Today I was skimming an article on LifeHack.org that referenced another article. The quote made some good points, but it seemed vaguely familiar. On a closer reading I realized that it was a link to and quote from my article from this site about making decisions ahead of time. Reading it in this way gave me a fresh perspective and some other ideas on how to make decisions in advance.
Regardless of how good your memory is, you are probably not very good at remembering all of your options at a particular moment in time. For example, if your schedule suddenly frees up 30 minutes right now are you confident that you would be able to pick the best use of your time for in just a few minutes. Probably not. We tend to remember things we need to do when something else triggers an association in our brain. This means that we are more likely to come up with important things that need done when we are busy on other tasks.
Capturing these thoughts can be very valuable. Right now I’m travelling for a few months and most of the time I don’t have high speed internet access unless I go to a library or cafe. It is very easy for me to think of 25 things I need to do online while I’m without internet access, but once I get connected my mind goes blank of all the important things and I end up just randomly surfing. By keeping of running list of things I need to do online, I’m able to make much better use of my time online and I don’t constantly find myself remembering things I forgot to do once I leave the internet cafe.
This is what GTD is all about. Having a list of what you can do in a specific context, a list of what actions will lead to progress on your desired outcomes.
Read the book,you won’t regret it.
David Allen, Getting Things Done