Tag: “Stress-Free”

GTD is a personal management method, very different from any other. Known as the art of stress-free productivity, instead of focusing on time management — like calendar-based systems — or on managing urgent tasks — like “priority-based systems” — it focuses on helping us manage our engagements effectively.

There are many methodologies when it comes to personal organization, probably one for each person in this world. They all have advantages and disadvantages, but GTD (Getting Things Done) is the only system I know that defines a complete workflow and covers all aspects of life and work.

The GTD phenomenon appeared over 15 years ago, and maybe due to that the more skeptic want to say it’s dead. The truth is it was quite a “trend” some years ago. According to Google, the “Getting Things Done” search grew significantly in 2005 and it reached his maximum at 2007. However, the acronym GTD (much more popular outside the Anglo-Saxon world) took up the torch since then, and the graphic shows that the interest has been constant from then on.

I have always supported the idea that personal productivity has nothing to do with working fast, something that many people, especially in the business world, don’t agree with. I’m totally against the cult of speed that rules our society, and years ago I chose to enjoying life instead of chasing after it, whether people like it or not.

One day in 1927 Bluma Zeigarnik, a Russian student of psychology at the University of Berlin, went along with several classmates and teachers to have dinner at a restaurant in town. When the waiter who served them took the order of all the diners with absolutely nothing to write in, as he did with the rest of the tables, she thought it was going to end badly. However, after a while the waiter served everyone exactly what they ordered.