Comments on: Why work so hard: The eusocial meaning of Getting Things Done http://aether.com/archives/why_work_so_hard_the_eusocial.html Editorial archive for Gary Wolf Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:37:47 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Matthew Cornell http://aether.com/archives/why_work_so_hard_the_eusocial.html/comment-page-1#comment-7 Matthew Cornell Sat, 20 Oct 2007 16:08:10 +0000 http://aether.com/?p=67#comment-7 Thanks for the background on Allen, and for putting his work in context. When I first adopted his work, my first question was "Is David Allen cheating?" Specifically, his is one of the few time management books that does not start with a personal assessment, and does not start top-down, i.e., from purpose/vision/goals. The argument Allen makes (and that I completely agree with) is that we're too bombarded with stuff to start to think about the higher levels. It's paradoxical, but I get it. For me I've never had luck with the top-down approach, but GTD's helped me a ton. That said, as you point out, we really must know what's important to us, or we're just driving fast nowhere. If you're interested, I wrote a bit about "reverse engineering" goals bottom-up from a GTD implementation: Where are you going? Use your actions and projects to reverse engineer your goals <a href="http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/2007/10/where-are-you-going-use-your-actions.html" rel="nofollow">http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/2007/10/where-are-you-going-use-your-actions.html</a> I also got some great responses to my question "What the heck *is* productivity all about?" <a href="http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/2007/10/what-heck-is-productivity-all-about.html" rel="nofollow">http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/2007/10/what-heck-is-productivity-all-about.html</a> Thanks again. Thanks for the background on Allen, and for putting his work in context. When I first adopted his work, my first question was “Is David Allen cheating?” Specifically, his is one of the few time management books that does not start with a personal assessment, and does not start top-down, i.e., from purpose/vision/goals. The argument Allen makes (and that I completely agree with) is that we’re too bombarded with stuff to start to think about the higher levels. It’s paradoxical, but I get it. For me I’ve never had luck with the top-down approach, but GTD’s helped me a ton.

That said, as you point out, we really must know what’s important to us, or we’re just driving fast nowhere.

If you’re interested, I wrote a bit about “reverse engineering” goals bottom-up from a GTD implementation:

Where are you going? Use your actions and projects to reverse engineer your goals
http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/2007/10/where-are-you-going-use-your-actions.html

I also got some great responses to my question “What the heck *is* productivity all about?”
http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/2007/10/what-heck-is-productivity-all-about.html

Thanks again.

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