Off the blocks

Getting Things Not Done

I have been and remain a proponent of Dave Allen’s Getting Things Done system for organization and personal productivity. But now, after almost a week off, I am advocating a GTND system – Getting Things Not Done.  

Is there a greater album?

It is often noted that old men, if they live long enough, revert to being children and that is never a pleasant situation to be in. (In my case, I do not long to live to a very old age.) This week I have reverted to my teen-age years where exhaustion from not doing much was my order of the day. One of my clearest memories is of putting Blond on Blond on my automatic turntable, falling asleep and then waking in a fog to turn the LPs over to the other side and then back to sleep. Visions of Johanna, my favorite song back then, was made for sloth (“ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet ….”)  

As a teenager and not having Harvard in my sights and no thought to modern-day teen resume building, I focused on 4 cardinal activities: thinking about girls, buying records, reading books and drinking beer (the drinking age in NY then was 18 which meant 16). These, you’ll agree, are exhausting and led to a 5^th – sleeping.  

On this vacation I’ve listened to Dylan (from Time out of Mind to Together Through Life), I’ve drank wine instead of beer except on one pleasant occasion when a “Brooklyn Summer Ale” whispered hello, I’ve read a very good novel (Look at Me by Jennifer Egan), eyed my wife and napped.  

I have, it is true, spent hours in the pool and run a number of times. But this all makes sense because, as Dylan sang in those olden days, ‘I was so much older than, I’m younger than that now.’  

In this whole week I have never tried to accomplish anything — and there hangs the tale.