Getting Things Done Simplified

The answer, Allen points out with forehead-slapping clarity, is to get all of this stuff out of our head and into a trusted system. Once you've written down everything you need to do, and have a system that you know you can trust to contain every necessary task, the freshly GTDed mind will be free to actually get the stuff done. "The truth is, it takes more energy to keep something inside your head than outside," says Allen.

Getting everything you need to do down on paper is called a Mind Sweep. It can be both traumatic and oddly liberating. The recommended technique involves going through your entire house, office, car and anywhere else in your life, and gathering together all of the objects and papers that need something doing to them. First time GTDers find that this can take one or two days, and produce lists stretching to hundreds of items. But that's the point, according to Allen. The brain can't tell the difference between an unimportant task it once set itself, and something urgent that's just popped up. At some level, all of that stuff is dragging you down. Only by collecting it together, and processing it by working out what it is, and what you're going to do about it, can we get the stuff out of our head. We all have a psychological drive to complete things

Once you know what you're going to do with something, the technique is simple: if it will take less than two minutes, you do it straight away. If not, you add it to a to-do list by writing the very next physical action you will need to do to move the situation forward.

According to Allen, it's only by thinking of the next physical action that we can truly get something out of our heads.

But more than that, Allen points out, the next physical action is the only thing we can do. No matter what the project is, and a project is really anything that takes more than one step to complete, from Christmas shopping to putting a man on the moon, it's not the project that gets completed.

"The common complaint that 'I don't have to time to' is understandable because many projects seem overwhelming - and are overwhelming - because you can't do projects at all," Allen says. "You can only do an action related to it. Many actions require only a minute or two, in the appropriate context, to move a project forward."

But faced with a to-do list of inordinate length, how do we work out what to do? Allen suggests we don't try to order our lists by priority. Instead, he says, we should make different lists for different contexts. A list for when we're at home, one for the computer, one for when we're out shopping, and so on. Given a few minutes between meetings, and a free telephone, you can get something done if you have your by-the-telephone to-do list to hand. Your next actions, sorted by context, are all you need to move all of your projects along.

It all seems very simple. And in many ways, it is. But like all the best systems, GTD's simplicity hides a considerable amount of sophistication. What looks like a mundane system of lists and calendars actually ties together to make something far more powerful.

It creates, says Allen, a whole new psychology: "'What does this mean to me?', 'What do I want to do about it?', and 'What's the next step required to make that happen?'. These are the cornerstone questions we must answer, at some point, about everything," says Allen.