Make a habit of unloading all your tasks, and ideas for tasks, from your mind into some kind of digital or paper tool.
🧠 Your brain is for thinking, not for storing tasks.
Make adding a task low-friction. Capture tools must be convenient and easy to reach: recording an idea should be one tap away. I long-press the Todoist app icon on my phone’s screen to add a task to my system.
Have a buffer for all incoming tasks, so they have time to lose their perceived urgency. I have a separate inbox for tasks created today. They move to the general inbox tomorrow.
Process all your captured tasks down to inbox zero. Do it as often as possible, but not more than once a day. You have to develop a sense of trust in your system, so you don’t avoid putting important things there.
Use one task system for all your activities, both professional and personal.
Make sure there’s only one place where tasks are processed. Don’t keep some tasks in your email app or a messenger. A message is a signal. When you receive one, decide whether it’s a task, and if it is, write it down. You can reference a message with a link, but never confuse signals with tasks.
If it’s not a task, but you want to write it down, put it in your notes for future reference. Never confuse reference information with tasks.
If it’s not a task but an event, put it in your calendar. If you need to prepare for the event, make a task for that. Events are not tasks.
When processing, rename your tasks and define them clearly, especially their scope. How will I know the task is done?
A task’s name answers the question “What do I do next?” A task should make sense to your inner monkey. Clarity prevents procrastination.
Begin every day with your task list. Make sure you work from your list. It’s not a report, it’s a working instrument.
Frequent review is where most productivity systems fail. If you don’t sort out the garbage, you soon stop trusting the system and either fall back on memory as your main tool or start over with a new, fancier tool.
A two-level task system works best for me. On the task level, I do small chunks of work, from 2 minutes to a couple of hours long. They are typically small-scale, easily achievable tasks you can “do” rather than “manage”. They are usually part of a project, contributing to its completion.
Projects are top-level tasks that require more than one action step. They can range from “Clean the garage” to “Launch a new product line”. Make sure they don’t get mixed up with tasks.
The project list is a bridge to your desired future.
Project and task statuses could be “Next”, “In progress”, “Waiting” and “Completed”. I also generously use “Someday” and “Maybe” (yes, separately) for delayed tasks.
🔑 A hugely underestimated GTD practice: flexible project scopes. If the project was “Create a new business”, but you validated one idea and it turned out to be unfeasible, you could redefine the project as “Validate idea X”, close it and work on the next idea.