We all know this feeling too well. We lay in bed at night thinking of all the things that we want to complete the next day. These tasks range from work related duties such as finishing a business report and emailing it to your boss, as well as personal matters like going to the gym, meeting an old friend or finally starting that side project which has been put off for months now.

No matter how things pan out, one thing is fairly certain: you’ll have achieved less than you’ve set out to accomplish the day prior. Not only does this failure to live up to your objectives decrease your productivity. More importantly, it nags on your self-esteem with the implication that you can’t keep up an arrangement with the person you should rely on the most – namely yourself.

David Allen, the author of the Book “Getting Things Done” (GTD), believes it doesn’t have to be this way. Having a Business Management and Productivity Consulting background with over 20 years of experience, he details an approach of staying concentrated, alert and in full possession of one’s capabilities whilst focussing on the task at hand – effectively fading out all potential distractions. At its core, he is describing a state of mind which is commonly referred to as ‘flow’ or being ‘in the zone’. In order to achieve this state, Allen recommends implementing a 5-step system to manage one’s workload, which consists of:

Capturing – anything that comes to your mind.

Clarifying – the captured items into concise tasks with actionable steps.

Organising – the items in categories, dates, priority levels and relevant references.

Reviewing – by updating and revising the list on a frequent basis.

Acting – on the task with the highest priority level in a given moment.

But let’s unpack every step in more detail.

Capture

The key enabler for the efficacy of the GTD system, is to start storing information about tasks, events, reminders, and ideas in an external system rather than your head. Every time you get a thought which requires taking action in the future, it has to be captured and stored immediately in an inbox. This inbox, which can be analogue or digital, is a visual representation of all the things that one will have to deal with at some point in time.

Allen points out that many people may use some form of a to-do list already. However, the majority of them are incomplete and fail to capture all open loops that occupy one’s mind – proving them unreliable and thereby meaningless.

Hence, the first step of the GTD system is to capture everything which will require some form of action in the future. Allen recommends taking a sheet of paper and jotting down every idea, task or recommendation which comes to mind. The points don’t need to be organised or categorised in any particular way yet. However, it’s crucial to take enough time for this step since the quality and trust that you have in the list is directly determined by its completeness as mentioned previously.

The best way to put this idea to the test is to try it out yourself. Thereby, Allen recommends getting out a notebook or a word processor and start jotting down all open to-dos, reminders and obligations. There is one rule though: You’re not allowed to put your pen or typewriter away until you’ve captured everything, which usually takes up to 30 min, from personal experience.

This process of capturing everything outsides of one’s mind proves to be indispensable, since the human brain is much better at processing rather than storing information. Thus, building such a system relieves our brain capacity, provides an overview of all open loops and helps us clarify the priority of tasks which will be outlined in the following chapter.

Clarify

For every item which has been captured in your inbox comes the crucial question now: What are the steps which have to be taken in order to mark it as done?

Thereby, each task needs to be broken down into actionable steps to move the needle forward. This could look the following:

Organise Holiday Trip to Spain:

• Research viable cities to visit
• Check for fitting flights
• Check for fitting accommodations
• Book flights and accommodation

According to Allen, people subconsciously approach every task in this fashion. However, they usually neglect to write it down methodically, although its effects on stress reduction and procrastination have been proven by countless studies.

When we break down a big task into smaller pieces, it automatically becomes more manageable – reducing the feeling of overwhelm in the process. Above all, it provides us with a checklist of actionable steps required to complete it with a defined outcome.

Organise

After each item in your inbox has been clarified, they have to be organised accordingly. Essentially, this means that each item on the list has to be filed where it belongs and labelled if necessary to make its retrieval as seamless as possible.

As mentioned previously, the four tools which are needed for the GTD system consists of a filing system, note-taking APP / Notebook, calendar and a trash can. Thus, all the items in one’s inbox should make their way to at least one of these places in order to be processed correctly. These things should be taken into consideration when organising one’s items:

• An actionable item should be filed into one of the four action lists consisting of projects, next action, waiting for or calendar.
• Label each item appropriately to make it easily searchable (e.g. phone, urgent, errand).
• Provide each item with the necessary context to take care of it as easily as possible (e.g. phone number, address, things which have been discussed already).
• Non-actionable items which will potentially provide value to you in the future should be stored somewhere for easy retrieval.

The organisation step has a bit more leeway, meaning that there is no one size fits all approach since everyone catalogues their items differently. As long as you can easily find the thing you’re looking for and know the highest value task to focus on in a given moment, you should be good to go. However, these are the things that helped me organise myself better:

• Keeping my calendar as empty as possible – I only file things in my calendar that have a definite deadline (project, urgent tasks) or are important not to miss (appointments, birthdays, events). For everything else, I use my to-do list to tick things off because it provides me with more flexibility when unexpected come along.
• Less but clear labels > More unclear labels – not every item on your to-do needs to be tagged since it’s easily searchable already. My approach is to label things based on the context / environment and urgency level. For instance, tagging something with ‘phone’ implies that I can tick this task off when I’m on my way to someone in the car in most cases. ‘Focus’ in contrast, suggests that I need to allocate concentrated time with little distraction to move the needle forward. ‘Urgent’ implies that it needs to be done soon. In addition, tagging items with multiple labels can prove effective as well if it’s urgent but also requires focus, for example. In short, whatever labelling method you pick for your tasks, make sure it provides meaningful insight when or in what context to dedicate yourself to it.
• When something takes less than 5 min, do it NOW – admittedly, this is a slightly modified version of the 2-min rule mentioned in the book. If something takes less than 5 min to do, it shouldn’t be captured in your inbox but done instantaneously. The process of writing the task down and filing it accordingly takes longer, than completing it right away.
• A decision to be made is a task too – if you’re anything like me and occasionally run into so-called decision paralysis when faced with a difficult problem, this tip is for you. File the item to ‘make a decision on XYZ’ as a to-do with a deadline. In most cases, it isn’t necessary to decide on the spot. However, you need to make sure that your system reminds you to deal with this question at some point to ensure not to lose track of it.

Review

There is no point of maintaining the GTD system if it’s not regularly revisited and kept up-to-date.

During the reviewing stage, one should add or remove items and references in the inbox based on their status, but most importantly clarify and organise them appropriately on a regular basis. Although, the maintenance frequency varies with person, it is recommended to review one’s inbox at least once a week. After all, the success formula of the system is determined by its completeness and the fact that you can fully trust that all of your open loops have been captured and processed.

Act

The final step of the system is the main reason why we started it in the first place: to start working on the most suitable item considering its priority, context energy level in a given moment.

Thereby, you should ask yourself the following questions when choosing what to work on:

• Am I in the right environment (office, home, car) to carry out the task?
• Do I have enough time to fully dedicate myself to the task and reach a result that pushes it forward?
• Do I have enough energy to commit myself to the task?
• Is the priority of the task high enough for me to be working on at this moment?

By candidly answering these questions, you ensure to always tackle the most suitable item that you can effectively grapple with on your agenda at a given time.

Conclusion

In my personal experience, the biggest benefit of the GTD System lies in its ability to clear the noise which is constantly occupying one’s mind. As Allan rightfully points out, there is no value in having a thought about our responsibilities more than once. It quite frankly distracts you from the thing you’re trying to accomplish at hand and mentally drains you in the process. By dumping and later on clarifying all personal commitments in one place, one gains a bird’s eye view on one’s personal projects in life – making them more tangible and manageable.

Which brings us to the limitations of this approach because the management and maintenance of this system requires a lot of diligence as well as personal accountability. Sine the aim of the approach is to act as a guidepost of what to pursue at a given moment, it won’t prove effective if maintained half-heartedly. Thus, it’s worthwhile to consider whether you’re the right type of person to reliably capture and process all of your open loops in this meticulous manner before dedicating yourself to it.

Lastly, a rather philosophical short-sightedness of the book should be pointed out. As the title suggest, the book’s aim is to teach the reader to get more things done – maximising productivity in every second of one’s life. Although I’m certain this wasn’t Allan’s intent, it is easy to fall down the rabbit hole of feeling the guilt of ‘wasting’ time on things which don’t produce a valuable output.

In my opinion, the advice in this book should be used to effectively tick off the pesky but important obligations which we all have in our life to gain more time to focus on the things which truly matter to us – regardless if they’re considered productive or not.