That is an allusion to the James Brown quote, “Feet don’t fail me now.” If you are young enough not to see the parallelism, good for you.

I’m what some people might call a hardcore GTDer. I’ve used the system for over 5 years by my reckoning. I’ve moved it from Palm device to to Pocket PC to WinMo phone, currently 6.5. I’ve updated lists in at least three versions of Outlook. I work on the computer 8 hours a day (more  or less) and write software documentation of one kind or another. My point is this: I’m comfortable in this milieu and adoption of GTD  has “paid” for itself in my case.

I could go on and on about the genius of GTD. In fact, I do on occasion to the glassy-eyed looks of co-workers and family. I have empirical evidence that it works for me.

Until lately. And now I feel a bit stuck. My mind is not like water. It is like mud. I don’t know David Allen but I think he would say that I fell off the wagon and that I should go clean something to get some flow going, in his Zen master way. I even tried that. But on a more fundamental level, I am still all jammed up, like Nuke in Bull Durham.

(Caution – all pop culture references will be at least one decade old.)

I’ve had minor setbacks with GTD but usually that happened when I became lame about the weekly review. This is probably the source of my problem now, too. I look at my list and it is a growing specter of failure to accomplish stuff. It has become the dreaded “To Do” list I abandoned a long time ago. Ugh. That is not good.

Knowing this, I jumped back on and tried the weekly review. It didn’t have the hoped for effect. Usually that would be all the kick start I needed to get back on course, restart some kind of flow.

That ain’t what happened. Instead, I felt old and tired. My mind felt like what a wet cat looks like. That is not Zen.

I discussed this with my wife who has endured many a speech by me about GTD. She is well aware of the system, though feels no need to go the distance and embrace it. She doesn’t argue the point, she just says, “nah.” Or at least that’s what I hear. Nevertheless she is usually a good sport about listening to me.

After much pacing and gesticulating, i.e. my normal way of talking, we came up with an experiment to try. I’m going to just filter on a day, and everything older than a particular day, I’ll delete. I’ll sort out the sorting system, if you like. It’s just bits; I could simply restore stuff I deleted if it feels all wonky. I’m hoping the removal of noise will restore the strength of the signal. 

My reasoning is based on the logic of the Someday/Maybe list itself. There are times when you realize that the project shifts from Someday to Maybe to gone. This is all okay. Events change. Environments change. People change. All those Flock of Seagulls audio cassettes sitting in a shoe box look like rubbish not cherished memories of a moment in time. In fact, they become unnecessary reminders of bad haircuts in your 20s.

Wish me luck. Lemme know if anyone has any experience with this.