It’s easy to see Getting Things Done—both the book and the concept—as being only about making lists and setting reminders. They are the easiest parts of GTD to describe, which makes it easy to find articles about them, but they’re not the most powerful benefits. Unfortunately, when we write and talk about Big Picture Issues, such as figuring out what you really want to do in life and cultivating “the courage to say ‘No’”, we run the risk of sounding like Woo Merchants with Big-Sounding Ideas but Nothing Helpful. I’d rather not do that, so I’m considering a different question.

What would happen if you practised GTD? What could you expect that goes beyond making lists and setting reminders?

Getting Things Done Milestones

When I practised the techniques I learned from Getting Things Done, I noticed at least two significant milestones along the way. These are skills that I cultivated by practising GTD. Skills that I didn’t even realize I needed, would come to rely on, and would eventually dearly love.

safely forgetting
safely ignoring

The list-making and reminder-setting habits helped me learn to safely forget things, so that I could balance concentrating on finishing tasks with thinking about the wider picture. Doing this over the period of a few years freed up both the time and (mental, emotional) space I needed to reach the next milestone. My attention turned naturally to whether I truly needed to be doing all these things. This helped me learn to safely ignore things, such as projects that I could leave to someone else or that didn’t need to be done at all!

Some folks write about these abilities as your latent superpowers and when you’re drowning in projects, it can seem like pure fantasy to imagine reaching a stage in your life in which you could say “no” to people and focus on what you care about, rather than what the world demands of you. Reading their article, you could be forgiven for feeling like they’re blaming you for not taking control of your workload—like they’re telling you that you’re Doing Life Wrong. I don’t want to do that. Instead, I’d like you to know that practising the tedious techniques of making lists and setting reminders, along with the other techniques from Getting Things Done provides a path towards developing the skills, the confidence, and the courage to get there. You don’t have to have been born with it. You don’t have to have learned it by luck. You can cultivate these skills, starting with simple tricks such as the Two-Minute Rule and Inbox Technique.

You can do this and you can find straightforward places to start. It won’t be easy, but imagine how it would feel the first time you forgot something safely, with confidence, and without consequence! How would your life change if you knew how to forget or even ignore certain tasks or projects or things? If you could do these things safely? If you could do them responsibly? If you could do them openly in a way that didn’t feel like a temporary vacation or a guilty pleasure?

That’s what I believe you could learn from Getting Things Done. I imagine there are other ways to get there, but I suspect they’d all go through these milestones eventually: safely forgetting, along the path towards safely ignoring.