you not only set your daughter’s birthday party up as a project in Outlook, but you send your husband an email to ask him to do something for the party simply so you can “send and delegate” it as a way of reminding yourself that you asked him to do it.

Seriously, GTD is working very well for me. I’m generally on top of what I’ve had to do for work, but there was one project that I was way behind on. I knew I was behind, and every day I’d tell myself that tomorrow would be the day I would catch up. Weeks passed. It was one of those things that’s big and important and you’ll be in trouble if it doesn’t get done but the deadline is far enough out that it’s too easy to let slip. And slip. And slip.

I put everything in to GTD, including that project. Every day I’d do a daily review and that task would be sitting there. Mocking me. Screaming “you better work on me today, or else!” Finally, during the holiday break when practically everyone else was on vacation I did it. Took me about 5 hours straight working on the darn thing and nothing else and now the project is close to being back on schedule.

When you have one thing that you know you have to do and you’re not doing it, getting it done and moving on to “next action” is like removing gunk from a blocked pipe. Everything behind it comes gushing out and flows easy. I was practically losing sleep thinking of doing that project and now that it’s back in active rotation all my tasks seem more doable than they did before. It’s a good feeling.

Tags: GTD, productivity