The Art of Living (Kindle highlights)

David Allen himself says that GTD is not actually about productivity, instead “it’s about being appropriately engaged with your world”. (loc. 374-375)
The pace of input and change today is a couple of times higher and more hectic than it was some decades ago, and it’s not slowing down. (loc. 424-425)
I understand Existentialist philosophy as the following paradigm: I recognize my situation and circumstances, but I refuse that my life and decisions be dictated by them; I am the captain of my ship and I set the path of my life. (loc. 524-526)
According to Simone de Beauvoir: “The ambiguous human condition means tirelessly trying to take control of things. We have to do two near-impossible things at once: understand ourselves as limited by circumstances, and yet continue to pursue our projects as though we are truly in control.” (loc. 544-547)
Existentialism is a vision of living life to the fullest, as Albert Camus would put it, it’s about living in the present and not postponing living life to a point in the future. (loc. 586-587)
It’s very easy to see that you can’t live in the present if stuff (let’s call them bombs) keep exploding in your face every other minute — well, this is precisely what planning ahead and doing preventive work can and should prevent. (loc. 592-594)
Algorithms of this sort, like “Gradient descent” [#gradientDescent], are used to find optimal solutions to well-defined problems. Decisions about next actions and next steps in the practice [→#nextActionDecision] are precisely such an approach (loc. 623-627)
It’s ok to over-capture, as you can always throw away spurious captured stuff later; on the other hand, you can’t un-forget something you forgot to note down, and these non-noted-down things can pile up on your mind, even when you can’t exactly or consciously remember them. (loc. 686-688)
I recommend you use context tags [→#contextTags], because there’s a considerable advantage to keeping a single list for all your next actions [→#liveUnionSets], filterable on demand, but also because these contexts might — and should — in some cases overlap [→#contextTagOverlap]. (loc. 796-801)
Many people already have some form of the universally-hated todo list, but most people are using it wrong. (loc. 930-931)
Mainstream todo lists are incomplete at best. When people usually set out to write a “todo list”, they typically just write the important or urgent stuff; but this is a mistake, because ignoring the non-important or non-urgent will still cause overload on your brain. (loc. 1020-1023)
The waiting list is therefore not a luxury for managers who have people working for them, it’s needed for everyone. (loc. 1042-1044)
The thing is, only if you have an exhaustive, up-to-date inventory of everything can you actually fully know what you’re not doing! (loc. 1079-1080)
My own definition of a project is a more practical, common-sense definition of what a project is, simply limited to those finished within around a year. Projects can and should sometimes take more than 1 year, but if they take much longer, they’re probably better put on a higher horizon. (loc. 1150-1153)
Horizon 0 (or the ground/runway level) (loc. 1145-1145)
Horizon 1 (or Projects) (loc. 1147-1147)
Horizon 2 (or Areas of Focus): these are responsibilities or commitments that will never end (in some cases as long as you live), examples include maintaining your health, maintaining financial stability, family life, etc. (loc. 1155-1157)
Horizon 3 (or Goals & Objectives): these are all outcomes that you would like to achieve but are either obviously gonna take more than a year (but not more than roughly 2 years) (loc. 1159-1160)
Horizon 4 (or Vision): these are outcomes that usually either take more than 2 years to achieve, or are obviously higher-level than goals and objectives (loc. 1161-1163)
Horizon 5 (or Purpose & Principles) (loc. 1164-1164)
Efficient time management, according to the bestselling author and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, is actually about avoiding distractions. (loc. 1244-1245)
The human brain actually has only around 4 working/short-term memory slots, this is down from what was formerly thought to be around 7 slots. (loc. 1274-1276)
Human memory is associative memory through and through, it works based on association for retrieval: remembering or getting stimulated by one thing triggers the memory of another. (loc. 1313-1316)
Sustained focus in chunks separated by leisure and mind wandering, both of which help for recuperation, is the best approach, whereas multitasking and serial-context switching easily deplete the brain’s energy. (loc. 1380-1382)
Small decisions have as heavy a cost as big decisions. (loc. 1402-1403)
Decisions are a subset of brain activities relying on willpower, which is akin to a depletable resource. (loc. 1403-1405)
There is a limited number of decisions you can take given a finite energy level. Depleting this budget typically results in what is known as “decision overload”, or “decision fatigue”, (loc. 1420-1421)
If all the items on your todo list (or even many of them) are unclear enough that they require you to keep making next-action and other decisions on them, live, every time you read the todo list, you’re gonna get overwhelmed! An unclear set of todos is no other than a jungle of unmet decisions, and you’re not gonna take decisions on all or any of those outside your peak time. (loc. 1435-1438)
Another manifestation of this fallacy is systematically misestimating how long something takes to finish: most people have a bias for under-estimating how much time they need for finishing things. (loc. 1530-1532)
Long story short, you especially do NOT want to be using System 1 for making decisions and passing judgement — it has been scientifically shown, largely because of the flawed heuristics and biases, to produce severe decision and judgement errors. (loc. 1581-1584)
The gist is, you want to use System 1 selectively, definitely not by default, and instead use System 2 more systematically and by default, in order to avoid the severe decision and judgement errors. (loc. 1614-1616)
When you’re reviewing your lists filtered for a specific topic (tag) [→#reviewAllVsTag], you are very likely to come up with ideas and find out the remaining cognitive blind spots (or how to uncover them), so to speak; then, after capturing, processing and working on those, you again go back to your lists having all there is to actually have! (loc. 1699-1704)
This tendency of the brain can be harnessed intentionally, by exporting everything to be handled outside the brain, except for the activity of doing the thinking itself; this is what scientists call “distributed cognition” (or “mind extension”). (loc. 1721-1722)
As Theo Compernolle, author of “Brainchains", put it: “If you take some time to reflect, you have a five times higher chance that you will do the right things, the most important things, the most ethical things, rewarding things, the most enjoyable things, the most fun things. If you do not take time to reflect, all that stuff that is not really important, rewarding or fun crowds out the best and leaves you unsatisfied and trying to compensate by doing even more.” (loc. 1970-1974)
The only way to transition away from an acceleration-based society to something else is by accepting the current accelerated reality, and building from there based on people’s progress in their individual lives; anything based on simply ignoring the modern pace of life is bound to fail. (loc. 2461-2464)
Meditation can be used to enjoy the clear mental space earned with a practice like the one I’m describing, but — unless you become a Zen master — it can’t easily produce this mental space to begin with, at least not consistently all the time. (loc. 2471-2473)
So, long story short(er), what I call a “project” and put on the projects list is what 99% of the population would call a “project” — no strings attached. Anything else, for instance a series of next actions that grouped together take more than 5mins of focus, are mini-projects which reside on the same lists as other reminders (so on next actions, waiting, someday/maybe etc). (loc. 2778-2780)
As a benchmark, a person getting into GTD would have 30-100 “projects” on his project list according to David Allen’s definition of a project, but only 5-15 when using my common-sense definition of a project (or 15-20 for the extremely busy). (loc. 2795-2797)
What I mean by a review in the AoL practice is not merely looking at the list of projects (or higher commitments [←#horizonsOfCommitment]), but actually stopping at and analyzing each commitment. This translates into doing some or all of the following, on a case by case basis [#whatIsAnAoLReview]: going through all items tagged as related to it, checking out waiting and next actions you have, assessing if (and why) something is stuck and handling blockages, making or reading/revising plans, thinking about options and new potential directions (on someday/maybe list), revisiting previous thinking on certain issues/ideas on someday/maybe list, making connections between different ideas within the project, and with related stuff outside of the project, getting creative by making new associations between existing ideas, recognizing and defusing ticking time bombs that would otherwise explode in your face later. (loc. 2797-2812)
David Allen prescribes reviewing all what’s on the lists in your system every week. This is namely valid for both the waiting list and especially the someday/maybe list (which can be pretty long). To remind you, this is a system supposed to contain all your thinking, ideas, worries and work on everything. If you haven't guessed it already, reviewing the whole system every week is too much — it’s simply overkill to do this! (loc. 2872-2876)
The lists of checklists (not the actual content of checklists) is better reviewed every week or so, or less frequently once you internalized it. (loc. 2885-2887)
The gist of the paradox of choice is this: more choice often means more overwhelm and tougher (or no) decisions, and it also results in less confidence in those decisions that are actually made. (loc. 2954-2955)
By making a choice from a todo list you’re effectively not merely deciding to do or pursue something (only 1 decision), you’re also deciding not to pursue every other thing on the list (a big number n-1 of decisions, n being the length of the list). (loc. 2970-2972)
You will therefore get overwhelmed by the huge choice and you will always feel uncomfortable with it in this context, not to mention the common-sense conjecture that the sheer amount of options makes it more likely you would choose wrong! (loc. 2976-2978)
This is why I highly recommend you use a 5-min rule (which is the rule used in the AoL practice) instead of a 2-min rule (which is used in GTD). (loc. 2978-2979)
The actual, optimal solution is recognizing that next actions generated by GTD and similar algorithms can be both actionable and optional; in my opinion it’s cumbersome and too rigid to create completely distinct lists for every category these things fall under, the optional type of items on the next action list should instead be identifiable and filterable on the next action list itself. (loc. 3119-3122)
The GTD tickler system is outdated. (loc. 3224-3224)
David Allen's advice to end meetings with decisions on next actions is problematic. (loc. 3272-3273)
It’s better to calmly and slowly assess the input and clarify it while doing cross-checks with other stuff in your external system later, after the meeting. (loc. 3285-3287)
Let’s get this clear: doing GTD, AoL or whatever else does not mean it’s ok for you to micromanage others. (loc. 3298-3299)
How the generalized AoL system works and is structured A list system (on the reminders manager) Basic/fixed lists [#AoLFixedLists]. (loc. 3319-3322)
Some people use tags for the fixed categories like “Next actions” and “Waiting” instead, and create fixed lists for every commitment, but I think this is highly sub-optimal and therefore advise against such a setup, for multiple reasons. (loc. 3945-3947)
This new workflow chart (shown below, with a downloadable version available here) is more down to earth and more directly applicable and practical than the one found in the GTD book, especially in light of what you actually do when processing and organizing. (loc. 4033-4037)
Use color coding for different reminder categories. (loc. 4183-4183)
Turn off notifications and only handle incoming information in specific sessions. (loc. 4190-4190)
Any notifications that you do keep, you’re better off being very selective about; these can be reminders you set intentionally for yourself (triggers to do a certain action at a specific time or location, alerts for meetings/appointments on your calendar to not keep having to scan it, etc) or VIP notifications. (loc. 4205-4208)
Look ahead in time into your system to prevent emergencies and disruptions. (loc. 4256-4256)
Block out noise, distractions and other interruptions using good earphones/headphones. (loc. 4307-4308)
Use a reminders app that is both simple and complex from the start. (loc. 4320-4320)
Do not take up or impose deadlines on actions unless these deadlines are needed. (loc. 4389-4389)
Corollary: use priorities instead of deadlines. (loc. 4421-4422)
For waiting reminders, you can use a start date to make them appear on your radars on the date when you should check up on their progress (if at all); this can be used for example for checking up on the delivery of a gift 1 week to a couple of days before a birthday. (loc. 4456-4458)
The same approach can be used to have someday/maybe items (especially decisions) appear on your radar on a specific day; this way you can let yourself sleep on something and trigger yourself to (start to) think about it at a specific date. This is a perfect tool for slow decision making, as you can set the start date to have a decision show up at an arbitrarily chosen date (depending on the case), which is a non-intrusive way (since there is no extra deadline) to remind yourself about a decision you want to take at a certain point in time (maybe a couple of days or weeks before it’s due, if it’s due at all). (loc. 4461-4465)
Use start dates cleverly to check up on waiting reminders and make decisions. (loc. 4452-4453)
Do not separate your calendars over multiple apps! (loc. 4508-4508)
Use a single app for managing all your reminders. (loc. 4525-4525)
Corollary 1: Do not use email to track tasks. (loc. 4532-4533)
Corollary 2: Do not use your calendar for tracking due next actions. (loc. 4545-4545)
Feel free to create sub-categories of the main reminder categories. (loc. 4569-4570)
A good example of this is the someday/maybe list: if you’re properly using it to store everything, it becomes unwieldy to have a single list; here for instance you can create sub-lists like “Recipes to try” or “Places to travel to” or “Books to read”, etc. (loc. 4573-4576)
Delineate work blocks on your calendar for getting work done. (loc. 4587-4588)
If you have a big backlog, process related stuff together. (loc. 4612-4613)
Process and review regularly and preferably when you’re least exhausted. (loc. 4618-4618)
(Preferably) Only process in a place where you can handle anything/everything. (loc. 4643-4644)
Postpone actions taking less than 5 mins in case they involve consequences you can’t handle. (loc. 4653-4654)
Skip the processing routine for already-crystal-clear stuff. (loc. 4673-4674)
Do not postpone/tickler blocked reminders for further ahead than needed. (loc. 4686-4687)
Archive (don’t delete) emails for keeping your email inbox tidy. (loc. 4714-4714)
Corollary: do not organize emails into folders on your email app. (loc. 4724-4725)
Add information, notes or status to reminders EITHER in the form of sub-reminders OR in comments, not both. (loc. 4738-4739)
Keep capture material by your bedside when going to sleep. (loc. 4766-4766)
Do not multitask (stupidly) — (mostly) single-task. (loc. 4779-4780)
DO sleep on / pause projects when needed. (loc. 4831-4832)
Just one thing: be clear and make sure that you’re doing this to handle blockages, not to procrastinate on stuff. (loc. 4838-4839)
Review projects / commitments in various depths, on a case-by-case basis. (loc. 4856-4857)
Review areas of focus in selective depths when reviewing the 2nd horizon. (loc. 4869-4870)
Divide a review by priority level and reminder chain when the commitment involves many reminders. (loc. 4893-4894)
DO quickly check (for information) when it’s needed in a review. (loc. 4916-4917)
The weekly review is mostly reserved for reviewing projects [←#reviewsInAoLVsGTD] and reviewing your current calendar [←#masteringWorkflow] for two weeks before and after the present date. (loc. 4934-4937)
Set up a subset of someday/maybe reminders to (optionally) review weekly. (loc. 4933-4933)
For a small, manageable subset of someday/maybe items, especially decisions you’re currently contemplating, it’s good to review them regardless of whether they’re under some project or not. (loc. 4940-4942)
Skip items with optional-priority and not related to projects when reviewing weekly. (loc. 4961-4962)
Have your system accessible to you at all times. (loc. 5028-5029)
Maintain your checklists directly while using them or when manipulating relevant reminders. (loc. 5046-5047)
Do not share your self-management system wholesale (even with your boss). (loc. 5112-5113)