[[David Allen]] [[lit/kindle/Getting Things Done|Highlights]] > It is possible to be effectively *doing* while you are delightfully *being*, in your ordinary workaday world...And *whatever* you're doing, you'd probably like to be more relaxed, confident that what you're doing at the moment...is exactly what you *ought* to be doing, as you're doing it. The Getting Things Done (GTD) system is a bottom-up approach to task management that promises to unlock a state of "relaxed control" by getting your "stuff" off your mind and into a trusted system that you review regularly. Every thing, big or small, that you plan to do is an agreement with yourself. The reason you feel unease is that there's a part of you that thinks you should be doing that thing *right now* and a part of you that doesn't trust you to do it at all. Learning to trust your system, Allen claims, will alleviate this stress. > You have to think about your stuff more than you realize but not as much as you're afraid you might. The key to the GTD system is answering the question "what is the next action?" for any outcome you commit to. First, clarify exactly what the intended outcome is. The outcome is a commitment to yourself (and possibly others), so be as clear as possible. Next, take the time, right now, to decide the very next physical action required to move forward. Finally, capture it in a list of next actions. If you haven't clarified the outcome, decided on the next action, and captured it in your system, it will continue to pull at your attention. ```mermaid flowchart LR Z{"🧠"} --> A["Clearly defined \n outcome"] --> B["Next \n Action"]-->C["Action \n Reminder"] ``` Ultimately, you must actually *do* these next actions. As Allen puts it, "the key to managing all your 'stuff' is managing your action". The promise of the GTD system is that you will be more productive because (1) you can confidently focus on what you're doing right now (without worrying that you should be doing something else), and (2) your confidence will grow to take on bigger and bigger projects and goals. >Ineffective personal organizational systems create huge subconscious resistance to undertaking even bigger projects and goals that will likely not be managed well. ## How to implement a GTD system You will need solutions and strategies to manage each of these five steps in your GTD system: 1. Collect 2. Process 3. Organize 4. Review 5. Do This process provides you with what Allen calls "horizontal" focus. The complement to this effort is planning, which helps you think about your work from higher perspectives and provides "vertical" focus. ## Getting started The first step is a painful but rewarding process of collecting, processing and organizing all of your current "stuff". Chapters 4 through 9 in the book describe exactly how to approach this massive undertaking for the first time. Anyone interested in taking this first step should find a copy of the book and review those chapters in depth. Once finished, you should have a place for everything and everything in it's right place. You will also have begun building the scaffolding of your GTD system. ## Key components Once you have a handle on all of your current "stuff", you need to maintain a system you can trust and that you enjoy using. The primary components of the GTD system include: - The Inbox - Next Action Lists - An Enjoyable Organizational System - Weekly Review Your system need not be complicated, and in fact should be as simple as possible. As Allen points out in the book, "all you really need is lists and folders". While the book (first published in 2015), describes mostly analog systems, these days your system will likely be largely digital. Part of the fun of implementing the GTD system is adapting it over time and incorporating new technologies (judiciously). ## The Inbox You will **collect** any and all incompletes (what Allen calls "open loops") in your inbox. The inbox allows you to get whatever just caught your attention off your mind quickly so you can continue to focus on what you're working on right now. > As soon as you attach a should, need to, or ought to to an item, it becomes an incomplete. Allen recommends, "have as many inboxes as you need and as few as you can get by with". You will **process** each item in the inbox to either (1) your next action lists or (2) your organizational system. Whether you do this in the moment or during your Weekly Review is an intuitive choice and will depend on how you have set up your system. If the "open loop" is an actionable item, I find it's best to go ahead and define the next action. If it will take less than 2 minutes, and you are in a good place to do it, just do it. If not, add it to your next actions list to delegate or do later. If the "open loop" is not actionable, leave it in the inbox until your next Weekly Review or sooner if the right moment presents itself. ## Next Action Lists Next action lists capture all of your next actions. Again, you may have as many as you need but no more. A calendar and a to-do list would be the simplest implementation. Use the calendar for any next actions that must be done at a certain time, and the list for actions that need to be done as soon as you can get to them. Allen recommends creating separate lists for each context. For example, one list includes errands to do while out and about and another list includes calls to make when you're making calls. Using tags in a modern task management software would accomplish the same thing. Do what works for you. Whether you combine or split personal and work actions is also up to you. Use next action triggers to remind you to complete an action at a particular time or place. Put these wherever you are sure to see them at the appropriate time or place. Distributing action triggers is okay provided you review those action triggers periodically and as required. A next action should be discrete and observable. In other words, there should be no pre-requisite and it should be obvious when you have completed it. If any outcome you've committed to achieving will require more than one action, it is a project. Projects provide a "stake in the ground" to ensure you achieve the intended outcome without having to define every action up front. Do not clutter next action lists with all of the tasks required to complete a project, use project plans instead. Create a comprehensive list of projects somewhere you will review regularly. The next action list is complete when you have captured every next action that can be moved on every front for every project. I call this the *next action frontier*. Any item within your next action frontier can be accomplished the next time you are are in the right context and have the necessary energy and time; anything outside of your next action frontier is not truly actionable. Create a separate "someday/maybe" list for any next actions or projects that are not currently high enough priority to move on. Create a separate "waiting" list for anything that is waiting on an action from someone else. The point is to not create resistance to looking at your next action lists with an overwhelming and poorly defined list of tasks and subprojects, but to focus you on what you can actually do right now, ideally without having to put much more thought into how to do it. ## Enjoyable Organizational System You will **organize** anything that is not on a next action list or your calendar in your organizational system. This will include a list of projects, your someday/maybe list and waiting list, reference materials, project support materials, and anything else that you want to keep on hand. The most important feature of your organizational system is that it is easy, even enjoyable, to use. An organizational system that is a chore to use will create friction that will eventually lead to disorganization. Have fun exploring available technologies and setting up physical systems (e.g., filing cabinets) that work for you. Don't over-complicate things. You should know instinctively where to file each incomplete. If you have so many buckets you can't remember them, or the boundaries between them blur, you have too many. ## Weekly Review According to Allen, "the magic key to the sustainability of the process is the Weekly Review." The goal of the Weekly Review is to clear your inbox and your head. You need to be confident that you have collected, processed and organized all of your incompletes. Start the Weekly Review by processing everything in your inbox. Next, review your calendar and all of your lists, including your next actions, someday/maybe, waiting for, projects and any other checklists you've created. Hopefully, you will find that you are in relaxed control and are free to be "creative and courageous" about taking on new, bigger and better projects. At some point, you may feel a pull to clarify your commitments from a higher perspective and review the bigger picture. Consider your projects, areas of responsibility/focus, goals for the next 1-2 years, visions for your life in the next 3-5 years, and finally your overall life purpose. Allen recommends you take time for this type of review, working from the bottom up, as often as you need to return to a feeling of relaxed control. ## Managing Action Deciding what to do next, and actually doing it, is the key to stress-free productivity. The GTD system helps you clarify exactly the list of things you *could* do, but does not prescribe a rigid structure of what you *must* do. > Every decision to act is an intuitive one. The challenge is to migrate from hoping it's the right choice to trusting it's the right choice. You can do pre-defined work, do work as it shows up or spend some time working to better define your work or improve your GTD system. When considering pre-defined work (i.e., your next actions), Allen recommends considering context, energy, time and priority. If you have organized your next action lists by context, it will be easy to see what you can work on given where you are, whether at your computer or about to take off on a cross-country flight. From there, consider which actions match your energy and the time you have. Finally, pick one of the higher priority actions. ## On Planning Allen describes the natural planning process as the process of defining the purpose and principles, envisioning outcomes, brainstorming, organizing, and identifying next actions for a project. If a project is on your mind, if you need more clarity about a project, or if the project just isn't moving forward, you might need to spend some time planning around it. > I can safely say that all of us should be doing more planning, more informally and more often, about our projects and our lives. And if we did, it would relieve a lot of pressure on our psyches and produce an enormous amount of creative output with minimal effort. A project plan should include a clearly defined outcome so you know when it is done, capture any thinking you've done when planning the project, and provide a handle to reference back to when collecting project support information and any related, random ideas that come to you. Most projects (80% by Allen's estimate) require only a clearly defined outcome and a next action. The rest require some level of planning, but only a few (<5%) will require any significant application of the natural planning process he describes. ## Critiques The GTD system is incredibly flexible. If anything, the book leaves a long-term, sustainable system underdefined. With rapid advancements in technology and so many new digital tools available, it's possible to over-complicate the system and/or change it too frequently. Designing your own GTD system will likely require substantial trial and error. Even disciplined implementations of the GTD system can be complex (for example, see the [ToDoist GTD system](https://todoist.com/productivity-methods/getting-things-done)). The mental load required to remember where everything goes in such a complex system may create resistance or lead to disorganization. Digital tools provide an unprecedented ability to collect "stuff". Even well organized, a poorly curated collection of reference material and other stuff will erode the value of the system as a reference and project support system. The GTD system may encourage over-collection, known as the [[collectors fallacy]]. Finally, time and resource constraints are not explicitly considered. Only a cursory description of the planning process, which might inform tradeoff decisions, is covered. How many commitments you make is largely left to your intuition. For the most ambitious or less experienced of us, no matter how efficient the system, we are still at risk of burnout. ## Takeaway The GTD system promises to give you "relaxed control" and unlock stress-free productivity. From my experience, deciding on the next action and focusing on clearly defined outcomes are the most valuable takeaways from the book. A well-implemented GTD system may help you be more present, think bigger, and restore the sense of agency and creativity that is core to our human experience. > Your life and work are made up of outcomes and actions when your operational behavior is grooved to organize everything that comes your way at all levels, based upon those dynamics, **a deep alignment occurs**, and wondrous things emerge. You become highly productive. **You make things up and you make them happen.**