I use GTD to clear the decks for creativity. I run my own business and my creativity is all about how to run the business better. I work from home and it is very hard to separate work from pleasure. I love it!

I have found an @afterhours context and an @during hours context… After hours just means non-client time to me.

I always used to get worried that when an idea bubbled up during the day I might lose it. Now I religously stick those ideas, web pages, emails etc into my Evening context.

When I have ‘evening’ time I start by mind mapping a problem, blog post or strategy. That gets me in the right frame of mind almost instantly. It’s amazing the connections you can make with maps. I then can use this frame of mind to exercise whatever creative need I have.

I also have to say that once I get into blogging later in the evening I find it incredibly hard to stop the flow of creative thought and then I can’t sleep!

Thanks

I’m an information architect. Although my job is highly technical, it is also wildly creative. It is my understanding that the point of GTD is to provide a “Mind Like Water” state that is naturally relaxed and creative.

In practice, I don’t divide my work by creative or not creative, I think of it as being divergent thinking or convergent thinking. GTD is great for managing the convergent thinking activities and leaving free undisturbed time for the divergent thinking activities.

The only next action I’ve been able to come up with for divergent thinking activities is to set aside time and see what come up. I actually have a number of contexts, such as @R&D and @Design.

I also like Covey’s idea of roles. I think of it like GTD’s areas of responsibility. It’s a good way of organizing my goals and emptying my head.

Jesse,

I had a similar experience. I had a really hard course project with an impossible deadline. Writing down “next actions” allowed me to stay focused on the project, but it, being such a high priority - didn’t leave time for anything else. And since GTD was really good at making me not procrastinate, a few days before the due date I found myself on a verge of a total breakdown!

It turns out, there is a good side to procrastination: it keeps you sane! So, I still haven’t found a way to use GTD for projects with unreasonable expectations and deadlines…

Jesse,

Your entry is provocative for any of us who truly aspire to create. And to do so in a sustainable, continuous way. GTD is not an end in itself, it ought to free you up to let go to do your work, not be a “good GTD’er”. At the same time, I think being conscious and using good tools ought to help ultimately.

First of all, once you get in the flow of a real creative endeavor it is good to accept the nature of this beast. You used GTD well to parse the project when applicable. And when the “animate” part came, it took over, as it must. You wore a nice shirt to your date, but why complain if it gets shredded when making out later?

Most of us know the state of minimal maintainence in the heat of really working & I dare say that state is in some way the heart of the matter—the flow state of creating is its own reward. When your pet dies and you are wearing the least filthy item from the laundry basket THEN there is cause for concern. Until then, let the to-go containers fall where they will.

The real task then is how to pick up the pieces once the project is DELIVERED & you collapse!

Since you know now that the culmination of a project is a snowball of unparsable action you can, in some sense, plan for it.

One suggestion is to know that this is likely to happen and figure some triage for post project starts. A timed sweep to physically grab all the laundry into a gigantic garbage bag, furiously scrubbing the kitchen sink til it gleams even though you have created a swamp of squalor, making a friend go running with you no matter what—those are all good starting points toward a post-project mindsweep. I personally recommend The Specials first album as the soundtrack to any timed sweep of this kind, though your milage may vary.

Thanks for your sincere comment—I am in the same boat myself (visual artist). I hope at the least that these commments help you to re-frame this part of the battle.

Solo

My best trick for writing is probabely a separate user account with no net access and no distracting programs. Just a word processor, a pim, and some extras like media player, a timer (if case I just have to timebox), and a backup script (so I don’t have to relogin before I can go to sleep). I reckon I’ve read this trick at 43Folders, so thank you. I write after my salary job is done and on weekends. Being a junkie material, I must say that it’s so much calmer without the lure of The Net. As for the home part of drumming practice, the bulk of which don’t require much time to tune in and, basically, can be done in small bites, the best trick is stepping away from my computer every so often and chopping at my pads for some 10 minutes. Those intermission are good for both my drumming and my @net tasks. Moreover, I’m trying to make a habit of not sitting back down at my computer before I decided on the next task - or at least on the list to take it from. It’s only too easy to get lost.

My novel-writing process is heavy on next actions and 3x5 cards.

In order to crank out fiction on a strict schedule, I use Syd Field’s “56 Cards” system (described in his Screenwriter’s Workbook.) In the canonical version of this system, you build up your plot by writing a brief scene description on each of 56 3x5 cards (14 scene-cards each for Act I, Act IIA, Act IIB and Act III.) Then you tack the cards up on a wall and debug your plot by moving and replacing cards. (I’ve done a portable version of this with the small-size Post-It Notes and an accordion-fold Moleskine.)

Once you’re satisfied with the scene outline, you can stack the cards and use the card-stack as a next-action stack: When you sit down to write, you just pop a card and focus on that one scene. You know the structure is already taken care of, so the decks are clear and you can focus on the scene at hand. I find that this system breaks the large, scary novel-writing project into a sequence of discrete, non-scary scene-writing next-actions. It takes the fear and loathing out of novel writing.

(The card-system I just described will sound extremely familiar to Extreme Programming practitioners, right down to the push-pins. I take this to be a case of parallel evolution.)

Reading the past couple of posts, I see a common thread appearing. Where does GTD stop and your project management/planning process start? I find GTD super for clearing the decks but often worry that I am asking the system to do too much project management. How do you handle the interfacing of GTD with your project management processes?

I’ve found that creativity needs to be applied to a task at hand (i.e., just being in a “creative space” doesn’t often lead to concrete results in GTD). Having deadlines or rigid times to be creative is a good limitation; once you have a target to aim for you can focus your attention on it.

A good trick to being creative is understanding the problem, and leaving it alone, then coming back to it. During the “absence” you’ll still be background processing it. So, to schedule creative time, I’d suggest scheduling 2 sessions: the first to understand the problem and a later time to start solving it.

I guess I’ve been mis-using GTD and never realized it. When I was first introducted to GTD, I immediately set up a context called @Studio to cover the times I did fiber arts. But @Studio for me could mean my actual physical studio where my looms live, or it could mean in front of the TV knitting, or spinning, or on the computer creating a pattern draft, or in front of my bookshelves, paging through magazines, and books for ideas on my next project, or even riding in the car knitting, or sketching out kideas.

By creating an @Studio context, I always know that my fiber art projects are tracked, and captured even if my vocational (i.e. paying work) life gets in the way of my avocation (fiber art), for months at a time.

So for me my organization looks something like this (all tracked on a Mindmap on my mac)

List of Current Projects New Shawl Design Sweater from Klondike Fiber Katmandu Purse

My next Actions for @ Studio could be the following Review yarn samples for the new shawl Card Klondike’s fiber for spinning Finish front panel of the Katmandu Purse

And @Studio would be any time I can squeeze from my farm, and work, and in fact there I times where I have to get creative on finding time to be creative (for example, knitting while exercising, taking a spinning wheel to a barbeque, etc.).

Jesse,

I sympathize with your persistant “animate” task. Being a graphic designer I’ve struggled with the same issue.

The problems are a lack of specificity and progress. “Animate” (or “design”, etc) could apply to any part of the animation you’re doing. And checking off one “animate” task only to have twenty more exactly like it isn’t exactly energizing.

Perhaps you can take another swipe at breaking it down further, to absurdly tiny pieces if possible. Maybe one task is to complete a rough pass, or to rough in five seconds of run time, or even better 00:00:00 to 00:00:05. This creates a unique task that reminds you of exactly what you should be doing right now, and lends a little more satisfaction at completing it. Plus you can more easily track your progress to see if you’re on track.

I would love to hear anyone else’s ideas on how to break up blob tasks like “animate” into crankable widgets.