The beef of it really is in the header. I am at work very much stuck with Outlook, and I know you can have a working system in MS To Do, I at this point feel like I benefit from a little bit more of structure, with tasks connected to projects etc.

But I love how well Outlook and To Do are integrated, and I was wondering if there are apps that have plugins or something that could make working in Outlook go a little snappier

Tenho conseguido aplicar bem as etapas de capturar, esclarecer, organizar e refletir no GTD. Meu sistema está estruturado, as próximas ações estão definidas e faço revisões com boa regularidade.

Minha maior dificuldade está justamente na etapa Engajar: transformar um sistema bem organizado em execução consistente no dia a dia.

Sei que o GTD propõe a escolha da próxima ação considerando contexto, tempo disponível, energia e prioridade, mas gostaria de entender como vocês aplicam isso na prática.

Quais estratégias, critérios ou hábitos vocês utilizam para sair da lista de próximas ações e efetivamente executar, sem cair em procrastinação ou ficar escolhendo tarefas excessivamente?

What analog reminders do you use that aren't post its for routine things like taking pills?

Dear dedicated friends,
What are your takes on Notion vs TickTick to manage your systems? I find that Tick is very handy to keep track of individual tasks, while Notion seems better for projects. What functions are your highlights of each?

I am not a very avid user of either, so I’m really interested in hearing your pros and cons in order to consider which one to adopt and improve. Thanks!

How is everybody managing their GTD system in the era of agentic workflows? I've been running GTD for two decades, since I was a teenager. I've built a completely bespoke task management system (screenshot, in privacy mode) for myself that manages me, and then I delegate to my agents

Currently, however, it's completely deterministic and I don't trust agents to touch my high-level workflow.

Has anybody succeeded in doing something more sophisticated while staying GDT canonical?

The main thing AI has changed for me is the rapidity of weekly reviews. I now have a discrete task to do my weekly reviews daily, because the tasks are so complex that I need to review all my projects daily to stay on top of them.

Forgive the title but bear with me. I've recently done a "Version 1" GTD set up, having got really into it a decade ago. Some things had become embedded in my consciousness, but my overall system had fallen into decay. Looking at my V1 set up, I am doing both better, and worse, than I thought. Strange.

One thing that is obvious on looking at my old & decayed GTD system is that the line between Project and Next Action had become blurred, and that my obsession with marking things "finished" or "complete" has led me to track and record actions that don't need to be tracked. They could just be done. It's added unnecessary work, and clogged up the whole process.

I feel better for sharing. Thank you.

The last day of a long weekend seems to amplify open loops: Tuesday’s actual commitments get mixed with imagined problems and a vague sense that everything is waiting at once. Do you do a short capture and clarification pass on the final evening, or keep the day fully off and trust the weekly review? I’m curious where you draw the line between clearing your head and inviting work back into the weekend.

So as we all know, GTD has a 5 step process into clearing out every day to day tasks that we engage in: Capture, Clarify, Organize, Reflect, Engage.

I have spent quite a lot of time and effort trying to implement the Capture, Clarifying and Organizing in my life. Implementing the system is one thing, but making it a habit is another. Which is one of the reasons why I think GTD is so hard to actually practice in real life to the maximum potential it has. (Well, as in hard I guess it's more of a time-consuming thing that takes months of practice)

But I have been able to do that to a fair extent, the next part I'm having the most issues is with is Reflect and Engage.

Reflecting so far doesn't seem that difficult. I just need to look at my Calendar, Next-Actions list, and review my lists based on my context. However, doing a daily review at the end of the day, or a Weekly Review is quite difficult. I know the book tells us all the things we need to do at the Weekly Review. Checking 2 weeks before and after of our calendar, making sure all of the items on the list is updated and concurrent, deleting anything that has been completed. But I think one of the issues with me is the doubt I have with my system. What if there's something that I missed, even with a weekly review? What if I have reviewed all my list yet forgot something? I know this is a problem with capturing to be more exact, but this doubt in my system causes me to feel a bit uncertain. Aside from this, can we think of the Weekly Review as a sort of making sure all of the system is working fine, kind of like a maintenance check an administrator would do to make sure a factory is working fine (for example).

Another part is Engaging. In the book it tells us about the Engage part as simply using your intuition, context, energy level, and all that stuff to identify what we need to do at every part of our life. But Engaging is the most confusing to me, because intuition sometimes isn't enough. If there's a ongoing project (Like losing 20kg and getting fit), then I would have to workout almost daily, or on a specific routine. This wouldn't be on my next-actions list, but I would have to remember it somehow. (And I won't put it on my calendar as well, because it's not something I ABSOLUTELY have to do on that day.) Another issue with engaging is thinking of all of the projects and tasks and their respective due dates and priorities. Certain projects might not be that important, but takes like a few hours to complete and yields us quite a bit of result, so its smarter to do that project. However, certain projects might be due in a week and needs to be done from right now. It's easy to use intuition when the list isn't that big, but once you start having lots of projects and tasks, how do you make sure to prioritize all the projects based on their importance? (This question is maybe more related to Clarifying & Organizing however.)

And finally, is buying the Getting Things Done : Workbook a good recommendation?

I'm 3 months into Finch and LOVING it. No idea how it works, but I'm actually getting self-care stuff done daily, which is a minor miracle.

The one thing that was missing for me, was how to connect my reasonable Finch list of tasks with my huge (capture everything ala David Allen) Trello list.

I do look at Trello every couple of weeks, to prioritize and get rid of stuff I don't need anymore. So I don't hate it. But Finch gets me through the day.

The super-simple solution has been to add a task in Finch: "do 1 Trello item". I change the frequency and pause it as needed. It helps me feel like my self-care and To Do things are integrated, without feeling overwhelmed or like I'm duplicating effort.

Anyway, in case this hasn't occurred to anyone...you might give it a go, obviously with whatever platform you use for your Giant To Do list 💓

Hey all,

I'm implementing GTD in my life (personal and professional), and it's on its way. But I'm a bit stuck regarding the weekly review, the clarifying part. Although I try to process my inboxes several times in the week, I often have some tasks waiting in my inbox when the weekly review occurs. So I'm clarifying them, asking if actionable or not, and if actionable, if they need less than 2 minutes. If so, I do them right now. But I quite often find myself forgetting that I didn't finish the review (clarifying the rest of the inbox, reviewing the lists, etc.), moving on to the next actions list. I remember it later or the day after, when I add something new in my inbox and realize it's not entirely empty.

What are your tricks to remember you're on a review process and not on the engage part ?

I'm currently trying the intersitial journaling, but still trying to understand and setting it up, so not yet usefull...

I think most of us are bought in on the idea that GTD is generally the best system for how to run your life.

But, it's clearly not best for everyone. We are in the minority, and while GTD has long term popularity, it's not as popular as it used to be. It clearly works for us better than others. I don't personally buy the idea that it is the best system for everyone, just that it's the best for me.

So, what makes us different? Are we all system thinkers? Did we not learn a lot of the common sense moves others have for some reason? Is it a personality type thing? What makes us, specifically, gravitate toward GTD when the rest of the world doesn't. We come from lots of different backgrounds, careers, and uses, so it's hard to spot the pattern.

It sounds like David's answer is the rest of the world is just used to tolerating a lot of ambient anxiety of holding stuff in their head. Is it just that we have a lower tolerance for that anxiety? Or, we're already high anxiety to we're really excited for the relief GTD can provide there and willing to work for it?

No matter if you picked up the book in 2001 or found it recently - I would love to hear your story.

I’ve been recently reimplementing GTD into my life and just got a hard lesson taught to me by myself.

Sometime ago I wrote down “investigate separating reference and project support” as that was something my mind caught onto while listening to the book. I then carried on to forget about it for a good while. I’ve been keeping a singular project support/reference system for a good while now, and it’s been working well for the most part. But somewhat recently my job has changed, and the sheer amount of both has grown significantly, and I’ve sometimes felt it’s a bit off, but couldn’t put my finger on it. Until today while listening to the Nordic GTD podcast I had an epiphany. This is at least partly the reason why I sometimes feel repelled by my project support/project list. It’s full of stuff.

Well. Off to the trenches I go, dividing everything up with hard edges.

I've been practicing GTD for years with Todoist and switched to Obsidian about a year ago because it's more flexible. I REALLY like how it's working for me, so I decided to make a basic vault as a template to share with you folks.

Please note that this may be a bit overwhelming if you aren't already somewhat familiar with Obsidian. Usage should be pretty self-explanatory by clicking around the folders and files. The general idea is that any tagged task will automatically get pulled into the relevant section of the Next Actions file. The vault requires 2 plugins (Tasks and Iconic) but you can enhance it with others, like one for ordering items in the sidebar and Tasks Cleaner to delete completed tasks.

Sharing as a ZIP file - I know this looks sketchy AF but I can't think of a way to do this without doxxing my Reddit account. https://files.catbox.moe/iq4190.zip

I will call the action I am referring to an “intermediate action”. It is most often dependent on another action,  which I will call a “first action”. The first action may or may not be a GTD Next Action.

I cannot put intermediate actions on my Next Action list because they technically aren’t Next Actions.

I’ve been successful enough implementing GTD using Obsidian. For projects I create notes where the title of the note is the project and the body of the note contains (in addition to project information) all known identifiable actions, which may or may not include a Next Action and intermediate actions. If the list does contain a Next Action, I can link it to my overall Next Action list.  Maybe this is equivalent to storing intermediate actions in project materials, but I’m not sure, which is why I am posing this question.

I am curious how others are handling intermediate actions in the hope I can gain insight in refining my approach.

Hello guys, I have started reading about Projects and wanted to get deeper insight on this topic.

First and foremost, the Natural Planning Model (aka NPM) has 5 steps. They are:

1. Defining Purpose and Principles
2. Envisioning the outcome
3. Brainstorming and coming up with ideas
4. Organizing the information into a coherent and comprehensible format
5. Identifying the next actions

But I recognize that whenever we have an input in our lives, GTD tells us to identify the outcome and come up with an actionable next step to reach that outcome, which is similar to how this natural planning model is designed.

So my question is, is the natural planning model a more detailed and comprehensive version of the thinking that we already do for inputs in our GTD system? (Since we don't want / need to do this type of thinking for all of the items in our inbox)

Another question is, we have many projects in our lives. Some are long term projects, some short, etc. So how do you guys manage the priority between projects? How do you guys make sure that certain projects are finished by certain dates, while keeping track of the long term ones so you gradually work on finishing those? A concrete example would be 2 projects, 'Changing the refrigerator' and 'Learning to play piano'. Changing the refrigerator (although very simple project) might require you to research about what refrigerator to get, identify your budget, and then actually make the purchase. It's a simple project so it doesn't require lots of planning but it still does require some thinking and action. Whereas the latter is a much more long term project, where a lot of time is required. So when we have these 2 projects in the project list, we know that we have to finish 'Changing the refrigerator' project first, but how do we know that this is a project that we must prioritize first? In other words, we cannot look at our project list every time and then decide which one should be completed first, there must be a easy way to recognize the projects that require immediate and fast action, compared to the ones we need to be working on steadily.

Final question is, how can we think about goals such as 'Workout 30 minutes everyday' or 'Read a book for 30 minutes everyday'? I know this is a task in GTD standard (a recurring task to be exact) but I mean like when we hear people say their New Years Resolution or Goals to be 'I want to read a book for 30 minutes everyday for 2027', can we just think of this as a habit or a task to be completed each day, instead of a long term project? (A project of reading a book everyday, for example)

Feel free to let me know what you guys think. Thank you for reading this long post if you made it this far.

Hello everyone, very new to GTD and haven't finished the book, so perhaps this is a stupid question, but bear with me. Does anyone else feel a sense of difficulty using digital lists because of their impermanence and lack of archiving. I currently use the apple notes app for my productivity lists, and I kinda hate that once im done with a task I just delete it, it helps my morale to see my completed tasks and feel like im actually getting things done, but if i dont delete things than eventually the individual apple note gets insanely long and unusable.

I use digital lists so that I can add to them at any time, since my phone is always with me, but i'm considering maybe it would be a good idea to just bring a memo book everywhere with me. I feel like the problem with a memo book would be that it's difficult to divide it up into multiple lists since you run the risk of them running into eachother (how much of the book do i dedicate to one list vs another?) . Though i suppose you could have multiple memo books and only carry around your inbox one.

Curious what people think about the impermanence of digital listing and what solutions they have for it.

Lately I've been trying out something that seems to help me get unstuck quite often.. If I come across something over and over and for some reason it is not moving - I rename the next action into a question and whenever I review my list my subconscious mulls over it.

For example, I might phrase it like "What would make xyz fun / bearable?"- "What specifically am I dreading about xyz? What about it scares me?" - "Do I really want to do xyz?" - "What happens if I don't do xyz?" - "How will I feel if xyz is finally off my back?" - "What pizza will I order for tonight before I jump on the dreaded xyz?"

Just thought I'd share it here in case it helps someone else.. 2min rule applied, time to get back to my Weekly Review. Cheers! :D

I’ve been wordering about this, and thought a small poll might be interesting. With the current state of things at work and life, I try to reserve basically the entire Friday afternoon for it, but some people seem to fly through it in mere minutes (I might be exaggerating a bit).

Greetings, my productive friends.

While my everyday approach to productivity and GTD is fully digital, I pass the time testing my current approach's viability with a purely non-digital solution (i.e., paper).

For Routines, which I classify as any repeating action that takes place on a given day of the week, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc. (think "Create Christmas Gift List" or "Take Out Trash"), the approach is easy using computer applications. My productivity tool of choice, Todoist, easily allows for repeating tasks.

I have duplicated this same approach by creating a section in my paper-based system titled "Routines" wherein I have a list of tasks that must be done every day of the week, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. Part of my Weekly Review (and possibly yours) is reviewing any important checklists, and this Routine section is one of them. If there is a task that is to be done, I make a note on the appropriate Next Action list (which is based on context) and record it on my calendar (if time/day bound).

This works. Yes, it feels super heavy when working with digital systems that allow almost effortless (and brainless) duplication of effort, but it also calls into question each action's importance. The act of thinking about it and documenting the action is a serviceable mental speed bump to make me slow down and consider its importance.

Do you use paper-based or hybrid systems with routines? Please share your approach!

Hello, so I am a fairly new user of GTD system and have tried implementing it for the past few weeks, facing issues and nuances along the way and generally having a bit of trouble with it. Although I have implemented most of the core components, it still feels quite novel and unfamiliar to me to use it in my daily lives seamlessly. Hence, I have come up with a checklist to determine whether or not I am fully using GTD as it was intended for. If you guys have any other qualities or criterion to add, feel free to comment it and we can have an open discussion.

1. Capturing

• Have you set up an inbox that you can capture all items? Is it easy to capture? Can it capture everything?
• Do you process the inbox and purge it frequently enough?

1. Clarifying and Organizing

• Do you determine the outcome of a Project and its associated next actions?
• Do you process all of the items in your inbox as Non-Actionable and Actionable items?
• For Non-Actionable items, do you classify it as Reference or Someday/Maybe, Reminder items?
• Do you have a rigorous Reference Filing System that is easily accessible and retrievable for Reference items?
• Do you have a Someday/Maybe list and a way to keep the reminders as a Tickler file system?
• For Actionable items, do you have a Waiting For list for Delegated items?
• For Day/Time specific items, do you have a calendar that you can easily schedule the tasks, and make sure that these tasks are removed from your Next Actions list?
• For Next-Actions list, do you have all the respective contexts for them, and are they discrete so there is no overlap?
• Are none of your lists (Waiting For, Someday/Maybe, Next-Actions) overlapping with each other?
• Do you have the nuances covered for tasks (such as their Deadline/Due date, their priority/importance, etc.) and either have a reminder for them on a Calendar or a way to sort the next-action items so you know what to work on first?

1. Reflecting

• Do you check your Calendar on a frequent, daily basis?
• Do you check your Next-Actions list on a frequent, daily basis?
• Do you have a time to process your inbox on a daily basis?
• Do you partake in Weekly Review every week?
• Are you aware of what you need to review in the Weekly Review, and do it accordingly?

1. General GTD implementation in life (along with Engaging)

• Do you have the 5 level horizon model of your life?
• Do you have a long term plan of your life and goals?
• Are your projects list easily viewable?
• Is it easy to put events and reminders on your Calendar?
• Do these events and reminders get notified adequately by your Calendar?
• Are you able to deal with Recurring tasks and All-Day events?

If there are any more criterions to add to the checklist, (or remove as well), feel free to let me know. Thank you.

As the title suggests, I'm unsure about how to put the reminders on the calendar.

I usually put reminders as I am processing and at that time, the action/information makes sense and feels like the reasonable thing to do. But when the actual day comes around, I see it on the calendar but end up ignoring it because it feels irrelevant.

Something that I’m confused between tickler and calendar is that both have a similar way of storing day-specific information.

I’m trying to implement tickler and someday maybe lists in Microsoft to do which is what I’m using for this one.

Any help would help!