Program Yourself

A few months ago I bought a book called Getting
Things Done by David Allen after hearing it recommended by Danny O’Brien

in his Life Hacks talk at LayerOne. I recently got re-inspired to actually read the book and try out some of the ideas in it.

GTD (as its converts call it) is really not so much a system for “getting things done” as for “keeping track of all the stuff you need to get done and deciding what to do with it”, which I guess is not quite as catchy of a title, but the actual “doing” is almost incidental to the system.

Honestly, I don’t think I would have ever picked up this particular book on my own. The book is written in the language and attitude of the motivational/self-help genre, and could easily be mistaken for just another “7 Habits of Highly Annoying People”-type book. Typically for the genre, it prominantly features the confident-looking smiling guru on the cover,
which made it somewhat embarrassing to read in public. I solved that problem by tearing off the front and back covers.

But behind all the business-speak and positive attitude, it turns out there are some very simple but powerful concepts, and practical details of how to implement them. There are a lot of good ideas in the book which could be very useful even taken alone (and some of which I was already doing). But where the real power of the system comes from the framework/feedback loop formed by the using all the building blocks together, ideally allowing you to keep your mind clear and
to focus on actually “getting things done”.

While the target audience seems to be non-technical, middle management types, GTD seems to also be particularly appealing to geeks (such as myself). At least to me, GTD intuitively feels “right”, one of those paradigm shifts that seem obvious in retrospect.

My theory is that at least some of the geek appeal of GTD comes from the algorithmic approach it takes. Real geeks automate everything — if we need to solve the same problem more than once or twice we script it. GTD is basically a
script, and your physical self is the hardware it runs on.

This is where GTD fits in with “Life Hacks”; GTD is a hack for your life.

Next time: GTD, and Why Every Other System Sucks.