Getting Things Done and the Artist’s Struggle

I have to be honest with you guys; I’m a procrastinator. It is a mix of my ADD, obsessive compulsive tendencies, and what some call chaos addiction.

In other words, I am terrible at time management.

To get prepared for my goal of writing an article every weekday for this blog I’ve decided I need to work on a time management system that works for me.

This week I read:

Neither of these two books really resonated with me as perfect solutions.

While continuing to search online for the best system for myself, I stumbled upon:

This book seems to be the one everyone is talking about as far as time management & productivity.

The idea of creating a system that fixes all my scheduling and anxiety problems is very alluring, but I remain skeptical. I’ve done a million to do lists, putting actionable items into charts, breaking down projects into milestones, prioritize, etc, etc. I feel like I’ve done it all.

Then I ran into this video:

It could be because I love this style of animation or that Monkeys in fez, but this video is amazing.

Beyond the visual elements, the video also makes logical sense. If I have problems paying attention part of that problem is not having actionable steps, fear of forgetting another task I must complete, and a lack of consistently going over what I have done and what needs to get done.

This will turn into a series as I implement what I learn from Getting Things Done.