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The GTD method in 5 minutes

The five steps that make Getting Things Done work.

Getting Things Done (GTD) is David Allen's productivity method. The idea is simple: your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. GTD gives you a trusted external system so you can focus on doing.

What is GTDEasy?

GTDEasy is an app designed to help you organize everything you have to do using David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology.

It is not just a to-do list. Its goal is to help you maintain a trusted system where you capture, organize and review all your commitments, so you can free your mind and focus on doing.

Instead of adapting GTD to a generic tool off the shelf, GTDEasy builds the method's concepts and workflows directly into the app.

GTDEasy's sidebar maps directly to these steps: Inbox for capturing, Clarify from the Inbox, Tasks and Projects for organizing, Tasks for reflecting and engaging, and Weekly Review for renewing the system.

The five steps

  1. Capture: collect everything that owns your attention into an inbox.
  2. Clarify: decide what each item is and what its next action is, if any.
  3. Organize: put everything in its place: contexts, projects, delegated items, someday and reference.
  4. Reflect and Engage: pause to review your options before acting, and choose what to do based on your context, time, energy and priority.
  5. Renew through Review: review your system regularly to keep it current, trustworthy and with perspective.
The weekly review is the centerpiece of the Renew step: block 45 to 60 minutes every week to keep your system up to date so you can trust it.

Key vocabulary

  • Inbox: where you capture everything that grabs your attention before clarifying it.
  • Next action: the next concrete, physical, visible action that moves something toward completion.
  • Project: any outcome that requires more than one action to complete.
  • Context: the tool, situation, place or person needed to do the task (calls, errands, computer, etc.).
  • Someday / maybe: incubated tasks or projects you might pick up later.
  • Waiting for: delegated actions or projects you expect a response or result from.
  • Reference material: information you want to keep that requires no action (notes, useful links, etc.).