Endless Tinkering

I’m a big fan of GTD. A lot of people ramble on about “so-and-so changed my life”, but in this case it’s true. I had never been organized a day in my life until I discovered David Allen and his system. I’m not saying I’m some sort of uber-organized person, but I’m 1000% better than I was.

There is a big community that has built up around GTD that spends a lot of time swapping tips on how best to implement the system. One of the problems with this is that it is incredibly easy to get caught up in tweaking your system, rather than Getting Things Done. I have caught myself doing this more than once, downloading software and templates, in an effort to add that one thing that’s going to make it even better. What this really is, is a very deceiving form of procrastination. You seem really busy, but aren’t actually accomplishing anything.

43 Folders has a great post on this type of tinkering. It’s hard to avoid, especially for us geeks, who always want to find the perfect piece of software (or often, write it ourselves).

I’m learning to recognize when I’m starting to fall into this trap, but it isn’t easy.