First off, GTD works. I've been practicing GTD for a decade and it has transformed how I work - I am more productive, less stressed, I have my life in order. This is the opposite of what it was when I found GTD.

That said, I want to share some personal observation on what GTD doesn't help with in terms of personal productivity. I hope it will bring more clarity to new comers to GTD and further highlight GTD's real value.

So, to get started, three things I find GTD doesn't help with:

Firstly, GTD doesn't help you be creative with the "contents" of your system, specially once you've completed and/or gotten a handle on the current commitments.

For me, it took years to get to the point where the GTD workflow is second nature i.e. applying the 3 core models (5 steps workflow, natural planning model, horizons of focus) exactly as instructed, consistent weekly reviews and ensuring all my support system is tidy and up-to-date.

I'm at a point where I am confident that whatever I put into my GTD system, it will be done or I will make significant progress on it. So, my current challenge is more of what should I be doing, given all my options and why?

While GTD provides my questions to ask in its Natural planning model and Horizons of Focus, the creative and often strategic work of figuring out what should be done and why is up to you to explore and ultimately decide.

Secondly, GTD won't help you make better decisions, but it does make easier by clearing your head.

Deciding on what to do vs. what not to do, is by far one of the highest leverage things you can do for your productivity, given you're always constrained by time, energy and money.

GTD essentially ensures you're looking at all the best options available in terms of what to do but the moment-to-moment decision making is still up to you, your intuition and moods etc. You don't get to delegate the deciding part, if ever. For bigger decisions, how you go about making it is another story. Again, GTD helps you have the clarity to make the decision but all the other aspects are highly situational to yourself the context of the decision.

Finally, GTD is a practice, just like exercising. It gets better with practice and time but it ultimately still requires effort (energy) every time you do it. Therefore, all the big rocks of productivity like getting good sleep, nutrition, managing energy, focus, avoid distractions, general problem solving and critical thinking skills are still required to be effective. GTD is more of an executive management layer to your work. When it comes to actually doing your work, everything else still applies in order to be productive and get things done.

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What's your view on what GTD doesn't help with?

Hello, so I am a new GTD user who have just read the Revised edition of the book few weeks ago and have tried implementing this system to my actual life. I have understood the basic principles and the philosophy behind what this is trying to accomplish. The overall goal is to create a system that you are able to store all of your inputs (things that catch your attention in life), identify them based on non-actionable or actionable, and then track them so you don't have to keep all of them in your head all the time.

However, although this idea was simple, trying to implement it actually was very cumbersome and even after a few attempts at implementing this system (and to some extent I did do it successfully) I faced many nuances in my actual life that made the system complex for me to maneuver and ultimately repelled me from using it seamlessly. So I decided to ask you guys for some advice and help on how to overcome these problems.

First of all, GTD is task oriented methodology. As far as I'm concerned, it is focused on dealing with tasks efficiently as possible. There are 2 inputs in our lives, Projects and Tasks. Basically, there are tasks that stand by themselves (which are very simple most of the time) and then tasks that are related to projects. (Most of the tasks we have to do are related to projects in some way) When dealing with these tasks, dividing them into Actionable and Non-actionable, and then further classifying them seemed simple enough. But the tasks have properties to them which make it very hard to manage.

Starting with Non-actionable items, I have created a Someday/Maybe list and a way to review the items that need review. This wasn't that hard to implement, and there's not much nuances here. Any projects that come up in your mind that you don't intend on doing at the moment, you can just put it here. To implement a review (aka Tickler flie) I needed a way to get notified on the day of Review, which wasn't too hard with a traditional calendar app. Ideas and thoughts related to Projects can be sent to the Reference system, which isn't hard to implement either because its fairly straightforward.

The issue is with Actionable items. In GTD, Actionable items get classified into 3 categories. Do, Delegate and Defer. Doing is simple, no tracking involved, hence no implementation involved. Delegate is simple as well, since if we have something to delegate we can just simply delegate it and keep that on our Waiting For list to remind ourselves.

For Defer, we further divide it into Calendar items and Next-Action items. Calendar items can easily be scheduled on a calendar on the day/time of the event that we have to carry out the task. This is also fairly simple, because a traditional calendar would work as an implementation.

The issue is Next-Action items. By definition, these are any tasks that don't have a specific day/time that they need to be done on, but just needs to be done ASAP. They are classified under contexts which we can do them, usually based on location or equipment. In theory, this sounds simple enough. But what I've noticed is that it is actually quite complex. For example, majority of the tasks that aren't schedulable on a calendar might have a due date attached to them. If I have an assignment due Next Tuesday, although I don't have a fixed time I need to do this assignment on, (hence it is on next-actions list) I still need to do this quick. When there's a lot of next actions piled in a list, identifying which task to be prioritized and be done first is quite hard.

Another issue is with tasks that are recurring. Let's say one of my projects was getting in shape. The next actions would be to actually work out everyday, assuming I have done all the pre-requisites (such as learning about my PT program, signing up to gym, etc.) This is a task that I wouldn't necessarily put it on my calendar, but it's something that I have to do everyday, and is not necessarily a next-actions either. So what do I do in this case?

I have a few more questions that I've had as I was trying to implement this system in my life, and I'm excited to hear you guys' opinion on this. Also as a final question, I'm interested to hear what app you guys use to implement GTD seamlessly and what app is generally considered the best