I’d ask David the following questions:

1. What are the implications of GTD for spirituality? Is there a spirituality behind GTD (obviously I think there is) and how can that be fleshed out and understood? What does GTD imply for “big issues” like peace and poverty in the world?

2. How can GTD be incorporated into education for our children?

3. Does GTD “work” in different social structures? In other words, can the UN use GTD? The Peace Corps? What would that look like?

4. Can GTD be pushed to an organizational model? GTD seems to focus on personal productivity. but is there some way that GTD could become a “new” quality assurance program or something like that? Can you “GTD” your organization beyond just GTDing the individuals?

That’s all I can think of right now.

Oh dear, only one question? Erhm… How do you prevent slack in your system? I can’t imagine that you are 100% disciplined ALL of the time, are you? So if you start to let it slip, do you have any tricks on getting back on track?

After Bryan’s big-picture questions, I’m a little embarrassed to post my decidedly small-picture one, but after being “on” GTD for a couple of years now, I still haven’t found a really satisfactory way of dealing with recurring tasks/chores that aren’t tied to specific dates. Things like changing the air filters, or working on various personal development projects that I don’t have time to do every day but want to maintain with some regularity.

There’s a Mac app whose name escapes me right now that’s designed to handle this sort of thing, but it’s overpriced and didn’t seem to integrate well with the rest of my system(s) when I (briefly) tried it. What I do now is maintain daily, weekly, monthly etc. “Routine” lists that I keep moving forward in my tickler file, but that’s a little too fiddly even without breaking out the individual tasks to separate sheets.

So I’d ask David if he’s dealt with these sorts of tasks in his work — surely he has, but he doesn’t seem to address them in the books — and what recommendations he has.

GTD is pretty obviously geared towards the 9-5 office worker type. How would you scale down the system for someone who doesn’t have as much “stuff” to deal with (students, unemployed, etc.)

I’d ask him how to deal with the army of next actions I now have. Before, I was forgetting, losing track of, or implicitly ignoring some of them. Now I feel like I have laser sharp vision of all the commitments I’ve foolishly made. I’m not saying it’s a flaw with the system. I’m better off now than I was before. But this is the next mountain I have to climb.

In Getting Things Done there’s a line that says, “Let’s assume for a moment that you’re not resisting any of your ‘stuff’ out of insecurity or procrastination.” It seems to me that this assumption actually carries through the rest of the book — that after you’ve defined the true next action, it should be easy just to do it or to feel no anxiety in postponing it. This is sometimes true for me, but other times I generate a next action that sits on my list for weeks. I’d like to know if David Allen encounters psychological barriers with his clients, and if he’s come up with any good tricks or practices for dealing with them. Thanks to this website I’ve read Neil Fiore’s “The Now Habit,” which gave me some insight into why I procrastinate. But I’d like some concrete ideas about new habits or ways of thinking that fit specifically into my GTD routine.

“How do you deal with actions that you can do right now, but have decided not to do at the moment because you have lots of other more important actions pending? Do these go in Someday/Maybe, stay on your context lists, or go somewhere else?” Actually, that is such a good question I aught to post that to the GTD forum. ::adds an action. Another one. Sighs.::

I’d love to know how to adapt GTD for use in schools, or in children’s lives generally. I have a couple of ideas, but most kids aren’t able to figure out their own filing system or manage contexts on their own; likewise they don’t have the resources to invest in a labeler, a high-quality file cabinet, &c. So my question is: “How, if at all, can you strip down GTD for use by children?” (For this purpose, let’s say that ‘children’ refers to people from 10-18 years.)

I would ask David Allen: Have you tried your GTD system in a company or for people that have to put out many fires each and every day?

I know that David says somewhere in the book that one shold not be spending time putting out fires all the time. But if I may explain why I would ask this: I read the GTD book recently and everything I have come across online. I have used kGTD for about 6 months too. The GTD system works great for me except for part of my job. I work in an ad agency with about 45 other people. Each and every day there are many fires (jobs) that have to put out because they are ordered by the clients in the morning or even after noon and they have to be delivered before six or the ads will not be published.

I see no easy way to implement GTD over such crazy work mania - there is no time to write any lists. Next action is more or less to do all the actions at the same time.

How ever GTD works quite good so far for the rest of my life. I am a designer here and also the computer guru (not my words though). I list of things to do, not to mention the things I want to do is a very long one. GTD is gives at least some fun handling all the small ideas and todos. I love to send a brilliant idea on something more to do with Quicksilver into the Inbox of kGTD!

Following is what I said on the davidco thread. I’d welcome any advice from you all as well:

Dear David:

Thank you very much for your contribution - you’ve helped me tremendously. If you were advising someone starting out in the field of personal productivity consulting, what would be your top tips?

Sincerely,

matt