I’ve been using the “Getting Things Done” method of dealing with my life’s tasks for around three months now. It’s worked pretty well. Up until a week ago, the primary benefit was that I no longer have to tell people that I’ve forgotten what they told me to do.
Well, I’ve found in the last few days, that if you start actually methodically doing what’s on your to-do list, you don’t necessarily stop having things to do. In fact, you may think of a dozen new things to do each day that you’re ambitious enough to do two dozen things.
The difference with these new to-do lists is that you’re now awesome at describing what you need to do in concrete terms, you have the benefit of reflecting on what you’ve already done and proactively thinking of tasks to help you in the future, and you’re writing at a higher level of “to-do” list.
For example, after a few weeks of checking off “buy soy milk,” you’re about ready to write down “search for ipaq-compatible grocery list system” so that you don’t have to write a bunch of one-off tasks anymore. You start writing down non-essential but cool things such as “blog more.” (Now you know the secret for finding out if I’m having a productive week 