On my new role, I have found the need to do a lot of reading to get up-to-speed. As a result, I had a stack of reading projects loom before me quickly, and was struggling to efficiently have a process that ensured I was getting all the reading done. My GTD system didn’t help me much either for the reasons mentioned in this article. Namely, reading projects with broken down action items along with the rest of my daily to-dos in the GTD system creates a form of cognitive dissonance. Hence, as the article suggests, I’ve found the distinction of working out of a routine instead of list for my reading projects to be helpful. I would rather not see a to-do entry from a reading project (say, completing a book) in my daily list at all. Instead, I have allotted times in my calendar when I can drain out the stack of ebooks on my operational reading list.

However, if it is a simple reading project/task such ‘Read through a long email chain’ or a time-sensitive one such as ‘Finish reading 30-page technical article prior to meeting’, I would still opt for the usual GTD workflow.