This is a satire. It’s just for fun. Really.
a chart I made when I was young and thought charts made things clearer
You may have heard about the trademarked process called Getting Things Done (GTD), that involves breaking tasks into manageable sequential steps, applying the Bayesian critical path method and then using multivariate regression analysis to reveal the fastest and easiest way to accomplish any task. (Just kidding, it’s really just common sense, rebranded.)
The problem with the process is that it is designed for people who think like 30-year-olds. When you’re a senior, your brain simply doesn’t work that way. So I’ve developed a GTD for old people like me. Same basic steps, but tweaked for those of us with less-than-perfect memories. I’m a senior person, and I know this process works because I think I remember trying it, and nothing that I can recall didn’t work perfectly.
For a start, if you’re a senior, think right now: Is there something you promised someone you would do about now, that you’re forgetting because you got distracted reading this article? Did you turn off the bath water? Let the cat in? Let the cat out? Where did you leave the iron? Do you really still iron stuff? And are you wearing pants right now? Should you be?
Great. Now you’re ready. Here’s a simple Q&A to get you started:
Q: How as a senior person do I listen to my favourite podcast without accidentally burning the house down?
A: Whatever your listening challenge is, Bluetooth is your answer. You will consume so much time trying to get Bluetooth to sync with your device, and then immediately lose the signal when you go to retrieve your tea, that you will never get around to actually listening to anything. This will save you hours of wasted listening time, and let you focus your attention on your tea, which is now cold. Grit your teeth and nuke it, but not for more than 60 seconds. Nuking anything longer than 60 seconds can lead to ‘explosions’ that could make your face resemble the US president’s. This could be perilous if you live in a blue state. And your microwave oven will interfere with your Bluetooth in any case, requiring you to re-sync it.
You might be tempted to try substituting “wired” headphones for Bluetooth headphones. Be aware that, even if you carefully lay your wired headphones out the precise careful way your kindergarten teacher laid out the class art supplies, when you return to pick up your wired headphones, they will resemble Charlie Brown’s kite strings and have advanced knots only taught in yachting school that would challenge even a competent Senior Sixer to unravel (if you do not know what a Senior Sixer is, you are obviously not an old person, so never mind; this problem will not arise for you, because even your baby monitor worked on Bluetooth).
Q: How do I use GTD to accomplish essential senior tasks like healthy meal preparation, getting exercise, making sure the garbage is taken out, and always having enough clean underwear?
A: Start with the basic approach: break each task down into manageable steps, put them in order, eliminate any that are not essential, and do the First Next Action first, or next (as per chart above). See how simple that is? Cooking and assembly of ingredients are inessential, and can consume hours of time you could otherwise be spending reminiscing about how much better things were when you could actually remember what they were really like. So GTD will teach you how to become a raw foodie! Much more nutritious, and no prep or cooking time at all! Humans are meant to graze, not slave over a hot stove!
Exercise is just as simple when you’re old. Calculate the aerobic value of each trip you plan to make outside or even inside your home, assuming each trip is on average 100 calories, which it is at your age. Now multiply by five, since you will have to return home an average of four times during each trip to retrieve important things you forgot to take, like your wallet, your keys, your umbrella, your car, perhaps your pants. See? You have already spent the same amount of calories as running a half-marathon. And you have to go back to the store again anyway, since you forgot your shopping list.
When it comes to managing your garbage, the GTD First Next Step is to ask the essential question: What is garbage, anyway? Why throw out that scrap paper when it could be used for making shopping lists, or GTD lists? That food in the back of the fridge? Add one year to the ‘best by’ date, and if it’s still past that date, push it further back in the fridge so it isn’t in your way when you do your next fridge cleaning, if civilization hasn’t ended by then. Then put your remaining garbage in Amazon cartons lying around your home, and leave the cartons on your veranda or outside your door, with stickers that say Fragile or Rush on them. Thieves will quickly sneak off with your garbage. Problem solved!
And as for always having clean underwear, don’t waste valuable time and resources washing them. They will end up clogging the drain and cause a flood in your laundry room anyway. Instead, go online to the Shein pages and order the ‘one gross’ package of underwear from them. It costs on average of only 1.6¢ per pair, less than the cost of laundry detergent would have cost to wash them. Use the ‘garbage’ method above to dispose of them after wearing them. You can even reuse the same cartons they came in!
Q: How do I as a senior person use GTD to optimize my emotional and spiritual health?
A: Pay attention to the official trademarked slogan of GTD: “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” That’s right: As a senior person, you are already an expert in not holding ideas longer than three seconds. In fact you can use your AARP membership card to automatically register as a Senior GTD Certified Coach and teach younger people how to stop holding ideas. If you are traumatized because Trump just said he was going to annex your country and turn on all its water taps (“they have essentially a very large faucet“) to save LA from drought and fires, just wait three seconds and voila, it’s forgotten. You have moved beyond mindfulness to mind emptiness, thanks to all that cholesterol and fat you ate when you were younger and could remember what you ate when you were younger. And there’s a special GTD mantra just for older people to use when meditating. It’s: I am letting all my thoughts just come and go and focusing all my attention on… I forget.
Just don’t meditate for too long, as at our age that can be dangerous. Whole tranches of the construction and repair trades make their living exclusively from doing work for senior meditators who forgot they did things, with terrible consequences. I would give you some examples, but I can’t remember what they are for the moment.
Q: Why don’t ‘young people’ see the value in the discipline of GTD and Covey’s urgent/important matrix? They’re all flaky, don’t show up for scheduled activities, refuse long-term commitments, and quit stuff that they don’t find ‘meaningful’. What’s the matter with young people these days?
A: Actually they have just learned what you’ve forgotten. (You should have written it down, like GTD says!) What you and they have in common is thatyou have no future. You have no future because you’re old, and everything that was merely important is now urgent, and if it isn’t urgent then it’s no longer important. And they have no future because, well, look around at the world you old people are leaving them with. They know that what’s important to them can and will never happen, so it’s not ‘really’ important — it’s impossible. And they know that what’s urgent will get done, system or no system (or it won’t, in which case it will cease to be urgent). Your system only tells you whatwas urgent and/or important when you made that judgement, in the past. So hang around with young people, if they let you. Maybe they’ll help you remember what is really important. Just don’t expect them to show up on your schedule.
Q: The system doesn’t seem to be working for me. Some of the things on my GTD list are older than Taylor Swift. What am I doing wrong?
A: Consider perhaps that some of the items on your GTD list might be impracticable or unrealistic, in which case you might have to modify them so that you can identify a short-term, “actionable” Next step. So, for example, if an item on your list is “Bring about world peace”, you might want to amend it to something more achievable like “Invent magic ray that makes US presidents competent” or even “Take neighbours’ dog for walks so it doesn’t bark so much”. No First Next step is too small if it moves you in the right direction!
And if something on your list is not Getting Done because it’s too complicated and intimidating a task, simply break it down into sequential manageable tasks. For example, if the task is “Learn to speak Mandarin”, a great First Next Action step might be to enrol in a Mandarin program using the famous “Where are your keys?” language learning methodology. Not only will this get you started on an otherwise imposing task, it will be immensely helpful if you find you’ve actually forgotten where you put your keys, as we seniors normally do at least once a day. Especially if you happen to be in China when you lose them.
(with apologies to David Allen)
