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An overview of the GTD system [Ian's Messy Desk]

If this was shareware, this post would be titled YAOGS (Yet another overview of the GTD system.) There are likely dozens of overviews of this system, available on the Internet, but none of them by me.

Background of the GTD System

Some version of David Allen’s “work-life management” system has been around for almost 25 years. The book, Getting Things Done : The Art Of Stress-Free Productivity, by David Allen, was published in 2001. He has also written a second book titled, Ready for Anything : 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life. GTD, a registered trademark, is the abbreviation for Getting Things Done.

I first came across David Allen when he called his seminar, Managing Actions and Projects. I still have the cassette tape series of David presenting that material.

In an interview with Fast Company Magazine, Allen said,

We clutter our minds with vague promises about what we should do, what we could do. But there is always more to do than there is time to do it. Most of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do - it comes from not keeping agreements they’ve made with themselves. When you tell yourself you ought to do something and then don’t do it, you experience self-doubt and frustration. You can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool yourself for a second.)

To deal with the “mind clutter” we experience, Allen developed a system which is based on identifying all the incomplete tasks facing a person and then isolating the next actions required to move tasks towards completion.

Contrary to most productivity systems, GTD is not priority based. GTD is based on what David Allen calls context: your location, time and energy levels determine what you can get done. Phone calls can only be made when you’re near a phone. The garage can only be cleaned when you’re at the garage, but not if you have only 15 minutes available. By organizing Next Actions into context, you can determine the best step to take given your circumstances.

There are five core principles to Getting Things Done:

Collect

This is the capture step. Anytime something crosses your mind that requires some sort of response or action from you, capture it in a “bucket”: an in-box on your desk or by the back door, an email folder, a notebook, a little tape recorder, etc. Any tool that gets it out of your head and into the system.

Process

Next you clear the items from the bucket(s). Start at the top of the in-box, pick up each item and ask yourself “is there an action I need to take about this item?”

Start at the top.

Deal with one item at a time.
Never put anything back into the in-box.
If an item requires action:

do it (if it takes less than two minutes*),
delegate it, or
defer it.

If not,

file it,
toss it, or
save it for possible action later.

*The 2-minute Rule: If it takes less than 2 minutes to do something, do it right away.

Organize

The foundation of this system is lists. You need as many lists as necessary to keep you on track, but not so many that you need a list just to cross-reference your lists. These are the basic lists recommended by David Allen:

Next Action: for every item requiring your attention, decide what is the next action you can take. (E.g., if the item is ‘write project proposal’, the next action might be ‘e-mail Nancy for proposal guidelines’, or ‘call Ken about cost estimates’, or something similar.) No matter the number of steps and actions required to complete the item, there will always be something that you need to do first, and this should be recorded in the next actions list. These should be organized by the context: such as ‘@ office’, ‘@ phone’, or ‘@ store’.
Projects: a project is anything that will need more than one action to complete. Keep track of those multi-action items here. (E.g., ‘write project proposal’ or ‘buy a new house.’)
Waiting for: if you are waiting on someone else’s response or work to complete your task, track it on this list. (E.g., ‘updated contact list from Mary.’)
Someday/Maybe: when you have a great idea or long-term goal that you would like to consider in the future. You don’t want it sitting on your project list for a long time, but you don’t want to forget it either. (E.g., ‘learn to speak Spanish’ or ‘travel to India.’)

Other common lists might be a calendar or context-sensitive lists: calls, @office, @home, errands, etc. David Allen also suggests a number of cool/convenient lists to augment the basics.

Review

Now that you’ve processed your tasks and organized your lists, you need look at those lists. You need to review the lists throughout the day, based on context. Once a week you need to set aside time for a weekly review to empty your buckets/in-boxes and make sure you are on top of things.