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Comment by im3w1l | Hacker News Reader

I bought the GTD book. But then I went on to misplace it and didn't find it for over a year. I might be a hopeless case.

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True story: I bought a book on overcoming procrastination over 20 years ago. Still haven’t read it.

Just one? That's not bad! My tsundoku tower has 10k+ pages, and that's after agrresive pruning I did a year ago.

The funny thing is I did finish reading it. But I wanted to go back and reference something and that's when I couldn't find it. Thus proving I had learnt nothing.

It is one of those books that are really good, and really a product of its time. Most of what you get out of it you can read online and its methods need more than a little tweak today, because our digital systems are so much more powerful than the folder based one he suggests (example, GTD is heavily against adding things to your calendar, because it confuses between things that you intend to do at a certain time and things that must be done at that time. With digital calendars, you can color code the difference).

Since switching to GTD, I've removed most of my pre-planned blockers and it's working well. How is color coding helping with the fact that according to GTD, only actual appointments should be put into the calendar?

I am glad it worked for you.

I have gotten good results from calendar blocking, so obviously I disagree with Davids rule about only putting things in the calendar that has to be done then. I can see his point for a physical calendar, but on a digital calendar you can have a (say) red calendar that your "must be done at this time or not at all" appointments can be added. That way when you see a red calendar entry you known what it means.

This was not really practical in Davids time.

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