what “getting things done” taught me about slowing down

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i didn’t expect a productivity book to change the way i think about unhurried living. david allen’s getting things done has a reputation for efficiency, systems, checklists — the opposite of “slow down. live beautifully.” but the deeper i got into it, the more i realized his whole philosophy rests on one idea that’s been at the center of my work all along: a mind like water.

a mind like water

allen describes it like this — when you drop a pebble into still water, the water responds exactly as much as it needs to. no more, no less. then it returns to calm. that’s what he wants your mind to feel like. not empty. not overloaded. just responsive, then settled again.

that’s the two hours a day, too.

i used to think the constraint was the hard part — mothering all day, then finding two hours to throw pots before the whole rhythm starts again. but the real hard part was never the two hours. it was carrying everything else into those two hours. the half-finished to-do list. the thing i forgot to email back. the mental tab still open from a conversation at breakfast.

capture everything, trust nothing to memory

allen’s first rule is simple: get it out of your head. every task, every idea, every open loop — write it down somewhere you trust, so your mind doesn’t have to hold onto it.

i didn’t build a gtd system for my pottery business. but i did, without knowing it, build a version of this for my studio time. the two-hour block only works because i’m not trying to remember anything while i’m in it. the glaze notes are written down. the order list is somewhere other than my head. what’s left, when i walk into the garage, is just the clay.

that’s not hustle. that’s the opposite of hustle. it’s clearing enough space that presence becomes possible.

the brief as a gtd system

if you’ve followed along for a while, you know i talk about “the brief” — the idea that constraints aren’t obstacles, they’re design parameters. two hours a day isn’t a limitation on my creativity. it’s the frame that makes the creativity specific enough to actually happen.

allen’s system works the same way. he’s not asking you to do more. he’s asking you to define, clearly, what “done” looks like for each thing on your plate, so your mind stops circling it. once something has a next action attached to it, it stops taking up space it doesn’t need.

for me, that’s meant getting ruthless about what actually belongs in the two hours. not everything pottery-related gets to live there. glaze testing, invoicing, packaging — those get their own time, their own list, their own capture system. what’s left for the studio block is just the making. one brief. one purpose.

overflow, not depletion

there’s a phrase i come back to often: overflow over depletion. gtd calls this something close to “mind like water” — a system so trustworthy that you’re not spending energy holding it together. the energy left over is what overflows into the actual work, the actual family, the actual moment you’re in.

i think that’s the real gift of allen’s book, at least for how i’ve used it. it’s not about optimizing your day into more output. it’s about clearing enough clutter — mental, physical, logistical — that what’s left has room to be unhurried on purpose.

what this looks like practically

a few small shifts that came out of reading gtd through this lens:

• a single running list for studio-adjacent tasks, checked once a day — not carried in my head into the garage
• defining “done” for each piece before i start it, so i’m not making decisions mid-process that pull me out of the work
• a two-minute rule borrowed straight from allen: if something takes less than two minutes, i do it immediately instead of letting it become a background hum

none of this makes the two hours longer. it just makes them quieter.

slow living was never about doing less for the sake of less. it’s about clearing enough space that the things you do, you can actually be present for. david allen built a system for that in the context of email inboxes and project lists. i built one out of clay and a garage and two hours a day. turns out it’s the same idea, wearing different clothes.

slow down. live beautifully. — and maybe, get it out of your head first.