Can GTD be used for creative work?
In short, yes.
But, let’s consider the debate from either side:
- Dave Lee writes that 2-minute or less tasks, typical of GTD, can be problematic. He then offers a solution of organizing work by session.
- Steven Bradley talks about identifying “fuzzy” work. He considers the importance of focus for creative work.
- In an interview with Todd Henry by David Allen, Henry describes the importance of creating rhythms in our work. He also focuses on the importance of being able to adjust a goal as you go along.
- Cal Newport writes that tasks should not be treated equally, in that some work calls for a “deep” mindset.
Everyone has a valid point. Each writer moves on to lend useful ideas about how to create conditions supportive of creativity. In the end, we’re likely discussing the same thing from different angles or even using different terms for the same concepts.
All Tasks Are Not Created Equal
Tasks do exist on a spectrum. We can visualize some tasks clearly, like “Get milk” or “Schedule a doctor’s visit.” Other tasks are more difficult to envision like “Write report” or “Design website”. The latter types of tasks are “fuzzy” or unclear in vision. We don’t know what they will look like in the end and may only have a sense as to a next step on the way there. In these tasks, much of the work is developing that clarity.
Creativity is an act of discovering what we are making in the act of making it.
To this end, the 2-minute or less oriented task is not so helpful. But, I do not think this is a hard and fast rule of GTD. And even if it were, does it matter? The heart of GTD, at least as I understand it, is about creating a system we can trust to support ourselves. We use the measure of a clear mind in building that system.
A nice comment from Henry’s interview is:
“Systems exist to help you do the work and whenever your system becomes about the system, or whenever you’re obsessively tweaking your system in order to have a better system, then you’re missing the point.”
We don’t even have to call it GTD. In fact, let’s go back further to the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson who described Trust vs. Mistrust as the first life stage of development. We can look at another psychoanalyst, DW Winnicott, too. Winnicott describes the importance of the transitional space in forming Play, the lifeblood of creativity.
The point is that Play requires a trusted environment to thrive. That is true for toddlers learning visuospatial skills when playing with blocks, that is true for teenagers learning social skills, and that is true for adults when trying to do good work. Therefore, our work is to develop those trusted environments within our projects, however we decide to do so.
Translating this into concrete applicable steps, I see nothing wrong with writing the task:
“Continue writing story”
and setting it to repeat regularly. While it is not a 2-minute or less task, it does set up a rhythm of being with the work. It lessens the pressure of forcing something to happen and allows space for the work’s vision to develop over time. We discover and design an environment we can trust in that rhythm to support our own individual sense of Play.
Arranging work in this way, GTD neither conflicts with creative work nor tells us how to be creative. GTD is more about cultivating a system to support our own individual creativity, a spirit we explore, study, and discover throughout our lives.
I love your model of the considered task, and the use of focused projects with daily repeating tasks, as they encourage incremental progress on thorny, creative projects. For me I have the hardest time with writing (marketing) copy, and your system of workflow has helped me immensely.
That’s great to hear, Chris!
I think I share your difficulty with writing copy. For myself, there just seems to be a ton of internal stuff to work through each and every time a project needs releasing. Why can’t I just make things up and have it magically show up all over the Interwebs? Argh.
In any case, having a system to work through the tougher projects can make such a difference. I’m glad the considered tasks and daily repeats are helping you.
Once you do schedule a task such as “Write screenplay” and have it repeat enough to get something down on paper, I also find GTD to be useful in a creative project in tackling specific creative elements. In the spirit of breaking big jobs down to actionable items, I will make specific creative tasks such as “edit transition into Act II” or “create a motivation for character X in Bar Scene.” That is much less scary than “Write draft 2” or “Edit Screenplay.” I read an article on the filmmaker Joss Whedon a few years ago that talks a bit about this – using GTD in a purely creative environment – that made me start thinking about being more specific in my creative task writing: https://www.fastcocreate.com/1683167/how-to-be-prolific-guidelines-for-getting-it-done-from-joss-whedon
Hi Danny,
Thanks for that link! I definitely plan on reading it soon, though you might have made me go off to watch Firefly again, dang it.
But, to your point, yes – I think there is definitely merit to that approach. As you start to get further and further into a project, you could either craft the repeating task to have a “narrowing scope” (like “edit transition into Act II”) and/or create an Administration project with its own tasks of narrowing scope pointing to various parts of the overarching endeavor.
Thumbs up on this post and this comment!
Making specific creative task like that makes any job less scary. Not just a screenplay. For me it works for technical reports as well. Or in deed any big task where you don’t know quite were to begin, like an email you been putting off because you don’t know how to explain something. Just getting those two things you know you have to put in there, get’s you started, and then you put all the other tasks in to the system as they inevitably pop up.