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GTD 'cult'

so a friend of mine sent me this message. I am a big fan of GTD and find it very useful. I'm just puttin' this out there.

[INDENT]
I was excited to sit down to read "Getting Things Done" today. It's a great gift. I was so excited that I even read the acknowledgments, to be complete about the whole thing. At the end of the acknowledgments I noticed that David Allen thanks someone named "J-R" for being his "spiritual coach."

Uh-oh. "J-R" seemed like it might stand for John-Roger -- the controversial cult leader and spiritual guru. And it does.

http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/msia.html

David Allen, his wife, and many of his employees are ministers in the MSIA (Movement of Spritual Inner Awareness), John-Roger's church:

http://www.ndh.org/template.php3?ID=65 http://www.davidco.com/coaches_corner/Ana_Maria_Gonz%E1lez/article14.html (employee quoting John-Roger)

Anti-cult websites accuse GTD of being part of a program to recruit people into MSIA. Their view seems paranoid to me, but you can read it for yourself:

http://forum.rickross.com/viewtopic.php?t=2193 http://forum.rickross.com/viewtopic.php?p=15025&sid=e3195755a2185f9b4710580921d3f527

Now, I'm not saying that Getting Things Done isn't a good book about priorities and organization. David Allen may have very good advice about that stuff. But I am saying don't go to a David Allen seminar, get mixed up with the David Allen Company, or get too involved with the hard-core GTD crowd -- at least not without taking some anti-brainwashing measures. Seriously. This John-Roger character and his followers are not a joke.

I learned about John-Roger a long time ago, as it happens, because in high school I read a self-help book called "Life 101" that he "co-wrote" with Peter McWilliams, the poet and anti-drug-war activist. In 1994, not long after I read "Life 101," McWilliams wrote an expose called "Life 102: What to Do When Your Guru Sues You." McWilliams left MSIA in 1994 after 15 years of being brainwashed. It turned out that John-Roger manipulated him into giving him co-authorship in return for keeping McWilliams alive. You see, John-Roger had the power to keep McWilliams alive because -- and this will surprise you -- John-Roger claims to be the incarnation of God on earth.

John-Roger has also made headlines in connection with Arianna Huffington -- who admits to being a close friend and who has been accused (though she's never admitted it) of being an MSIA minister as well.

[/INDENT]

Paul's picture

Wasn't there some sort of...

Wasn't there some sort of "mystical Traveler" in Ghostbusters?

I think ops30's post really hits it on the head, and is worth much more than the $0.02 opening bid. If GTD works for you, it's OK. I don't think I'm going to go from a weekly review this week to donating all my spare cash to a fringe religious group next week.

The posts over on the "cult" message board were interesting. I appreciate the research, because it does look like DavidCo., like LOTS of other businesses, may be run by a like-minded group of individuals (pretty common to seek out folks who share your vision in an entrepreneurial venture), and as you take productivity & prioritization to higher levels in your life (beyond today's tasks), you may get into ?higher-level-life-stuff.? So it's kind of nice to know if there are some overall philosophies that might come into play at some point as David & Co. produce more work. I also think the MSIA link might explain some of DA's past experience with consulting ? he alludes to a lengthy background in management consulting, but doesn?t have a lot of details. I had always thought he just got in on the early wave of consulting when it was a new field, and firms weren?t really established yet. So, yeah, I do think it?s kind of interesting. Maybe some of his consulting past is through ministry of some kind.

But, I don't share the Rick Ross board poster?s concern that GTD is just a way to indoctrinate us into something else. If DavidCo folks would like us to move from GTD to something else, if it?s not of interest to me, I?ll politely decline. I?d do the same if David had written a book on sushi ? I just don?t care for it, it?s not my thing.

The co-founder of Domino?s Pizza wants to start an orthodox Catholic community in Florida, but if I order from Domino?s, I still feel like I?m getting a pizza, not a slice of Catholicism.

 
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