Comments on: How can you trust your GTD system?

By: David Griffin

David Griffin — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 11:17:12 +0000

I have been using “Life Balance” as my GTD tool. I sync the PC with an old Handspring Palm OS PDA, which goes everywhere with me.
Though I rarely enter new items in it on the PDA (I just capture in a meo and process later) I do find it immensely useful for
– having my context lists whereever I am
– being able to search my whole system for something at any time. In the case of “have I added this to my system ?” I can simply search with the Palm OS “find”. If it doesn’t find it in my LifeBalance system, it will go on to search memos and may find it in my raw capture memo. Either way, it puts my mind at rest.

By: JamesR404

JamesR404 — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 15:04:05 +0000

David’s reply is golden here.

When I have my nagging voice come up “oh! Did I remember to enter that?” I always convince myself to trust my system. When in doubt I re-enter it, even if my PC isn’t at hands (like I’m falling asleep) I can record a voice memo in my phone.

In my laptop there’s a weekly recurring task to check for voice memos, so that covers that =]

Now there is nothing I can forget since it’s all in the system.

By: Michael Rose

Michael Rose — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 21:46:33 +0000

This took me two years to learn!

(Just learned it this year)

I had a lot of pain with this and that feeling of not knowing/not trusting led me to be constantly tweaking my system as I never knew if I’d gotten everything or whether there were any holes. It was advanced GTD-inspired procrastination.

The big *aha!* for me was forcing myself to trust my Next Action lists. i.e. “Dude, if it’s on there, and you can do it, you should do it. Your previous self thought it was doable and necessary, trust it!”

I realized I’d never get 100% of everything 100% of the time but trusting the lists means I get more done and (if you review regularly) then there is still plenty of time to loop back round for the things you *think* you might be *possibly* missing.

In my experience as I do more I actually miss less and it all kinda gets done (like magic :)

By: TesTeq

TesTeq — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 20:13:17 +0000

David says: “Trust comes with consistent use.”

So you must trust yourself that you can be consistent.

By: Phil

Phil — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:57:49 +0000

It’s great to see someone else ask this question. I’ve often pondered how to keep from entering something twice while still trusting the system. Great reply!