Getting Things Done, as one nested list

Getting Things Done was published in 2001, has sold in the millions, and is usually described in a way that makes it sound like a filing cabinet with a personality. Underneath, David Allen's system rests on one observation about how minds work, and he puts it in six words:

Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.

A head is a terrible place to keep a list. It reminds you of things at random, usually at 3am, and it never says which of them matters. Everything else in Getting Things Done follows from getting things out of it.

The five steps, honestly

Capture everything, in one place you trust, without judging it. The judging is a separate job and doing both at once is why inboxes stall.

Clarify each item by asking what it actually is. Is it actionable? If not: bin it, file it as reference, or park it in Someday. If yes: what is the very next physical action?

Organise it onto the right list — next actions, projects, waiting for, someday.

Reflect — the weekly review, which is where the whole thing lives or dies.

Engage — do the work, choosing from a list you already trust.

The one idea worth stealing

If you take nothing else: the next action is a physical action.

"Plan the party" is not an action. Your brain refuses it because it is not a thing a body can do. "Ring Sam and ask which weekend suits" is a thing a body can do, and it takes about the same effort to write as to avoid.

Most stalled lists are lists of projects mislabelled as tasks. Every line beginning with "sort out", "look into" or "deal with" is a project hiding, and it will sit there being ignored until someone writes the first physical action under it.

Contexts, and whether they still matter

GTD's contexts — @Calls, @Computer, @Errands — come from a world where the tool decided the task. Half of them collapsed once everything became a phone.

They are still worth keeping for one reason: batching. Six calls made in one sitting cost less than six calls scattered through a day, and a list called @Calls is what makes that possible. Keep the contexts that describe a mode you are in, and drop the rest.

Mapped onto an outline

Each list is a top-level bullet, and every one of them nests:

• Inbox — captured, unsorted, emptied daily.
• Next actions — with contexts as sub-bullets underneath.
• Projects — one branch each, with the next action as its first child and the notes underneath it. This is the part that a flat to-do app cannot do: the project and its next action are the same place, so a project can never quietly lose its first step.
• Waiting for — delegated, with the date you asked. This is the list that makes chasing painless rather than awkward.
• Someday / maybe — folded away until the weekly review.

• Getting Things DoneDavid Allen's system: get it out of your head, decide the very next physical action, review the lot weekly.
  • InboxCapture first, think later. Everything lands here and nothing stays.
    • Whatever just occurred to you
  • Next actionsOne physical action each, starting with a verb. "Plan the party" is not an action.
    • @Calls
      • Ring the dentist
    • @Computer
      • Reply to the landlord
    • @Errands
      • Post the parcel
    • @Home
  • ProjectsAnything needing more than one action. Every one of them owes you a next action.
    • Renew the passport
      • Next: find the old one
  • Waiting forDelegated, with the date you asked. This is the list that makes chasing painless.
    • Sam — sending the invoice (asked 12 Aug)
  • Someday / maybeAlive but not now. Read it in the weekly review; promote anything that has started to itch.
  • The weekly reviewTwenty minutes, same time each week. Without it this is just a list of old intentions.

Folded bullets open with a click; every line is yours to rename or delete. Open it →

Mark something done with ⌘⏎ / Ctrl+Enter and it stays in the outline, ticked, until you hide completed items (⌘O / Ctrl+O). Nothing is deleted, which matters more than it sounds: a week's finished work, visible, is the only honest answer to "what did I actually do".

The weekly review

Twenty minutes, same time each week. Four passes:

1. Empty the inbox to nothing.
2. Check every project has a next action. Any that does not is where your week is going to stall.
3. Read Waiting for, and chase anything that has gone quiet.
4. Read Someday / maybe. Promote one thing, bin one thing.

Skip this and GTD degrades into a large list of old intentions within a fortnight — which is what most people mean when they say they "tried GTD and it didn't work".

What to skip

Skip the tickler file, unless you have a genuine need for date-triggered paper. Skip the elaborate reference filing; a search box does that job now. And do not build the whole system before using any of it — start with Inbox, Next actions and Projects. The rest earns its place, or it does not.