How to Get Everything Done, Effectively

Millions of people use GTD framework to manage their lives. Here’s how you can get started easily.

Everyday, our skills are needed in more areas than ever. We are pulled in all directions by our bosses, colleagues, partner. We spend whole day working, yet feel we didn’t get anything done. How the day went by?

We all have to go through a lot of tasks, projects, to-dos, checklists, and follow ups in our knowledge work. Often, they are more than what we can manage.

Were you ever in a situtation when things simply slipped from your mind, you reached an “oh shit, I forgot!” moment?

If you are like me, this has happened to you more than once. Rather, this has happened enough times you realize you can’t keep everything in your head. You’ve been burnt by trusting your brain in critical situations. You know it’s not foolproof to keep everything in your head. Some tasks are way too important to be missed.

“Your head is a crappy office.”
- David Allen, Getting Things Done®

Our mind works in unique ways. It doesn’t have any sense of present and future. It wants to get everything done now. It reminds you about them constantly. That’s the reason you think about dog food at 3pm in the office when you can’t do anything about it.

You learn from your past mistakes. You now have a to-do list or a calendar somewhere, physical or digital, which has some reminders. You know the types of tasks you are more likely to forget, or you have to get done today no matter what, you put them in a list. May be you write 3 things to get done everyday. And when you accomplish them, you feel proud striking them off. It gives you the confidence that you can finish things that you decided to take on. Great.

To-do list is the first step

Your to-do list comes in all shapes and sizes, some don’t even look like a list. It’s a sticky note on your desk. It’s a calendar “event” with yourself, that is actually not an event. It’s your meeting notes from your conversation with your boss. It’s a grocery list on your fridge. It’s an unread email in your inbox.

If you maintain some sort of to-do list, if you write things down somewhere and strike them off later, congratulate yourself. Having any system in place is a good start, in fact a great start. You are doing better than most. You’ll be surprised how many people walk with everything in their head.

Your to-do list works. You write your important tasks in it that you must do, and you get them done. But what about not-so-important things that you have to take care of? Why rely on your to-do list and on your mind both? Why not have just one system?

Not-so-important things are important too

Everyday we do a lot of tasks that are not important in the big scheme of things, but we gotta get them done. Clean the kitchen, buy dog food, take car to the mechanic, buy a new pair of shoes. They are essential in living a balanced and healthy life.

We often trust our brain to remind us (rather constantly when we don’t need it) about these chores. We expect we’ll automatically get reminded when we are leaving the office. We rarely write them in our to-do list. Our tasks are spread between our to-do list and our head, so we constantly switch between the two to tell us what we need to do right now. Hence, we don’t trust either of them completely.

Everything goes in your to-do list

To create a trusted system, you must put everything in your list. Everything. Build a system of writing everything down so that you don’t have to rely on your brain to give you the information at the right moment.

Just the act of writing down gives you a sense of control. You don’t have to constantly ask your brain “show me all my tasks.”

There is another downside of not having a single list. You can only prioritize and decide what to work on next if you have a complete picture of what all you are committed to. If some things are still in your head, you’ll constantly second-guess yourself if you are doing the right task. So take everything out on paper.

Managing to-do list

David Allen created an elaborate way of managing your to-do list, Getting Things Done®. I’ve been following GTD since 2019 and it runs my life. It took me 6 months to get it into routine. Adapting it is a big endeavor. But that’s a topic for some other time.

I don’t want to give you a complex framework which you are likely to drop in the middle. A lot of people have picked up David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, and found it too technical.

Big changes are difficult. So I’ll lay down a simple process to get you started.

Setup - Create and categorize your list

To bring the chaos to order, you start with a simple process. You write everything down and categorize it in a way that it doesn’t become overwhelming.

You’ll follow an easy way of writing everything down. It’s simple enough to get you started. But it will set you up to eventually follow GTD (or some form of it) because you realize how helpful it is to note things down.

Here are the 3 steps to follow -

1. Brain dump (or mind sweep)

2. Categorize in Today and Someday

3. Create an Inbox

Let’s go over each step one by one.

Brain Dump

It’s a simple but lengthy exercise. People usually take anywhere between 1 to 5 hours to finish it. There’s frankly no time limit, but you’ll know when to stop.

In this exercise, you gonna take an empty paper or a digital space, and dump everything down that has your attention. Any task that you have to get done, no matter when and how, big or small, goes in there. All the projects you need to finish go in there. It’s a dump of everything that’s going on in your head.

People usually have 100-300 items in there. Yes! Get dog food, hire a person, document the process, follow up with a colleague, remind your boss about something, buy a house. Stop when it becomes very hard to find what else have your attention. Don’t strive for perfection. You’ll create a place for things you will remember in future.

Your job here is to not get them done. You are simply taking them out of your mind so you free up some cognitive space in your head.

“Your brain is there for having ideas, not for holding them.”
- David Allen

Brain dump isn’t easy. It takes a lot of time, but you should have everything out of your mind. The brain dump represents everything that you have to get done (or may be not), eventually. This list is huge, no wonder you can’t get all of them done. So now you can stop beating yourself up for missing things here and there.

Next step is to categorize this list to make it actionable.

Categorize in “Today” and “Someday”

There are several ways of categorizing this list. A simple way is all I want you to do right now.

Moreover, I believe the categorization is very personal. You actually create your own style. You throw away what doesn’t work, you keep what’s effective. This is an ever evolving process. What works today for you might not work in 12 months. So don’t worry much about the best way to structure it.

Categorize your brain dump in 2 parts -

• Things I can do today or this week (Today/This Week list) - today or this week, whatever you feel comfortable looking all at once. This will vary depending on your commitments. Putting them as daily tasks simply means you’ll process the second part more frequently.

• Things I’ll get done someday or not at all (Someday/Maybe list) - everything else falls into a someday/maybe list. You have great ideas all the time. Some are worth exploring, some are distractions, few can change your life. You don’t have to evaluate every idea right away. Just put everything in Someday/Maybe and worry about it later.

Inbox

The beauty of brain dump is your brain will naturally start having a lot of new ideas. Now that it doesn’t have to worry about current tasks, it frees up your cognitive energy to be more creative. You don’t have to force it. It will come naturally.

For all the new ideas coming in, create a space, an Inbox. It should be quickly and easily accessible, digital or physical. As you go through your day, having new ideas, Inbox will be the place to write all of them down.

Everyday we come up with life changing ideas, ways to improve ourselves. With all the chaos around us, they often get lost. Write down your ideas in Inbox to not let that happen.

Get to work

As you get on with your work, you only have to think about your today / this week list. This is a manageable list of tasks. You don’t feel overwhelmed by looking at it (if you do, move some tasks to someday/maybe). You don’t have to worry about tasks in your someday/maybe list, that’s 90% of things. You feel lighter already. But you are still 100% effective, if not more.

Then, you must look at your someday/maybe list frequently and pull things out from there into today/weekly. You can do that at the end of the day or week. You get current with newly added things and get to work again.

For any new work that shows up, first put them in Inbox. Then you process your Inbox the same way you process your someday/maybe list. Decide on each task in your Inbox whether it is to be done today (or this week), or it is more for the future (put them in someday/maybe list).

Processing Inbox separately has huge benefits. In work, we are constantly interrupted by new and “urgent” tasks. As soon as we are aware of them, we immediately start working on them. But what about that important thing you were working on when you got interrupted? When you process your Inbox while keeping your today/this week list in mind, you prioritize the recent tasks with the complete context and your other commitments. It helps you differentiate between seemingly important and actually important things.

Improving your list

As you go about using the list, you’ll find opportunities of improving it. There are no bounds on how the list can be improved. It’s your list and you should change it how you think is best. As an example, when you review your someday/maybe list, you’ll have to review 200-300 items in one go. A lot of them will be bigger projects than mere one-off tasks. So it might make sense to further divide someday into “Projects” and “One-time.” This is just an example, I’m not suggesting you have to do exactly that.

Be flexible with managing your list. There’s no best way to organize your projects. The structure evolves constantly. I’m using a completely different structure than what I had a year ago.

The tool you use, paper, a to-do app, doesn’t matter as well. Only thing that matters is it has to be effective for you. You should be able to look at it and get the work done.

Moving Forward

Managing the daily chaos liberates you from getting entangled in the stuff. Managed life gives you the freedom to be more creative and be in the moment. The more your tasks and projects are organized, the more it allows you to accept new challenges and be spontaneous in the moment. On top of that, all the life-changing ideas you keep on having are important to be worked upon. You owe it to yourself to not let them disappear.

You life is worth trying new ideas and habits. You life is worth improving.