All the complexity is in The Someday/Maybe list. The undertheorized “quantum indeterminacy” part of GTD. My book reading list is in some complex superposition of read + j*unread state. See Pierre Bayard’s book for the theory amazon.com/gp/product/159
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If you’ve used GTD for at least a year, you’ll have noticed something: the Someday/Maybe list moves very slowly. In the Areas of Concern top-level list, most Someday/Maybe items come from “play”, “meaning” or “enrichment” areas. You don’t someday/maybe taxes or a work deliverable
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This is not an accident. Processes are disproportionately from the nice-to-have enrichment side of life. Each item is individually unnecessary, but if you don’t do some subset, life will seem meaningless. Book lists, bucket lists, collection hobbies, tinkering/making hobbies...
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Subtlety: With books history matters as much as the future. A book doesn’t ever quite exit the someday maybe list because it can only be declared “done” if it doesn’t merit another reread. A book is a potentially infinite-pass “project” if you like it enough.
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That is the setup. Now imagine a life “work”flow where 90% of the energy is in processes like this and the project/habit parts are trivial. Everything is a thread with an extended past and an indefinitely extended future.
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Things that have this character tend to have a someday/maybe character. Nothing must *necessarily* be done, it’s all optional, but you want a certain amount of energy contained in that process. Example: book reading, travel, hobbies, key relationships.
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Further, imagine that these processes interact like in a distributed computing system, full of CAP theorem messiness. Your travel inspires your reading inspires your game design hobby inspires more travel. You want to keep this fertile reaction going.
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Now... design a system like GTD where the “process” is the first class citizen, indefinitely extended memory is valuable, there are no due dates, nothing *must* be done, and the governing spirit is play not work. So this is a “playflow” design challenge.
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Despite lots of serious things going on in the world, more and more energy is shifting from “work” like activities to “play” like. Either actual play, or work disguised as play via gamification. So we need playflow systems.
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I think so too. My "system" of playflow is very broken
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I did like Jim Collins' idea on show of tracking any "creative" time, and always having at least 1000 hours in the last year (rolling window). Good way to make it an infinite vs a finite (e.g. daily or monthly) game
itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the
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