Getting Things Done Explained

This post is inspired by the Life­hacker arti­cle on Get­ting Things Done Explained to Stu­dents. I’ve men­tioned Get­ting Things Done (or GTD) many times in the past. Many of you prob­a­bly know what it is already. Some of you prob­a­bly use it as a way to orga­nize your life. But whether you are a GTD “addict”, novice or just plain harassed and you want to put some orga­ni­za­tion in your life, this arti­cle is for you.

Get­ting Things Done (com­monly abbre­vi­ated as GTD) is an action man­age­ment method cre­ated by David Allen, and described in a book of the same name.

Sophis­ti­cated with­out being con­fin­ing, the sub­tle effec­tive­ness of GTD lies in its rad­i­cally com­mon sense notion that with a com­plete and cur­rent inven­tory of all your com­mit­ments, orga­nized and reviewed in a sys­tem­atic way, you can focus clearly, view your world from opti­mal angles and make trusted choices about what to do (and not do) at any moment. GTD embod­ies an easy, step-by-step and highly effi­cient method for achiev­ing this relaxed, pro­duc­tive state. It includes:

• Cap­tur­ing any­thing and every­thing that has your attention
• Defin­ing action­able things dis­cretely into out­comes and con­crete next steps
• Orga­niz­ing reminders and infor­ma­tion in the most stream­lined way, in appro­pri­ate cat­e­gories, based on how and when you need to access them
• Keep­ing cur­rent and “on your game” with appro­pri­ately fre­quent reviews of the six hori­zons of your com­mit­ments (pur­pose, vision, goals, areas of focus, projects, and actions)

Imple­ment­ing GTD alle­vi­ates the feel­ing of being over­whelmed, instills con­fi­dence, and releases a flood of cre­ative energy. It pro­vides struc­ture with­out con­straint, man­ag­ing details with max­i­mum flex­i­bil­ity. The sys­tem rig­or­ously adheres to the core prin­ci­ples of pro­duc­tiv­ity, while allow­ing tremen­dous free­dom in the “how.” The only “right” way to do GTD is get­ting mean­ing­ful things done with truly the least amount of invested atten­tion and energy.

GTD is basi­cally a “work­flow for life”–it gives you a quick thought process for mak­ing sure that every­thing you need to do now gets done, and done fast; and every­thing you need to do later will be filed for later.

The Process

1. Col­lect
2. Process
3. Orga­nize
4. Review
5. Do

The Inbox

Every­thing begins in the inbox. This is where you COLLECT all the stuff that come into your life. The inbox can be an actual phys­i­cal inbox where you put all your files, mails, bills, etc. for access and pro­cess­ing later on; or a vir­tual inbox in your com­puter where you put all com­puter files, reminders, emails, etc.

It’s prob­a­bly the most impor­tant part of GTD—capturing all of your assign­ments. Many peo­ple think of an agenda or a plan­ner as syn­ony­mous with a to-do list. It doesn’t make any sense to write a new assign­ment down on a plan­ner under a date—that’s deadline-oriented think­ing that just begs for procrastination.

Instead, as soon as you get a new assign­ment, write it down on a list that you’ll review later. A sim­ple notepad is all you need. (I use a great nerdy tool called THINGS. I’ll talk about it later). Put all of your new assign­ments on that same notepad; don’t divide it up by cat­e­gories yet. That (divid­ing it in cat­e­gories) will be done later on.

Don’t depend on your brain to remem­ber assign­ments, either. Write every­thing down. That kid who writes things on the back of his hand—he’s not so far off. He’s bet­ter off than you who is so smug to think that you’ll remem­ber everything.

The Work­flow

This is when the action begins.

1. Visit your inbox. And then go through a thought process, illus­trated below:

2. Turn every­thing in your inbox into an action – the first pos­si­ble action you could take in order to com­plete that par­tic­u­lar item. Turn­ing items into action takes some skill and some get­ting used to. I’m still not good at it–and I’ve been doing this for a long time already. But this is cru­cial. If it’s some­thing that will take mul­ti­ple actions, just think of the first thing you need to do to get it rolling and make a note some­where that you’ve got a new project on your plate.

Now if it can­not be turned into an action, you can do three things:

3. Clas­sify the action into DATE, CONTEXT or BOTH.

CONTEXTS are an awe­some way of orga­niz­ing to-dos. Instead of hav­ing one daunt­ing list of tasks and actions, you sep­a­rate each item by what mate­ri­als you need to get it done or where you’re going to do it. Your list of con­texts can look how­ever you like, but here’s mine:

• @TELEPHONE. For all things I need to do when I’m on the phone. Texts I need to send out, phone calls I need to make, reminders I need to give to peo­ple over the phone.
• @OFFICE. On those rare times I’m in the office. This con­text usu­ally includes reminders to upload files to the cen­tral file server in our office, or things I need to print out, or meet­ings with our HR and Account­ing Department.
• @HOME. For things I need to do at home.
• @ONLINE. For to-do’s I need to, uhm, do when I’m online or on the net. This would prob­a­bly include blog posts I need to research on, some stuff I need to check out on the net, pay­ments I need to make online, etc.
• @OFFLINE. For to-do’s I need to accom­plish with­out the aid of the net, and prob­a­bly with the net turned off to max­i­mize focus and attention.
• @ERRANDS. For things I need to buy or do or pass by (usu­ally on the way home).

Now, when it’s time to work on stuff, you’ll know exactly what to do where you are.

Although I am par­tial to con­texts, you can also clas­sify your to-do’s by DATES. If there’s a due date, or a set date for some to-do’s and they don’t nec­es­sar­ily have a con­text, you can just go ahead and mark your cal­en­dar for it. Thanks to THINGS, I can clas­sify my to-do’s into CONTEXTS and put a due date for each one.

4. Then do what needs to be done at the right date (and time) and/or dur­ing its proper con­text.

A Note on “Projects”

Projects are items that need mul­ti­ple steps.

While most of the things we do are single-action items: call the doc­tor, buy gro­ceries, pay bills, etc.; there are many things in our lives which require mul­ti­ple steps as well. A to-do item that says Pass the Project Post-Mortem could be fur­ther bro­ken down into (1) Make list of post-mortem items, (2) Call office­mates for infor­ma­tion, (3) Sum­ma­rize infor­ma­tion, (4) Make pow­er­point pre­sen­ta­tion, (5) Sked the Pre­sen­ta­tion. This is when a to-do becomes a project. So try to be more clear about the steps that you need to do in order to fin­ish the whole. Break­ing the project down into action­able items is also the best way to man­age the project. Once you’re done with the first step, make a note of the next action and put it through your “inbox” like it’s another assign­ment. Keep doing this until you com­plete the project.

Regular/Recurring Assign­ments. There are some items in our lives that are recur­ring. We pay bills every 15^th and 30^th, we sub­mit a report every Fri­day, we have date night every Tues­day. These things do not have to be part of your inbox but can be listed down as an item or event on the day it is sup­posed to occur. THINGS alarms at the start of every day to remind me of recur­ring things I have listed before­hand. This ensures I do not for­get any­thing I need to do.

The Review. Another impor­tant facet of GTD is the REVIEW. Pick a day once a week and review three things: your cal­en­dar, each project and each con­text. In your cal­en­dar, look at what due dates you have com­ing in the next week. When you do this, you can already start plan­ning for those events. Put the items in your inbox.

Review the con­texts and pending/active projects as well, mak­ing sure you have set the time for each to do and you have a next action listed for each project.

In the end, the impor­tant thing about GTD is that you file what­ever needs to be filed so your mind is not clut­tered and you’re not anx­ious about things. You then do the thing that needs to be done just when you need to do it, or ear­lier. This is work­ing smarter and not harder.

If you have ques­tions, please ask me in the com­ments sec­tion below.