What ‘GTD’ Teaches Me About Prayer

Getting Things Done (often abbreviated GTD) is a methodology for productivity and time management. It comes from David Allen who wrote a book by the same name, which has become a whole brand about taking the stress out of life and business.

I’m also finding it has some things to teach me about prayer rhythms that stick.

If you’re an Apple user, as I am, you may be familiar with the “spinning pinwheel of death.” It’s that multi-colored icon on your Mac that shows up whenever your computer freezes because it’s thinking too hard.

Sometimes my prayer life feels like the spinning pinwheel of death. I just get overwhelmed and paralyzed by the stuff of life. Work. Marriage. Two kids. Ministry. And did I email and call everybody I was supposed to communicate with today? My brain and my soul just get jammed up.

Sometimes my prayer life needs a trellis. I planted some tomatoes last week and I put cages around them—cages not to keep them from escaping, or to keep them repressed, but to keep them from falling over so they stay healthy and produce fruit.

I want to be a healthy person who produces fruit in my life with God. I need a cage. I need a trellis. I need a structure, a guided rhythm that keeps me on track, that helps me say no to the seemingly infinite onslaught of distractions, that keeps me anchored and secure and peaceful.

Prayer can take on a great many different forms. The daily office is one good form. There are very few, if any, wrong ways to pray. I think about prayer like time spent with my kids. Sometimes they talk my ear off, telling me every detail of their day. Sometimes I’m trying to point something out to them they’ve never noticed before. Sometimes they just want to snuggle. And sometimes they even fall asleep.

(Sidebar: Never, ever beat yourself up for falling asleep in prayer. Think of all the people in the story of Scripture who had profound encounters with God in a dream.)

It’s no accident that when the disciples ask Jesus how to pray, Jesus goes to parenting language. Prayer is about deepening the relationship between ourself and God, the way a child bonds to a parent. That’s the end goal.

Michael Casey says, “Prayer cannot be measured on a scale of success or failure because it is God’s work—and God always succeeds.” Prayer is God’s work and we get to help.

At the core of GTD are five practices: collection, processing, organizing, reviewing and doing.

Prayer as “collection”

Last week I sat down with a blank sheet a paper wrote out all the things that were making me anxious. It was cathartic. I put it all on a single sheet a paper, could hold it in my hand and say, “God. This.”

In the Harry Potter stories, Professor Dumbledore uses a Pensieve, pulling memories from his mind and collecting them in a bowl to come back to later. It’s a perfect image for this practice.

Collection is simply taking the thoughts out of our heads and making them words on a piece of paper. Maybe this takes 15 minutes, maybe an hour. There’s power in writing things down. Having a journal for this is great. Maybe this is a weekly or monthly or quarterly (or daily?) practice of emptying your brain of all the pesky, anxious little ideas. Get them out and on paper.

Prayer as “processing”

Eugene Peterson writes, “Be slow to pray. Praying most often doesn’t get us what we want but what God wants, something quite at variance with what we conceive to be in our best interest. And when we realize what is going on, it is often too late to go back. Be slow to pray.”

It might be tempting to try your hand at collection and be content with that. If we’re in a hurry, it’s an enticing siren’s call. But there’s more work to be done. We can slow down, as Eugene Peterson urges us.

In the practice of processing, we take stock of the items we wrote on that sheet of paper and begin to sort them in two buckets: things I can do something about and things I can’t. This may take some slow discernment and brutal honesty. I often find that things I have no control over like to disguise themselves as things I do, and vice versa. The things out of our control we now let go and trust to God.

Prayer as “organizing”

We’ve acknowledged there are things we can’t do anything about. We’ve let go of those. Now we ponder those things of which we can do something about. What do they have in common? Are there ways in which they’re related? Are there themes that connect them?

Organize between big ideas (maybe wishes or dreams or big projects) and next steps. There’s a big difference. I may feel some rising anxiety about being a better dad. I can bring that before God. But if I don’t wait with that until it can be converted into action, it’s lazy wishing.

I can want to be a better dad, and I can imagine committing at least 10 minutes each day to sitting on the floor giving each of my kids my undivided attention. In this space we can imagine the conversation, the give and take with God. It’s safe to express, “I know I need to act, but I don’t know how,” and then wait in quiet for the response.

Prayer as “reviewing”

One of the big pieces that David Allen advocates is The Weekly Review. In some ways, it’s not much different from the Ignatian Examen. How is this system actually working? What happened? How do the outcomes compare to the original goals or hopes? What went right? What went wrong? What can be tweaked?

The goal of all this is our secure contentment in the love of God. GTD isn’t a rigid twelve step process but rather these general movements that allow you to make them your own as you find what works in your unique life situation. Prayer is very similar. There’s no magic bullet or perfect program, but there are some general movements that most human beings share in common that keep us on track.

It can be helpful to identify several areas of your life—they could be family, work, ministry, neighborhood, finances. They could be any number of things. Each week review them: How is the shalom of God growing in them? What tensions or anxieties are bubbling up?

Prayer as “doing”

Prayer leads us to living well. It’s not a mechanistic way of manipulating God or our circumstances. It’s not something we do so that we get something else.

We practice prayer. And we practice it more, because it leads us deeper into the life of God. Prayer is action like breathing is action. Prayer leads me to living well in God’s good world.

I like to think of putting my hands to this work together with God. It’s our work together, parent and child, God’s and mine.

My 4-year-old son loves his Legoes. “Daddy, play Legoes with me!” he says. And that becomes me rummaging through the box, “Okay, we need one of these pieces. Can you help me find it?” and “Put this piece right here. And that one put in the same place but on the other side.” And he’s so proud and excited about what we’ve made.

Teresa of Avila writes, “The important thing in prayer is not to think much but to love much.” The point in embracing a system like this—a trellis—is to stretch the muscles that help us love much.

The language and process of Getting Things Done is just one way that gives me handles to sit still and be present with God in prayer.