I originally posted this over 2 parts on The Mobile Company blog here and here.

In today’s office and personal environments we’re constantly being bombarded with information, requests, and questions via our devices and in person. Paradoxically, access to more data and communication tools means that people increasingly become less focused — and might feel they are losing control over their own productivity. This blog series explains how we can improve our prioritisation, planning, and execution, as well as how to increase the level of trust between us and the people we work with.

Getting Things Done (GTD) is a methodology and system developed by David Allen. Since it was first published, it has gained a somewhat cult-like status among followers and detractors. I learned about GTD many years ago and have been happily using the system for the past 8 years. The reason you should try it too is because the potential upside of the system is huge, while the potential downside is near zero. After all, if it doesn’t work for you there’s always the other option — to continue doing things the way you were previously.

Step 0 — Stuff goes into the inbox

Right now, what happens when someone comes to your desk and requests something? What happens when your boss asks you to do something via email? What happens when you’re in the shower and you remember about a thing that needs to get done next week? In GTD, all of these things (and more) go into an ‘inbox’. Think of it as a giant (digital) box where all of your raw thoughts, actions, and questions are collected. They can be specific like ‘Buy cake from bakery around corner for wife’s birthday next week’, or general like ‘clean garage’. At this step it doesn’t matter, as long as you understand what it means.

The reasons for including this step are:

Create the habit of recording everything that requires some sort of action in one place (your ‘inbox’).

Be present to what you’re actually doing, instead of having thousands of tasks in your head that you’re trying to remember. If you remember that something needs to get done, record it in your inbox, then continue doing what you were doing before you got distracted (a conversation, another task, spending time with your kids, and so on).

Step 1 — Processing

At certain points during the day and week, you’ll process all the things you’ve collected in your inbox (step 0). We’ll talk more about the timing of processing later.

For now, let’s imagine you have a bunch of things in your inbox and you’re ready to process them. The most important part about this step is to understand when you are ‘processing’ and when you are ‘actioning’. Processing includes scheduling, categorising, expanding with more detailed tasks, et cetera. Actioning is actually doing what the task needs. For example, if I had an action of ‘move house plant to backyard’, then processing it would be looking at my calendar, deciding on a good time to do it, then scheduling it for next Monday because that’s when I have time. Actioning would be physically moving the plant to the backyard.

Here’s the framework I use to process tasks:

What is it?

First, we ask ourselves what is this? Is it an action (i.e. do I only need to do 1 thing to complete the task)? Is it a project (i.e. do I need to do more than 1 action)? Do I need to keep this, or can I throw it away (i.e. spam, marketing emails, coupon offers, job contract, medical records)?

Trash?

If I don’t need it and there are no actions for me, then I trash it.

Reference?

If I do need it but there are no actions to take, then I will add it to my ‘References’ folder. In part two of the blog series, I will list some useful tools that should be used as part of your Reference.

Project?

If there is more than one action I need to take around this item, then I create a project for it. E.g. ‘clean the garage’ consists of many smaller tasks. Some examples: write down list of things in garage that can be thrown away, confirm with wife they can be thrown away, organise garbage collection for disposable items, create plan of how items will be organised in garage, execute plan / rearrange items in garage. Write down as many follow-up actions as you can. Once you’ve done that, we can process each individual action you just created in the same way we would process an action that is in your inbox.

Action?

If it is an action, the question we ask is: can I do it right now in less than 2 minutes? The action could be: send email requesting information about product X from Colleague A. If this email takes me less than 2 minutes to write and send, then I should just do it right away.

But if it’ll take more than 2 minutes, then we categorise or schedule it! If the action is already in a project, then we don’t need to categorise it. But if it isn’t in a project yet and should be, then we move it into the relevant project. E.g. maybe we have a project of ‘New vision and values created for company’ and our inbox has an action ‘company values questionnaire created’, then our action would be categorised (i.e. moved) to the Visions/Values project. Once we’ve categorised the item (if needed), we can schedule it. Not all actions need to be scheduled.

Scheduling

My recommendation is to have at least one action from every active project scheduled to keep all your projects moving forward consistently. If there are no scheduled actions for a project, then it shouldn’t be an active project. Since we’re in processing mode, we should have our calendar in front of us. At this point we can decide that this action should be scheduled for tomorrow or next Monday (more on this in the second part of the series).

For items (both actions and projects) that don’t need to be scheduled: you can either leave them in the category to keep them visible, or categorise them into the Someday/Maybe bucket. Items in the Someday/Maybe bucket are things that you would like to do or achieve, but aren’t immediately relevant to you now. E.g. redo the landscaping for the garden, learn how to skateboard, and so on.

Step 2 — Weekly reviews

On a weekly basis, you should be performing a ‘weekly review’. I usually do this on a Sunday so the coming week is ready before it starts on Monday.

The basic structure I have is:

Clear your inboxes. This includes your email inbox. You do this by following Step 1 for each of your inboxes, making sure that you only process, not action (unless they take less than 2 minutes).

Look/think about all your roles and responsibilities. Create more roles or responsibilities if you want them to be an area of focus. My examples include mobile developer, partner, healthy human, and a few more.

In each of the roles and responsibilities, create actions and projects relevant to that area.

Once you’ve created all the projects and actions you can think of, you perform the same ‘processing’ as in Step 1, including scheduling them throughout the week.

When scheduling actions throughout the week, ensure that you only schedule between 3–5 actions each day. These actions will appear in your Daily Review (see Step 3).

Revise and update (if necessary) your Someday/Maybe list by moving or scheduling any items that you want to work on into the week ahead.

If you have items you’ve delegated and marked as ‘waiting’, schedule follow-up actions for the ones which are relevant for the coming week.

Step 3 — Day-to-day actioning

Daily Review

If you have followed all the above steps closely, you should be starting your day with a Daily Review. Since you’ve already scheduled all your actions and projects during the weekly review, you’ll have a list of 3–5 actions for you to re-evaluate and decide on daily. If the action is still relevant, then you will decide to definitely get it done today, and move the action to the Today list. The actions that no longer need to get done today should either be rescheduled (if you know when), or moved to your inbox to be processed later.

Today List

The Today list is a sacred space, so everything that you move there must get done by the end of the day. If you don’t follow this rule, then your GTD system will likely break down. Once you have completed all the compulsory actions in your Today list, you can move to the Next list.

Next List

The Next list should show you the next actions for each of your active projects or areas. Depending on the software you use to manage your GTD system, you may have certain tags or labels to filter your Next list. Since your active projects are a mix of both personal and work projects, you may want to filter your Next list to show only work projects when you are at work, and personal projects when you are at home.

End of day

At the end of the day your inbox most likely has some new items to process. When first starting GTD, I’d recommend processing everything in your inbox at the end of each day. When you become more advanced and the workflow is second nature, it will be possible to process the inbox once a week.

Other important considerations

Calendar

Your calendar is also a sacred space, similar to your Today list. Only appointments that are time bound should be added to your calendar. Events such as meetings must happen at a certain time, so they should be included in the calendar, not your to-do list.

Do not use your calendar as a ‘to do’ list or an inbox! You want to minimise the ‘surface area’ of where your actions and projects exist, so you must consolidate it into one tool as much as possible.

Recommended digital tools

When starting out with GTD, I strongly believe you should be using a ‘strict’ GTD tool that follows the methodology closely. I would recommend Things by Cultured Code (iOS, macOS) or NirvanaHQ. Both these tools support having an Inbox, Today List, Next List, Someday/Maybe, Projects, and Areas.

To store all your References, I’d recommend using Evernote and/or Dropbox. If you also archive your emails (i.e. never delete them), then your email can also serve as part of your Reference system. Just make sure you store references in consistent places so you know where to look when needed. For me, this means using Dropbox for large files, the email inbox for all my correspondence history, and Evernote for everything else (business cards, random notes, and so on).

As for your calendars, I personally consolidate all my calendars into my Google account. This is partly due to historic usage, but also the ease and reliability when collaborating with others to sync up calendars.

Ready to get started?

The first step I’d recommend is to set aside 10–30 minutes in a quiet place without any distractions. Turn off your notifications, put your devices in airplane mode and make sure you won’t get interrupted.

Once you’ve set that environment, write or type down everything that is currently on your mind. Include all your raw thoughts and do not try to categorise any of them. I like to call this part ‘brain vomit’. Take out the trash, call parents, send proposal to client, plan holiday trip, water plants, renovate house, build NN for image recognition — all of these are examples you could include.

When you feel that you’ve recorded everything that was on your mind, that becomes the start of your inbox, a.k.a. Step 0. You are now ready to go back to the start and follow all the other steps to start becoming your most productive self.