Getting Things Done - GTD
Organize, Reflect, and Engage: The Three Steps That Complete the GTD Workflow
AUTHOR: María Sáez
Brief introduction to the GTD methodology:
1. The Perfect Storm: Why Modern Work Overwhelms and How to Deal with It
2. Capture and Clarify: The First Two Steps of the GTD Workflow
3. Organize, Reflect, and Engage: The Three Steps That Complete the GTD Workflow
In the previous article, we looked at how to capture everything that demands our attention and how to clarify each matter until it becomes a decision. But every decision we make needs a place to be stored, a time to revisit it, and, finally, an opportunity to carry it out. That’s what the three steps that complete the GTD workflow are all about: organizing, reflecting, and engaging.
Organize
Our brains are unreliable when it comes to remembering to-do lists, but they’re surprisingly good at associating places with meanings. We know instinctively where our keys are if we always leave them in the same spot, and just seeing a package by the door is enough to remind us that we need to return it. GTD lists are based on that ability: when each type of task has its own place, knowing where to locate something is equivalent to knowing what it is and what needs to be done with it. The mind stops wasting energy on remembering and reclassifying the same things over and over again, and that freed-up energy is, to a large extent, what makes us more effective.
Organizing doesn’t require inventing anything. The categories are already determined by the decisions we make as we clarify things, and each answer from the previous step has its corresponding list.
The actions we need to do go on the Next Actions list, and they should be done as soon as possible, whenever circumstances allow. If, on the other hand, they need to happen on a specific day or at a specific time, they belong in the Calendar, which also includes events and information that’s only relevant on a specific date. It’s important to protect the calendar: if it fills up with things that “would be nice to do that day,” it stops reflecting what actually needs to happen, and we lose confidence in it.
Some tasks can only be completed when we’re with a specific person, and that’s where Agendas come in: lists of pending matters to discuss with each person or at each regular meeting, so that when we meet with them, we have everything we wanted to talk about right at our fingertips. And when what’s missing depends on others, the task goes to the Waiting For list. The key here is to note three things: what we’re waiting for, from whom, and since when. Without the date, it’s impossible to know if a delay is normal or if we should follow up. An item doesn’t come off this list until what we were waiting for comes back to us.
Projects, on the other hand, are the list of pending outcomes. They don’t contain the complete plan, but rather a commitment to an outcome that requires more than one step, and every active project should have at least one next action in one of the lists above. If it doesn’t, the project is at a standstill even if we continue to believe it’s moving forward.
Things that aren’t actionable also have their place. What we decide not to decide just yet goes to Someday/Maybe, where it sits until we revisit it. Information that might be useful to us later goes to Reference as reference material. And what’s no longer needed goes to the Trash, which is also a legitimate way to organize.
To sum up:
- Next Actions → actions I need to do myself, as soon as possible
- Calendar → actions I need to do myself, with a specific date and/or time, and events and information that are relevant on a specific date and/or time
- Agenda → next actions that require me to meet with someone to complete them.
- Waiting For → next actions that other people need to do
- Projects → pending outcomes
- Someday/Maybe → items I’ll evaluate later
- Reference → supporting material
- Trash → items I don’t need
The way each item is worded matters just as much as where we place it. The next action must be able to be carried out without any obstacles. When we read it, we should know exactly what to do, without having to think again about what it meant. That’s why actions are written using specific verbs (“call Marta to request a quote,” “draft the contract”), while projects can use more generic verbs that describe the result (“renovate the kitchen,” “launch the new website”). A list of vague actions forces us to go back and clarify them every time we consult them, and it ends up being a list we avoid looking at.
Ultimately, the system that replaces our memory is nothing more than that: reminders organized into lists. Actions and projects take place in real life, not within GTD. What the system stores are the cues that allow us to keep track of everything.
Reflect
If I had to choose the most important step in the entire workflow, it would be reflect, and it takes the form of a specific habit: the Weekly Review. Its purpose is to maintain trust in the system. A system that isn’t reviewed becomes outdated, and when we stop trusting it, our minds take over and try to remember everything on their own. In other words, we’re back to square one.
The Weekly Review is not the time to catch up on everything we didn’t do during the week, nor some heroic session to make everything perfect. It’s just a review, and any review—no matter how brief or incomplete—is better than none at all. Given its importance, we’ll devote a separate article to it later; here, I’m simply showing you its basic structure.
David Allen breaks down the weekly review into three objectives. The first is to gain clarity, which usually takes between five and ten minutes: clearing out your inboxes and sorting through whatever has piled up, including loose papers and anything that’s still on your mind.
The second step is to get up to date, which is the most time-consuming part, taking about thirty to forty-five minutes. This involves removing what’s already been done, filling in any missing information, and going through the lists one by one. The Calendar is reviewed in two directions: backward, from the last review, to identify commitments or follow-ups that may have been overlooked; and forward, four or five weeks, so that nothing catches us off guard with little time to react. The Next Actions and Agendas are reviewed to confirm that they’re still valid. The Waiting For list requires active management: if following up on something takes less than two minutes, it’s done right away; otherwise, a reminder is set to handle it later. Finally, in the Projects section, we look for those that no longer have a next action so we can reactivate them, and we review their supporting materials to see if they contain anything we may have overlooked.
The third goal is to get creative. With the system up to date, the mind finally has room to look further ahead: to review the Someday/Maybe list to see if anything is worth pursuing, to capture new ideas, and to consider which projects we want to get off the ground. It’s the reward for the work we’ve done, because it’s hard to think ambitiously while part of your mind is still preoccupied with what might be slipping through the cracks.
- Gain clarity → 5–10 minutes
- Get up to date → 30–45 minutes
- Get creative → 0–?
Engage
The goal of all of the above is very simple to articulate: to feel good about what we’re doing at any given moment. And that’s only possible when we know that what we’re not doing is accounted for elsewhere. In GTD, engaging isn’t simply about executing tasks; it’s about filtering and choosing from a set of tasks that have already been defined.
Throughout the day, we work in three different ways. Sometimes we tackle work as it shows up: unexpected events, requests, and urgent matters that pop up without warning and that, at times, are rightfully the most important. Other times (most of the time), we work on tasks that have already been defined—those listed in our reminders: the Calendar, Next Actions, and, optionally, the Waiting For list. And other times we work on the system itself, defining the work: capturing, clarifying, and organizing. This third approach is the one most easily neglected, and when we devote little time to it, the rest of the work becomes poorly defined, and everything ends up turning into work that just pops up.
When it comes down to choosing between tasks that have already been defined, the decision goes through a series of filters. The first is context: where we are, who we’re with, and what tools we have available; because it doesn’t make sense to consider making a call if we don’t have a phone handy. The second is the time available: twenty minutes before a meeting isn’t enough to start a report, but is enough to wrap up three pending tasks. The third is energy: some tasks require a fresh mind, while others can be done just fine late in the afternoon. Only after applying these filters, among the remaining options, do we ask ourselves which one makes the most sense to do right now.
- Context → place, person, tools
- Available time
- Available energy
- Which one makes the most sense?
For this to work, we need to develop the habit of returning to our lists every time we finish something and it’s time to choose the next action. If we don’t, the natural tendency is to do whatever comes up, and the day becomes reactive even if the system is flawless. And if we have trouble deciding when consulting our lists, the problem almost always lies in the fact that we haven’t clarified things well enough. A list of specific actions practically chooses itself; a list of vague intentions paralyzes us.
A cycle, not a sequence
Capturing, clarifying, organizing, reflecting, and engaging aren’t five phases that you complete once and then forget about; rather, they’re a cycle that repeats daily and is readjusted each week. None of the steps is difficult on its own; what makes the difference is practicing them consistently enough that they no longer require effort. When that happens, the question of what to do next ceases to be a source of anxiety and becomes a calm choice, because everything else is exactly where it needs to be.
Knowing the five steps is just the beginning; the real challenge lies in putting them into practice in our daily lives without giving up on them after just a few weeks. We’ll discuss how to implement GTD in the next article in this series.
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