I think everyone does GTD. It’s just that for some their Inbox is the exact same size as their life. Before you gasp, I think it is useful to theorize that GTD is an extension of natural processes. In other words, if we lived a million years, we would eventually converge on a GTD-like process. David Allen is just offering a helping hand to those of us who aren’t that patient.
Remember, in GTD, the Inbox is where you collect all the stuff that comes up in the course of living. It puts stuff that needs to be sorted through in one place. Without successfully corralling all this stuff that needs to be dealt with into one place, there is no guarantee you’ll be able to find it to sort through. Not having things in one place leads to holes in your perception of what you actually care about. I.e. you care about something, but have no way to remind yourself that you care. Humans need this kind of reminder since our personalities are so much bigger than our memories. Incidentally this is feature, I think. It leads to focus (but that is fodder for some future post).
Another way to look at it would be to remember the old saw “Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can buy a lot of convenience.” GTD offers us a way to make our life more convenient, and hence enjoyable. It can’t make us great, or successful, gorgeous, or whatever other fantasy we daydream about while frustrated that we forgot yet another cub scout meeting. Some notable organizational catastrophes were brilliant successes. They just decided to keep their life exactly the size of their Inbox. Not a problem, a choice.
Now before you think I am offering an out to all those who claim “they know where everything is in this mess,” I want to clarify. If you have an Inbox the size of your life, you do not have a handle on it. As humans, we are capable of living large lives. Much larger than our personality, identity, or soul can contain. Therefore we end up not able remember everything that is in our life during every moment. That is the beauty and the challenge of living as a (relatively) smart primate as opposed to a garden earth worm. You see, for an earthworm, its identity is the exact size of its life. It eats, poops and repeats. It doesn’t have a burning passion or fantastic goal beyond that. If one chooses not to corral the stuff that comes up in the source of our lives into a tight InBox, we cannot be upset if things get away from us. We’ll just have to accept it. If one cannot accept it, better get on following some of David Allen’s advice.
That advice starts with this: if you don’t have a way to collect everything you need to deal with into one, or just a couple of places, find one. Modern life throws an astonishing array of stuff at us. Furthermore, for some of us this can stir our creative juices, so we churn out a whole bunch of stuff on top of that. Get it all into a box, basket, bag or whatever. This will help you discover more about the really big identity you enjoy as a human. Even this one GTD step alone will allow you to reflect a bit more on what it means to be you. If you really corral up everything in one place, you might get interested in the next step, sorting it. Even if you don’t, you’ll thank me for that big pile in the middle of your living room 
I promise…
