- One of the things I like about GTD is that (as I mentioned in the post) it encourages me to look at the overall picture (and gives me an overall picture to look at) of my commitments.

- Efficiency isn’t a bad word. However many things I’m trying to do (and less would be better), I want to do them more efficiently so I have more time for quiet reflection, playing games, hanging out with friends, doing nothing at all. Procrastination time (at least in my case) is not at all the same thing as good down time.

- One thing I haven’t found strongly in the GTD summaries that I’ve already added for myself is the need for a (monthly maybe?) reflection day, where you don’t try to do anything, but reflect on what you’re doing in a deeper way than your weekly review of your project list. Reflect in terms of your goals, priorities, etc. For all I know that idea is in the GTD book though, just not emphasized in the online writing about it.

I’ve picked up little GTD things here and there in my regular blog reading (often from links to lifehacker, another GTD site). While I’d like to look into some of the other options for upgrading my daily GTD, the main thing I got from this post right off was the motivation to get the most out of Quicksilver - a supersweet app for macs that I’ve been half using. Now I’m getting about three times the power out of it. Thanks!

I think I need to pick up some of the list and procrastination management techniques too.

sometimes, though, I wonder if we should really be promoting a GOT method instead - Get Out of Things. Maybe, instead of doing more efficiently, we should just be doing less?

My name is Jay, and I use a productivity system.

I love your post. It’s exactly the way I feel about GTD. It really didn’t teach any new or complicated things to do, just put them all together into a trusted system that I actually use.

It sounds like you were actually doing pretty well. I had six years of paper and commitments stored up in my office and my brain. And nothing getting done. So the initial capture was really hard for me.

I had used other “time management” things in the past, but I never stuck with them very long. They never became trusted systems, I guess.

The first thing that really kept me using GTD was the tickler file. The second thing was how much clarity I had after doing a review. And now that I’m stress-free and productive, I don’t ever want to go back.

You can check out my GTD posts here.

Jay