Getting Things Done (GTD)

The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

A critical walk-through the methodology with practical implementation tips

Cliff Scherer

August 2010, Lunch & Learn

Contents 1 Introduction

1.1 Welcome
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Welcome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 What is GTD ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Why use GTD ? . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

2 Theory 4
2.1 The Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2 Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3 Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.3.1 Horizontal Control . . . . . . . 5
2.3.2 Vertical Perspective . . . . . . 9

Welcome! What I want to share with you in the next

3 Implementation 10 hour is something which I discovered around 2 years
ago. Basically it is a book about a productivity tech-
3.1 Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
nique, which is really interesting. Actually 2 years
3.2 Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 ago I did read it and afterwards I was so fascinated
3.3 Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 that I started to implement GTD for work and private
life. So far I can really make an overall positive con-
3.4 Best Practice, Tips Tricks . . . . . . . 17
clusion. But to say this clearly, I am not dogmatic
about GTD, I am more a critical user. The good
news is, that GTD is more a flexible framework from
4 The Promise 18 which you can start from and fine-tune it according
to your own needs. So maybe you become interested
and there’s something in also for you. So again wel-
come and be invited for a tour about “Getting things
5 Resources 19 done”!

1
1.2 What is GTD ?

GTD is a productivity technique and as such it’s go-

ing along with lots of other systems in the personal
consulting market. Now unfortunately all theses sys-
tem undergo heavy “marketing” and it’s hard to dif-
ferentiate between them.

When you implement GTD, you will see it helps you

to tackle the 3 “eff. . . ” areas of productivity bal-
anced, comprising of efficiency, effectiveness and effi-
cacy. Any of these areas is important and just being
good in one will limit your productivity. Before we
go into details about GTD, let’s go back to procras-
tination: Maybe we all have experienced this already
– so why do we do this?

Frankly speaking, I personally do not always trust 1.3 Why use GTD ?
what others want to sell you. It’s sometimes better to
first listen what others say. For the start of our walk- Look here. . . – Does this look familiar to you ?
through here’s just a brief collection, demonstrating
that GTD has quite some reputation.

When you now start to ask yourself, what is GTD

then and how you can make use of it. Well, sometimes
it better to define something by first defining what
it is not. So here’s what getting things done is not
...

A lot of things on your desk, a lot of commitments you

made, a lot of projects and immediate task are wait-
ing for you and you’re asking yourself “Oh my god
which comes first? What should I do now, what later,
how can I ever get this done?”. In David Allen’s
“GTD-terminology” these things are called “stuff”.
More precisely it’s defined by: Anything in your psy-
chological and physical world that does not belong
where it is, but for which you have not yet determined
the desired outcome and the next action step.
It’s a bit funny, but what you see is in fact a serious
issue that productivity experts call “procrastination”, Some of you now might think, OK this is the usual
a behavior to move things around in busy mode for consulting language but please hold on, I’ll come to
just avoiding the real work. the point in just a minute.

2
David Allen’s idea about GTD starts from the This one for example might help in the beginning,
problem, that the human brain’s “reminder system” but once you have too many prioritized reminders and
is quite inefficient and seldom reminds us of what we this happens quite often, you find yourself to have too
need to do at the time and place when we can do it. many open loops any having high priority. So this
This problem get’s bigger the more stuff is coming system is easy but does not really heal the problem.
in. David Allen found evidence in different stud- In terms of the 3 eff’s (efficiency, effectiveness and
ies, that it’s a big problem if we use our brain for efficacy) which are critical for overall productivity it’s
both, remembering incomplete stuff on one hand and quite limited.
in parallel do the real thinking for which we get paid
or which we like to spend time during private life. Here’s where GTD claims to be really better and
Seems our brain is optimized better in doing on thing we will see in the next couple minutes how it
at one time very good, rather keeping all the incom- works.
plete things in memory. In other word multitasking
is for computers not for our brain. If this is correct
you can imagine that the word “open loop” is really
a stress factor. So what do we tend to do, when this
happens? Our brain cannot handle it and will call for
help.

We will cover basically 2 core parts: First is about

the GTD theory, like the book, the concept and the
methods. Second part will cover the practical part
how this system can be implemented. Additionally I
will provide you after these 2 parts some information
about resources in case you decide later to become
more familiar with GTD – which is certainly my in-
Besides procrastination, so just delay working on the tention today.
real stuff, there are many ways to seek for help in a
more active sense. Here’s one system. . . So let’s start with a bit of theory.

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2 Theory

2.1 The Book

The first book has basically 3 parts:

• The first one gives an outline how GTD helps to
get control of your life through the 5 stages of
the so called “mastering workflow”.
• The second part covers details of this workflow.
• Lastly the third part is about why these methods
work and which benefits can be expected if you
David Allen’s first book “Getting Things Done”
start using the GTD approach.
was the kick-off for everything related to GTD. He
has written this book in the year 2002. I hope you understand that I will not be able to cover
all aspect of this book and of the GTD system in just
What I personally like about David Allen is, that few minutes, so here’s an excerpt and my very own
he claims himself as a lazy guy and he mentioned few personal take-away.
times that he developed the GTD system just to get Now let’s come to the core part of the theory, the
things done at maximum efficiency, effectiveness and concept and the methods behind.
efficacy but low effort- something highly desired for
anybody but especially lazy people.
2.2 Concept
Basically his first book contains all core principles
of GTD. I highly recommend you to read it, in case
you decide to become more familiar with GTD or
even plan to really implement it. You’ll find in the
resources part a reference for buying the book or an
audio-book.

I have the paperback with me here, you may take a

look.

The book was successful worldwide and lead in the

following years to a large GTD community of follow-
ers which still is very active. By the way, several
books followed the first one, which are more or less
just extensions of the first one.

In the beginning it’s absolutely OK if you just focus

on the first one. Once you understand the princi- What makes GTD so unique is that it works basically
ples and start to implement them you’re anyway get without priorities. What ? – a productivity method
momentum to further explore this subject either by without priorities ? Yes, you heard correct – in GTD
books or other resources, and I can tell you there are it’s up to you to define the sequence of tasks you want
plenty of them. to work on.

4
And you’ll see later GTD provides big flexibility de-
pending on your current context. What’s similar to
other productivity systems is, that GDT works pro-
cess based. Another very typical aspect of GTD is,
that it gives you a feeling of running a trusted sys-
tem, which even works when the amount of stuff is
very huge and your normal capability to absorb and
remember without GTD is reached.

Next very typical aspect of GTD is, that it’s very

much task oriented as such it helps to keep the ball
moving. In GTD you’ll always asks yourself “What’s
the next action ?”. These actions are listed down in
your trusted system ready for implementation once
you feel available for action.

Last but not least, GTD itself does not focus on work
It comprises of 5 steps: Collect, Process, Organize,
only, no it highly suggests to cover any part of your
Review and finally most important Do.
life to get full control of stuff coming in.
In a minute we have a look how these steps look like?
In order to make this concept happen, GTD provides First let’s get an brief overview about the whole flow
a framework of methods. without nailing down on the details.

2.3 Methods

The framework consists of 2 parts. One for getting

control of your stuff, the other one for keeping per-
spective. Both are important, but GTD is mostly
famous for the first one, and I will also mainly focus
on the first one in the next couple of minutes.
Stuff is collected in a Inbox first. In this theoretical
section I want to leave it open what it is, it’s just a
virtual box. Once your stuff is in the Inbox, as second
2.3.1 Horizontal Control step you will then Process this stuff from your Inbox
by asking “What is it ? – Is it actionable ?”
The part where GTD supports getting control on your • If it’s not actionable, you have different options.
stuff is also called “horizontal process”. The book Either you just trash it, or you Organize it by
even calls it “The Mastering Workflow”. Big words, filing in a special location it if you feel it’s later
but basically quite simple. I think the value of GTD necessary to take reference. Sometimes you’ll in-
is that it provides a clear described workflow. cubate it and Organize it by putting it to a sepa-

5
 rate place for collected stuff which you probably Collect
Do someday, but not now.

• If it’s actionable but it takes several single steps

to achieve the final result, then GTD calls this
project even if it’s just a small one. You’ll
separate it, first Organize it by adding to a
Project-Master-Overview-List and then later
break it down in a different process on single next
actions which you then can feed into the horizon-
tal workflow afterwards as a single next action.

• If it’s actionable in one step you first check, what

the next action is.

Back to start, when stuff comes in you Collect it in

– If the next action takes just a few minutes, your Inbox as a kind of buffer.. When you start GTD
you normally will just Do it immediately, from scratch, you typically will have to reserve some
because the time to Do it is shorter than time (maybe one relaxed Sunday morning) to Col-
making a further effort about it. GTD rec- lect all existing stuff, including all the “incompletes”.
ommend 2 minutes as a threshold, but I David Allen calls this “mind-sweep”. Complete-
think that’s just a rough guideline. ness is very important, and feels a bit strange, as
you need to end up with the situation to have com-
pletely backuped your brains part running in “open
– If the next action has to be delegated but loop mode” into a trusted system, to release your
you need response afterwards to continue, brain and get focus on real thinking. For the Collect
you will delegate it and Organize this by step any tool is fine, but for the later Process-Step it’s
adding this action in a Waiting-For-List. good to have not to many different tools. Again which
tools are appropriate I will cover later in the practi-
cal part. Most important, when you run the workflow
regularly, this Inbox will be completely empty, so nor-
– If the next action takes longer and (un- mally there’s no overflow and you already will start
fortunately) you cannot delegate is, you to feel really good as you see always a small number
will put this action, depending on the type of fresh unprocessed stuff only.
of action, either into a Calendar or a
Next-Action-List. Which one is more ap- To get your Inbox empty you will have to Process the
propriate I will explain later. stuff.

Process
The result of this process is, that now all of your stuff
is collected, processed and organized into a trusted
system. But that’s certainly not enough. Lastly you
will use it for the Review, resorting on frequent basis
and most important depending on time, energy and
context finally Do the next action.

This process is continuously repeated all the time,

so stuff goes in, is processed and organized, reviewed
and will be done sooner or later. Doing so, means to
get control on your stuff. Nothing is lost. Everything
is kept moving.

That’s all for an overview, now let’s dig in deeper in

each single step of the horizontal workflow. The Process-Step comes second. Main purpose is to

6
classify your Inbox stuff and pushed it into those cat- will delegate it and Organize this by adding
egories which help you later to Do it. So important this action in a Waiting-For-List. As
is, processing is not doing, it’s still a way to prepare before, this steps means for the human’s
before doing. This is really a value adding step not brain that the item it’s externally backed-
just delaying the action. You will see later, that the up, and your brain does not need to remem-
categories can be very usefull. OK, so let’s assume ber this open-loop any longer, as you can
you have time to get your Inbox processed. First you trust your system. Later we will see that
will take each single item and ask “What is it ? – Is this Waiting-For-List can be reviewed
it actionable ?” and used to remind you, look here’s some-
thing to follow-up with your colleague, fam-
• If it’s not actionable, you better trash or delete
ily member or friend.
it, or you Organize it by filing in a special lo-
cation it if you feel it’s later necessary to take
reference. Sometimes you’ll think it’s in gen-
eral worth while to keep it as potential later
task or project, but at this moment you sim- – If the next action, unfortunately cannot be
ply don’t want to make it active. Then you delegated, you normally will just Do it im-
will incubate it. This means to keep it inactive, mediately if the next action takes just a few
but you will Organize it by putting it to a sepa- minutes. I mentioned before that GTD rec-
rate place for collected stuff which is called the ommends 2 minutes as time threshold. But
Someday-Maybe-List. The last step is already I think this depends on your setup. If you
the organizing step, which we will cover in just have a smart system, maybe taking a not of
a moment, normally you do both together. In- a next action is even faster than 2 minutes.
cubation means for the human’s brain that the In the practical part we’ll see how software
item it’s externally backed-up, and your brain can support you, typically for me it takes 15
does not need to remember this open-loop any seconds to make a note about a next action.
longer, as you can trust your system. Later we So if I am very busy and I see during the
will see that this Someday-Maybe-List is not a Process-Step lots of things I tend to not Do
place to just dumb things which would mean it’s it immediately because the effort and time
a grave of all open things. No, during the regular spent is quite small. The benefit is I can
Review, at any time you can decide to make the Process my Inbox completely to zero, and
task or project active and bring it back to the once this is done I can come back for Review
process. and Do it.

• Back to the Process-Step: If the specific topic

you Process from your Inbox is actionable but
it takes several single steps to achieve the final – If you decide to not Do the next action im-
result, then again it’s a project. An example is mediately you will Process it by deferring.
“submit sales report to department head”. You This sounds simple, but actually it’s an ac-
notice, it can also be a repeating topic. tive step as you will think about the type
In this case in the Process-Step you do 2 things: of the next action. Depending of the type
first you identify it’s a project and second you your will separate it by either organizing it
separate it from single action items. As consecu- to you Calendar or to just one or more list
tive steps later you will Organize it by adding the of next actions. The key question for type is
project to the Project-Master-Overview-List, whether the action is time or date specific or
which serves as a source for the . Again, is it more or less independent. Again, this
this process steps means for the human’s step means for the human’s brain that the
brain that the item it’s externally backed- item is externally backed-up, and your brain
up, and your brain does not need to re- does not need to remember this open-loop
member this open-loop any longer, as you any longer, as you can trust your system.
can trust your system. Later we will see Later we will see that you will Review your
that this Project-Master-Overview-List is re- Calendar and Next-Action-List very fre-
viewed and used to remind you, look here’s quently and your system will remind you
a project, now lets finally break it down into about the next action to be done.
smaller actionable pieces.
• Back to the Process-Step: If the topic is action-
able in one step you first check, what the next
During the Process-Step normally you will directly
action is.
Organize your stuff into your existing structures like
– If the next action can be delegated you lists.

7
Organize may exclude things like “in plant” and “difficult” or
“60mins” and better select next actions tagged with
“easy” and “5mins”.
So back to where we came from, now you have col-
lected, processed and organized all your stuff into a
trusted system. What you achieved is a huge step
because now you can feel relaxed as all stuff is in the
right place. It’s not a one time process you will have
to repeat this on and on to maintain it’s state. The
only thing now which is missing is to select and finally
Do the right thing out of your trusted system.
The steps in GTD which are in charge for these fi-
nal steps are Review and Do. Let’s talk first about
Review.

Review

We heard before organizing in GTD is the step of

documenting projects, next actions, references in sep-
arate lists/folders after you have decided in the Pro-
cess-Step before where it belongs. Organizing also
means you keep these lists and folders a live and
maintained. Organizing is very much related to the
tool you use. But all tools have same things in com-
mon, they help to do the documentation as efficient
as possible. For example: The reference file can be an
old folder or a hard drive folder. Both act as reposi-
tory for things you want to file long-term. How you
structure this folder is up to you, important is that
your structure allows later easy access and search.
The most intuitive aspect of organization steps is the
Calendar – here everyone knows what is meant, bt
be careful normally we maintain in a Calendar only
meeting, but GTD wants you to also maintain next Review means to go through your heavy loaded
actions in your Calendar. The other parts like the trusted system and get reminded about what you
some-day-maybe list or the Waiting-For-List is just have organized which means what you have docu-
a simple list where you document the topic. For the mented. In the practical part you will see later that
last part the next-action lists, which typically is the there are different subroutines of Review:
biggest part of your system, GTD highly recommend
to have not just one. GTD recommends to sort the • Your Calendar needs to to be reviewed most fre-
next action. Not by priority. Remember GTD is not quently, as the next actions are time critical.
priority based. No, GTD recommends to assign your • Next you will Review your Next-Action-List,
next action to aspects, which help you later to choose when you have time. In most cases you will find
the action depending on you current: things depending on your context, energy level
• context, like location, place, resource (i.e. office, and time and you will Do them.
home, on trip, on phone, colleague A, B, in plant) • Waiting-For-List, Someday-Maybe-List and
• energy level (difficult, easy) Project-Master-Overview-List are not re-
viewed on such high frequency. You will capture
• time needed to fulfill this single next action them during the so called Weekly-Review which
(5mins, 10mins, 60mins) serves the purpose to keep your system up-to-
date, clean and complete but also rethink how
This assigning, or tagging during organizing step is
you have processed things before and maybe you
not mandatory, but it’s a huge help for you later dur-
decide to reorganize some projects and next ac-
ing Review-Step and final Do-Step to easily decide
tions.
what to do in a specific moment. For example you
are in the airport and have 10mins before departure To separate the Do part in the Process is a bit ar-
and want to accomplish a next action: before spend tificial. We heard before that during Review of your
time to browse through all your next actions, you Next-Action-List typically you will decide to finally

8
Do a specific next action. David Allen has sepa- leave effectiveness behind. One more time: effective-
rated this step, because he wanted to emphasize that ness means: Do the right things to achieve the de-
even with perfect organization of your stuff in your sired effect. For effectiveness you need to keep the
trusted system waiting for final action, quite often overview.
you still can and will have to make good choices about
OK, the critics overlook that David Allen also talks
what you are doing.
in his books about this part, and describes in the ver-
Do tical process the method to gain perspective. Prob-
ably it’s not so dominant as the horizontal workflow
and therefore it’s not so known. I will also only briefly
touch this part here, but I want to want to make sure
that you know that GTD covers also the perspec-
tive.

2.3.2 Vertical Perspective

Project planning is a typical example for the verti-

cal process. You remember from horizontal process
before, stuff comes from time to time in your Inbox,
which belongs to you but it cannot be done in one
step. By definition it’s a project. So you separate this
first and you Organize it by adding this new project
on your Project-Master-Overview-List. Well, in
order to become actionable as part of the horizon-
What is GTD saying about how to Do these choices ? tal workflow this project needs to be broken down on
We heard already that GTD is highly recommending next actions.
that you tag your next actions by context, energy and
time. So these are normally good criteria to make a
choice.
But there are sometimes phases in where you have
simply no choice and you have to accept that you
Do the work as it shows up, or run it in predefined
manner. If this is the domination part of your work,
then GTD’s contribution is quite limited. I think
more often is the case that you run in mixed mode,
sometimes you have the choice, sometimes not.
Alright, so these are the five steps of the horizontal
workflow. I hope it became clear that continuously
running these steps, will ensure to get control on the
stuff which is coming in every day. Control means,
take the stuff out of your brain put into the system
and steer it to final implementation through the dif-
ferent steps. As every theory, sometimes you find Project planning is not the only instance to run the
challenges, and we will come back to this point later vertical process. David Allen proposes in his book
what you can do to avoid frustration. In general I to look on your work and private life in different views
find GTD a very robust system, which won’t fail if like an aviator:
you follow the major recommendations.
• Runway – current action
OK, that’s it, about the horizontal workflow method,
which again is one of the major principles of GTD. • 10,000 feet – current projects
You see it’s quite operational, down to earth, as any- • 20,000 feet – current responsibilities
thing is broken down on the level of a next action
to be finally done. Nothing of these small bits and • 30,000 feet – one-to-two-year goals
pieces is lost, certainly with a lot of effort to keep it
• 40,000 feet – three-to-five-year goals
complete in your trusted system.
• 50,000 feet – career, purpose, lifestyle
This very practical aspect of GTD is also sometimes
used for criticism. These critics say that GTD is Due to the time constraint of this session I cannot
driving people too much on focusing on efficiency but go into further details. If you are interested in fur-

9
ther details I recommend you Allen’s 2nd and 3rd complicated things like a project down to actionable
book. pieces. Basically that’s all you need to know to un-
derstand how GTD theoretically works. We can now
Back to GTD’s vertical process of braking down these
move on to the practical aspects – how to implement
views on next actions. It’s rather simple and more
GTD.
holistic. David Allen called it “back of the enve-
lope” planning or natural planning model.

3 Implementation

In this part I will touch on the various lists and the

tools you will use in practicing GTD.

Here are the steps: If you want to use ver-

tical planning to create a Project-Plan for
example, you typically will start from your
Project-Master-Overview-List. Starting from the
project name, you will let your mind go through 5
distinctive steps of planning: The first one is define
the purpose and the principles of your project. Once
this is done you next try to envision the outcome
of the project. Third, if not clear already, in order From the theoretical part you heard already that lists
to get creative solutions you do Collect ideas how to are the fundamental workplace of everything you Do
run the project by brainstorming. The next step is with GTD. Each list is treated a bit different to work
to Organize these ideas into an reasonable steps like properly, and that’s what I want to explain in a
milestones. Lastly these steps are broken into single minute. Secondly I will touch the questions where
actions, ready to be used to the typical GTD horizon- and how you run these lists. You will see this can
tal workflow. You see, here’s where the two processes be done in many ways and different tools. Basically
meet each other qnd the whole GTD concept gets this is one big advantage, that GTD call itself “tool
complete. agnostic”. That means whatever tool you choose it’s
most important that is works for you personally and
This sounds very normal and natural. Maybe you it supports you to keep the workflow running. One
already plan your projects like this. Important is, key factor is that it should be pragmatic, simple and
whatever goes through your mind, you certainly also flexible to use. It does not help you to run the Collect
will have to note and document it in a simple project step if your Inbox needs 5 minutes to boot or has no
list. Again, GTD recommends you to backup this power if you need it, as will most likely miss the im-
and put it to an external place so that you can release portant stuff which just came in. To avoid frustration
your brain on the remembering part and concentrate you need to make sure that you decide for yourself
on the real thinking work. which tool works best. For example if you travel a
Documentation means, you will have one lot, make sure your tools are mobile and works all
Project-Master-Overview-List and you will the time independent from location and power avail-
have one Project-Plan for each single project with ability. Lastly later I want to make you aware of
your conclusion on the 5 distinctive steps. Both some challenges when you start to implement GTD
will ensure you have a trusted system about your and provide some best practice examples as well as
projects. few tips and tricks.

So summarizing, GTD offers you two processes, the So let’s start with the fundamental workplace of
horizontal process to get control on your incoming GTD, with lists. The first list you will maintain, is
stuff and the vertical process to break down more your Inbox.

10
3.1 Lists and “Is it actionable”. Let’s first talk about the
Next-Action-List.
Inbox
Next Action List

As example, here we use a paper based planner, but it

could also be you physical inbox or your Lotus Notes As example, here we use again our paper based plan-
inbox folder. As mentioned earlier, when you start ner. As a tip: there are typical verbs which you
to implement GTD you will have to really capture will find in anybodies Next-Action-List. Examples
anything. For example the commitment you gave are: Call, Buy, Email, Read/Review, . . . You will not
to your boss that you will travel to Shanghai in 6 find verbs like: Resolve, Ensure, Implement, because
month to run the workshop. But also Collect in your this verbs typically require more than one step, and
Inbox things where you got stuck, and at the mo- should be treated as project.
ment have to clue how to proceed. Once this is done,
When you Process and add a next action into your
and this could take quite long, then you will Pro-
Next-Action-List keep your entry short and clear.
cess the Inbox down to zero. Make it a behavior to
Later it will be more easy for you to know what has
not leave the office without zero Inbox. It does not
to be done. Once you did it, make a remark , tag
mean that you have done the topic at the end. But
it “done or completed” or just strike through. This
what you will Do in GTD to Process the stuff and
applies to all kinds of lists.
Organize into your lists, ready to be done when you
later have time. Doing this, creates really peace of David Allen very much recommends that you Or-
mind. There might be exceptions where zero Inbox ganize your Next-Action-List by context to make
is not possible. Some GTD enthusiasts say that at them more relevant for you. The idea behind
least you should not have more unprocessed topics is, that for later Do-Step, when you check your
in you Inbox than you can overview on one page. Next-Action-List it’s more easy and faster to pull
So don’t worry if you sometimes cannot fulfill zero the right action when it fits to your current con-
Inbox, but try to limit this as exception. Once you text. As example that means that you may have 5
did it, make a remark , tag it or just strike through. Next-Action-Lists.
Again, GTD is not dogmatic, and you don’t need to
feel bad if you sometimes fail. Another important
behavior is to never put things back to your Inbox
once you have started to Process it. Basically there’s
no reason to do it. Even if you have no clue what
to Do with the new topic, don’t put it back. You
better Process it as inactive and Organize it into the
Someday-Maybe-List or put it into your Calendar
for the Weekly-Review or create a project and put
this topic to the Project-Master-Overview-List
and the very first step is to clarify purpose before
you move on. And finally sometimes you just decide
to put it to waste.
But most things from your Inbox, you will Pro-
cess to your Next-Action-List or your Calendar
after checking the two questions “What is it ?”

11
One list here is called “@phone” is just for the con- and check open actions and only when this is done,
text of being able to make phone calls. The next one then come back to your Next-Action-List.
is called “@office”. It is populated to next action you
can Do when you are in the office. Contrary to that When you delegate often tasks and you wait for feed-
the next list is called “@plant”, here you will find back in order to track it, finalize or continue on your
all next actions where you need to be on site in the end you will have a Waiting-For-List.
plant. If you travel a lot it makes sense to have con-
text “@travel”, so you can use all the idle time, like
the next action “read report”. It’s also quite useful Waiting-For-List
in private live to have a context “@errands” where
you make sure that you will not forget the present
for your wife when you are next time in the city and
have time for shopping.
The idea of making context-based Next-Action-List
can be extended to other criteria like “energy-level
needed” or “time needed”. But keep in mind to Or-
ganize it simple and flexible. If you go for paper-based
tools like notebooks, filofax it’s probably easier to
have just a few Next-Action-Lists and folder-labels
with more broad context. If you go for software-based
tools, then you will get a lot of support to do very spe-
cialized multi-tagging and filter later whatever you
want.
Back to our example: Maybe the last action to get
reminded to buy the wifes present should be bet-
ter Organize into your Calendar, just in case you
tend to forget this date. Then you will put this ac-
tion, with reasonable lead-time, into your Calendar. Just note here what, when and to whom you have
During your Daily-Review, you will see it and get re- delegated. Make it as specific as possible to be able
minded. after a few weeks to follow-up. If it’s date-time spe-
cific you may also add the same point into your calen-
Calendar dar. This list will have to be also reviewed on regular
basis.

When you have reminded repeatedly you better also

just make a note about that and the new appointment
made with your team mate, customer or supplier.
This sounds quite strict but don’t forget quite often
your work is very much depending on your partners
input and your performance might get challenged. On
the other side you may not overdo this, especially
in your private GTD implementation. If you keep
track about the status of topics your agreed to be
done by your wife and after regular and strict Review
and constant reminding she probably will get pissed-
off. Latest by then you better reconsider the level of
your GTD implementation. Get relaxed, where you
can.

The Calendar is almost a no-brainer. It works very

well on paper but also in software. One thing is im- Project-Master-Overview-List
portant: Don’t put all your next actions into the
Calendar. Only put things into your Calendar which Another central list in your trusted system is the
are really time-specific. Otherwise you face the prob- Project-Master-Overview-List, which is the pri-
lem that immediately everything is super time criti- mary respository and Review entry point for all you
cal and normally you get lost. If you just put time- active projects. Anything which you Process from
specific next actions into your Calendar you will be your Inbox which you decide is actionable but which
able to differentiate better about the time priority. needs more than 1 step should go in this box first be-
During Review you will first tackle your Calendar fore you work out the detailed Project-Plan.

12
 remember the natural planning sequence and have al-
ways some guidance with you.
So let’s go through the Project-Plan. 1st is the
purpose and principles: In our example, we have a
project with the title “holiday” project has the simple
purpose to relax. Sounds simple, but for larger and
longer projects, it’s good to stay reminded about the
original purpose. 2nd is envision of the project out-
come. In our example we envision to spend 2 weeks in
Japan with our family in the summer. Next is Collect
ideas. Seems in our example the brainstorming lead
to either Tokyo or Osaka. As a next step you Orga-
nize the ideas into reasonable steps, not single actions,
more milestones. For our simple example this will be
booking flights and the hotel. The last and very im-
portant point is, that note done the single actions.
As example, here we use again our plain paper- In GTD it’s not necessary to note done all of them.
based planner. You can see the list shows just the Its good if you can Do it, but then it’s just a list of
description of the projects, not more. As a tip: actions you can later to fill your Next-Action-List.
there are typical verbs which you will find in any- More important is, that in this project planning phase
bodies Project-Master-Overview-List. Examples you define the very next action. Without this next
are: Organize, Prepare, Set-up, Resolve, Implement, action the project will not start. Now when you do
... this, something interesting happens within the GTD
When you Process and add a project into your system. Your very next action will also go into your
Project-Master-Overview-List keep your entry horizontal workflow, in which you run all day. So
short and clear. Later it will be more easy for you to take this very next action and put it into your next-
know what has to be done. Once a project is closed action-list with the appropriate context. By doing so,
make a remark , tag it “done or completed” or just you will ensure that next time when you Review this
strike through. context, you get reminded. And you can choose to ac-
tion this item and you will create a progress in your
Before you finalize a project, you will have to have project. Once this action is done make a remark, tag
an idea how to run it and write it down to release it “done or completed” or just strike through in your
your brain from open-loop memory mode. You Orga- Next-Action-List. It’s clear if this action item is
nize this in your trusted system by creating for each completed your project will get stuck unless you Re-
project a simple project-specific plan. view your project-specific list on regular basis and de-
fine the next action. The whole process starts again.
Project Plan We will see later, that the Weekly-Review in GTD is
the relevant steps where you do exactly this. Back
to the project-specific-list: Once this specific project
is closed just make a remark , tag it “done or com-
pleted” or just strike through and finally get rid of
this sheet by filing in a separate folder.
Let’s move to another list, which is not rele-
vant for your daily GTD workflow with respect
to have actions. Nevertheless this list is repos-
itory and Review entry point for all your inac-
tive ideas/tasks and projects. We talk about the
Someday-Maybe-List.

Someday-Maybe-List
As example, here we use again our plain paper-based
planner. You see in the example the topic “buy a
new car”. The topic is in the Someday-Maybe-List
As example, here we use again our plain paper- and not in the project list, because at the moment it
based planner. In the beginning it helps a lot if you was decided that its not actionable. It is not in the
upgrade your planer and have prepared preprinted trash as you cannot exclude that sooner or later the
sheets which contain headlines for the title and the idea comes back on your agenda. The list helps you
five natural planning steps. Then you don’t need to to remember all those things and during the Review

13
you can decide whether you want to keep it there or will Review your Next-Action-List by using the
activate it as either next action or as a project or just relevant context, like location, energy level and
trash it. The Someday-Maybe-List can become quite time and you will Do them. It does not make
large if do not run this regular Review. sense to Review your Next-Action-List as often
as your Calendar, otherwise you tend to focus
too much on administering your system rather
than using it. But there’s one trick, which helps
you a bit to get some more structure for your
day, no matter it’s a work or a private life, like
vacation day: you may create during morning
out of your Next-Action-List a focus list for
the running day. This list will be the source for
all next actions you pick for today. Picking next
actions for a focus list are a very nice feature
of many GTD software applications. You may
do the same also already in late evening the day
before. Lastly, during Daily-Review routine you
may check the Waiting-For-List. It’s typically
not necessary to do is every day.

• During Weekly-Review you will keep your sys-

tem up-to-date, clean and complete but also re-
Review – that’s keyword now, we are leaving the lists think how you did Process things before and
and come to the review. maybe you decide to reorganize some projects
and next actions. This is necessary as in real
The review life it’s not always possible to keep everything
In GTD the Review is really an important part of perfect in your system. You will trust your sys-
the implementation. I need to reemphasize: Without tem only if it keeps up-to-date with your real
Review you cannot run GTD. It’s a common failure life. Typically the start of the Weekly-Review
when you start GTD to feel that your system, all the is to start with housekeeping. If your failed to
lists and the process behind is bullet proof. Reality Collect and Process stuff, now Do it. A typi-
is, it is not. The fix for this is the Review. cal example is your overflowing physical Inbox.
Also things which are not physical, all the open
loops, which have not been collected and pro-
cessed will be tackled. Again completeness is
key to maintain a trusted system. Next you may
Review again your Calendar and next actions
and check whether the status is still valid. Nor-
mally you will find items which are completed
or which are no longer relevant. Sometimes you
will redefine next actions, like putting it into your
Someday-Maybe-List. Once you are in this list
have a look whether you want to activate items.
Another important section in the Weekly-Review
is reviewing your project lists. Again the main
purpose is to check completeness, update status
and add new items when you forgot to do it dur-
ing your week already. The Weekly-Review takes
some time, but it’s good time spent. It could take
20mins or even 2 hours, depending how much
There are at least two subroutines of Review:
you need to catch up. You will see, that taking
• The Daily-Review, or sub-daily Review is mainly some time for short but frequent maintenance of
the process to keep your attention on the real your system during the week, will help to keep
next action. First Review your Calendar as it the Weekly-Review very short. A good time to
contains besides your appointments all next ac- do the Weekly-Review is Friday afternoon, some
tions which are time critical. You may Review people need really distraction free environment
your Calendar more often, for example in the and do it on Sunday morning with the first cup
morning, before lunch and later during the after- of coffee – decide yourself, but don’t forget to do
noon. But your mileage may vary. If your time it once per week. It’ s a good idea to combine
critical actions are done or addressed, next you both work life and private live to really manage

14
 your 24hours available. As the Weekly-Review you may easily query and find this item. On paper
will restore your trusted system you will really multi-tagging is almost impossible if you want keep
feel good after having accomplished it. your system flexible. In the resources section I will
provide you some links to good GTD software.
The Review can be done on plain paper, where you
will be quite busy to amend and add your notes or on
more or less smart feature rich software basis. That’s Before you decide for software-based GTD tools, be
the nice thing, GTD does not rule you or narrow you ware of the downsides All these high-tech tools de-
in to use special tools. In the next section I want to pend on power supply. If you run out of power your
talk a bit about the various tools and provide some trusted system is no longer available to you. You will
Pros and Cons, helping to make the right choice de- no longer be able to Collect, Process new stuff or Re-
pending on specific needs. view and get the trigger for a next action. So if you de-
cide to run GTD on high-tech tools prepare for power
backups, like power adapters, spare batteries or bat-
3.2 Tools tery packs and load your device frequently. Secondly,
high-tech GTD systems are typically so feature-rich
Let’s start with the high-tech-tools. The most ad- that it takes some time to learn to use it in an efficient
vanced and most versatile tool for GTD is the com- way. If you have an issue with that you better decide
puter, maybe equipped with capturing devices like for paper-based solutions. Even once you feel familiar
scanner, microphone, camera and internet connec- with your software GTD tool, it happens that the lat-
tion. est update feels and looks very different. Some people
like this continuous development some don’t.

So you see high-tech tools look very interesting,

but also have some disadvantage. The market for
software-based GTD tools is growing quite fast. That
brings the problem of making the right choice. It
even leads to the problem that many people with are
new to GTD focus and keep high efforts on finding,
worrying and swapping between all these tools rather
than just running the GTD process. Recently David
Allen has commented this, have a look here:

There are plenty of software suites for almost any

operating system which support the GTD methodol-
ogy. Even being very universal, a desktop PC has the
big disadvantage to be not mobile. Mobility is very
desirable to have a tool for direct capturing of the
stuff if you want to avoid to have a Inbox separated
from your software. Since recent years a very good
solution for that problem are smart phones like the
iPhone, which are actually mobile computers. Com-
puter software can handle your GTD system on the
local drive or in the internet cloud. Internet connec-
tivity offers you the advantage to share your system
or parts of it on different devices, or different con-
tacts. Another big advantage of software-based GTD
tools over paper-based is the capability to manage
your informations like a database. You can easily de-
cide to reassign an inactive project to active or change
contexts for a next action. On paper you will have So let’s have look on the opposite side. Typical low
to delete an item in one list and add it the other tech tools are physical inbox, trash bin, paper and
list. That’s more time consuming. On software GTD pen, a binder system with folder labels. If you decide
systems you have quite often the ability to tag a ac- to go for the low-tech GTD tool-option you typically
tion or project with one or more key words. Later will use a combination of these things.

15
 The pocket mod is just a plain A4 paper folded like
origami but ready for GTD. You can carry it with
you with a small pen in order to capture stuff without
any battery consumption. It’s a nice example, prob-
ably not as smart as an iPhone, but certainly much
cheaper and also unique in it’s simplicity.
That’s all want to share about tools. In the resources
section you will find references to more informations
about tools. Now I want to move on to the chal-
lenges everybody is facing when starting with GTD
and even many people find when running GTD for
quite a while.

3.3 Challenges
A big advantage of this option is that it’s incredible
reliable and robust. These tools are available all the
I’ll just cover two major challenges. I am pretty sure
time and need no power, no booting, so capturing can
that everybody fill face them. So it’s good to be aware
be done instantly. There’s no learning curve and you
and know how to treat it.
can start right from scratch with minimum financial
and time investment. On the other hand, these low-
tech tools have certainly also disadvantages compared
to the modern tools. First paper holds just a very
limited amount of information. If you have done a
complete mindsweep for collecting your stuff and once
you have processed it, there’s a good chance that you
will carry a lot of paper with you. Another very big
issue about handwritten, paper based GTD tools is
the fact that the way how or where you put your stuff
is an important decision. Once you have assigned the
next action to a certain context list, it stays there
unless you take the effort to delete it and reassign
somewhere else. In software this can be done faster.
As this action item will be located in one specific
context and not multiple lists it’s also harder later
to find it. Lastly full text search in a paper based
GTD system is not possible. So low-tech tools are
robust, but the price you pay is the lack of some fancy • If your Inbox get’s out of control, you will feel
features. more and more pressure. This can happen if re-
peatedly you have no time to Process your Inbox.
Nevertheless low-tech can be smart. Here’s a nice
The negative side is, that you might tend to
example:
longer add further stuff there and that’s the start
of the end of your trusted system. There’s just
one solution for that: Make sure you still Collect
everything in your Inbox and you really Process
it in a timely manner, for example target to end
up at zero Inbox every day.
• The other big challenge is to do the Weekly-
Review properly. If you get sloppy there, it’s
very likely that you’ll no longer be able to use
your system for keeping control on your tasks. It
will happen more and more often that things will
pop up which you no longer have been aware of
and you will have to do firefighting.
I think both challenges show that implementing GTD
needs quite some discipline to keep the benefits alive
over time. Even if GTD is good for lazy people it does

16
not mean that GTD is a self-running methodology
which does all the work for you.

As GTD is not free of challenges, it no surprise that

you will face a learning curve during the first few
weeks once you start to implement it.

• For Collect-Step, make sure you really bring the

stuff out of your head, and put it to your dedi-
cated Inbox. Don’t wait long and keep it simple.
Avoid to keep stuff in your brain and avoid to
spread the stuff around at different location and
contexts.

• To keep your Inbox clean, Process the stuff when

David Allen has once made a distinction between it shows up. Don’t do it when it blows up. Again
different 3 groups of people, which all claim having Process does not necessarily mean you do it, it’s
understood to implement GTD. The first group of just to decide how to Organize it for later doing
people did not get it at all, the second group partly when you are available for it.
got it and the last one fully got it and brings it to an
advanced level. • You really add value if you keeping your system
organized by categories which are clear, simple
I am not sure whether there are really discrete groups and meaningful for later use.
or whether there’s more a grey scale in which you will
find yourself in different aspects. Frankly speaking we • It’s best practice to run the Weekly-Review on
also should bear in mind that consulting companies regular basis always with the target to restore
make money in subtle handling the balance between completeness and consistency of your system.
supporting and discouraging people. So as long as you
• Which kind of next action you will choose, should
feel to not belong to the last group you might be will-
not be driven by the latest, loudest call. Strive
ing to pay more for learning/practicing GTD.
to run in balanced choice mode and rather than
My intention here is just to make you aware that GTD emergency scanning.
cannot be learned in one day and you cannot expect
More practical, here are a few tips and tricks:
that it works for you immediately in all areas. So be
patient with yourself and be realistic and pragmatic.
GTD is more a process. Just start it without worrying
too much and then reflect how it works for you and
make some experiments and adjustments for your-
self. Even if you run GTD very much specifically and
tailor-made for yourself, I found common recommen-
dations for best practice and tips/tricks which might
apply for anybody. In the last part of my presentation
I want to share with you some of those.

3.4 Best Practice, Tips Tricks

For every aspect of the horizontal process here’s a

short summary of best practice and the opposite,
what you better don’t do.

17
 • In order to Collect properly, always have some-
thing with you to make a note. Use it immedi-
ately when stuff comes in.
• Get a feeling for how long two minutes really is
and be strict to yourself about the two-minute
rule.
• It’s a good idea to make a Calendar appointment
for the Weekly-Review. It will block time and
remember you to do this essential GTD step.
• Have all tools and supplies within an arms reach.
• Eat the frog first! Even if it sounds strange, make
it to a principle to start the day with those ac-
tions which you don’t like so much. Once you no
longer push these actions to a later point in time
you’ll reduce the risk of procrastination almost
to zero.
That’s all I can share with you in this short session
about practicing GTD.

4 The Promise

Now we come to the end. Before I close, David

Allen gives a promise, how your mind will behave
once you master his GTD system. He calls this “mind
like water”. So your mind will respond on changes,
no matter which – if it’s an urgent new project or the
continued pressure from a family member – it will
respond with appropriate movement and then return
after a while to the status of full relaxation, ready for
the next challenge. I personally like it, this promise
is a nice picture.
I wish you all the best to achieve it.

18
5 Resources

• ISBN: 978-0-14-200028-1

• Amazon paperback: http://tinyurl.com/zo5rt

• Amazon audiobook: http://tinyurl.com/26xq2q8

• David Allen at Google, 46min: http://tinyurl.com/2d7htv3

• Promo GTD, 6min: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDGKtu8qY6A

• David Allen in US TV, 4min: http://tinyurl.com/32bswpy

• David Allen the genesis of GTD, 5min: http://tinyurl.com/38oowzp

• GTD Times: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GTDTimes

• GTD Virtual Study Group: http://tinyurl.com/29sbory

• CBS Money Watch: http://tinyurl.com/24e8lwh

19
• GTD Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/e898w
• Book Summary: http://tinyurl.com/5gl57q
• Minizone Wiki: http://tinyurl.com/6qw83

• David Allen Company Podcast: http://tinyurl.com/2ev5jzd

• Get-It-Done Guy: http://tinyurl.com/2fz23bj
• GTD Vitual study group: http://tinyurl.com/258acr6
• 43 Folders: http://tinyurl.com/28qqefb

• Software Overview – very comprehensive: http://tinyurl.com/2ydu78

• Free Multiplatform Open-Source Software “Thinking Rock”: http://www.trgtd.com.au/
• “Best” Mac Software “Things” for Mac, iPod touch, iPad: http://culturedcode.com/things/

• 26 Reasons not to use GTD: http://tinyurl.com/25unta

• Modification of GTD: http://tinyurl.com/24c5dj5

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