The GTD method: Getting Things Done in five steps

What is the GTD method?

David Allen describes Getting Things Done, or GTD for short, in his book of the same name, first published in 2001 and revised in 2015. The basic idea: your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. Every open loop—a call to return, an idea, a half-planned project—costs attention as long as it only lives in your memory. So GTD collects everything in one place, clarifies it calmly, and files it so you can always see what to do next.

What sets the method apart is the question of the next action. “Taxes” isn’t a task you can finish. “Download my W-2 from the payroll portal” is. GTD makes you phrase this step while you sort—later, when you want to work, you no longer have to think, you just do.

The 5 steps of the GTD method

1. Capture

Everything that has your attention lands in an Inbox—without judging and without sorting. What matters is that capturing is faster than thinking about it: a keyboard shortcut on the Mac, the Share menu on the iPhone, a sentence to Siri. The fewer inboxes you have, the better; each additional one is a place you have to keep an eye on.

2. Clarify

When you clarify, you take each item on its own and ask: What is it, and is it actionable? Anything that isn’t actionable goes in the trash, on the Someday/Maybe list, or into reference. Anything that is actionable gets a next action. If the outcome takes more than one step, it’s a project.

This is where the two-minute rule comes in: anything you can finish in less than about two minutes, you do right away. Everything else you delegate, put on the calendar, or add to your Next Actions list.

3. Organize

Organizing means the outcome of clarifying goes onto the right list. Projects go on the Projects list, next actions on the action lists, delegated items on Waiting For, fixed appointments in the calendar. Afterward, the Inbox is empty—not because everything is done, but because everything has a place.

4. Reflect

A system you don’t look at loses your trust. That’s why you check your calendar and next actions every day and look at everything once a week: in the weekly review. More on that below.

5. Engage

When it’s time to work, you choose from your next actions—by context (where you are, what you have at hand), by available time, by energy, and finally by priority. Because every action is already phrased concretely, you simply start.

Lists and contexts in a GTD system

GTD gets by with a few lists. Each one answers its own question, and no list mixes things you can do with things you’re only waiting for.

For David Allen, a project is any desired outcome that takes more than one step and can be completed within about a year—so “Renovate the kitchen” or “Plan a vacation in Portugal” count too. The Projects list is an overview of your outcomes; the next actions live on the action lists.

Contexts split your next actions by what you need to do them: “Calls,” “Computer,” “Errands,” “Office,” or “Agenda: Anna.” While you wait at the doctor’s office, you open “Calls” and see only what you can do from there. Now that almost everyone does almost everything on a computer, many people use fewer location contexts and more contexts based on energy or time, such as “Quick wins” or “Deep work.”

The weekly review

The weekly review is the part of GTD that gets skipped most often—and the most important one. Once a week, ideally at a fixed time, you bring the system up to date. David Allen divides it into three parts:

1. Get clear: collect loose papers, notes, and emails, get the Inbox to zero, empty your head.
2. Get current: check off next actions, look at the calendar for the past and coming weeks, review Waiting For and follow up, go through every project, and make sure each one has a next action.
3. Get creative: go through the Someday/Maybe list, activate or drop ideas, add new plans.

A project without a next action is the most common leak in a GTD system: it’s on the list but doesn’t move. If you ask only this one question in your weekly review, you’ve already gained a lot.

Set up GTD in TandemLoop

TandemLoop doesn’t prescribe a method, but it has the building blocks for GTD, which makes it a GTD app for Mac, iPad, and iPhone. You build the lists as views—saved views that collect tasks across all projects according to your rules. Here’s how to set up a GTD system:

1. Inbox and capture: New items reach the Inbox through Quick Entry (⌃⌥Space on the Mac), the Share menu, the Inbox widget, or Siri. To clarify them, drag them onto a project or an area.
2. Areas and projects: Areas such as Work, Personal, and Health, with projects inside. If one step has to follow another, set the project to sequential—then only the first open task is available. One-off items live as standalone tasks in the area.
3. “Next Actions” view: In the view editor, set the filter “Available is Yes” (active, not deferred, project active), turn on Show project context, and set Only Next Action per project. If you work with an agent, add “Assigned To is Human” so only your tasks appear.
4. Contexts as tags: Create tags such as “Calls,” “Errands,” and “Computer,” ideally under a parent tag “Contexts.” If you group the Next Actions view by tags, each action appears under its context.
5. “Waiting For” view: Use the Quick Setup preset Waiting and show the Waiting For field so you can see whom to follow up with.
6. “Someday/Maybe” view: Filter “Status is Someday.” If the status applies to a whole project, the project and its tasks disappear from your next actions.
7. “Weekly Review” view: The Agenda layout across everything open, with Include Inbox and Show project context on. Add a project view that shows every active project with its progress and open tasks.
8. Engage: the Today view or the Today widget on your iPhone.

Which layouts exist besides List and Agenda, and how filters, groups, and repeats work, is covered in the overview of the to-do app with all its features. If you’d rather see your next actions as a Board with a WIP limit, the guide to the kanban app for personal kanban connects kanban and GTD. And if you want to sort your next actions by importance, combine GTD with the Eisenhower Matrix as an app.

GTD with an AI agent

GTD involves a lot of admin work: reading items, phrasing actions, assigning projects, going through lists. This is exactly the work an AI agent can prepare. Because TandemLoop stores all tasks as text files in your iCloud Drive, an agent with file access, such as Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor, can read and edit them. We call this agentic GTD: the agent does the groundwork, you make the decisions.

The agent creates tasks, projects, and areas right where they belong and files Inbox items. If you want to see every filing decision first, turn on proposals: the agent then only adds new items to the Inbox directly and submits everything else as a proposal that you approve in the app. Clarifying remains a GTD step you’re responsible for; only the typing goes away.

Example: have the agent prepare your weekly review

On Friday afternoon, you open the task, go through the list, and decide—whether the course costs $49 or $79 is up to you, not the agent.

Delegating while you clarify also gets a new option. Instead of “Waiting for a colleague,” you can assign a task to the agent: research, a draft, an analysis. You decide whether it does the task itself, prepares a draft first, or asks before it starts. The page Share tasks with AI agents explains how handing off and handing back work in detail.