The Bog of Lost Scholars

Having read Getting Things Done and Ready for Anything, I have the very strong suspicion that David Allen (a) has never had primary, direct, actual butt-wiping responsibility for small children or an eldery and incapacitated relative, and (b) is in a rather well-off financial bracket.

It’s definitely one of the drawbacks of the book, in my opinion. I believe that the general system and principles are valuable to everybody, but the books are very clearly aimed at middle-management on up. The stay-at-home mom may need this system more than that middle manager, but she’s much less likely to be able to carve out the time and space to process everything; she certainly won’t be able to take two whole days to get the system started!

GTD also seems aimed towards the one-time or over-long-cycle projects, rather than the daily tasks. If she does implement the system, I doubt that the above stay-at-home mom is ever going to write “change baby’s diaper” or “break up kids’ fight” or “choose foods for supper” on her next-action lists; the first two are things that have to be dealt with when they occur, and the third is something that’s going to go right back on the list within eighteen hours of being crossed off. If “wash dishes” makes it onto a next action list, that’s a sign that this mom needs Flylady more than she needs David Allen.

Which is not to say that GTD won’t be of use to her. I’m not a SAHM, but I’ve run into this phenomenon on weekends — suddenly my son is taking an unexpected nap, and I have no idea which of my six gazillion projects I should tackle, so I waste half the nap figuring out what to do, or I end up watching a video or browsing a magazine, by default rather than by choice. Whereas when I have a list of home projects and next actions, I can scan it and say, “Aha! Cutting out some fabric is what I should do right now!” (Or “washing the dining room floor”, or “studying Greek”, or “mowing the lawn”, or even “kicking back with a video” or “browsing my craft magazines”.)

(I’ll interject with one thing in GTD that, on this reread, rather bugged me. Allen commented that in his experience, the folks who had the hardest time implementing GTD were those who had fast-paced jobs where they always have to be “on”, and who came home to two or more children under ten and a spouse who also works. Apparently Allen doesn’t have stay-at-home moms who can’t afford nannies among his clients, let alone single parents.)

The book also doesn’t directly address another thing I’ve found in the process of implementing GTD:

The fence on the side of my house was somewhat dilapidated when we moved in, and one of the panels fell down three years ago. It’s badly in need of replacing, and it’s been on my projects list for ages. So why haven’t I moved on it yet?

1. I have to buy the materials, which is going to add up to several hundred dollars that I either haven’t had or have needed for a more urgent or important project.
2. If I do the labor myself, I need several hours of kid-free time, and I’m rarely able to get more than three. If I have someone else do it, that’s still more money I have to save up before I can move on the project.

So the fence hasn’t been replaced yet. There’s at least twenty other projects on my list that are held up for similar reasons — insufficient cash or insufficient child-free time. Some of the projects are trivially simple — for example, there’s a leak over my stove that I haven’t pinned down yet, and all I need to do is go up in the attic crawl space when it’s raining and look around that area. But when I’m alone in the house with my autistic son, I’d be foolish to leave him unsupervised that long, especially since I can’t get out of the crawl space quickly.

Nowhere in Allen’s book does he indicate that someone might be held up on a project because they don’t have the needed resources and may not be able to get them for some time. In Allen’s world, or at least in his target audience’s world, people are held up on tasks because they haven’t bought nails or because they need to get a phone number, not because they need to save $500 (and can only squirrel away $25/month, and that’s only if an emergency doesn’t hit).

It’s not that these problems don’t fit into GTD. My next action on the fence project could well be “set aside $X/month towards fence supplies” or “buy concrete and seven fence posts”; my next action on the attic is “when it rains in the evening again, call my boyfriend” (so he can come over and watch my son while I’m up in the crawl space). But Allen gives the strong impression that these issues are alien to him; if I weren’t so sold on the system, I’d be very turned off by his book.

The final stage of Allen’s Getting Things Done is doing your tasks. Once you’ve collected everything, processed it, organized it, and reviewed it, you’re in a good position to pick something that needs doing & can be done, and do it. If you’ve processed your tasks properly, you won’t say “but wait! I need to do X first to prepare for this task!” or “oops, I need to go to the store and get gizmos for this”; if you’ve organized them, you can easily find tasks you can do in your current situation (at home, at work, on the road); if you’ve reviewed them, then you know what’s actually on your list.

For me, the “doing” step is very dependent on the “reviewing” step. If I go to Life Balance and scan my to-do list when I’ve got a free block of time, I’ll find a task that I need to do and that fits my mood. Otherwise, I’ll end up grabbing whatever task appeals to me at the time, which may or may not be the best thing I could be doing.