cerealjoe | GTD, TED and why I like my desk messy. (Reply)

The General walking on proudly and proudly do I walk into another opinion filled post.

I love where I work and I love research but some little things just piss me off.

One of those things that irk me is cult following of certain "methods" and it's not necessarily related to research, actually it's not related to research, it's related to people. I've just sat through a four hour seminar and it was rather interesting but some of the discussions reminded me of just how much of a problem I have with those "methods".

It started a long time ago but it keeps coming back. Last week I made a presentation on how our vision of time has changed over the centuries, now everyone has this notions that we're overworked but actually most of the time we work less than those from two generations ago. It's just that these days we have so many choices as to what to do that we feel that we do not have the time to do them all, hence the overworked feeling. My talk was based on a chapter from a book written in 2000, my final statement was that it was refreshing to read a book about time and our vision of time without seeing references left and right to Getting Things Done and The Four Hour Workweek. I've read through all of those books and I think some of their ideas are great, like the fact that there is no need to check your email every five minutes, but do we really need to have all those sites dedicated to how to make the best GTD binder?

Today, during the seminar, we got into a discussion about something and TED talks came up and it seems that now once you've had a TED talk, you're a guru to millions of people. Those TED enthusiasts actually know the ranking of the different people who have given TED talks! I was rather surprised. Of course I knew that TED talks had a huge following but what wouldn't I do not to hear about them all the time! It seems it's the new Wikipedia or Google, if someone has said something on a TED talk, it must be true and it can be quoted as a source in discussions. I'd still prefer concrete references though, not just a "I heard it there last week". The thing I cannot stand is when someone forwards me a link to a TED talk telling me how awesome it is just for me to see that it's a three hour video. No thank you. If I have three hours to waste, I'd rather read a book on the subject or maybe catch a video of a class from a university (like Saturday Morning Physics, I think they are provided by the University of Michigan), but that's just my personal opinion.

Finally, if we're going to talk about innovation, can we please stop mentioning Apple? Apple isn't the first one to provide a platform and APIs upon which others can create things. Saying that the iPhone revolutionised the phone market is very much 2007, can we please give some more poignant examples now? I'll admit that last year when we were writing the paper on creativity, I really thought of mentioning Apple but then I thought about it and there are products and services which deserve to be described as innovative much more than the iPhone.

That's it. And let me tell you, GTD is not for everyone. I have my own organisational system: the "notes" feature on my iPod. Whenever I remember that I have to do something, I write it there, no hierarchy or anything. Somehow that's the way I get things done. Trying to put things into ordered lists is just too confusing for my brain. The other thing that works for me is to keep my electronic inboxes almost empty but if ever my physical inbox were empty/organised, I'd go mad. My desk is an ecosystem and I love my little ecosystem.