V2 - MISSING GTD ESSENTIAL - INBOX is NOT a PROJECT / NOT ALL Actions Belong to PROJECTS

Three of my senior managers are now being tele-coached by Davidco, David Allen’s company.

The coach has logged a major criticism of Nozbe, one that unfortunately has not been improved in V2.

Nozbe has somewhat “mangled” the GTD methodology as promoted by David Allen and his colleages at Davidco.

I’ll try to capture as simply as I can the coaching we received from Davidco and why Nozbe currently does not support this.

A GTD Inbox has only one main function, collection. Everything that enters our world should be immediately added to your GTD Inbox for later processing.

There is only one other GTD goal associated with your inbox, move it to zero during processing.

As you do so, you strive to meet other key aspects of the GTD method:
- no doing! [unless it can be done in 2 mins or less]
- start at the top and work down [no sifting!]
- one item at a time [no budles!]
- NEVER back in!
- move to ZERO daily, ideally

In processing your GTD Inbox in this way, you must ask yourself, what is the outcome? – and – will it take more than one step to deliver that outcome? ONLY if the answer is MORE than one step, do we need to create a project to deliver that outcome.

Why does Nozbe get in the way of these key aspects of GTD?

Firstly, it’s because Nozbe has defined its INBOX it as a “project”. It is NOT a project. And doing so sets it in entirely the wrong space in your productivity toolset. The inbox is completely separate from your project files [whether ACTIVE projects on/near your “desktop”, or inactive projects in your “filing system”].

Our coach [the Director of coaching for David, so we do respect her views!] is on a mission to reduce our project list to the minimum. And even one extra item, mistakenly called “Inbox” was like a poison to her.

Secondly, Nozbe has nowhere for us to place our actions that can be done in one step. Absolutely every action must be in a Project in Nozbe.

So, one option is to leave these single-step actions in the Nozbe “Inbox”. And that breaks the GTD Inbox rule of “never back in”. Inbox is NOT for ORGANIZE, REVIEW or DO (aside from 2-minute rule). It is only for COLLECT amd PROCESS.

The only other option appears to be create yet another “false project” for “ACTIONS” that collect together all non-project actions.

Again, our David Allen coach was unimpressed, but it is a workaround we are considering.

I have to say that the best solution of all is for Nozbe to fully and faithfully support the GTD methodology.

It would be good for all GTDers and also for Nozbe as a company – it may eventually earn a coveted (and rare) “Designed for GTD” badge from Davidco?

Would be really interested to hear the views of Michael and others on this recent insight from Davidco. We are keen to find the right tools for GTD across our entire programme.