Just a quick post to say that I wrote an article on why you should bother with Personal Development – I have posted it as a Squidoo Lens just to have a play with that site. Have a look!
Why You Should Bother with Personal Development (click the link to be whisked to the article!)
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I am a big fan of GTD. Some days it is all that holds the fiberous parts of my life together! And it is definitely why I think I am more productive than most people.
But I think GTD has a big problem – it is focused very much on the short term. Yes there are the Horizons of Focus etc, but for most people they were bored by the time they got to that part of the book. And it is the ‘to do list’ part of GTD which is ‘Remarkable’ – the bit that stands out and makes you think “woo hoo”.
As an example – how many of you rushed out and bought a lable maker/folders/moleskin before you had finished chapter 3? Compare this to how many of you honestly had written down all your horizons of focus by the time you had finished the book? Loads versus a few I fancy.
And that is fine. There are very few all encompassing solutions in this world (Jack Daniels is the only one I can think of off hand 
), so we shouldn’t expect GTD to be so.
The important thing is that we acknowledge that whilst we use GTD to Get Things Done on a daily or weekly basis, in reality, very few of us use it to drive where we want to be in 5 or 10 years time.
So what? Well, today I got 10 things done. Yesterday 12 things. The day before 8. Great. I had three very productive days, but nothing has changed except I am three days older. Did any of those things make me happier, richer, fluffier etc? Who knows!
Focusing on your Hipster PDA and your label maker to micromanage your life is an easy trap to fall into. You are ‘doing GTD’ therefore you feel as if you have ticked the development box. But that GTD system must be driven by a development framework that get you to where you want to be. This could be GTD’s Horizons of Focus, a Covey-esque program, or something from Steve Pavina. As long as you have something that helps you decide which of 100 things you could do today will ultimately make your life better.
So have a think. Does you life revolve around your @Next Actions? Or does you @Next Actions revolve around your life?
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