Getting Things Done (GTD), is a productivity methodology designed by David Allen. GTD increases your productivity by taking things out of your mind and turning them into a reliable system you can trust. This frees up your mind to work on the task at hand, rather than trying to remember a large number of things at once. You will feel more relaxed and more productive at the same time.

In particular, a user-friendly part of GTD (which I describe later), it only takes 2

minutes to learn, but may increase

its efficiency by phonemic levels.

GTD has many parts. An important component is the following action lists, which

Replace to-do lists in other methodologies.

David Allen realized that in today’s dynamic society, to-do lists, daily plans, etc., often

They do not work. If everything and everyone around you goes 100% according to plan, they can

It works, but how often does everything go according to plan? A meeting lasts longer

than expected, the report you need is not ready yet, or the computer network

for an hour, and the whole day can spiral out of control.

David Allen’s solution to this was the following action lists. Instead of planning the day

Based on projects, it lists the next action items for the tasks you need to complete. Your

Record these next actions in separate lists based on context.

This is best shown with an example …

Suppose you have the following to-do list:

• Investigation into Buying a New Palm Pilot
• Host the next marketing meeting
• car service
• Buy a new Apple Mac
• Unsubscribe from the magazine
• Prepare for the department meeting

The first step in GTD is to change the list to be based on the following physical action to

each project:

• Search online to find different potential Palm Pilots to buy
• Call John to set up the next marketing meeting
• Look in your car manual to find a qualified car mechanic.
• Apple reseller by phone and buy a new Apple Mac
• Phone and unsubscribe from the magazine
• Print the financial report of the department meeting

By listing the following specific physical action, it is much easier to continue with

The projects. You can procrastinate in “Prepare for department meeting”, but

“Printing the financial report for the department meeting” seems much easier

something you need to address and are therefore MUCH more likely to do so. Alone

This idea alone will increase your productivity dramatically! It seems simple, but

it’s actually quite deep, because you focus your mind on ACTION.

The next step to get things done is to move these next actions to different

Context-based lists:

@Phone (Things I can do when I’m on a phone):

• Call John to set up the next marketing meeting
• Phone and unsubscribe from the magazine
• Apple reseller by phone and buy a new Apple Mac

@Computer:

• Search online to find different potential Palm Pilots to buy
• Print the financial report of the department meeting

@Home:

• Look in your car manual to find a qualified car mechanic.

Why have separate lists? The main benefit is that it allows you to see the tasks that are

only suitable for where you are at the moment. If you are at work, you are not

distracted by the tasks that are on the @Home list, and if you are at home,

they are not distracted by work tasks. The actual GTD contexts you use are up to the task

you. The standards recommended by David Allen are generally based on

location (like the ones above), but you can use whatever works best for you.

Another benefit of separating lists into contexts is that it is easy to

Quickly change what you’re working on if something goes wrong. Suppose you are in

in the middle of an online investigation, and the computer network goes down. While

other people may decide it’s time for coffee, you can just look at yourself

phone list and start tackling some of @Phone’s tasks instead.

Dividing your to-do lists into context-specific next-action lists may seem like a lot

more work than a standard to-do list, but it’s not really. It just takes a little longer

plan, but the increased productivity more than makes up for it.

The following action lists are a small part of the Getting Things Done methodology. They

are useful by themselves, but their power is multiplied when used with the rest of

The David Allen system. GTD is incredibly effective and I encourage you to give it a try.

yourself, reading David Allen’s book (“Getting Things Done: The Art Of

Stress-free productivity “), or by trying some GTD software.