More Kinks in My GTD System

Getting Things Done recommends that you simplify, simplify, simplify by focusing on what your big goals are and only doing the tasks that help you accomplish those goals. I recently complained to Jennifer, my shiny new roommate that I had problems knowing what my goals were. Just like the GTD system seemed to be biased towards corporate types, it also seems to be biased towards people who know more than I do what they want out of life. For example:

Faith’s Goal #1: Be a professor. Okay, that sounds like a good goal, except if I really think about it, it’s pretty fuzzy. A professor where? A big university (such as those I’ve attended thus far)? A teaching college? (Jennifer recommends Truman – thanks Jennifer!) Do I want to teach graduate students or undergraduates? And what if I want to be a writing program administrator? Do I want to do administrative work? And maybe I don’t want to be a professor – I’ve also thought about teaching at a private high school or boarding school. What if I end up disenfranchised with the system of higher ed? Also, I was reading this article in Newsweek and it sounds like these schools could be cool places to work. And what is this “professor” identity anyway? What if my goal to be a professor conflicts with a goal to be a teacher or advisor or dean or chair? Or wife, mother, friend, humanitarian, pet owner, American Idol finalist ….

Another kink in the system is that little things don’t go away just because you don’t focus on them. For example, this semester I did a good job of saying to myself that my thesis was absolutely the number one most important thing (in GTD speak, that’s an MIT or Most Important Task). So when I had a free hour or two and I was trying to figure out what to do, I always went to the thesis. This meant that my thesis got done. But that did not, in fact, make other things go away. Papers did not grade themselves. So while it was great that the thesis went well, I was plagued with a lot of loose ends.