Yesteday, in an article on O’Reilly Radar, Jimmy Guterman raised a valuable point about working with GTD. Namely, now matter how efficient you become, your efficiency won’t save you from overextending yourself.
It turned out that my problem wasn’t that I was insufficiently efficient. The problem was that I was way too overextended. I had taken on more than even a very efficient person could handle. Efficiency is great, but it can only get you so far. I recommend Getting Things Done, as long as you don’t treat every word as immutable and inarguable. It can help you out of many bad habits. It can’t, however, stop you from agreeing to take on too many responsibilities.
I believe that overextending yourself is dangerous and that even “black belt” level GTD won’t save you from that particular pitfall. However, I also believe that there is a part of GTD that helps mitigate the problem — namely, the Someday/Maybe list. Now, the Someday/Maybe list won’t help you when the things that comprise your overextension are commitments you’ve made to others — after all, you must deliver the things you’ve promised or risk your professional or personal reputation — but it does help keep your overall list down to a manageable size and reduces the impact of getting into the overextended state. Remember, defer it is one of the valid choices for inbound stuff.
That said, I have found the need to extend my GTD system a bit by projecting availability of time and energy at least a month in advance and allocating those (unfortunately limited) resources to the projects I’ve committed to so that I’m less likely to overextend myself.