Indeed it does! And the key lies in separating “defining work” from “doing work.” GTD’s “get clear” process involves going through everything in your inboxes (not just email but physical papers etc), and determining what is the actual _next action_ for this thing (if it’s actionable at all; some emails should just be referenced, delegated, or archived).
You log that next action in your system and move on to the next one, rather than doing the action t then and there (unless it’s super quick to do so).
By separating these two, you minimise mindset switching, and can be far more assured that you’re working on the right thing at any given time.
Yes, from my point of view, GTD does two things very right. One is separating the "defining work" from "doing work", the other is keeping contextualized task lists for "do this next time you are at that place, or meeting that person, or whatever".
And of course, both feel obvious in retrospect. I don't even remember if there is anything else in GTD, but the value I get from those is enormous.
You log that next action in your system and move on to the next one, rather than doing the action t then and there (unless it’s super quick to do so).
By separating these two, you minimise mindset switching, and can be far more assured that you’re working on the right thing at any given time.