Putting my head through the firmament - GTD

"A traveller puts his head under the edge of the firmament in the original (1888) printing of the Flammarion engraving."

Via Carl Sagan's Cosmos: Vangelis' Heaven and Hell
http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=qDvKsQAafGU (image above appears at 3:51 mark)

A part of me seems to harbor a distrust of "drinking the Koolaid", which has delayed my adaption of GTD.

It seems like taking a leap of faith. When I came back from a summer vacation in 2011, I began focusing on working smarter, to get myself better cope with the heavy workload my position demanded.

Fast forward 14 months--I have read the GTD book, watched a few videos, and am in the process of re-reading it, underlining key phrases and noting critical points.

It feels like standing on the high dive for the first time, looking down at the water, rationally knowing the jump will not kill me, but fearing the unknown and increased risk.

Maintaining a consistent system for both home and work seems to represent the point of procrastination. Do I need a complicated system to track my projects or will a simpler system suffice? David Allen himself seems to make clear the person needs to figure out the complexity needed after collecting everything for the first time. So, now that I have everything collected, I need to process everything for the first time and figure out how complicated a system I need.

Will I see the bang for the buck in using the system? If I adopt something, I want to look smart doing it.

Will I feel the emotional benefit of the weekly review? If I do not, the effort to invest and dedicate time up-front will fail as the review portion becomes the weak link. David Allen recommends thinking about it like brushing one's teeth...after a period of forced habit, it begins feeling "right" to have clean teeth.

Have I invested enough money to purchase the tools I need to succeed? I have a stackable three-level shelf from IKEA, a Brother P-Touch labeler and extra label tape cartridges, a folder holder from Target, the GTD book, paper pads and pens. David Allen uses a few other tools: a BlackBerry, a voice recorder, a scanner, Lotus Notes...none of theses seems like necessities, and I think he would probably agree.

Do I understand the process fully enough to begin the Process phase? After watching a few videos and re-reading the book, the process flow seems straightforward enough....figuring out if I need to take action on each item, doing it if less than two minutes, otherwise deferring it, delegating it, or archiving it.

Can I imagine myself successfully implementing GTD? Yes, I think so, but I have not really thought about how it might feel to have a system in place to move my brain to function primarily as a decision making tool rather than a tool for remembering priorities and actions. I imagine manilla file folder containing...what? Next actions, I suppose, if I choose a paper-based system. A folder for active projects. No, the manilla folders would contain the support material for each of the ongoing projects. With the tiered folder hold showing those I am currently engaged in on a regular basis. I think the Next Actions lists for each Project folder probably deserve a digital format.

Psychologically, having physical folders seems very important, to me. My PhD folder: boom. My @Errands folder: boom. And so forth.

As an aside: people reading this obviously cannot see this, but I have a purple throw on my lap and a very content cat sleeping on it. :3

It seems to come down to: my lazy side complaining about the extra work needed to learn a new habit. Like exercising a muscle. I think I want some reassurance I will feel the emotional benefits of using the new system. From my research, it seems reasonable to feel cautiously optimistic the GTD system will help bring structure to the way I collect my thoughts and process those collections into actionable projects. I will trust my system and lean on it to support my intuitive judgment calls on what to work on next...or what not to work on. I look forward to capturing as much as I can into the system, so I can live my life focused on actions rather than to-do lists.

UPDATE: important to note David Allen does not say this will make life easier...it does not represent a silver bullet...it simply represents a tool to allow people to focus fully on the challenges one identifies as the most important to focus on, at any point in time...it "clears the decks" of the mind, so to speak.