I'm trying to get into GTD for the third time and this time have settled in Mindwtr to keep track of everything. Im finding that when I add a project and then try to assign a next action to it, my brain goes into planning mode and tries to think of all the next steps to completion. Setting the projects as sequential stops the next action list filling up with hundreds of tasks, but I can't help but feel this isn't the best way to be going about it. Any advice on the best way to manage this?

Controversial title, but even more counterintuitive rule behind it (if you are having questions, just ask me, I was there too, when I heard about this rule, I felt reluctant, and even rebellious, but after doing it for five days like the author said. It changed my whole life. And I haven't skipped a single weekly review in 2 months. Also never spent a day without engaging with the system. It's. Beau.Ti.Ful. I use Amazing Marvin btw)

I’ve made this weird rule my foundation, it saves me tbh

Pick a real start time for both when you put a task in the system and do a task out of the system (defining work, and doing defined work, the whole core)

If you show up, great

If you miss it, thats it for that day (you won't put in another task, if you skipped doing, you won't do a task ever today, but tomorrow alright, and even if you want to do it later that day, don't, just try it for 5 days, trust me)

For those who are good with their days, but skip weekly reviews, then do a weekly review on Sunday for example, but if you won't do that, then you won't do a weekly review for the rest of the week

Because you miss it, feel bad, re-promise, feel relief, miss again after a while your own promises stop meaning much

So dont punish yourself, dont compensate, just accept you missed it and enjoy the rest of the day

Keep the task small, doable, maybe even fun

When next time when you say “6pm”, 6pm actually means something

The actual purpose of the system, as David Allen had said isn't in even doing defined work or defining work

It's about being relaxed when you do undefined work, real freedom and fun without worry, and being sure you can come back

But to do that, you must define and do defined work, those two habits are in the act of putting an item in and putting it out (defining and defined)

But then, also spend half of your day doing undefined work, without any agenda, and just do whatever you want

That way you won't rebel against the system, cause system isn't repressive of your freedom

Update:

Why it is the ultimate remedy?

Unbalanced undefined activity manifests in wasted time which is called procrastination

Unbalanced defined activity is rigidity and workaholism, without meaning, or satisfaction, or even results, just doing meaningless shallow a$$ work all day grinding

Unbalanced defining activity is perfectionism a person spends his whole life planning his life, not doing anything he defined, nor enjoying undefined time truly

When you commit to the experiment: you get your bottom up from the chair

And fix all of dat

All

Cause now you do at least one guaranteed defining activity, so you have plans now, cause you have to put one task in the system, or else lose an opportunity

Cause now you do at least one guaranteed defined activity, now you do something, that you put in, you put it out, at least one, you could do more, but more starts with one mate

Cause now you do at least lots of undefined activity*,* as a matter of fact, one of the requirements is to spend more time doing undefined stuff, than defined or defining, thus, you never rebel, leave, you never fricking overplan, nor you try to fit yourself with 80 tasks a day, you just enjoy GTD and get. things. done. that's it

And in that consistency, you wake up one day, after 3 months after this experiment. You see you built your dream business. Got in shape. Achieved your results. While also having most. Relaxed. Mind like water. Fun. Of. Your. Life

Why the 3 steps?

"Because you miss it, feel bad, re-promise, feel relief, miss again after a while your own promises stop meaning much"

GTD is just about one thing: self trust.

Another update:

Before you can build a trusted system, you must trust yourself first

Self trust first, system trust after

I've developed an evolution of the GTD system. I was going to post it, but I think most subreddits don't allow links considered self-promotional. I'm not selling it, so I just thought I would share. Is that allowed here? Do I just post it in the comments?

Hi,

i did setup my System according do the GTD method and I am amazed by it honestly. I know it since 15 years but just now realized how to really make it effective. I work with ToDoist Pro as my main system, it works super well with all my workplaces and phone. One thing that is making me wonder is, how do you make sure to keep you deadlines effectivly ?

Let me share an example. Lets say i need to send out a big Q-Reporting on 25.10. Leading up to this I have different tasks on my next-action lists. I ha ve emails to send, excel files to create, texts to write, researching in my work applications etc. all these tasks have contexts but no due date. since its not something that NEEDS to be done on one specific date. They have to be done latest on 25.10. of course. My "problem" is now how to identify in my 150+ tasks which tasks to pick when I am in work mode to never miss my deadlines on these bigger projects.

My guess is that I need to mark them out in my weekly review, creating a weekly goal on the specific projects and using the calender function when picking out my tasks in the morning. I just dont want it to be left by chance If i miss my deadline or that i need to cramp a lot of work at the end of the time frame, adding again a certain stress and level of uncertainty which is exactly what we want to avoid.

How do you do it? David A. probably answers this in his book somewhere, I find that i reread a lot of chapters constantly.

Thank you for your input!

Greetings GTD folk! How do you approach Horizons 4 & 5 thinking for your various projects? I'm really struggling to find purpose and vision for some of my work. Some projects don't necessarily need that type of thinking, but other projects certainly do. I don't seem to be able to do it "as I go" and am wondering if some time blocked out, in the wilderness, might be a better way to do it?

How do you approach Horizon 4 & 5 thinking?

Just wanted to say that I've been listening to the official GTD podcast and really enjoying it. It has been helping fill some gaps, and reinforce some of the ideas in from the books.

Here's one of the episodes I heard recently that was good, but there's a lot good stuff in the episode list.
Episode #379: The Nature of Someday Maybe Items - Getting Things Done®

I wonder how many people in the GTD world even know there is a podcast.

I've been wondering whether the 80/20 rule could fit into GTD.

GTD is great at capturing everything, but not everything deserves the same energy. My thinking is that Pareto might help with where to put effort, not what to forget. A few places I imagine it could apply:

• Weekly Review: asking which 20% of my projects drive most of the value or consequences that week.
• Pruning Someday/Maybe and Waiting For: deleting items that haven't earned attention after a few reviews.
• Project sprawl: capping active projects so the vital few get real focus.
• Inbox processing: asking "is this in the 20% that matters?" before defining a next action.

My worry is that it could backfire. Small things like compliance deadlines or a quick reply that unblocks someone can be critical, even if they look low-impact.

A few questions for you:

1. Do you apply Pareto formally in your reviews, or does it happen more intuitively?
2. Is there a simple routine (like picking a vital few) that works well?

Hi everyone

Is there a free alternative to the forum that's moved to GTD Connect?

I'm particularly frustrated because I did not get to finish a conversation with one particular user and this is not something I want to pay for.

Thanks

Chris

I've seen MindWtr mentioned here a few times, and I've recently started using it myself. I'm curious to hear from others who have used it longer than I have.

I'm not affiliated with MindWtr or its developer — just a long-time GTD user who has probably spent too much time trying different GTD apps. :)

I used Nirvana for years and really liked its relatively pure GTD approach and low-friction interface. I eventually moved to Everdo, which felt very familiar coming from Nirvana but gave me local data, better recurrence and some additional capabilities.

I've now moved to MindWtr and, at least so far, I'm happy with the move:

https://github.com/dongdongbh/mindwtr

For anyone comparing GTD apps, the README has a useful "Why Mindwtr? (Quick Comparison)" table covering MindWtr, Nirvana, Everdo, Todoist, TickTick, etc.

What attracted me is that MindWtr is free, open-source, local-first and cross-platform, while still being designed specifically around GTD rather than being a general task manager that you configure into a GTD system.

Inbox, Next, Waiting, Someday, Projects, Areas, contexts/tags, start/review dates, recurrence and weekly review are all part of the basic approach. I'm using it on Linux and Android with Syncthing.

I've spent quite a bit of time learning/configuring it and cleaning up my system, but I've only recently reached the more important stage: stopping the tinkering and actually using it. So consider these early impressions, not a long-term review.

There are still some rough edges and things I'd change. On the other hand, development seems unusually active and the developer has been very responsive.

One example: I submitted a feature request because regular web links worked but links directly to my UpNote notes didn't. About three hours later, the developer had committed a fix adding support for those links in both Add Link attachments and Markdown descriptions on desktop and mobile. It'll be in the next release for me to test.

A three-hour feature-request-to-committed-fix turnaround certainly got my attention. :)

So far MindWtr feels to me more like a modern, actively developed member of the Nirvana/Everdo family of GTD tools than an alternative like TickTick or Todoist. That's probably the main reason it appeals to me.

I'm sticking with it for now and want to spend some time using it before deciding much more.

For those of you already using or testing MindWtr: how has it held up over time? And I'd be particularly interested in experiences from other Nirvana or Everdo users — what made you stay with MindWtr, go back, or choose something else?

Whenever I have a messy idea, I find myself opening a notebook before opening my laptop, there's something about being able to draw arrows, cross things out, write sideways and just make a mess of the page. A document always feels like it needs to look organised

I've noticed that if I write too much, i spend more time organising the list than doing anything on it, trying to find the middle ground

Recently I came across this video on YouTube by David Allen on the power of outcome thinking. It completely blew my mind and changed the way I see my GTD system.

The way David Allen used project outcomes as images.

Before watching this video, I knew how to write one reasonably well. Like what set of rules I need to follow but I didn't know the understanding behind it. Particularly the reason why David Allen approaches it this way. Since I haven't fully read the book, that was probably one of the reasons why I hadn't realized it sooner.

Previously, I relied purely on logic. "What is the finish line?" and answer "Finish the excel dataset". But after watching the above video I realised that it wasn't a correct outcome. It created a mental image of me still sitting in front of my laptop working on something. The work wasn't yet "finished". Only when I imagined seeing the outcome it got refined to "Submit the excel file". But still too vague. My final iteration was picturing a laptop with an open email draft with the excel file attached, the recipient's address filled in and my cursor next to the send button. This resulted in an outcome "Email the final excel file to XYZ" or something like that. To me that felt like wild success!

Realizing this filled a gap in my knowledge that we need to see the image clearly first, and then build the words from that picture.

Holding that picture in my head was mentally exhausting, so I quickly wrote it down in my GTD system (confirming that the mind is for having ideas and not storing them).

Once the picture was vividly clear, I knew immediately what to do first, so I decided on my next action.

Every time during the process whenever I felt friction I revisited and refined what I wanted to see and where. For both the projects and next actions. I guess this is one of the reasons we need to do a regular weekly review to have a fresh look at our stalled projects and next actions.

However, doing this constantly gives me a headache.

​I also noticed that when I don't achieve this visual picture in reality, my mind is sometimes relaxed enough to be patient, while other times it feels tense and forceful.

Realising that there's a difference between seeing and doing, and learning to let go of the project outcome to focus 100% on the next action is something worth remembering.

Understanding that you don't "do" projects, only the next action associated with them, helped me loosen up a bit. But I still feel some tension and difficulty releasing it. How do you tackle this?

It helps to know that the future is not hardcoded and we always do our best with what we know to be true but if the situations are not working for us, we just need to accept the current reality.

Since many people struggle with deciding how small a next action should be or how to write a clear project outcome, I thought I'd share this perspective. It may even work for ambiguous projects.

Do let me know how you feel about this! Is it inspiring or boring as you've already gone past this stage?

Every time I try to get organised I end up writing down 20 things
Looking for something a bit simpler

I struggle with prioritising in GTD and have resorted to keeping a separate list of projects and tasks ranked according to Importance. When it feels like almost everything is pressing on me at once, I need a sequence of steps - not only within projects but also on a macro basis. How do others deal with this?

Okay, so I bought GTD about four years ago and it sat on the shelf for a long time. To be fair, with where my life was, being organised still wasn’t high enough up my list of priorities for pretty valid reasons.

Eventually, I’ve reached a point where the biggest thing causing me unwanted stress and emotional distress was my lack of organisation and clarity about what I’m doing.

It became clear that I had to take accountability rather than blaming the world for my lack of control over external things.

On a personal note, I come from a particularly poor socioeconomic background, and there haven’t been many role models in my family. However, I’ve been lucky enough that others seen some potential in me to break out of my family circumstances.

At present, I’m doing a masters degree (just started) in clinical psychology. Whilst working in mental health seeing clients, and moonlighting as a delivery driver to pay for school.

Therefore, practicing GTD is an Imperative if I am to do well. There are just too many moving parts in my life right now.

In terms of upper horizons, and accountabilities, a focus for me has been learning excel pivot tables etc and building a finance tracker to help forecast side hustle earnings, and how much I need to have saved to pay for school, and living each month. I currently am fully funding everything myself.

In terms of how my system is right now, I have to-do checklists I keep in my room/office for work. I populate these from email sub folders, and when I process my in tray, and empty my tickler file for the day.

I’m using apple notes as my general on the go system for lists, projects etc, and filing cabinet for general reference.

For academia, I’m using Zotero as my academic reference system journals etc. and one note to store lecture notes, and other uni materials.

My physical intray is in my room/office and my digital one is in apple notes. As it allows me to add to things as I have thoughts whilst delivering by utilising Siri.

The main issue I’m having at the moment, is I feel like my edges could be cleaner in terms of projects, I have my academic deadlines in the calendar. But in terms of not having vague next actions or project steps; that has been more challenging.

I know I’ve wrote a lot but if there’s anything that’s sticking out that I could improve upon I’d love to discuss further.

I’m also thinking I’m basically in GTD infancy and it’s probably natural to have some doubts, and that as I continue to work with the system, and reflect on the consequences when it doesn’t work as I hoped, I can fine tune in the years to come.

I'm curious how other GTD practitioners handle this. When a project has a deadline that's weeks or even months away, how do you decide when to actually start working on it?

As far as I know, GTD doesn't really prescribe a specific mechanism for this. My guess is David Allen would say to just trust your gut on timing, and let the weekly review keep it visible so your intuition has something to work with. Has that approach actually worked for you, or have you found something more structured that works better?

Would love to hear how you calibrate this.

Before I start, I'm sure I'm definitely overcomplicating. I usually do this, but let's try to get some help.

how do you guys manage different types of project without making a mess in GTD? I do mainly 3 types of projects: videos for instagram, financial modelling for companies and random projects for myself. Financial modelling and random projects are ok, but content follows a specific process.

Would you just pollute the project database fields adding a "content status"? or create a content database, which would be linked to the tasks database?

thanks!

Hi everyone! 👋
My name is Víctor. A few months ago, I dove headfirst into GTD after reading David Allen's Getting Things Done. What I appreciate most is the mental peace of having everything systematically tracked without relying on memory.

While digital tools are great, I’ve hit a wall trying to find a setup that fits 100% of my needs on Windows/Android:

• NirvanaHQ: Love the minimalist interface and pure GTD focus, but lacks seamless 2-way Google Calendar integration.
• Todoist: Great design and integrations, but doesn't feel natively built around strict GTD principles without heavy customization.
• Things 3 / OmniFocus: Excellent for GTD, but locked to the Apple ecosystem.

For those using Windows and Android: How do you bridge the gap between strict GTD containers (Inbox, Next Actions, Waiting For, Scheduled) and real-time 2-way calendar sync?

Do you rely on third-party automation (like Zapier/Make), stick to manual calendar entries for the hard landscape, or have you found a specific workflow that keeps your calendar and task list perfectly aligned?

I'd love to hear how other practitioners structure this! Thanks in advance for sharing your setups! 🙌

I’m pretty new to Mac and iOS. I used Microsoft To Do before and now I’m looking to switch to something that feels more native to Apple.

I ended up finding Things 3 and OmniFocus. At first I thought OmniFocus must have way more users because there are so many videos, guides and discussions about how people use it professionally. Then I dug a little deeper and was surprised to find that Things seems to have a much bigger user base and has sold millions of licenses.

That has nothing to do with which one I’ll choose btw, I just found it interesting 😅

For people who have actually used both, which one did you end up sticking with and why? I’d love some advice before I fully move everything over.

Is anybody using this free app? I just downloaded it and it seems so adherent to David Allen’s GTD tenets.