I can’t or I won’t?

Back to Work’s intro to GTD series has been a good recap on the GTD methodology. With only 1 episode remaining (#99), one of the discussions poi nts from the tail end of episode #98 struck a chord with me:

I can’t or I won’t?

I’ve found myself justifying the deferral of tasks or projects during reviews with excuses such as “you can’t do that because there’s too much going on at work” or “you can’t do that because you need to do X instead”.

This, I now realise, is a fallacy. I’ve been defering stuff because I won’t do them rather than I’m unable to do them. The fun part now - with this realisation in mind - is to look at the reasons why I’m choosing not to do them.