But if you try to practice it without the habits in place, it's not likely to stick. You can buy an expensive treadmills, but without the behavioral change and the consistent practice of basic habits, that treadmill will just collect dust and good health will seem elusive and complicated. This is like saying that getting healthy is about having good exercise equipment. One mistake a lot of new GTDers make is in thinking that GTD is not about these habits or about behavioral change, but about tools - apps, fancy notebooks, and so on. Although it can be hard work to build those habits, it's not rocket science, and anybody - even college professors - can do it. These habits, when done consistently, add up to a dramatic improvement in productivity and peace of mind. These four habits form the core of what Leo Babauta calls 'Mimimal ZTD' in his Zen To Done system. It is predicated on some basic habits: Collecting, Processing, Planning, and Doing. So far in this series, I have stressed that Getting Things Done, GTD, is a system for making intelligent choices about what you should be doing and what you should not be doing at any given point in time. You can find the first seven posts here: Setting the Stage, Engaging the System, Acquiring the Habits, Collect, Process, Planning, and Doing.

This is part 8 of an ongoing Tuesday Sanity Check series on Getting Things Done (GTD) for Academics.

Setting up todoist for gtd