Hey Kenzi. Fellow artist here.

I've actually done a little bit of thinking about this very thing, how to apply GTD to art-making. I haven't really fleshed it out yet... so you're actually making me THINK! Shame on you. ;-) So I'm kind of making this up as I go along. I don't know how useful it will be.

Anyway, I've got a really huge list of Someday/Maybes, and a big portion of them are art and design projects. I've got my S/Ms sorted into categories. These are the ones that would probably be of most interest to you:

• Art Exhibits to See
• Art Galleries (galleries I will want to look into once I have built up a good body of work)
• Art: Projects (various art projects I want to tackle someday, ideas for paintings, drawings, etc.)
• Design (various design projects I would like to do someday)
• Design: Interactive Design (web stuff I want to learn how to do)
• Design: Personal Website (I want to redesign it)
• Design: Typography (typeface ideas)

Right now a lot of the creative stuff is pending my getting a house with a room to do my art stuff in. So once I move, I'll be doing a LOT of painting and drawing, and hopefully typeface designing.

I think a lot of the problems with combining art-making and GTD is that while art is a process, it's not always a linear one. GTD is somewhat linear, but it allows for a bit of flexibility.

Although I suppose if you are doing a portrait of Madame X, which would be a project, your first Next Action would be to arrange a sitting, so that would most likely initiate a phone call and writing down an appointment time on your calendar. Then you would create an NA to "Draw a dozen sketches for portrait of Madame X." You could put that in a "Think" context, like Merlin talks about in his Dr. Contextlove article.

Likewise, in my Next Action contexts, I have an @Studio context. I don't have a studio per se, but it works. It just says "when I'm in my art-making environment, here's what I need to be working on."

Back to the "Madame X Portrait Project," your next step would naturally be to pare that down to 2 or 3 sketches, then to draw that full-size on canvas or paper, and then start painting. I've actually written myself post-its for things to tackle on a particular canvas, like "Finish shadows in the trees" or what have you.

So I think the real moral of this story is to figure out what your contexts are, and work from there. Which I think is a lot of what GTD is about. David Allen wrote his book for project managers and CEOs, but I think once you grasp the whole context concept it applies for everybody. If you're at your easel, what do you need to do next? If you're in a place to think about your upcoming projects, what do you do next? (Pick up your pencil and sketchbook and start drawing!)

Thanks for making me think about this! I think I've about got it figured out, but I'm interested to see what other people will say.

It's really intersting to hear this from an artist; reading the book I start to feel like I have to be a CEO for this to work, although I do see glimmers of tricks that could work for my creative stuff. My problem is that I don't get to the art, so I need to manage all the other life stuff so that there is time for the art. And while I am working towards that moment when I can actually sit down and do the "art" itself, I can make my lists of things to do towards that end, like buy paint, buy canvases, research x, y & z, clean studio space, ...little things that I can do beforehand so that when I do have time to do the art all the elements are in place, and there is no excuse to put it off any longer.

I think that GTD will help me hang onto those sometime/maybes so that they will evetually get done. Those are MAJOR open loops for me that I find really disappointing; because they are not necessities of life, they don't get priority, but they are necessities in the sense that my life feels empty without them.

It will be interesting to share our experiences with this process applied to the work of art.

I'm a writer, not an artist -- but I think you'll find that not only will GTD help you in the big picture get a handle on your "life," but by figuring out art projects and next actions for them and actually writing them down, not only will they become more concrete, but you'll give them an importance that is harder to ignore/forget.

I think that artistic creations are a little bit in that fuzzy category between a concrete widget and more abstract knowledge work.

Of course, art can run the gamut from concrete to abstract. Sculpture is about as concrete as it gets, especially when made from stone. On the other hand, poetry is incredibly abstract.

In the end, there is definitely a deliverable, whether that final product is delivered to a client/editor/gallery/yourself.

Back to GTD, though, I think it all comes down to thinking of your context(s), and what you can do within that given situation, and maintaining a list of projects and what it will take to move said project to the next stage of completion. (Even if, like the proverbial artist, a painting isn't finished until it's sold!)

For a writer, it isn't even finished after it's sold. Editors keep tweaking and changing.

For a screenwriter, not only is it not finished -- every actor, director, producer, craft services person thinks they've got a better line -- but you're likely to have another screenwriter (or three or five) come in and rewrite, every time somebody new comes on the project with a new vision.

Oy. I'm depressing myself.

Onward, Sisyphus!

I have noticed a similar problem to this in my academic life. I have tried writing papers early before, but I always seem to keep working on them into the wee hours of the morning right before they are due. Granted, some of that is procrastination, but my paper isn't finished until the deadline, no matter what. Well, unless I have it published. Then, I guess it would be finished. ;)

When I try Christmas shopping ahead, I'll either forget what I bought until I find it the following March, or I discover that they just bought "one" for themselves between the timeafter they mentioned wanting "one" for Christmas, or I keep buying more presents (especially for kids).

Sometimes doing things early doesn't work.

One thing I am trying is putting a tickler about the Christmas gifts I bought after Christmas so that I get them out in early December of this year...

Something like: present for niece, in closet, wrap and send. This is the first time I have done anything like this so we will see if it works!

SG

I always keep a list throughout the year of things that I see that I think would make a good gift for a certain person; I can see this working with GTD, maybe with the tickler file. I could put these items in the November file (notes to myself, a printout from a website, a book or CD review etc.) and then when that month rolls around start actually buying those things for people. I could also do that for birthdays, just pop the note in the file for the month before the person's birthday.

Hopefully my husband will continue his disdain for organization and won't venture into that file to find out what he will be getting.

Label his file "feminine hygiene products." Stick a couple of coupons or ads or something in it on top.

He won't look.

The idea of an ongoing list is great. As I've said before, I think -- I sometimes buy ahead of time and then find out the gift is no longer appropriate for one reason or another, or forget I have it, or can't find it.

The tickler file is a great idea for recording gift lists and where you hide stuff, if you do!