Category: “Getting Things Done - GTD”

Can you implement GTD by halves? Sure. Is it still GTD? Nope.

Surely you know that the book written by David Allen in 2001, Getting Things Done, has become the manual of personal productivity for hundreds of thousands of followers. The great success of this method is that it has been used and validated empirically by a crowd of supporters.

Once you’ve captured everything that haunts you, the second stage of GTD is to clarify or process all that stuff, that is, to define exactly what each thing is and what the next step to achieve the end result is, if any.

When I talk to someone who has successfully implemented GTD, I try to find out the reason that has led him to try it. It is not just curiosity. There are many people interested in productivity-related books, blogs and applications, which fail to implement any methodology or system. I want to know what differentiates the former from the latter. What does it take to succeed? Is there a secret?

If you capture all the stuff that command your attention, clarify what they mean and what to do about them, organize the resulting tasks and reflect on them when appropriate, then your daily actions are found in these three lists: