What Are the GTD Agendas and What Are They For?

In GTD, Agendas are just a set of Next Actions associated with a person or a group of people.

In the same way that we link Next Actions to the physical contexts or tools that are needed to carry those actions out, so that we then have a short list of actions to do that we can focus on when we are in that context, we can link actions to the people we need to be with or talk to in order to carry them out. The people and groups of people with whom we regularly deal with certain issues are just another kind of contexts.

If our GTD system were paper-and-pen based, we would not have “one” list of Next Actions but several: one for each relevant context in our daily activity. And these contexts can be places, tools and people:

Well, an Agenda is one of these lists of Next Actions related to a person or group. They are a great tool to reliably save all the things you need to discuss with people or teams you meet regularly, so that the next time you have the opportunity to talk to them you can keep track of all the pending issues, without forgetting anything.

Another major benefit of Agendas is that they are respectful of your time and of those you work with. Instead of interrupting someone at work (as well as your own work) every time you feel the need to discuss something with them, what you do is make a list of everything you need to talk about. That way, when the time comes for the meeting, you can complete that whole batch of actions at once.

The use of Agendas is not limited to meetings, videoconferences or phone calls. You can also use them when you have to communicate with someone by email or text messages, although it’s best to avoid these types of communications whenever possible, due to the lack of efficiency they entail.

Lastly, if you always have your Agendas available, they will allow you to discuss all the issues you have pending with a person when you meet them in an unexpected or casual way.