I like to have some ‘think’ time every day, and lately that’s been during my lunch hour. Today I was thinking about how I process, or more accurately, DON’T process my GTD lists as regularly as I should.

One thing that came to me today is that my internal mental future-vision lists don’t match my Real Life lists and don’t match my GTD lists. If GTD is supposed to reduce stress imagine what happens when the lists don’t match… TOTAL STRESS.

I’m fairly laid back, so stress isn’t always apparent. One of the places that my stress shows up is in procrastination. The more stressed I get, the more I don’t address what’s stressing me. I’ve noticed this is really cyclical, so it takes a while to build up and then it becomes this major Catch-.22 situation.

Today’s ‘think’ session was like that.

At first I thought I could tweak my processes; I have a good system for yearly/quarterly/monthly goal setting, but translating that to a repeating weekly habit of GTD and project work is hit-and-miss. So off I went to Google to see if there was something about GTD that I was missing.

This lead me to a post and video by Merlin Mann, over on 43folders. What’s spooky about this little side-trip is that his post was exactly about seeking guidance on the web, and how at some point it’s not really productive; it becomes a distraction in itself, and one that the purveyors of these sites would rather you be a repeat visitor, than graduate and no longer return. His other point was that maybe instead of seeking advice on ’something’ you should just do ’something’ and thus gain actual experience doing, instead of gathering all kinds of fluffy meta-crappus about ’something’.

At this point I knew I should actually just look at my lists and see what was wrong; if there was a pattern to the mismatch between lists.

I looked first at the plethora of lists in my primary software app for GTD, called ‘Remember the Milk‘. I looked at the list titles. I looked at the kinds of thinks these titles suggested. And the pattern became apparent.

Most of my lists are either ‘Personal’ or ‘Professional’. In other words the lists are clearly one or the other. The ones that were neither were @someday lists that had become catch-alls for postponed creative ideas, projects, and dreams.

Looking again, I noticed another feature… ‘Personal’ really means ‘Family Obligations’ and ‘Professional’ really means ‘Work Obligations’. Huh. ‘Obligations’ was the topic of a discussion (well, rant I guess) that I had with my wife about lifestyle, career, and the ’stuff’ of modern life.

So my lists had become a kind of crutch just as described by Merlin as a kind of procrastinating auto-pilot destination that we can go to when we have ‘fear of doing’ (or the other dozens of fears we might have), instead of ACTUALLY DOING what was important.

I knew then that what was wrong with my lists was that they were externally focused. They were oriented to satisfy others, to ensure I met my obligations like a good little drone. I gave inadequate weight to my own wants and needs, not giving myself permission to do what I must to be creative. To be different than I am. To allow my inner vision of what life could be manifest itself as ACTIONS.

Ok, so that was kinda deep. Well for me, anyway. Not that I’m shallow; I just tend to stay at the near end of the pool in most of my interpersonal interactions. Back to the story….

At this point I posted a question to twitter:

Fill in #3: Personal, Professional and ___ ? A: It depends on how you define #1 and #2. Hint: It’s a huge miss in pop culture.

And got back the PERFECT answer from a new follower, @mattjamestaylor:

@afterexposure passionate? That certainly is missing a lot today and it starts with ‘P’.

It’s a perfect fit, because what’s missing in my lists are my passions. Like photography. Not that I don’t have a zillion items in a dozen lists about photography, but they are all related to the launch of the business side of photography – not about ACTUALLY being creative.

And I think if you do some searches of your own you’ll find that ‘Personal and Professional’ are often the ONLY TWO categories ever discussed, offered, implemented, or expected to exist in the pop-psych-webs of self-help and productivity books, articles, software, and the rest of the meta-tweetin’-blogotubes.

So what happens if we have Passions, Personal, and Professional? That’s kinda tidy, right? Passions are for YOU, Personal items are for your non-workplace relationships and activities, and Professional is for that super-serious “Don’t laugh cuz’ this is bidness and it’s serious” (to mangle a quote from Tom Peters).

Except maybe more categories isn’t what I needed. What if I needed fewer? What if I only really need one?

What if your Profession is your Passion? What if those around you also feed, nurture, and support you, and your Personal life is less distinguished from your Professional life?

What if by being actually concerned how well you deliver service to your customers, and took delight in helping them by doing what you really like to do and are passionate about – wouldn’t that be a harmonious way to live? To do what you enjoy, with people that value you and your creativity? Wouldn’t that be a magical state above just competently managing to-do lists?

And what if that was your brand identity? What if you were bold enough to be your brand, because you were the best example of what your brand-ideal was?

What if that were me?