Getting Things Done (GTD) is a personal task management system. It helps you gather, organise and resolve all of your commitments, ideas, and problems in a structured way through a set of principles and rules.
In short, it forces you to capture all your tasks, ideas and thoughts, and distill actionable next steps into centralised and organised lists that you review regularly. Sounds like a lot of work, but it pays off with tons of benefits I will explain here.
I will not write how this system works in detail here, but I can recommend you a quick 15min summarisation to quickly grasp the gist of the system.
People often call it a productivity system but I tend to avoid that term since GTD’s mission is not only about “getting things done”, but achieving immense clarity and control over your private and work life. It helps you feel good about things you chose to do.
I’ve been using GTD for over 2 years now. I’ve re-adjusted the system to fit my needs multiple times. I’ve also re-read the book. At this point, I think it boosted my productivity (speed of task execution) somewhere between 20% and 40%, and I achieved absolute calmness and confidence in how I handle my time. A number of commitments or tasks I forgot about is down to minimum, if not zero. I don’t understand how I’ve ever been able to get anything done without this system.
I am sad to see that this system is mostly used by productivity enthusiasts, managers, engineers, and other knowledge workers. The beauty of GTD is that it provides core principles and suggests rules that you can adjust and calibrate to fit your needs. GTD is for everyone. In Closing The Evolution Gap I talk more about my frustration with this systems being underused.
Since this methodology did so well for me, I wanted to share all the values it can provide. A lot of them are hidden out of plain sight and not even mentioned. Not even by the father of GTD, David Allen.
So here we go, benefits of GTD I noticed in random order:
Overview of all up-to-date possible actions leading to traction towards your goals, from which you prioritise intuitively the action you should be doing. People have a notion GTD forces you to go into robot-like behaviour, but quite opposite - intuition is at the heart of choosing your next action.
GTD forces you to move on any actionable project, issue, or problem in your head. It forces you to ask yourself healthy questions. Instead of asking yourself WHY is something happening and focusing on the pain, you begin to ask HOW can you approach a problem.
You release the stress by writing restless thoughts down and into the system. The fact that you think it shouldn’t be on your mind is irrelevant. When you have a problem like this, writing down its wanted outcome and next action releases the stress. This also helps to deal with internal triggers that are distracting you.
Once you have a full action and commitments list in front of you, you remove a lot of decision making cognitive biases. Urgent things are seldom important. And important things are seldom urgent. You finally begin to work on things that matter long-term.
Your private emotional and actionable problems are also recognised and addressed by the system. It levels up your emotional intelligence. By actionable I mean things you can change. For everything else, you have meditation and mindfulness.
Peace of mind from trusting the system that doesn’t create any mistakes or slips. The confidence comes from reviewing your list of actions and commitments regularly.
Asking yourself “What is next?” for all commitments prevents procrastination.
Separating private and work life. Why do you continue working more than 8 hours? Because you don’t feel you’ve done enough, and you don’t plan how much work will you do. Nothing is finished unless you drew the line beforehand - and you have to do it daily.
Writing outcomes helps you know when you’re finished. It also helps you visualise the outcome which makes you move better and faster with the commitment.
Observing a bigger horizon of your commitments - every single task will match one of your goals. No task is meaningless. Every action you do is tied to a bigger WHY.
GTD helps you say no to things. You are aware of all your commitments. and you can re-negotiate them by moving them out of your sight, away from your actions list to “someday” list. You won’t believe how many things are not important once have all of your current commitments in one place. it lets you breathe and focus on what matters. No overworking.
Distraction is an action leading you away from your goals and dreams. Traction is an action that leads you towards them. GTD helps delineate those two important categories.
Your commitments and work are digestible. You will no longer feel de-motivated by unfinished to-do lists since you can easily add or remove commitments depending on how much you can process.
“2-minute rule" is a golden rule. All actions that can be done in under 2 minutes should be done immediately. Everything else goes into the system.
Helps you achieve a personal feedback loop through periodical reviews. You become more self-critical.
Helps you work on areas of your life that are stagnating. You no longer wonder why are your relationships, parenting, or other areas of life falling apart if all commitments in front of you are mostly work-related.
Every commitment or project is in a specific state of organisation. If you need more clarity you move up the natural planning ladder - brainstorm and plan more. If you need more action and get things done move down the natural planning ladder - come up with clear next actions.
It helps you categorise your problem and apply Cynefin framework more easily.
And a couple of important quotes from the book itself:
- GTD is not about getting more done (there will be always more work). It’s about getting to a place where you love what you’re doing and being organised enough to maximise your creativity.
- GTD is not about doing things early**. It’s about doing things just in time.**
- GTD is not about doing everything on your list. It’s about feeling good about things that you’re not doing.
- GTD is not about setting priorities, it is about getting clarity on what your priorities are.