Do you, like most people, have to juggle a million things every day? Getting that car fixed, replying to those emails, taking that phone call. Because of this, sometimes it’s hard to stay focused on the task at hand. Our attention drifts away to things that we have yet to get done. Our flow keeps getting interrupted by our monkey minds. We try to remember everything, cramming tasks inside our heads.
The GTD (Getting Things Done) methodology is a foolproof personal productivity system developed by David Allen. It consists of five steps:
- Capture your thoughts. Instead of keeping all those ideas, to-dos, decisions and so forth in your head, you need to capture them in some external platform, whether on paper or digitally.
- Clarify what each item is and what you can do with it.
- Organize the outcomes into a structure of lists.
- Reflect on what is important to you and review the items in your system.
- Engage your tasks. Pick which action you wish to undertake at this time and do it.
You can implement GTD on a piece of paper, but if you’re looking for a more reliable tool, use this board template that we’ve built for you.
What is the GTD Template?
The GTD template is a Kanban Zone template adopted from the GTD methodology by David Allen. To implement this framework, you need a system. This is where we come in to help you.
Our template helps visualize the methodology so you can drag and drop your tasks and flow them through the columns.
What is included?
The template consists of the following:
- Five main columns: Inbox, Clarify, Organize, Engage, and Done
- Two subcolumns inside the Clarify column: Not Actionable (Someday/Maybe, Reference), Actionable (Do It, Delegate It)
- Two subcolumns inside the Organize column: Projects (Identifying, Envision, Brainstorm, Organize, Define, In Progress, Done) and Single Tasks (Calendar, Next Action, Waiting For)
- Five labels for five contexts: Email, Calls, Errands, Work, Personal
How to Use the Template
- Start your Free Trial, then build a new board from the GTD template.
- Capture. Add everything that has your attention as cards and assign them the correct labels. Put them in the Inbox column.
- Clarify. For every card, ask yourself, is it actionable? If so, what is the next action? Move the cards to the correct column after you answer these questions (Actionable/Not Actionable).
- Act on these cards if they are actionable.
- Organize. Move the cards to these subcolumns (Projects and Single Tasks) if you need a reminder to do it in the future.
- Reflect. Review your board frequently.
- Engage. Move the cards to In Progress or Verify if you’re working on it or if its completion needs to be verified.
- Move the cards to Done after you’re done with the task.
- To work based on context, filter the board by labels.
To learn more about GTD, visit gettingthingsdone.com.
