GTD and constant anxiety about missing something

[vbampton]

If you miss an appointment, you waste someone's time; but if you spend all week worrying about whether you're going to miss an appointment, you waste a lot more of your own time.

Love that!

[mthar1]

It might be that your mind is convinced that it can trust you system but your instinct is not to. To truly trust your system is a habit change - and how hard it is to change your previous habits depends on how deep they have been engrained.

So in addition to looking at your present GTD implementation for any gaps in the actual system, it might also help to observe and try to work out where your feelings of anxiety come from. Is there anything in your past? Can you pinpoint what specific contexts or events that trigger your insecurity? (no need to answer, just rhetorical questions...)

[enyonam]

It might be that your mind is convinced that it can trust you system but your instinct is not to.

It does really sound like the challenge you're having is that you don't trust your system yet. I went through a phase like this. It was really tough to give up using my mind as the ultimate controller and transfer it instead to my GTD system. Sure I could collect and process and organise... but I had to keep doing that so I could be sure I wasn't missing anything. I wasn't trusting that my brain really did not have to get involved again once I'd captured something.

So I would suggest you focus on building trust in your system. Test it. Next time you capture something a second time... check... did my system really have it. If it did, remind yourself that you don't need to think of things a second time ... your system's go it. If it doesn't, ask yourself what your system needs to have to give you more confidence it's got it and it'll be there when you need it.

I think all the suggestions you've received are great. For me, building a regular weekly review + having a project around tweaking my system, is what really helped me build the trust. I think if you start with the weekly review and add a question to ask yourself each week "What can I do to rely on my system more?", you'll eventually get there.


Regards, Enyo
www.enyonam.com