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Originally Posted by Ezza  I do have a criticism though - I found GTD not that helpful with deciding what to do right now - prioritizing in other words. I think you need to be prepared to take from it what works for you. |
I found this exact same problem with gtd, I love that it allows me to collect everything but I needed a bit more direction than just "this is everything you want to do", I needed "this is what you should be doing right now".
I have tried various crazy methods in the past to put my to do's into some sort of order but none were quite right. If I did things in a particular order I ended up focusing on unimportant things or putting all my efforts into one project or area of my life, I was always out of balance.
I got to thinking about why my systems hadn't been working, then I read GTD. I realised that I hadn't been collecting EVERYTHING, I had only been collecting those things that I didn't want to actually do but needed to be done. I also realised that I needed to find more balance otherwise I would constantly just pick the most fun thing from my list.
I ended up building a web app that prioritised my items for me, I collect everything I want to do and it tells me what to do first. It misses out parts of GTD that I don't think are relevant to me, I don't have contexts or a tickler file for example. I do have a system that creates balance for me, allows me to input things I want to do immediately as well as things I want to do in the future, and allows me to delay things I'm not able to do yet.
My advice then, collect everything into your system, but think carefully about what you need from your system, try different things, notice what works and doesn't work about each thing you try, and come up with your own personal version of the system that works for you.