Quote:
Originally Posted by LizPf
This is where the GTD/OmniFocus system falls apart for me ... I can't get into the habit of recording my tasks to be done later. Capturing often doesn't seem to be worth the bother.
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Similar to what Spiral said, you can ask yourself: "will putting it down on paper (OF) use more mental resources than it saves? If the answer is no, then don't write it down (and do it right away if it needs done). So, I don't write everything down. I don't write down "put bread in toaster" because it isn't an action that sits around in my head taking up mental resources. I either do it now or I don't. If I see that my scissors has inexplicably escaped from its drawer yet again, I don't make a project in OF, I just pick it up and put it away. If the action is something that stays in your head when you're not doing it, and you aren't going to do it immediately, then write it down to get it out of your head. If you don't have access to your mac/iPhone, then get a little mini-notebook (glued binding kind), keep it in your pocket, and write it down.
The two minute rule is for processing the inbox, not for capture of ideas. If you're the kind of person who gets distracted easily, like me, this is a crucial distinction. If I'm working on something I don't want to be distracted from, I will write down an action that may only take 30 seconds, because I know that if I get up and do it on the spur of the moment, I'll inevitably get distracted on the way, forget that I was in the middle of something important, and waste 30 minutes doing something that really didn't need to be done.
This also brings up automatic habits & GTD. If an action becomes a mindless, automatic habit that never consumes mental resources, then it doesn't need to be down in OF.
GTD is not your master, but your servant whose job it is to free up your mental resources, so you can live your life the way you want to. In DA's book "Ready for Anything", he has a chapter (13) where he lets us in on the secret that some of his most rewarding projects were never even on his lists. But he needed to have all the other stuff out of his head, knowing that it was all in order and taken care of, to be able to truly enjoy that impromptu project.