Asian Efficiency on 6 Ways Agile Results is Better than GTD
“If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.” – Bruce Lee
Aaron Lynn and Thanh Pham of Asian Efficiency wrote a thoughtful and interesting post about why they like Agile Results over GTD:
6 Ways Agile Results is Better than GTD
Here's the opening blurb:
“Here’s a short, fun article about why I prefer JD Meier’s Agile Results as a foundational productivity system more than Getting Things Done (GTD). Not that GTD isn’t awesome, it just misses a lot of things given the complexity of our lives nowadays. If you’ve been on the edge about switching to Agile Results, here are 6 great reasons why.”
What I like is that they are fans of GTD and are familiar with both systems.
I used to get asked how Agile Results related to GTD. My most common response was … “better together” and “to each his own” or “absorb what is useful”. Of course, Bruce Lee was an early influence on me: “Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own.”
That said, I never had a snappy unique selling proposition, other than Agile Results is a personal results system for work and life. For many folks, they liked when I said that it’s a “simple system for meaningful results.” For other folks, they said the big deal is “outcomes not activities.”
I actually think that’s the key: meaningful results.
A lot of Agile Results was born out of a desire to achieve 3 key things for as many people as I could:
- Help people make the most of what they’ve got (operate at a higher level, unleash their potential, and hit their high notes)
- Help people master time management, productivity, and work-life balance, and enjoy the journey. Sometimes the journey is all we’ve got. Let’s look back and say it was worth it.
- Help people get back up, when they get knocked down. I wanted to help people keep bouncing back, keep moving forward.
On #3, I always think of the line from Rocky 6:
“Nobody is gonna hit as hard as life, but it ain’t how hard you can hit. It’s how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. It’s how much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning’s done.” – Rock Balboa (Sylvester Stallone)
I also think about my last visit to one of the Block Busters that was closing. The lady there had spent the last several years of her life. For her, Block Buster was her life. With Block Buster closing, she didn’t know what was next. She was scared. She was feeling the struggle of each day, and wondering how to keep going.
I confidently gave her a copy of my book, Getting Results the Agile Way . I was confident that it would help her figure out how to write her story forward. I was confident that she could use it to help her find her strength each day. I was confident that she could use it to help her figure out what’s important in her life and spend more time on that.
In that instance, the last thing I wanted to do was to show her how she could use Agile Results to get more things done. Instead, I wanted Agile Results to help her get back on her feet again and bring out her best, and to help her write her story forward.
I wanted help her to hit her high notes.
And, I wanted her to have better endings, brighter beginnings, and better adventures along the way.
Ultimately, I wanted Dr. Seuss's timeless wisdom to ring true for her on multiple levels:
“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”
I hope with Agile Results, I help people smile more.