Executive Summary:
David Allen’s Getting Things Done introduces a powerful productivity system designed to help individuals capture, clarify, and organize tasks, leading to a more efficient and stress-free approach to work and life. The GTD method emphasizes the importance of externalizing tasks to free up mental space. In a nutshell, it promotes better focus and decision-making.
Target Audience
1. Professionals: Those seeking to improve their time management and productivity in the workplace.
2. Students: Individuals looking to effectively manage academic workload and personal tasks.
3. Entrepreneurs and Business Owners: People who juggle multiple responsibilities and need a system to stay organized and on track.
Three of the Most Practical Takeaways:
1. Capture Everything: Consistently externalize tasks and ideas into a trusted system to avoid mental clutter.
2. Clarify Next Actions: Break down projects into actionable steps to maintain momentum and prevent overwhelm.
3. Regular Reviews: Weekly reviews ensure that your system stays up-to-date and aligned with your goals.
Introduction to David Allen:
David Allen is a productivity consultant and the creator of the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. With decades of experience in coaching and consulting, Allen has become a leading authority on personal and organizational productivity. I highly recommend his books since it is so informational and rich in insights. It also speak to my experience directly with no fluff.
Related Books:
1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
2. Deep Work by Cal Newport
3. Atomic Habits by James Clear
4. The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
“Getting Things Done” by David Allen - Chapter Summary
1. The Art of Getting Things Done
• Introduction to the GTD methodology, emphasizing the importance of clearing your mind by offloading tasks into an external system. Allen points out that productivity increases when mental clutter is minimized.
2. Getting Control of Your Life: The Five Stages of Mastering Workflow
• Describes the five steps to control workflow: Capture, Clarify, Organize, Reflect, and Engage. These stages help in processing tasks systematically, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.
3. Getting Projects Creatively Underway: The Five Phases of Project Planning
• Discusses how to manage projects by breaking them down into smaller, actionable tasks. The five phases include defining purpose, envisioning outcomes, brainstorming, organizing, and identifying next actions.
4. Getting Started: Setting Up the Time, Space, and Tools
• Emphasizes the importance of a dedicated workspace and the right tools to implement GTD. This chapter covers organizing your environment, both physically and digitally, to support your productivity.
5. Collection: Corralling Your “Stuff”
• Focuses on capturing everything that requires attention. This involves gathering all physical and mental “stuff” into a trusted system, ensuring that nothing is overlooked.
6. Processing: Getting “In” to Empty
• Explains how to process the collected items by deciding the next action for each. The goal is to clear your inboxes, leaving no task or item unaddressed.
7. Organizing: Setting Up the Right Buckets
• Discusses organizing tasks into categories such as Projects, Next Actions, and Waiting For. Proper categorization ensures that tasks are easy to access and manage when needed.
8. Reviewing: Keeping Your System Functional
• Stresses the importance of regularly reviewing your system. This includes weekly reviews to keep the system current, check progress, and plan ahead.
9. Doing: Making the Best Action Choices
• Covers decision-making processes for task execution. Allen introduces the “Four-Criteria Model,” including context, time available, energy available, and priority, to help choose the best next action.
10. Getting Projects Under Control
• Offers strategies for managing and completing larger projects. Emphasizes breaking projects down into manageable tasks and ensuring each has a clear next action.
11. The Power of the Collection Habit
• Reinforces the importance of habitually collecting all tasks and ideas to ensure nothing is missed, which supports long-term productivity and stress reduction.
12. The Power of the Next-Action Decision
• Highlights the effectiveness of consistently deciding the next action on tasks and projects. This habit prevents procrastination and keeps momentum going.
13. The Path of GTD Mastery
• Concludes the book by outlining how to achieve mastery in GTD. This involves integrating the GTD principles into daily life until they become second nature, leading to sustained productivity and clarity.
In essence, “Getting Things Done” by David Allen is a comprehensive guide to managing tasks, projects, and responsibilities efficiently. Each chapter builds on the previous one, forming a cohesive system that helps individuals gain control over their work and life. The key principles—capture everything, clarify tasks, organize effectively, reflect regularly, and engage appropriately—are designed to optimize productivity while reducing stress.
Glossory
Clarity in GTD means: deciding the meaning of something that emerged from the capture phase. This includes determining whether it is something that requires immediate action, if it should be used as a reference, or if it should be discarded (David Allen defines trash as anything that has no further value). It may also be something to put on hold for a later review or archiving.
Appropriate engagement: This refers to adequately acknowledging the status of something in order to release its hold on one’s attention.
Incubate: Allow something to remain within a system without committing to immediate action, but set it to be reassessed later. Use reminder systems like Someday/Maybe lists, tickler files, or calendar items.
Natural Planning Model: The instinctual five-stage thought process that our minds follow when executing any desired outcome.
Open Loop: Anything considered unfinished that demands attention.
Organized: Where something is placed in a system based on what it means to you.
Orientation Maps: Custom lists or reference documents that support appropriate engagement with one’s circumstances, such as meeting agendas, calendars, action items, and project lists.
Outcome: A final, optimal result at any level of task completion.
Perspective: Along with control, one of the two key elements of self- and organizational management.
Control: Having something stable and under control rather than attempting to manipulate it.
Predefined Work: These are pre-decided actions and projects listed in a set of reminders, accessible for review and evaluation against unplanned or unexpected options.
Process: To decide what a captured or collected item means, like interpreting its deeper meanings and determining what you intend to do with it.
Productive experience: An optimal state of performance and experience, where one is fully engaged and efficiently achieving goals.
Productivity ecosystem: Encompasses all meaningful information, relationships, and inputs that might trigger attention and direct focus.
Project support: Includes any collateral materials and relevant information connected to a project, such as project plans and reference points. This can be organized by project, theme, or topic.
Reflection: The process of assessing the content of any horizon or category of items from a broader perspective.
Review: The analysis of appropriate maps on a consistent basis or as needed for clarity and focus.
Stuff: Refers to undecided or unorganized items, which can be either physical or psychological.
Threefold nature of work: The categories of work we engage in as we go through our day:
1. Work that has been previously defined (pre-decided actions).
2. Unplanned activities.
3. Defining our work (processing inputs).
Tickler file: A suspense file that can be triggered at a certain time point, such as a calendar item. Also known as projects put on hold, according to Tiago Forte.
Vertical thinking: The creation and examination of multiple levels of content within a particular sphere, such as backward planning with next actions in mind.
Weird time: Small, spontaneous windows of time that appear throughout the day. During these moments, use reminders and tasks to stay productive.
Workflow: A sequence of activities that takes inputs and commitments from start to finish.
Waiting for: Pending receipt of information or actions from others.
Weekly review: A regrouping at an operational level, conducted once per week, to ensure everything is on track.
Deep Dive:
As your professional life develops, you will get ideas at different times, so it’s important to capture them in a safe place all at once. Don’t let your ideas linger in dusty corners where they might be forgotten.
Clarifying in creating lists and moving on to the next stage
When you complete a to-do list, ask yourself what these tasks really mean. For example, what specific attention do you need to put on your bank and the credit line?
And what exactly do you need to do? When sorting through the items in your basket, ask if it’s something actionable and if it’s something you need to do something about.
If the answer is no, it might go to the trash, be incubated for later, or be used as a reference.
If the answer is yes, ask what the next action is. Next question: what is the project or project plan? By doing so, you keep a placeholder for things you can continue to work on. A project is defined as an outcome that requires more than one action.
Clarify: Capture what is pulling your attention. Put specific attention on discovery. Identify what it means to move to the next stage.
Organize by context, which is very useful. For example:
• Office tasks
• Phone calls
• Computer work
• Errands
• Agendas
In Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit, he discusses the concept of a keystone habit, such as emptying out your inbox and conducting a weekly review.
You have to teach individuals the GTD (Getting Things Done) method, but the culture can support the organization, mindset and behaviors.
Implement GTD approach
Start by identifying what is being accomplished by what time.
Make sure no conversation ends without determining what the next action is—whether it’s yours or mine. And people will actually start to track this. Change the culture and make that happen.
Get Back on Track
Stop. Sit down. Empty your mind. Make decisions about the next actions.
Follow this routine. If you fall off track, follow this process again, and you’ll easily identify where you lost your way.
Deciding on the necessary allocation of resources to make something happen as soon as the outcome has been clarified will produce more results with less effort.
In knowledge work, productivity comes from operational responsiveness. Clarifying actions on the front end improves the image of what’s happening in the background.
Using the next-action approach can dramatically increase your ability to make things happen, leading to a rise in self-esteem and a more constructive outlook on life.
Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
—Saint Francis of Assisi
Getting Things Flow Daily vs Getting Things Afloat
This requires daily behavior to identify incomplete tasks and the steps needed to complete them. Getting things moving before external pressures and internal stress build up fosters a sense of self-worth that will spread to other areas of your life.
The next action presupposes that change is possible and helps combat the victim mentality.
When people complain, they are assuming things could be better than they currently are. Use the next action question to make it urgent and to bring about that change. Empowering yourself in this way will increase the light in your eyes.
This creates a virtuous circle of making things happen, providing positive reinforcement. As Bernard Shaw said, “Don’t blame circumstances for what they are. Create the situation yourself if you can’t find it.”
David Allen tried to answer the following question to apply his principle: Does it help to get things done? If so, how do we utilize it in managing the work of our lives? (Tiago Forte spends time addressing this in his book.) Can we use this information in ways that allow us to produce what we want to happen with less effort?
Mastering GTD approach in life
Your life and work are composed of outcomes and actions that you give consciously or unconsciously. Recognizing, developing, and mastering the art of getting things done opens up opportunities for growth. Without challenges, there’s no room for growth. Create deep alignment between operational behavior and the things life throws at you.
1: The Magic of Mastering the Mundane
While working as a consultant, the author found it engaging to resolve details, process unaddressed email threads, and empty drawers, sometimes working for hours. Mastering mundane tasks can provide a sense of accomplishment and clear the way for more significant achievements.
2: Manage Outcomes on Multiple Levels
Tie details like phone numbers, appointments, and grocery lists to higher-level purposes, values, and visions. Focus on cornerstone questions like:
• What does this mean to me?
• What do I want to be true about it?
• What is the next step required to make that happen?
This kind of thinking and these tools will serve you well.
3: Deploy Natural Planning
Compared to clarifying, organizing, reflecting, and engaging in a coherent way, Natural Planning produces relaxed, focused, and controlled results in more specific areas. It involves modulating ideas and types of information, putting them in sequence and priority, and developing them by taking real next actions. Executives, like the author’s clients, use this method to frame meetings and discussions.
4: Shifting to a Positive Organizational Culture
Cultivating a positive organizational culture involves consistent application of the principles of getting things done. By shifting the culture, individuals start to track their actions and ensure no conversation ends without clarifying the next steps. This transformation can make a significant difference in how work is approached and completed across the organization.
Three steps of of "next action approach"
1: Focus and Fast Track
Fast-tracking may mean slowing down and taking care of yourself. The bottom line is to become more conscious, more focused, and more capable of implementing the changes and results you want, whatever they may be. When you write down your goals, define real projects around them, and ensure that the best actions are continuously decided upon and followed through until completion.
2: Apply Outcome Thinking
Applying outcome thinking systematically is powerful. Train yourself to identify the real results you want and the projects you need to define to achieve those results. Only when you know the right outcomes you’re after, like improving your financial situation or spending more time on self-improvement, can you truly make progress. Engage your intention by paying attention and ensuring that everything incomplete in your experience is connected to “completion.”
Ask yourself:
• What does this mean to me?
• Why is it here?
• What do I want to have be true about this?
Once you’ve identified the needed change, determine the gap between where you are and where you want to be, how to bridge that gap, and what resources you need to allocate to make it happen. This is a more specific question derived from asking, “What is the next action?” The challenge is to continuously apply these two essential elements: defining what “done” means and what “doing” looks like.
5 Horizons of Focus
1. Next Actions: Deal with tasks at the physical, visible level of action, such as emails, phone calls, conversations, errands, and meetings.
2. Projects: This involves managing ongoing activities that require more than one action step.
3. Areas of Focus and Accountability: These are categories like personal health, professional responsibilities, or financial stability that need consistent attention.
4. Goals and Objectives: These are mid- to long-term outcomes to accomplish, such as launching a new service or achieving a significant milestone.
5. Vision: The long-term desired outcomes or ideal scenarios. Vision provides a positive image of the future that makes day-to-day activities seem meaningful rather than tedious.
6. Purpose and Principles: The ultimate intentions and values driving your actions. For example, transforming the lives of 500 entrepreneurs by helping them acquire clients aligns with a larger purpose of serving the startup community.
The practice is simple yet challenging to maintain consistently, especially when distractions are constantly vying for your attention. The process involves writing something down, deciding on the next step to move it forward, recording that reminder on a list, and reviewing the list regularly.
A healthy skepticism is often the best approach to derive value from what’s being presented. Challenge the ideas, and if possible, prove them wrong. This critical engagement is key to truly understanding the concepts.
Many people need to apply what they know in a more timely, complete, and systematic way to stay on top of their tasks rather than getting overwhelmed by them.
All the methods proposed are based on three key objectives:
1. Capture: Collect all the things that might need to get done or that have some utility for you—now, later, or someday—and store them in a logical, trusted system outside of your mind.
2. Clarify: Direct yourself to make decisions about all the inputs you allow into your life, so you always have a working stock of next actions that you can implement or renegotiate at any moment.
3. Curate and Coordinate: Manage and align all the content by recognizing the multiple levels of commitment you have with yourself and others at any point in time.
Through the internet, we have infinite data to do things better, but the lack of clear boundaries can create more work for everyone.
We are more connected than ever, anytime and anywhere, but we are not yet equipped to handle the overwhelming number of internal and external commitments this brings.
Many well-intentioned value systems fail to provide order, meaning, and direction to our work for three reasons:
1. Distraction: Day-to-day and hour-to-hour commitments often prevent us from appropriately focusing on higher-level goals.
2. Inefficiency: Inefficient personal organization systems create significant subconscious resistance to undertaking larger projects and goals, which are not managed well.
3. Raising Standards: When loftier values are clarified, they raise our standards, making us more aware of the changes needed, which can create more work to be done.
Protip: Two minutes of focused thinking can make a huge difference.
Manage commitments
Anything that does not belong to where it is, or the way it is, becomes an open loop, which will consume your attention if it’s not managed properly.
The solution: First, identify what each item means to you and determine how to move forward with it. This might seem like a simple process, but most people don’t do it consistently.
Managing commitments requires:
1. Capturing Open Loops: Any open loops in your mind make it less clear, so they must be kept in a trusted system outside your mind—what’s called a collection tool—that you know you will regularly revisit and sort through.
2. Clarifying Commitments: Clarify what your commitment is by deciding what needs to be done to make progress toward fulfilling it.
3. Organizing Reminders: Once you’ve decided on all the necessary actions, keep reminders of them organized in a system you review regularly.
To test this model, write down the project or situation that is most on your mind right now—something that bugs you, interests you, or consumes a significant portion of your conscious attention.
Once identified, write down the “Definition of Done” (DoD)—a clear and successful outcome.
After that, write down a sequence of actions required to move the situation forward.
Reflect on what changed—likely, the right amount of thinking solidified your commitment to a specific pressure or opportunity.
Structure your thinking toward an outcome and an action plan that doesn’t require conscious effort to maintain.
Define the desired outcome and next actions
Rule your mind or it will rule you
—Horace
Many of our daily activities are already defined. People rarely think structurally to define the desired outcomes and the necessary next actions. However, this is one of the most effective ways to make wishes a reality.
Something constantly bugs your mind because:
1. You haven’t clarified what the intended outcome is;
2. You haven’t determined what the next physical action step is;
3. You haven’t put reminders of the outcome into a system you trust.
Your mind is less intelligent than you think.
Transform all the stuff we’re attracted to and accumulate into a clear inventory of meaningful actions, projects, and useful information. These to-do list items need to translate into clear outcomes and actions.
Many things need to be organized in order to get real payoff, and people tend to be unaware of that.
Steve said: If you don’t view it or initiate it, how can you be aware of its importance?
Things often get stuck because we haven’t decided what doing looks like and how it happens.
GTD (Getting Things Done) requires two components: what “done” means (outcome) and what “doing” looks like (action).
A bottom-up approach is more effective for most people who are too obsessed with day-to-day tasks, without the need to worry about the bigger picture.
Be more conscious and in control of what’s in your inbox and in your mind, and incorporate those practices into a trusted system. It helps with maintaining this status, bringing focus and creative confidence.
Preserve the mental resouces
Many executives David worked with spend their days dealing with mundane tasks and their evenings brainstorming ideas and visions for the company and its future.
There is no reason to ever have the same thought twice.
The author sees this as a waste of creative energy and a source of frustration and stress.
Any would, could, or should commitment held in the psyche creates irrational and unresolvable pressure, 24/7.
Your system holds all the incomplete, undecided, and unorganized stuff. Think of it like the RAM on a PC.
Your conscious mind is a focusing tool. Incomplete items stored in this mental space limit your ability to think about more than two or three things at a time.
Our mental processes are hampered by the burden on the mind to keep track of things we are committed to finishing without a trusted plan or system in place to handle them.
Integrate the five-step process.
Don’t be a slave to your mind. Many people are trapped by keeping their commitments inside their minds. Ensure that the “shoulds,” “coulds,” “might-want-tos,” and “ought-tos” generated in your mind are fewer than those recorded.
Many people collect tasks but do not clarify them. They create random lists everywhere, and these lists themselves become a source of stress, doing more harm than the stress they were meant to relieve.
Because they don’t effectively organize the results, they make decisions about things in the moment but lose the value of prior thinking. They can’t make these decisions available in the appropriate context in a trusted format that they can use.
You need to reflect on the contents consistently to keep them functional. Regularly review your calendars to stay current with upcoming events and deadlines, and consistently avoid last-minute craziness.
Ask yourself: What do I need to see, and in what form, to get it off my mind?
Before engaging, ensure that the inputs are meaningful rather than driven by the latest and loudest demands, and based on trust instead of hope. People often have a nagging sense that they are not working on what they should be. For those critical actions, they miss out on the timeless sense of meaningful work that lays a foundation for stress-free productivity.
Don’t just list the most important things. Instead, list many practical tasks, like remembering your assistant’s birthday. The open loop will take up mental energy and prevent you from having an effective and clear focus on what is truly important.
How to make and use a project list?
Initially, make a project list in a simple form with either a master list or separate sheets of paper for each one.
From tree hugging to forest management, use a complete and current projects list.
A project list is not designed to hold plans or details. It’s just an index of open loops. Use it or glance at it for a sense of control. Also, be aware of the horizon represented there, extending your confidence with your control and focus into a longer reach of time.
Use it to generate calendar entries, action lists, or address unexpected tasks that come up, and use these as your tactical and immediate focus.
Steve: I just use a project list to cross off items.
Use it for weekly reviews. Ensure action steps are defined for all projects, and nothing gets overlooked.
Also, know that you have an inventory available to you whenever it seems advisable to evaluate workloads.
To complete a project list, you are able to capture subtle things that pull and push at your consciousness. You can find more small things categorizable for this, like attending to parents or finding a good tailor (since it takes more than one step according to GTD by David Allen). It’s a relief of internal pressure.
Complete those to stay current and clear for yourself.
For it can be:
• Critical for control and focus.
• Alleviates subtle tensions.
• Forms the core of the weekly review.
• Facilitates relationship management.
Park the to-dos
You can park those to-dos that can be done anywhere using mobile devices, utilizing a digital context list or anywhere that suits you.
I’m considering dividing the “anywhere” tasks from the “at home” tasks, so I can make use of that “anywhere” time during commutes.
For errands, it makes sense to group them together in one place, reminding yourself of all the things you need to do while you’re out and about.
Being able to look at the list before you go somewhere makes you more aware of batching things together efficiently.
For books you want to read or review, use a clear boundary to make yourself aware of your inventory, and stay keenly aware of what you want to read and discard what’s not necessary.
For major reading tasks, you can also divide them into two categories based on how you read these books.
Use email to manage video blogs or online articles that you want to review later.
Dealing with what goes into your inbox
When dealing with what goes into your inbox, follow a few basic rules:
1/ Process the top item first.
This approach is beneficial for reviewing a full timeline with complete information.
2/ One at a time.
This is how the mind naturally works, focusing on one thing at a time.
3/ Never put anything back in.
This rule helps with accountability and prevents the waste of mental resources.
Create a system to manage list, in-tray and calendar.
P657:
“I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s” — William Blake
P874:
Respect your calendar by only placing items that need to be done at specific times or on specific days.
This practice will foster trust and self-confidence.
Organize ASAP actions by context. The best way to be reminded of an ASAP item is to be in the context required for that action.
Discretely categorize these actions based on:
1/ How many actions you have to track.
2/ How often you change the contexts within which you perform them.
Having a discrete call category makes it easier to focus and intuitively choose the best one to make at the moment.
Also, take time to record the phone number alongside each item.
P682:
Think carefully about where, when, and under what conditions you can do which actions, and organize your list accordingly.
You can only feel good about what you’re not doing when you know everything you’re not doing.
P505:
Anything not in its place may be tossed into the in-tray.
Ask yourself: “Is this really something I want to keep?”
“Is the furniture arranged the way it should be?”
“Is the computer set up the way you want it?”
P515:
“Oh my gosh, I forgot about that! I’ve got to deal with it!” The author’s client doesn’t want to put things in the huge stack of other stuff in her in-tray because she’s afraid she might lose track of it again. If it’s something that needs to be handled immediately, handle it right away. If not, go ahead and put it into the “in” tray. By doing so, it won’t be lost later.
As you go around and check your space, ask yourself if there is anything you want to do or change. If there are actionable items, leave a note and toss it into the “in” tray.
P645:
Take note of the date you delegate a task. It’s worth doing for the few occasions when others will come back to you about it.
Make a decision about whether to do it now (the two-minute rule), defer it, or delegate it.
P610:
For items without a next action, they can go into the trash, be incubated, or become a resource. For incubation, it can be written on a “someday/maybe” list or set as a reminder on the calendar.
Why you need to empty two days to initiate the process?
Setting up the space, time, and furniture properly can reduce unconscious resistance to dealing with your stuff, making it easier for you to sit down and work through your inputs and tasks. Otherwise, your conscious effort will fight against your unconscious, leading to self-defeating behavior.
Time required for the capturing process
It takes about 6 hours to implement the full capturing process, followed by 8 hours to clarify and decide on actions for the inputs you’ve externalized and captured.
Benefits of an uninterrupted process
Not interrupting the process can provide you with a sense of control, achievement, energy, and creativity.
Importance of having your own workspace
Having your own workspace is important. When couples expand to two workstations, it can make a big difference. This move relieves them of subtle stress in their relationship related to managing shared tasks and responsibilities.
Proper use of a calendar
A calendar should not be used as an action list within a time block but rather to track the hard landscape of things that need to happen on a specific day and time.
A calendar can be used to manage time-sensitive information and commitments.
Importance of organizational tools
Many organizational tools are designed for managing lists. For example, a calendar is essentially a form of a list where day-specific action reminders are listed according to time.
The importance of filing
Filing is a success factor. Questions like “What is this? Why is this here? What should I do with it?” won’t become subliminal voices that burden our consciousness if we rigorously set up and maintain our world.
Time required for the capturing process
The capturing process takes many hours because there are so many places to check.
Use Weekly Review to negotiate and align your day-to-day activities to your larger commitments
Small tasks often support bigger things, unsurprisingly.
Projects rarely show up in nice, neat packages.
They often appear in the form of a situation, communication, or activity.
The weekly review can be used to align your larger commitments with day-to-day tasks.
It’s like forward planning with the end in mind.
Having a sense of control and overview of all commitments that may be relevant to your relationships with others is valuable.
This overview helps with negotiation and frequent renegotiation of both explicit and implicit agreements.
Three areas that may have hidden projects:
1. Current activities
2. Higher-horizon interests and commitments
3. Current problems, issues, and opportunities
4. Projects that need to be captured from a calendar, action list, or workspace.
• Like spotting unrecognized projects.
• Some artifacts can be tied to the project and followed up with.
Current problems, issues, and opportunities may disrupt your attention if left without direction. See these as opportunities to turn into projects.
These fall into three categories:
1. Problems (especially those you complain about)
2. Process improvements
3. Creative and capacity-building opportunities
Delegated Responsibilities Belong to the "Waiting For" List
Put those delegated responsibilities on the “Waiting For” list. Just constantly review the list to ensure everything on it is progressing.
You want a next action to be continually current on any portion of a larger project that you can make progress on independently, even when you have dependent projects or tasks.
When listing projects and sub-projects, the goal is to know where to find all the moving parts and review them frequently to keep them off your mind.
Set up Your Personal Reference System
Dividing up supporting material into facts/history and the essential propelling forces is important. Think about how to integrate those into your work process.
The author intentionally maintains a project support development section at the back of a project list. This section is used to capture random thoughts, plans, or details about projects on his list.
Clear out inactive, unrealistic, or redundant projects to keep the system effective. When you clearly define what is actionable and what is not, you can store as much as possible without blocking your workflow.
Reference material shows up in various forms: general reference filing, large-category filing, contact management, libraries, and archives.
The success criteria of a personal reference system include:
1. Distinguishing between actionable and inactive items.
2. Deciding how you might use that information in the future.
Use a someday/maybe list
Use a “someday/maybe” list to give yourself permission to add all potential projects of that sort to it. Add an item to this list when you realize that an optional project doesn’t have a chance of getting your attention for the next few months or more.
This list needs to be reviewed periodically to try one or two items at certain points.
Capturing Projects from Different Sources
1. Projects that need to be captured from a calendar, action list, or workspace:
• Look for unrecognized projects that may have been overlooked.
• Certain artifacts related to the project should be identified and followed up on.
Turning Problems into Opportunities
• Current problems, issues, and opportunities may disrupt your attention if they aren’t addressed. See these as opportunities to turn into projects.
• These fall into three categories:
1. Problems (especially those you often complain about)
2. Process improvements
3. Creative and capacity-building opportunities
Managing Delegated Responsibilities
• Put delegated responsibilities on a “Waiting For” list.
• Regularly review this list to ensure that everything on it is progressing as it should.
Maintaining Progress on Projects
• Always have a next action ready to keep current on any portion of a larger project that you can work on independently, even when other parts of the project are dependent on external factors.
• When listing projects and sub-projects, the goal is to know where to find all the moving parts and to review them frequently so that they don’t weigh on your mind.
Introducing Three Frameworks for Deciding Actions
1. The Four-Criteria Model for Choosing Actions in the Moment
2. The Threefold Model for Evaluating Daily Work
3. The Six-Level Model for Reviewing Your Own Work
From Bottom to Top
1. The Four-Criteria Model
• Follow these standards:
1. Context: Consider where you are and what tools are available.
2. Time Available: Know how much time you have before your next obligation.
3. Energy Available: Gauge your current energy level and mental state.
4. Priority: Determine the most important tasks based on the above factors.
• You can safely eliminate an action if you can’t do it because you’re not in the right location or don’t have the necessary tools.
A. Organize your own actions by context, like calls, at home, at the computer, and errands.
• Example: You can refer to your call list if your meeting is delayed by 15 minutes.
B. Using context can force you to decide on the next physical action.
C. Creatively tailor your own context categories to fit your situation, sorting by tools and physical locations.
• Example: Create a “Before Trip” temporary category into which you move everything from any of your action lists that can be handled before you leave. That becomes the only list you review before everything is done.
Other lists, like “Brain-Dead” tasks (simple tasks without much brainpower), and “Less Than 5 Minutes” (quick wins), are also useful.
2. Time Available
• Know how much time you have at your disposal and maintain a 10-minute to-do list alongside your big and important tasks.
• It’s a good idea to snack on your task list and have some quick wins.
3. Energy Available
• It’s recommended to keep a list of tasks that require little mental or creative energy, like casual reading, trimming trade journals, or watching the sunset.
• These tasks are open loops that are easy to close, right then and there (RTH).
When you take a closer look, few people have their processes and organization honed to the point where they are as functional as they could be.
• Consider their real-time: For example, batch tasks while en route, like going to the laundry, or read the meeting agenda while on your way to a discussion.
Use the “someday/maybe” list to give yourself permission to fill it with all the items of that sort.
Add an item to this list when you realize that an optional project does not have a chance to get your attention for the next few months or more.
This list needs to be reviewed periodically to try one or two items at some point.
Use your calendar as a trigger for activating projects, including events to participate in and decision catalysts.
You want to remind yourself to make something an active project at some point.
Thinking Tool
Use physical tools to keep your thinking anchored and saved so you can stay engaged constructively for hours.
Writing Tools
Function follows form. Give yourself a context for capturing thoughts, and thoughts will occur that you don’t yet know you have.
Having capturing tools readily available and handy will help.
Keep a pen at places where you are likely to want to take notes, or use your smartphone.
Project Planning
For planning projects, once you have identified them on your project list, it will be easier and more effective to organize them quickly.
Two types of projects deserve planning capacity:
1. Those that still have your attention after you’ve decided on their next actions.
2. Those about which potentially useful ideas and supportive details emerge as you go along.
Reviewing Your Commitments and Action Lists
After reviewing all your day-specific and time-specific commitments, your next area of review should be your action lists (such as calls, computer tasks, and in-office tasks to-do).
On many days, you might not need to check all your lists. The calendar will tell you what you wouldn’t be able to do.
You should have access to any one of your lists at any time. For instance, you might want to review your accumulated agendas for your life partner.
Also, keep your project list ready to have face-to-face conversations about current realities and priorities. It’s functional to keep it constantly up-to-date.
Managing these tasks may require multiple skills. For example, when you suddenly get a text invite for an unplanned but strategic meeting with a potential client, how quickly can you clear the deck, print the relevant data, and renegotiate other commitments to be fully present for the engagement?
Don’t let your lists fall too far behind your reality. Don’t deceive yourself about this. And, if your system becomes outdated, don’t force your brain to engage again at the lower level of remembering.
Reviewing all your outstanding commitments, intentions, and inclinations until you can honestly say, “Hey, I absolutely know right now everything I’m not doing but could be doing if I decided to.”
Getting current will ensure all your orienting maps or lists are reviewed and up-to-date. As you get clear and current, you will naturally generate ideas and perspectives that will add value to your thinking about the week and life.
Ruthlessly process all notes and thoughts related to your interactions, projects, new initiatives, and input that have come your way since your last download, and purge those not needed.
Trust Your Gut
• Trust your gut. Use it as a reference point that allows you to step back and assess where you can consult the source of your inner wisdom.
Recap: Seven Essentials to Manage Your Commitments
1. Alignment and Implementation
• Make Commitments Aligned with Larger Goals: Ensure your commitments are aligned with your larger goals, which is an obligation.
• Two Years for Implementation: It takes about two years to implement and habituate the methodology to gain more control at the mundane level.
2. Reflection and Clarity
• World’s Confusion vs. Personal Engagement: The world is never confused; only we are, due to how we engage with it.
• Reflecting on Your Actions: Reflecting facilitates being present by engaging constantly with all commitments and activities.
• Reassurance: Reassure yourself that you’re doing what you need to be doing, and it’s okay not to be doing what you’re not doing.
• Regular Review for Clarity: Review your system on a regular basis to keep it current and functional, ensuring clarity and stability.
3. Systematic Review and Updates
• Daily Check and Update: For the system to work effectively, it must be checked and updated every day.
• Review and Process Regularly: Constantly review and process all notes, thoughts, and relevant documents. Use folders as a tickler system to manage documents that need attention on specific days.
4. Checklist and Task Management
• Purpose of Checklists: Checklists range from big-picture outlines to detailed instructions, ensuring tasks are completed without mental overload.
• Objective-Based Checklists: Objectives like “maintain good physical conditioning” should be built into checklists that are reviewed regularly.
• Job Levels and Responsibilities: Include various levels (e.g., career goals, health) and responsibilities (e.g., team morale, processes) in your checklists.
5. Reducing Mental Load
• Affirmation through Checklists: The value of checklists often lies in affirming that specific areas are okay, which adds to your relaxed focus.
• Knowing What Not to Worry About: Checklists help you understand what you don’t need to be concerned about, reducing unnecessary mental load.
6. Transition Management
• Maintaining Responsibility Lists: Keep responsibility lists until all blanks are filled and transitions are managed effectively.
• Cruise Control: Once in cruise control, the detailed responsibility list may no longer be needed.
7. High-Performance Self-Management
• Creating Accessible Checklists: The ability to quickly create and use accessible checklists when needed is a core component of effective self-management.
After reviewing all your day and time-specific commitments, your next area of review should be your action lists (calls, computer actions, and in-office tasks to do).
Six Levels Model for Reviewing Your Own Work
1. Horizon 5: Life Purpose
This is your overarching purpose or life mission. It defines what kind of life you want to live.
2. Horizon 4: Long-Term Vision
This encompasses your long-term visions, typically looking ahead 3 to 5 years. It’s about what you see yourself achieving in that time frame.
3. Horizon 3: 1-2 Year Goals
These are your specific goals for the next 1 to 2 years, focusing on measurable outcomes you wish to accomplish.
4. Horizon 2: Areas of Focus and Accountability
Here, you identify the main areas of responsibility in your life and work, as well as the focus points where you need to maintain balance and accountability.
5. Horizon 1: Current Projects
This level involves the immediate projects that you are working on to move you toward your larger goals.
6. Ground-Level: Current Actions
These are your next actions—immediate, tangible steps that you can take to move your projects forward. You start from the bottom up, ensuring that your actions are aligned with your higher-level goals.
Alignment of Levels
It’s crucial to keep your current actions aligned with your higher-level visions and goals to reduce internal conflict and direct your energy effectively. By doing so, you can work toward the life you want to create. For example:
• Life: Want to be your own boss
• Vision: Create a business for yourself
• Short-term objective: Secure a specific job to gain experience
• Accountability: Fulfill key roles that will help get your business rolling
• Project: Immediate outcomes that you need to achieve
• Next action: The very next thing you need to do to make progress
Priorities and Perspectives
When you’re in crisis mode, like if your “boat is sinking,” the bigger, long-term goals (Horizon 5) might not seem immediately relevant. However, H5 (life purpose and principles) is still the most important context for setting priorities and making decisions.
Action Review and Calibration
A good check-in point is to make sure you have at least 50 next actions and “waiting-fors” captured, including all the agendas for people and meetings. If you don’t, it’s worth being skeptical about whether you have everything in control.
Connecting Higher Horizons
Horizons 3 to 5 involve the broader goals and long-term considerations:
• Horizon 3: Your one-year goals
• Horizon 4: Your three-year vision for your career and personal net worth
• Horizon 5: Your intuition about your life purpose and how to maximize its expression
Pick the Right Battles
Choose battles that are big enough to matter but small enough to win, as Jonathan Kozol wisely suggested.
Motivation and Direction
Capture the motivators driving your current work, as many may come from higher commitments or intentions. Your direction and goals should be based on deep thinking, analysis, and intuition.
Coaching Example
The author shares an experience coaching someone in the banking industry who was intimidated about investing in his own startup. By working from the bottom level, he was able to make more accurate and natural decisions in alignment with his goals at higher horizons.
Long-Term Thinking
For commitments that extend beyond a year, ask yourself:
• What are the long-term goals and initiatives in my organization, and what projects do I need in place to fulfill my responsibilities?
• What long-term goals and objectives have I set for myself, and what projects do I need to implement to make them happen?
• What significant events or trends are happening that might affect my options about what I’m currently doing?
By directing your focus to what’s inherently true about these situations within your current reality, you can better align your work with your life purpose.
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Threefold Model for Evaluating Daily Work
At any given time during your workday, you’re engaged in one of the following three types of activities:
1. Doing predefined work
This involves completing tasks that you’ve already planned and organized in advance.
2. Doing work as it shows up
This refers to handling unexpected tasks or issues that arise throughout the day.
3. Defining your work
This step involves reviewing, organizing, and prioritizing incoming tasks to clarify what needs to be done next.
By developing the skill and habit of quickly processing new input into a well-defined system, it becomes much easier to trust your judgment about which tasks to tackle. You’ll know when to stop doing one thing and start focusing on another.
Being able to dispatch what’s coming in and staying organized allows you to take advantage of unexpected time windows. This enables you to handle multiple projects by swiftly shifting your attention from one task to another, without the need for actual multitasking.
Your task choices must be calibrated against a clear understanding of your work’s nature and goals. Learning to make quick but thoughtful decisions among many competing tasks will help you maintain a healthy balance in your workload.
1. Calendar Management and Review
• Regular Review: The calendar is the best tool to review regularly to prevent last-minute stress and trigger creative thinking.
• Event Preparation: Use your calendar to manage project actions and prep for upcoming events.
• Past and Future Events: Review the past two weeks and the upcoming few weeks for emerging action items or reference information. Identify any triggers from past events that may prompt future actions. Archive your calendar with nothing left unresolved.
2. Project and Action Lists
• Project Review: Regularly evaluate the status of projects, goals, and outcomes one by one. Ensure there’s at least one next action kick-starting each project.
• Waiting For List: Ask yourself whether follow-ups are needed. Do you need to send a status email? Add an item to someone’s agenda to discuss it when you meet them? Record and check off next actions accordingly.
• Checklist Review: Go through relevant checklists to ensure nothing has been missed, given your commitments, responsibilities, and interests.
3. Creativity and Flow
• Natural Flow: Don’t force creativity; let ideas arise naturally and capture them. Remove barriers to a natural flow of thoughts and actions.
• Spontaneous Ideas: Capture valuable spontaneous ideas. An “aha” moment occurs when you externalize your thoughts and reflect on them, showing how natural this process can be.
4. End-of-Week Review
• Timing: It’s ideal to review during the last two hours of your final workday of the week. This allows you to:
1. Keep the week’s events fresh in your mind.
2. Address uncovered actions that require contact with others before the weekend.
3. Clear your mental decks for the weekend and relaxation.
5. Goal Setting and Motivation
• Control Before Goals: Trying to set goals before mastering day-to-day control can undermine motivation and energy.
• Enrichment Focus: Enriching your life is the real goal. Regularly reassess your goals and commitments to ensure you stay clear-headed and maintain momentum.
6. Life and Work Assessment
• Regular Assessment: Assess your life and work at the appropriate level, making decisions at the right intervals. This ensures clarity and helps you stay on track with your broader goals.
• Lifelong Obligation: This process is an invitation to continuously fulfill your destiny or intentions, taking into account unfinished business and long-term aspirations.
Build Trust with Your Mind
Whatever is on your mind is there for a reason: it is relevant, especially when your mind is clear and you trust it to a larger degree.
Capture all levels of your current work, which will automatically produce greater focus, alignment, and a stronger sense of priorities.
It takes some time (10-15 weeks, according to the author) to fully trust the completeness of your lists.
Identifying Responsibilities on the Second Horizon
To truly feel relaxed, you need to know what your job entails. Professionally, this includes anything relevant to your current position and work. Personally, it includes the responsibilities you’ve taken on in your family, community, or personal life.
Use Contracts, Goals, and Values
Incorporate personal goals or value statements to add structure to your responsibilities. Keeping a list of areas of focus is crucial for regular review, divided into professional and personal categories. Review these every one to three months to trigger new projects and evaluate your progress.
Agreements and Priorities
A discussion of your projects must incorporate all these levels of current agreements between you and others. Only when you know where you’re going and what’s truly important can you understand when enough is enough.
Horizon Levels 3 to 5
These higher horizons help you understand the current state of your broader goals:
• Horizon 3: One-year goals
These are your goals within the next year.
• Horizon 4: Three-year vision
This refers to your three-year plan for your career and personal net worth.
• Horizon 5: Life purpose
This is where you intuit your life’s purpose and how to maximize its expression.
For Commitments Longer than a Year
Ask yourself:
• What are the long-term goals and initiatives in my organization, and what projects do I need in place to fulfill my responsibilities?
• What long-term goals have I set for myself, and what projects do I need to initiate to make them happen?
• What other significant developments are occurring that might affect my decisions about what I’m currently doing?
• What other major changes are happening that could impact my options?
Direct your focus toward what may be inherently true about these situations within your current reality. This will help guide your decisions and actions across all levels of your work and personal life.
Horizon 1 is critical. Start by focusing on the immediate actions that are within your control. This bottom-up approach helps you tackle the most important and often elusive tasks by identifying and addressing them directly. As you build this practice, you will gain more flexibility and improve your performance. Over time, this method becomes more refined, allowing you to achieve higher levels of coordination and stress-free productivity.
Remember, anything that occupies your mind is there for a reason—it’s relevant. When your mind is clear and organized, you’ll trust your thinking process more, allowing for better decision-making.
By capturing tasks and responsibilities across all levels of your current work, you create a system that naturally enhances your focus, alignment, and priority-setting. According to the author, it may take 10-15 weeks to fully trust the completeness of your system, but once you do, the benefits are substantial.
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