If anything, I'm more likely to have the opposite prob -- not getting enough done because it's too easy to let is slide sometimes.

But I wonder how people who have an appt. calendar for their business use GTD. That might help you, too. If you have an appt. calendar with times blocked off for what needs to be done, you can block off time (for a break, for example) and perhaps see the time slots that are left, and have more reasonable expectations for what can be done during those periods.

Thanks for your answer, pooks: I am also curious if people who got into a position with fixed appointment calenders still think a lot about their productivity system - it seems to me they are already productive. Maybe GTD and other methods are much more about developing an intuition (for getting things done) over time than replacing intuition with logic.
Because I made a conscious effort to do more things that I like and that are healthy during the last weeks, I already feel much better ("I feel the force again"). But I still see it as a definite weakness in the GTD system as proposed in the book, that there is not much about prioritizing.
Anyone sooner or later will come into a situation with diminished resources (if not burnout, it might be age), and whenever I look into Mr. Allens book, I find his rant against to-do-lists less and less convincing.
True, the downside is that you have to rewrite and rewrite, and that it is harder to have work in different contexts. But what about Covey? During the last weeks I tried a compromise between the context- and project-lists, and a daily to-do list. I only write a few items on that list; whatever Project or next step I want to work on definitely. It helped me a lot to have this "mission-accomplished"-feeling again, because as I said, I was frequently doing too much things with low importance.
As for working in pre-scheduled blocks of time, I think this is a wonderful idea, at least for more routine tasks. what I'd prefer, however, is to develop a better intuition what would be most rewarding to do next, and when to take a break....

by the way, another thing I miss in "the system" is a more dedicated focus on the issues of "knowledge workers" (academics, writers, and the like).
Any time I used ("the original") GTD, I found it hard to find next actions for the type of work I do, so I used it to organize stuff that kept me from writing my dissertation.
The best "next action" I came up with so far: checking the state of papers that I (plan to) read. On the list, I put not only the name of the paper I intended to read, but also some letters, like (O) (C) (R) (E) (B), which stands for Order in library, Copy, Read, create an Exzerpt, and finally, enter Bibliographic information. I have to do these steps on most of the texts I read, so I cross off one of these letters whenever I finish one of the next (sub-) steps.

Writing works best in regular intervals for me (I found some immensely helpful advice on this in the book "professors as writers"), another thing that did not quite fit into GTD. This is something a (short) daily to-do-list of the most important items is really useful for: "write 1 hour" can become a regular item, and checking this item off daily is so rewarding...
did you find any other ideas how to apply time-management-tricks to writing? I'd be exited to hear them!
Mark

I think there's a fine line between using GTD to do what you have do to (the happy medium) and using it as either a procrastination tool (at one end) or as a fast track to burnout (at the other extreme).

I spent a hour yesterday turning my job description into a mind map to help me understand it. It wasn't on a NA list anywhere. But there was nothing on my to-do list that I'd promised anyone with a deadline, so I thought it seemed like a worthwhile thing to do - and then let incubate for a day or so before the review.

GTD should be a tool to allow you to control your commitments, not for them to control you. The tag line on the book says "the art of stress-free productivity". If you're burning out, you're doing it wrong - probably in aspects of undertstanding commitments and renegotiating. Go back to basics, and read the book again. And look at your higher levels as well - what's really important to you? Doing all this shit, or having a good life?

Sorry to be so blunt, but I don't do touchy-feely stuff very well.

thanks for the answer, andy, and also the clear choice of words. I didn't mean this post to become an application for pity. Interesting, though, that the term "burnout" is quite likely to trigger responses which state some resistance to the idea, that there might be some connection between "the book" and the temptation to do too much.

To avoid a misunderstanding, this was not meant as an anti-GTD-post at all. I value the system for its flexibility, for the idea of project- and next-action-lists, and for the support it provides for weekly reviews and long-term planning. Experiencing symptoms of stress (to use a non-psycho-term - it sounded worse than it is) just made me think of exactly what you recommended: That health should get a higher priority in my life.
I have to add, however, that I am still startled by the simple recipe: "it can't be the book". Especially on higher levels, I don't find much that I want to change. "Doing all this shit" is not how I would describe what I do for a living; I really like my work, and yes, I even have a family (which is top priority as well).
Just because I find creative work so rewarding, I am in constant temptation to forget about the time, and write until the morning, for example, or forget to lunch, when I am in the office. All I meant to say was that GTD in its current version might not be the last word about how to do time-management:

1) Most people on this forum seem to have clear limits set to them by their work. Frequently, I don't. In my eyes, this makes it a necessity for me to think about fixed intervals and such to introduce a bit of regularity.

Many writers (including academics) have problems defining their work in terms of next actions. Projects, yes, but "write 1/4 of chapter 4" ? Today, it might be 1/9 of chapter 4, tomorrow, 1/20, at the end of the week, 7/9 of chapter 4, in thirty minutes. This often results in doing the actual work outside the GTD system, and using lists only for projects and next actions of things that might keep you from working. There is an interesting post about that on the forum "The efficient academic", just to state that it is not a "beginner's error"

2) how do you organize recurrent, complex activities? As writers usually complain, many creative activities do not fit that well into "next actions". why should I go back to the basics (I read this book quite often now), when writing a list of these tasks might help?

3) Even if I add things like "relax > 5 times daily" to the task-list, it is very hard with GTD to get done with all the item on the lists. These are open lists, so by definition they always refill. I find them very handy for everything that I want to do during the week or later, but adding a daily, simple, closed list (only a few items!) to the system makes it much easier to define the minimum to be achived on a given day, and to remind myself about regular tasks: It may be an odd habit, but I feel better when I can tick these (important, regular) items off my list.

I started this thread to discuss a few ideas that helped me tremendously during the last weeks. Now I wonder, however, why it should be so important to work with the system "as advertised": What are the changes that you introduced into your personal GTD setup - especially, if you have to do (or are allowed to do) creative tasks?

Mark

Very intersting topic(s)!

A Some observations

1) It is not only the list which is "closed" or "open", but the items on it adhere to the same rules. A GTDish NA is open: it just defines the starting point of the activity, a bookmarked point in the project. A "Todo" is a closed description: you know whe you have finished it.

2) "Many writers (including academics) have problems defining their work in terms of next actions. Projects, yes, but "write 1/4 of chapter 4" ?"

These are action reminders, not full tasks descriptions. What about "write on book"? Why limit yourself?

3) "But I still see it as a definite weakness in the GTD system as proposed in the book, that there is not much about prioritizing."

The whole 10,000ft-50,000ft complex is about prioritizing. In GTD you prioritize wehever you negociate if something goes into @projects or someday/maybe for example. You just don't do it on the actions level. Once you defined a next action, you are 100 percent certain it has to be done anyway. If you do your projects right, ther is no need to renegociate at action level.

4) I think doing GTD the "original" way means to see the calendar as the tool for any time-bound issues. Any dates are in there, and only there (or maybe as well in project plans in the project support materials). Time-management on the other hand, things regarding your working schedule, deadlines, and so on, seems to be outside the scope of GTD entirely.

5) "Order in library, Copy, Read, create an Exzerpt"
Are we violating any copyrights here? As a writer? -gasp-

B What are the changes that you introduced into your personal GTD setup?

1) No changes just some additions.

2) "checking this item off daily is so rewarding..."

When I plan my projects through, I set deadlines for intermediate steps, I call them milestones. I plan as far as I can "see" the project. For example "draft1 of chapter one". On very small projects the NA gets the deadline.

I maintain a statistic how many deadlines I catched, missed, had to renegotiate befor the date arrived ect. The motivation here is to increase the marketshare of "catched corporation". Hard landscape appointments with myself (eg schedules NAs) count in this as well. I stopped playing computer games since I do this.

3) "I don't. In my eyes, this makes it a necessity for me to think about fixed intervals and such to introduce a bit of regularity."

Same opinion here. On the other side I am against a private/professional split. This is something that came with the middle class after the industrial revolution. I don't want to live that way. For example if I read a book about, let's say "Smart Answers", the knowledge I absorb will be for my use in my life, wether professional or private... I just does not make sense.

Back to our topic...

What I did GTD-wise to adress the issue is I added some simple time-based contexts to the mix. For example each working day from 1 pm to 5 pm I am by contract with myself in the @writing context. This is fairly new to my and I often have problems with it when I sleep into the day. So NA is get to get used to rising up early...

4) "how do you organize recurrent, complex activities?"
I have a list of these "chores" and I just copy this list into my context lists when I do my weekly review. Things I do once a month I have a reminder in my calendar, I then copy the action into my lists.

I have a daily should-do list (idea from you-know-who
), after I realized I have no daily must-do items.

5) "but I feel better when I can tick these (important, regular) items off my list"
I do use the "When is something worth doing"-sheet of Dave Seah's PCEO. I made it my duty to reach a minimum amount of points on a weekly basis.

I hope this is helping any way. Feel free to ask more

I find that some of my work is also hard to define as Next Actions. I just put "make progress on report" as a next action. I see it, I do some until I'm bored or an interruption comes along, I cross it off and add it back to the bottom of the list. Sometimes that means I do 10 minutes, sometimes it's 5 hours, but it's doing as much as I can with the other stuff that's going on around me.

There's also the "Spend 15 minutes working on X with radio/tv/iPod turned off."

Agony, of course.

But even without turning off all the distractions, just putting "Spend 15 minutes" can sometimes make a huge difference.

My daily list consists of only few items. Used to write it on an index card, but nowadays I'm testing the use of my paper diary for this purpose.

Rainer

Dear folks,
thank you for all the helpful answers so far, which helped me to help me a lot:
-It was good to be reminded that GTD has to offer a lot about the need for prioritizing in general, and especially on higher levels. On the lower, day-to-day-basis, I was glad to hear that other people implement certain additions to the original system that worked out for them. Examples are checklists of regular items, reserving time blocks for certain contexts, or the immensely useful Emergent Task Timer, to re-check where your time is actually going. I still like to cling to the "one little achievement per day"-idea, because while regaining strenth will be a longer process for me, it feels good to get those next steps done, which are slightly more interesting.
-I will spent some time adjusting the higher-level-goals and such now, health becoming more important. I think this is a process which involves a lot of "touchy-feely-stuff" - this is not in the book, can't be in any book, but in my eyes, this is definitely an area we should try to become experts in. (reading a bit of stevepavlina and such can help - and, most of all, your wife/girlfriend/family, and, of course, the FlyingSpaghettiMonster of your choice)

Interesting, though, that writing and other creative stuff has softer goals and, by definition, a more or less unpredictable outcome, which is hard to put into time-management-systems, or systems at all. Today I read about Thomas Mann, that he kept writing in strict regular intervals ("there is no genius outside office hours"). The little-and-often-principle seems to work well for productivity - with a closer look on my priorities, I will try to get used to it...

Thank you for your time!