Did I survive 2 weeks of vacation with (almost) no access to the internet? Yes, I did, and not barely but almost easily — much to my own surprise!
Two weeks may not sound like a long time to some people, but to somebody like me it sounds like an unusually long period without writing blog posts, reading RSS feeds, using e-mail, browsing the internet and so on.
I took my laptop (yes, I persuaded my wife I really needed it for storing all of the vacation pictures), I took my PDA with my core GTD system (ListPro) and I even bought 100 minutes of wireless internet access. I barely used any of them!
Literally being unplugged for 2 weeks is truly liberating and has allowed me to reconsider and refocus on what’s really important to me.
These 2 weeks of vacation were also the first time I actually took a break from using GTD! As expected I didn’t have much use for my project and next actions lists during my vacation. It’s all about taking it easy and doing fun stuff with my wife and little children after all!
And this is when I truly realized and experienced the real value of GTD: the positive feeling of relaxed control that comes from knowing that your trusted GTD system contains everything you could/should/ought to be doing. This alone has enabled me to make the smoothest and quickest transitions between “normal” life and vacation, ever!
Just before my vacation I did a complete review session, ensuring a complete and current GTD system. During my vacation I didn’t even feel the need to look at my next actions at all. After my vacation I could easily resume my “normal” life by using my GTD system again.
So, the real value of GTD (to me!) comes from this ability to quickly suspend and resume my “normal” life, and being able to completely let go of everything while, for instance, enjoying my vacation!
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You can only feel good about the things you’re not doing when you know exactly WHAT you’re not doing.
My wife has commented about me taking the laptop with me on vacations. One thing she could not deny is when I said that my MacBookPro equals the books she takes on vacations.
So what we do is when she is reading her books I use my (mac) book. Besides when we are lucky enough to get a connection it is helpful to find information and empty the camera. Besides that I write a travel diary every day that goes online soon as the computer finds a connection.
This scenario is similar to the idea described in Chapter 13 of David Allen’s “Ready for Anything”. You may check it out.
@Michael:
I have the book (RfA), I even blogged about some of the articles from the book but I don’t think I have read Chapter 13 yet. I will check it out!
Welcome back, and I am glad to hear that your vacation validated your GTD practice. I had a similar experience a couple of weeks ago when I got the flu and was out-of-commission for a few days. The only thing that really suffered was my posting frequency!
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