty well I think and here’s why: Allen is very clear in his book and subsequent talks over the past six years- GTD is adaptable and can integrate into any system that currently exists. It’s more of a set of behaviors than anything else. Kelly Forrister, a GTD coach, also makes it clear that GTD can sync with any number of high or low tech systems such as:
- Notecards (low tech, think Hipster PDA )
- Lotus notes
- Outlook
- Google Calendar and Gmail
- Day Timer planner
The fact that GTD is able to marry (or at least cohabitate with) these current tools is a plus for the GTD side of things. Adaptable yes, but what about the claim leveled recently that GTD is too simplistic?
Leo from Zen Habits ran an interview with Dr. Stephen Covey in which the famed 7 Habits author called GTD “too simplistic and superficial”. No GTD practitioner likes to hear fighting words such as these but consider the obvious: 7 Habits has been around for 20 years and GTD a mere six. Clearly GTD has some catching up to do and the FranklinCovey world is much larger than that of GTD. What will be the staying power of GTD? Time will only tell.
So how does GTD stand up to criticism? Pretty well I think and the proof is in the pudding. I describe GTD as “life changing” and that is something that I say about very few other things in life (i.e. faith, marriage, being a father). So am I a Getting Things Done evangelist? Sure. But even an evangelist can take a good bit of criticism from time to time.
If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5upy49. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen
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March 12th, 2008 at 5:44 am
Mike, you are right on. Covey is right when he says GTD is simplistic, because it is a simple methodology. The implementation of GTD can be as simple or as structured as you are comfortable with.
The 7 Habits are a philosophy, the implementation of which is of a different magnitude than GTD. It requires a new model of observing the world, your work, and yourself.
GTD tells you that you need to work on action “A3″ now because you are in the correct place, at the correct time, with the appropriate equipment/supplies.
The 7 Habits tell you that you need to work on action “A3″ now because this is the time allotted for working toward Goal A, as previously indicated by your principle-driven goal setting and weekly planning.
March 12th, 2008 at 7:20 am
Thanks for mentioning my Organize IT post. GTD does stand up well to criticism, it was much harder to fault it than I originally envisaged (I admit that some of the points I picked out aren’t exactly “strong” faults). But as you say, a little bit of *constructive* criticism can be good and that was really my intention with the post.
The thing about GTD was that I was able to immediately go away and do something with it. With 7 Habits, as Stephen says, you basically have to view entire areas of your life differently and I don’t feel the book much covers practical ways of doing that.
March 12th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Hi James, thanks for stopping by. I appreciate your comment and agree that Covey’s book does not offer much in the way of practical applications. It is a philosophy of change, and I am working on a series of posts to be a guide for that change. Check them out at http://hdbizblog.com/blog/category/7-habits/
March 12th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I completely agree on the distinction being made in the comments between the 7 Habits and GTD. From Covey’s standpoint, GTD does reside on a more superficial plane, yet I don’t think he is knocking it at all.
In the very first chapter of the 7 Habits, Covey gives credit to personal effectiveness strategies (what he calls the “Personality Ethic”) when he says “I am not suggesting that elements of the Personality Ethic…are not beneficial, in fact sometimes essential for success. I believe they are.”
Covey simply makes a distinction between such strategies and what he intends to talk about: “But these are secondary, not primary traits.” His comments are therefore not surprising, nor do I think intentionally disparaging.
March 12th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
[…] día de hoy HD BizBlog publica un post, de Mike St. Pierre de The Daily Saint, donde al hacer referencia a la crítica […]
March 12th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
I read the same article and agree with the author of this post. Of course, the headline got lots of attention - that was the intent. I do agree in part that GTD may not be for everybody, in fact I am a recent convert from Covey to GTD, and was attracted by a specific application of GTD rather than the system itself. It was the application that made all the difference for me. I wrote about my recent discovery and experience in a post this week at http://johnkendrick.wordpress.com
March 13th, 2008 at 4:39 am
>Brick & John, thanks for your input guys, and for continuing the discussion. This very thing is why I believe that we are on the cusp of needing the next generation of productivity management.