A vintage productivity system that clears anxious thoughts
It’s hard to believe that something as unsexy as time management could become one of my primary passions, but when you see the before and after picture of my life, it’ll make more sense.
Organization of thought never came naturally to me. In high school, I was diagnosed with ADHD (for real). I found coping mechanisms that allowed me to limp along, but keeping it all together felt like bailing out a sinking ship. In graduate school, I studied Silicon Valley-style project management, but did I ever bother to apply the principles to my own life? No! No, I did not.
It wasn’t until a 9 to 5 job gave me a blueprint for how to spend most of my day that I was ready to detangle my time and priorities. When I was ready, a book changed the game.
The book was David Allen’s classic, Getting Things Done. In it, Allen offers a sophisticated personal organizing system based on one simple truth: every idea, thought, and to-do in your head collects a little bit of stress. As the stress cloud grows, it confuses and overwhelms us until our path forward is totally obscured.
The solution, Allen tells us, is the arduous and liberating process of dumping everything (EVERYTHING!) out of our brains by writing it down. Sound overwhelming? It is to me. And we’re already doing it in our minds, all the time, with no support and new tasks pouring in every hour.
Allen’s system is creating an “external brain,” a concrete home to our mental clutter where we can examine and re-arrange our thoughts at will.
I read through Getting Things Done twice: once to reset my thinking and the second time to try the “GTD” system. The system is…thorough. I Marie Kondo’d every item in my house and every file on my computer. I wrote down every personal, professional, and social to-do, idea, and daydream in my life. Then, I began the process of sorting all of the information into projects and reference files, defining next action steps for each.
It took months. Mostly I spent that time gathering my courage, but doing it was no joke either.
When the dust settled, here’s what I found:
- Anxiety occurs when we carry undefined expectations about some part of our lives. It’s that nagging sense of failure or missing out that accumulates across our relationships and areas of responsibility. It’s not about feeling good about what we do. It’s about feeling good about what we’re not doing right now. Once we name our options, we can choose without worrying much about what we’re missing. I was shocked to realize that trying GTD gave me greater relief from clinical anxiety than medicine or counseling. It’s not a replacement for either, but it’s a hell of a non-chemical tool that only costs $12.
- Creating a system is totally unrelated to the job of maintaining that system. Especially when that system is large and flexible enough to cover everything in your life. Keeping my GTD files updated each week, without spending more time on task management than actual work, is a discipline I’m still trying to figure out.
- The best part of GTD isn’t increased productivity or the clean closet. It’s the way it re-wires your brain to accept new information. With GTD, every new input can be placed and primed for action based on its relationship to the rest of your life, instead of being thrown on a trash heap of disordered thought.
- GTD, or any organizational system, is like a digestive aid for the brain. It feels great, keeps everything running smoothly, and no one wants to hear about it.
One exception to the above. During the GTD installation process, I was 15%-50% less fun to work with, especially for the creative types in my life. Imagine trying to ideate and riff on an exciting concept when the new hire (me) is constantly asking, “What’s our timeline?” and “Can we clarify next actions?”
Before my coworkers threw me out a window, I realized what was happening and how obnoxious it was. I sent out a little memo explaining what was going on in my brain. I explained to my coworkers why I was trying to clarify my work process, promised to support them in their creative work, and comforted them that my persistent questions reflected an “under construction” phase and not a permanent stick-up-the-butt.
I kept this promise, too. My questions are back to a normal level, or normal for me at least.