New year's resolution

'Tis the season to make new year's resolutions. Mine are simple: Read one book per week and blog once a week. That's it. Oh, and I'm also going to lose weight, stop smoking, drink less, be nicer to people, get more organized and overall be a better person.

- Gummi

Is GTD grown up and boring?

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A good friend of mine, Ron Feldman, who runs Kwiry, a cool service for reminding yourself of stuff, pointed me at a very fun article by Chris Hardwick about GTD, 4 hour work week and some other book that I'll never read. Although I'm not going to repeat the article here (I'm not that kind of a blogger, just follow the link and read it, highly recommended) there is one thing that stood out to me in that writeup: GTD is grown up and boring. Perhaps a bit too much?

Now I've read Getting Things Done (GTD) and the 4-hour work week, and I think there's something to be learned from both books. But I also think 4-hour work week is painting an overly optimistic picture of how you can just start selling stuff online, outsource everything and go on a lifelong vacation. Believe, I strongly believe in a lot of the stuff Tim Ferriss talks about, but I'm also pragmatic.

Which leads us to GTD. Ever since I read GTD I've been a big proponent of the approach described by David Allen, but I've never thought about it possibly being too dull or boring for mass adoption. Does that mean I'm dull and boring too, by association? I don't know.

But it also opened my eyes a little. Perhaps there's room for an approach that somehow tries to combine the best of both worlds. Relax a little and enjoy life like Tim, but do it in such a structured way that you can actually make it happen. What would the book be called, "Getting things done in 4 hours per week?" Maybe I'll write that book someday :)

- Gummi