I don&#x27;t think that was a failure of GTD. I think that was a failure to understand your own limitations and what you&#x27;re realistically going to be able to accomplish in any given timeframe. It really sounds like a fundamental failure to <i>properly</i> understand GTD.<p>If you actually read <i>the book</i>--rather than the BusinessInsider, et. al. listicles summarizing it--Allen makes the point that the most important feature of any task tracking system be that it is not cumbersome. All else be damned. If whatever system you&#x27;re using to keep track of what you need to do is getting in the way of keeping track of what you need to do, then it is no good.<p>He also makes the point that nobody is meant to do everything in the book. The book is meant to be a cookbook, you are meant to try different things in the book up to the point of gaining control of your work <i>and then put the book down</i>. You&#x27;re supposed to stop reading GTD when you start to get things done. Don&#x27;t mess with a good recipe.<p>I keep a single sheet of paper as my TODO list. If it doesn&#x27;t fit on the paper, it doesn&#x27;t go on the list. It&#x27;s one list for both work and personal issues, because I only have one life, I can&#x27;t clone myself and work on two lists in parallel. I scratch things off and reuse the paper until it&#x27;s full. I then rewrite the list on a new sheet of paper, with items that have gone undone for a long time naturally bubbling up to the top of the list.<p>And if something has been ignored at the top of the list for a long time, I just throw it away. If it didn&#x27;t get done in the last month, clearly it&#x27;s not that important. If it were more important, I would have made the time to do it.<p>Get better about throwing away your emotional baggage.