Getting Things Done?: A Complete Guide for Beginners and How To Implement GTD in Paymo

Ever wondered how each successful person achieves more things with less effort? That’s because they have a system for getting things done.

This is no surprise. In fact, this is mandatory given the speed at which companies and roles and responsibilities change these days.

We’re talking about a system that works on all levels (both the big picture and the nitty-gritty details), manages several daily inputs, and saves a lot more time and energy than it needs to be maintained.

Wait, does this system even exist? You bet!

David Allen, the renowned productivity consultant, wrote a bestseller in 2001 in which he described a 5-step framework on how to deal with activities in a relaxed, yet controlled manner: the GTD (Getting Things Done?) method. Since then, every new edition withstood the test of time, cultivating an active community of followers.

Impressive, right? Before jumping to this, here’s a short glimpse of what you’ll learn next:

• GTD Meaning
• How Does GTD Work?
• Going “All In” On GTD
• How to Use Paymo to Get Things Done??
• Paymo’s GTD Limitations

Feel free to skip the theoretical part if you’re already familiar with it and see how you can apply GTD in real life.

GTD meaning

GTD is short for Getting Things Done?, a simple approach for managing and organizing tasks that rests on three pillars:

• Gather all your incomplete activities in a trusted system
• Narrow them down to the ones you’re in full control of and really need to complete
• Keep active reminders about these to review regularly

The premise behind Getting Things Done? is that we’re all forgetful beings, experiencing thousands of wandering thoughts each day. To put it in David’s words:

Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.

He’s talking about the short-term memory, which can hold on to 3 to 5 meaningful things at a time. That’s because it has no sense of past and future, so it will nag you when you’re least able to do a task.

This explains why you can’t stand still and focus on your job without worrying about the notifications on your screen or your colleagues’ external demands (guilty as charged here ??).

Applied properly, GTD will turn all your fuzzy ideas and wishes into actionable items. The point is to free up your mind of “open loops”, so you can stop remembering things and focus on something more productive and creative. Excited already?

How does GTD work?

At its core, Getting Things Done? is all about managing different lists to deal with your present and upcoming work. To achieve this, there are 5 steps you need to go through:

1. Capture all the activities that catch your attention

2. Clarify what they mean and what to do about them

3. Organize and put them into the right lists, so that you

4. Reflect upon them as options for what you want to

5. Engage with.

Let’s have a closer look at each step.

1. Capture

First, collect every activity you consider incomplete in your life, the so-called “open loops”. This can be anything from an idea for work, a reminder to call a relative, that Tokyo trip you’ve always wished for, you name it.

There’s no real boundary between work and personal life. They all take real estate space in your brain. Your job is to capture each one into separate lists that are part of an “Inbox”, until you can decide if they’re actionable and what you’ll do with them. The point is to end up with as few lists as possible and regularly empty them.

Which brings us to the next step.

2. Clarify

Once your inbox is all set up, it’s time to process and empty it in a methodical fashion. This requires you go through all items and ask yourself a couple of questions until you arrive at the actionable ones that solely concern you.

Here’s a simplified GTD diagram to help you out:

Now let’s get our hands dirty and dig a bit into its mechanics.

Is it actionable?

This is pretty straightforward. If an item is not actionable, you have three options:

• Trash it if you don’t need it anymore
• Incubate it into a “Someday/Maybe list” or “Tickler File“ in case you could do something about it at a later point in time (like that Tokyo trip from before)
• Keep it in a “Reference list” if contains useful information that you’ll need to come back to (like an epic blog post or recipe).

If it’s actionable though, you’ll need to find out if it’s more complex than it first looks like (in terms of resources and people involved).

Does it take more than one step to complete?

Most actionable items can be completed in one step: send an email to a client, schedule an appointment to the gym, you get it. Others are not so straightforward and require extensive planning. Getting Things Done? recognizes the latter ones as projects simply because they take more than one step to complete.

Add them to a “Projects list” for now, in no particular order. The point is to have one place where it’s easier for you to review these complex tasks.

Will it take more than 2 minutes?

Moving on with the single-step, actionable items, ask yourself if each activity is going to take more than 2 minutes to complete?

If the answer is “No”, do it right away. You’d waste too much time to document it. We’re talking about forwarding an email, throwing your garbage away, this kind of activities.

If the answer is “Yes”, jump to the delegation and deferring part.

Am I the right person to do it?

You might often end up with an item on your inbox that doesn’t even concern you. That’s because you don’t have enough knowledge, skills, time, or there’s someone else who can do it better and faster than you would.

So just delegate it. If you want to review it, place it in a “Waiting For list” along with all the other activities that are currently in limbo.

Is it for a specific day or time?

We’ve finally arrived at the items that are actionable, have a single step, take more than 2 minutes to complete, and are assigned to yourself. Your last concern should be if they need to be done at a specific time or not?

If they have a due date, they’re better off on a “Calendar”. If they need to be done as soon as possible but don’t have a time constraint, place them on the “Next Actions list”.

According to Getting Things Done?, these are “physical, visible activities” that will take you towards the desired outcome. They are specific, like “Create a 1-page wireframe for the Customer Studies page”, so you don’t have to think about what you meant in the first place when you do the tasks.

3. Organize

Remember when I said that the GTD method is all about lists? Here are the ways in which you can sort your tasks.

For non-actionable items, you need a “Trash”, “Someday/Maybe list” or “Tickler File”, and a “Reference list”.

Perhaps the one that bears further explanations is the Tickler File, a physical file with 43 labels (31 labeled “1” through “31”, and 12 labeled with the months of the year) to which you can literally mail stuff to yourself. It’s David Allen’s favorite analog tool when it comes to getting things done, but things have migrated towards digital nowadays. More on this in another part.

For actionable items, you need a “Projects list”, “Calendar”, “Next Actions list”, and “Waiting For list”.

Since you can’t do a project, only the items within it, the Projects list merely serves as an index. The details, plans, and other important documents that go into each project should be kept separately in a “Support Materials list”. This might look similar to the “Reference list” above, but it bears more attention to make sure you progress on the right “Next Action” items.

The Calendar should be sacred. What goes on it should be done during that exact same day. This includes:

• time-specific actions (like appointments and meetings)
• day-specific actions (the ones that have a due date, but no set hour)
• information-specific actions (details about what to do or whom you should involve on a certain date).

These are the only actions that are allowed. Appointments might bear revision, but the rest are non-negotiable.

This means you no longer need a daily to-do list since all the remaining items will land on the “Next Actions list”. Remember, these are physical, actionable reminders of what you must do to change the current status-quo of your projects or open loops. To better organize them, use a context tag (at home, at work, with family, phone, computer) and specify where to be, with whom, or what to use.

4. Reflect

By now you should already have a complete system for gettings things done. But let’s be honest: you can’t extract too much value from it if you don’t analyze it on a frequent basis and at appropriate levels. The question is how frequently though?

Go over your “Calendar” and “Next Actions list” on a daily basis, and complete them according to their due date and context.

For the rest of the lists, do a weekly review. This leaves you with enough time for things to build up, without having to worry about micromanaging them. Clean up all remaining open loops, update all the necessary materials, and empty your lists so you can start fresh next week.

TIP

During the review phase, you can also use a “Trigger list” to see if you’ve got any lurking open-loops in your mind that you forgot to add in your inbox in the first place.

5. Engage

You’ve properly captured all your open loops, clarified and organized them into lists, and reviewed them regularly. It’s time to actually work on them.

In fact, this is the whole point behind the GTD method is to have a trusted system.

If not sure about your priorities, David Allen proposes three decision-making processes that you can incorporate in your daily work:

A. For choosing actions in the moment:

• Evaluate the context in which you are
• Think about how much time it takes to complete a task and how much you have left
• Consider the energy it takes to complete a task and how much you have left, and
• Trust your intuition to take the decision that yields the highest ROI based on the first three values.

B. To deal with your daily work, you can either:

• Do predefined work and cross off items on your Next Actions list
• Do work as it shows up, which implies that it’s more important than what you already have planned
• Define work, which refers to the Clarify phase in the GTD method

C. The last process relies on taking decisions from different perspective levels. Going from top to bottom, you should look into your:

• Life, the big picture
• 3–5 year vision
• 1–2 year goals
• Areas of responsibility
• Current projects
• Current actions (the “Next Actions list”) to know what focus on.

Going “All In” on GTD

Phew, that’s a lot to take in. If you find it too dense, that’s because most attempts to define the GTD lack depth, telling only half the story.

A word of advice: don’t do the Getting Things Done? steps all at once. That’s where..

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