David Allen Suggests We Take a Fresh Look [GTD]

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Bruce Keener

A few days ago, David Allen tweeted

Dump all your previously-assumed projects & actions. Create a fresh list. What’s now current & real?

At first I thought this was a nutty suggestion, and that David was just thinking out loud instead of actually recommending something specific. But, now that I’ve thought more about it, I plan to do what he suggests. Well, not exactly what he suggests in that I am not going to throw my current lists away … but I am going to pretend they don’t exist and see what happens when I create entirely new ones. Will there be a good bit of overlap? I expect so, but I also expect there’ll be some stuff added that should have been there before. And, I expect I’ll leave some stuff off that’s really just BS stuff anyway.

Priorities change. We change. It’s a good idea to look at our task lists and ask “is this something I really want/need to do?” It’s also good to question our goals and our list of values, to see if they are the ones that are really right for us now. Ideally our values don’t change much over time, but it could be that we have not expressed them as well as we should and that rethinking them gives a more nuanced list.

There is also an implicit recommendation in David’s comment: backup the stuff that is in your existing system. If it is all in electronic storage, print it out so you have a copy of it. Otherwise, it could wind up all going away with a hard drive crash or a cell phone’s death or a mistake by the company that keeps it in the cloud for you, and then you would have to recreate it … not quiet the same thing as wanting to recreate it.

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  • http://www.garotasemfio.com.br Bia Kunze

    I do that once a year. In my birthday. Ir’s almost at half the year, nice to check goals set In January. Some I decide to work harder, some I put on hold, some I drop. And why not, set new ones.

    Same way I make the weekly review (runway and 10.000 ft), I do the montly review (1st each month) for my 20.000 ft (Covey’s roles) and the yearly review, but focusing on 30, 40 and 50.000 ft.
    I take the day off, leave gadgets behind, pick up my moleskines and leave at 7 o’clock… to go to hotel In a farm. I came back the same day, it’s about an hour from home.

    • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce Keener

      Hi Bia,

      Thank you for the comment. Great to know that you are doing that.

      Moleskines are perfect for that sort of thing, aren’t they? I absolutely love them for dumping my thoughts onto paper and for helping me see things in a new light. I also have some light green “engineering pads” that work well for me in this regard.

      Good to hear from you again!

  • http://ruudhein.com Ruud Hein

    Nice ideas, Bia.

    My runway & 10K view is something that moves around quite often: PersonalBrain, Moleskine, Evernote, MindManager, etc. I like to keep my experience happy and part of that is using the toy… uh… tool – tool, I mean! – that pleases me the most at that time.

    backup the stuff that is in your existing system

    Yes and no. I backup everything that’s important anyway (mirrored external drive, offsite Mozy backup, sync when it comes to Evernote, etc). But apart from that, it’s just lists. David has lost his own lists more than once and sits down and starts another one.

    It’s part of the beauty of the system, eh?

    Thanks for the post, Bruce. Enjoyed the nudge, as always.

    • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce Keener

      Hi Ruud,
      Thanks for sharing your insights. Good points on the backup.

      I’ve seen you mention PersonalBrain several times on Twitter. James Fallows recently wrote an article about it. Good to see it getting some more attention. I haven’t used it in years … tried it out when it was pretty new (8 or even 10 years ago) and liked the concept but it was pretty basic then (I think it was web version only, if I remember right, and I probably don’t). I think it’s important to have some sort of free-form tool, even if it’s just paper, and even if one uses only part of the time … there’s something about free-form that gets you to think different. And, of course, PersonalBrain has the advantage of free-form and the advantage of a “taggable” system.