Tag: “Self-Improvement”

Surely you know that the book written by David Allen in 2001, Getting Things Done, has become the manual of personal productivity for hundreds of thousands of followers. The great success of this method is that it has been used and validated empirically by a crowd of supporters.

Are you being productive or just active? They’re not the same thing, but we often use—unconsciously—the concept of activity to deceive ourselves (or consciously, to fool our boss). Sometimes we need to feel busy to not have to do other important tasks that make us uncomfortable for any reason. “I keep doing things all day. So cool!”. No doubt you’re working hard; you show dedication, but dedication sometimes masks a meaningless work. Are you inventing things to avoid doing what’s important? Think carefully about it and be honest with yourself.

When I talk to someone who has successfully implemented GTD, I try to find out the reason that has led him to try it. It is not just curiosity. There are many people interested in productivity-related books, blogs and applications, which fail to implement any methodology or system. I want to know what differentiates the former from the latter. What does it take to succeed? Is there a secret?

“GTD is not for me”, “I’m not an organized person”, “I haven’t found the ideal application”. These are some excuses that I often hear from people that have tried unsuccessfully to bring order to the chaos that reigns in their lives. Have they really tried? I don’t think an attempt to do something without total conviction for a couple of weeks can be called a try. If you are eating fried food and pastries for 10 years, is it realistic to return your cholesterol level to normality in just two weeks? It took me some months to change my eating habits, and even more time to get the desired results.

Productivity. A concept so simple to be defined and so difficult to be analyzed. Personally, I rather the shorter definition: doing more with less. Put that way, maybe it doesn’t look a big thing, but don’t be fooled. This powerful concept is the key to measuring the efficiency and evolution of economies and societies, and determines companies profitability and people quality of life.