The hangup people have is that they think that a schedule they create for the day is set in stone, and that they could never keep it. Well, they are right about the second part, but today’s tools allow so much flexibility that a schedule can be used as a guideline subject to on-the-spot changes at any moment.

Used in this way, the schedule takes a great deal of pressure off the to-do list as a tool, and allows it to act as more of a list than a task manager. This flexible approach allows us to create a balance between the to-do list and schedule that each person needs to adapt for themselves.

When my schedule is not laid out in detail, what I find is that I end up carrying too many details about the timing of items on my to-do lists in my head, which quickly becomes a burden.

Hope this helps.

@Andrew – It can be difficult to balance the idea of trying to make sure you don’t miss anything important and trying to keep from grabbing everything under the sun as possible tasks. One approach is to go ahead and write everything down, but then be brutal in deciding what you are NOT going to do. The problem is that this can add a bunch more work to your organization process.

I think on of the big pitfalls people run into is spending too much time on their process and tools and not enough time doing the actual work. Tools are great, but only to the extent that they help you really accomplish important things. If your tools help you accomplish more and more things that are less and less important, you need to rethink things.

One of the bigger advantages to GTD is the idea that you can fully concentrate on the task at hand, because you don’t have the nagging feeling that you are missing something else. This is valuable but can be offset by the feeling of being overwhelmed because you wrote down everything you could possible think of doing.

@LJ – Working for someone else can be tough. On one hand you want to really give your all and buy in to the goals of your organization. On the other hand you can spend your life working for a company without doing much to really help yourself prepare for the future.

Sometimes it can be good to take the position that your job is just what you do in order to be able to spend time on the things you consider more important. This obviously can really change how you choose employment.

I would love to have the freedom to do the things that will have the most impact, but sadly, my priorities at work are not my own. Likewise at home, as much as I would like to spend the entire evening helping my daughter read, the laundry is piling up.

The obvious answer for me is that I give up at work, and work on what is considered important. I can voice my opinion, but since I do support, this is not necessarily the way my business works.

At home, instead of working 2-3 tasks in a couple of hours that will have the most impact, I either have to do just 1 of those tasks, or make the tasks small enough that I am progressing on important stuff in the time I can.

Thanks for a great article!

I definitely have resisted the urge to try to do more (or at least to collect more to do) that GTD does encourage. (That’s why I said I wasn’t quite a follower. I think the problem of my workflow is that it feels satisfying to finish something “actionable” (i.e. I can check off a box in my list of tasks), but most of my work isn’t on my task list. Reconciling that will take some conscious thought at the end of my day.

Vernon, I’m actually only using Remember the Milk for my personal tasks, and I’m quite fond of the submit-by-email feature (for when I’m out and about) and the Gmail integration, but I’ll check out Gubb also. Thanks!

Well said. That reminds me of a concept from Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive (which I believe I won from a drawing on this very site). Drucker states that a person should ask themselves something like “How can I contribute the most to my organization?” or “What can I do that others may not be able to?”

I’ve found this to be great advice, but it can be difficult to remember when I get into the “fire fighting” mode.