Brain Silt, Brain Clearing

“How’s that empty inbox doing?” is a question that I have (surprisingly) not been asked. My friends and co-workers, who are used to my initial enthusiasm for tools and concepts and ideas and systems, have tended to back off and watch the tool-adoption process take its course.

Some tools seem like a great idea (low carb diets) but are too hard to implement (for a vegetarian) or lead to impermanent results (eat one cracker and gain all twenty pounds back). Some tools work beautifully (7 Habits) but lose efficacy over the long run. And some are fine (KeyNote. I *love* KeyNote) but aren’t contagious.

The big one I’ve been working at for the past couple of weeks is David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. It seems to come from a fairly simple set of suppositions: you can’t keep everything in your brain, because it silts up; you can’t afford to forget important things; thus, you’ll be in constant tension unless you find a good way to remember important things when and where they are necessary – a way that your brain trusts. And he proposes such a system.

I love it.

The tension of trying to balance a load of contradictory and important thoughts and projects and ideas and lists in one’s mind has been addressed by Robert Frost in his Armful. Frost’s solution, of course, is to restack the parcels. Allen’s solution is far more radical: he says we should drop and stash them, and create a reliable system of revisiting the dropped ideas. Reliable enough for the overwrought, overthought brain to be able to trust.

The geeks of the world have seized upon this system with delight. Not only can it be reduced to a three-letter acronym, the exuberantly joyous GTD, it can be hacked, sliced, changed, reviewed and in many ways, automated. Searching for GTD in the blogosphere brings up loads of good information and people grappling with the concept of dropping things out of one’s brain and checking up on them periodically (a weekly review is what the doctor orders).

Translators – often running small businesses, always fielding multiple requests – stand to benefit from the orderliness of the GTD system. We need our brains clear enough to be able to come up with just-the-right-word. Thousands of times a day.

Watch this space for some thoughts about negging (a courtship practice where the suitor obtains the attention of his quarry by insulting her publicly) in trade, commerce, and flamewars.

As to my inbox, which you were wondering about since the beginning of this post, it is still at zero, and now my desk is clean (clean! only a cat between me and my screen!) and so are the kitchen island and the kitchen table. Think I can keep this up?