The Basics of GTD

Many people want me to give them the basics of GTD. They want to know what is the gist of GTD? Well, if you want it boiled down to the basics, here’s it is:

1) Create a Trusted System – just like your contacts or calendar, you need to create a Trusted System where your brain will know you can trust to check to see what you have to do in your life so you can get it out of your head.

2) Outcome-Based Thinking – Articulating in the most specific terms possible what specifically a successful outcome looks like for any give use of your time. Another way to think about it is “How will I know when I’m done with this?”

3) Define the Next Action – Knowing that you don’t need to track everything you could conceivable do about a Project but just the next action to move it forward. You just need to know the next physical action that would get you closer to completion.

4) The Weekly Review – Accepting that the heart of the Trusted System that lets you move through a day with a high tolerance for ambiguity is the knowledge that eventually everything you’re doing gets looked at once a week without fail.

That’s it. I can’t boil it down to anything simpler than those four steps.

What is your minimal version of GTD?