There's an interesting phenomenon which was explained to me once as a key cybernetic principle: in order to create simplicity amidst complexity, your system must be equally complex. The corollary to that would be that if you're trying to manage something very complex with too simple a system, it will over-complexify it! And that's just what I've seen over these many years as a coach and educator. People's lives are way more sophisticated, intricate, and multifaceted than the systems they are using to manage them. A calendar and to-do list pale as puny weapons against that kind of universe. In some ways their incompleteness and insufficiency just make the situation worse.
In the rest of this essay he goes on to acknowledge that overcomplicating your systems is also a trap: premature and overly detailed structuring. Allen's belief is that GTD is just complex enough (or just simple enough), and I'm inclined to agree.
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