Do you trust your lists?
The simplest organizational tool is the humble list. Anytime a person gets an item out of their head and onto the written page or electronic notebook automatically relieves the tension around remembering it. In fact, David Allen has often summarized GTD as getting stuff out of your head.
However, it seems that many people are allergic to doing this simple task. Whether it is due to an assumption that they will never forget, or fear of knowing the full extent of everything on their mind, lists can fall to the wayside. But is there one list that we always trust?
In a recent blog post, David Allen shared what he believes is the one list almost everyone creates and trusts. It is their calendar.
If you ever feel like you need to defend your lists, ask your skeptical friend if they are sitting around trying to remember what appointments they have on their calendar for next month. They’re probably not biting their nails about where they need to be a week from next Thursday at 4pm. They’re probably not even thinking about it. Why? Because they have their appointments tracked in a system they trust—a calendar they trust they’ll review at the appropriate time and place.
So why do people trust their calendar and not the other lists they make? David has pointed thoughts on that as well.
The problem with most people’s system is that the calendar is the only list they trust, and more than 95% of what they really need to keep track of is not a set of appointments but all the things to be done in between them. Thinking that your head is a better place to keep track of stuff, and yet finding it critical to maintain a calendar, seems to me a kind of intellectual dishonesty.
Efficient Librarian 