My GTD Structure & Processing

When I was in elementary school, my teachers were worried about me. One day, my teacher asked my mom to come in for a parent-teacher meeting. My teacher said I was performing well in school, but she was concerned about one thing. My agenda, it was completely blank, and she was concerned that I would begin to fall behind in school. Little did she know, I would never use an agenda throughout my schooling.

Gone are the days when my life was so simple. Unlike the structure of school, life is much more challenging. I have many ideas and thoughts in my head, but it is impossible to remember and act on every single thing.

That is where this post comes in. The purpose of this post is to simplify my life. GTD stands for getting things done, and do I like getting things done. This will be a living post, and I will change and adapt it and I find better ways to work with myself. The model will be simply 5 parts

1. Capture
2. Clarify
3. Organize
4. Review
5. Engage

I will break out each part and illustrate how I utilize each. This post will primarily be using the personal productivity tool, Omnifocus, however, you will be able to use any tool to model off of this process.

1. Capture

In this stage, you will capture everything. Capture your to-dos, ideas, recurring tasks, everything. You will want to capture everything as soon as it hits your brain so that you don’t have to think about it again until it is really needed.

Almost everything starts with Omnifocus and may find its way into other projects.

Captured in Omnifocus (Primary GTD Manager)

• To-Dos
• Recurring Tasks
• Projects
• Reference Lists
  • Ideas
  • Reminders
  • Recurring
  • Reading List

Almost everything is captured in my Omnifocus. Omnifocus is structured in a backlog & sprint structure, where I have a long list of backlog items that are less structured items/projects at the bottom and as they move up toward the top, they become more defined and broken apart.

Captured in Apple Notes

• Daily/Weekly/Monthly Notes & Planning
• Goals
• Journal

Notes contain non-actionable things. It is just a way to take notes and do planning. Items can go from Omnifocus to notes (such as Ideas or Projects) when more detail is needed to define them. Notes are generally non-collaborative.

Captured in Google Suite

• Detailed Essays/Writings
• Collaborative notes & spreadsheets
• One-on-Ones

Things captured here are general more detailed than notes and sometimes involve collaboration

2. Clarify

In the clarify stage, all items will be captured in Omnifocus to be categorized or actioned upon. Items in the inbox will be reviewed once per day, so that we can get to inbox zero daily.

While reviewing the inbox ask: Is it actionable?

• If no, then either trash it or file it as a reference
• If yes, decide on the next action to do
  • If it will take less than two minutes, do it now
  • If it will take more than two minutes, delegate it if possible or put it on a list to do it at a later period (assign a defer/due date if necessary)

3. Organize

In the organize stage, organize the actionable items by category and priority. Assign due dates where necessary and set reminders when follow-up is necessary. After the Inbox has captured and clarified items they will go into the following buckets.

One of the harder pieces is to assign priority, for this, I use two frameworks:

1. Important/Urgency Matrix
2. Value / Effort = Priority

Generally, they will go to the Backlogs in order to be clarified & prioritized further. From the backlog, they will either become an individual task prioritized in a sprint or they will become a project. Projects are also held in the backlog as an action group where they will be clarified further. References can be actionable and non-actionable tasks, these can be reminders, recurring actions, or just things to revisit such as business ideas, sell lists, etc.

Prioritization & Planning

This folder contains Backlogs & Sprints, which are the meat of this Omnifocus structure. The reason I created backlogs and sprints are that I ended up with a lot of tasks that had an overall bucket (work, personal, business) but I didn’t have the project for them, and it became really messy. With this method, I rely on Agile Scrum-based methodologies which help me accomplish more.

Daily Priorities

These are my top 3-4 priorities, set daily the night before. These are high-level objectives that I want to focus on and accomplish before the day is over.

Backlogs

• Work
• Business
• Personal

The backlog is a place to capture items in order to be clarified & prioritized. The higher up on the list means it has a higher priority. In the backlog, items will remain individual tasks or become action groups. If the action group becomes large, then I will break it out into its own project. From the backlog, tasks, action groups, or projects will be added to a sprint.

Sprints

• Work Sprint
• Personal Sprint
• Business Sprint

Sprints are weekly sessions where the goal is to get everything done in it. I do a weekly sprint planning where I am essentially planning out my weekly goals and what I want to get done.

Projects

• Work
• Business
• Personal

Projects are bigger action groups that will take a longer period of time than a single week and therefore are broken out into a project. They are usually something where I am working on over the course of a quarter or longer. These projects are generally tagged with “Sprint” is I want to focus on it during a sprint or the individual tasks within a project can be tagged with Sprint in order to focus on that specific task.

Reference

• Ideas
• Reminders
• Recurring
• Reading List

The reference folder contains items that are generally non-actionable and don’t require it to be looked at. The goal of the reference folder is to clean up the other folders and get it out of sight, out of mind. It does contain some actionable items such as Recurring tasks or Reminders, but the reason why they are under the reference folder is because they will pop up onto the Calendar or the “Today” perspective when action is required. These tasks are usually short and don’t require much effort.

Personal Relationship Manager (PRM)

My Personal Relationship Manager is used as a reminder to stay in contact with my friends and personal relationships. I also put things on here for when I have a one-on-one conversation as a reminder to bring up. I segment my PRM into the following lists

• New
• Friends
• Family
• Mentors
• Networking
• Colleagues

For each person on the lists, I use a recurring repeat to defer until for that person.

Template Lists

This is a newer folder for me, and I use these lists as a list that I can clone and use for one-off things. An example of such a project i have on here is “Travel Checklist” to serve as a template to ensure that I don’t forget anything.

4. Review

By this point of the process, you’ll have a lot of items that have piled up. It is time to review the to-do list. In Omnifocus, there is a Review section and you can set varying review timeframes to review more or less often for certain lists.

1. First, look over each to-do and see what the next action should be. If something is really vague, break it down.
2. Second, give each list a review to see where priorities should be adjusted.
3. Third, review the overall system and determine if it is working for you, and what needs to be changed.

5. Engage

The fifth and final step is to engage and get into your work. Choose what your next action is and get it started. At this point, your system is picking what work you should do. To-dos are organized, categorized, and prioritized. You know what to work on next, and when to do it. Everything is broken down into manageable, bite-sized pieces to make it easy to start.