I do not think David Allen is completely true about multitasking. I do not believe it is just “quick refocus”. It takes time and exercise to practice multitasking, but I believe this is something within the capabilities of our processor brain.
While I agree that GTD is good and can help all of us free up our resources, I think that GTD should start from what not to put on a to do list, hence this post title.
I’m doing a test in these days. I’m using RTM (Remember the Milk), which is one of my favourite tools, to manage all my tasks. But, I’m also building, every day, a 3-tasks mental list (no need for a tool here). I give my mental list a higher priority, so that RTM comes in only when my 3 top most important tasks are completed. By keeping the list down to 3 I find myself, quite often, working in parallel on all of them.
The first results are showing me that, more and more, this is giving me so much less distractions that I’m already enjoying a better productivity. This also makes the tasks in RTM the kind of tasks (not too important and easy to forget) I can crunch really quickly. Meanwhile I’m learning to choose wisely what to put in my 3-tasks list and what to declare not completed but “undone”.
