Getting started with GTD: a lightweight setup

Last updated: 2026-10-12

David Allen's Getting Things Done is a method for getting everything out of your head and into a system you trust. The full method has many parts; this guide covers the core you can start with this week.

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The idea in one paragraph

Your mind is good at having ideas and bad at holding them. GTD asks you to capture every commitment, big or small, into an inbox; to decide for each item what the next physical action is; to keep those actions in a few lists by context; and to review the whole system weekly so you can trust it. When you trust the system, your head is free for the work in front of you.

Step by step

1. Capture everything for 20 minutes. Write down every open loop: work, home, errands, promises, ideas. One item per line, no sorting.
2. Clarify each item. Is it actionable? If not, delete it, file it as reference or put it on Someday. If yes, what is the very next physical action?
3. Do anything under two minutes. Replying to a short message or booking a slot online is faster to do than to track.
4. Organise what remains. Next actions go to their list or context tag; multi-step outcomes go to Projects; date-bound items get a date; delegated items go to Waiting for.
5. Choose by context, time and energy. When you have 15 minutes and your phone, look at #calls. When you have two quiet hours, pick a deep task from a project.
6. Review weekly. Empty the inbox, check every project has a next action, scan Waiting for and Someday, and look at the coming week.

Type these lines into Pladay

Each line below was read by the same parser the app uses. The task, date and repeat rule are what you get when you type it.

A minimal set of lists

• Inbox: everything new lands here first, unsorted.
• Next actions: concrete, visible steps you can do as soon as you have time, such as “Email Sam the draft”. Many people split this by context: calls, computer, errands, home.
• Projects: any outcome that needs more than one step, with at least one next action each.
• Waiting for: things you delegated or are expecting from others, with the date you asked.
• Someday/maybe: ideas you are not committing to now.
• Calendar: only things that must happen on a specific day or time.

Where beginners get stuck

• Building the perfect system before using it. Start with the inbox and one next-actions list; add contexts later if you need them.
• Writing projects as tasks. “Plan the holiday” is a project; “Look up flights to Lisbon for May” is a next action.
• Putting wishes on the calendar. If you move a calendar item every week, it belongs on a list, not on a date.
• Skipping the weekly review. Without it, the lists go stale and you stop trusting them.

Setting it up in Pladay

• Pladay's Inbox is the capture point; anything typed without a list goes there. Quick add keeps capture to one line, with dates and #tags when you know them (quick add).
• Create lists for Projects and Someday; use tags such as #calls, #errands or #waiting as contexts, and filter by tag when you are in that context.
• The guided weekly review starts with clearing the inbox, which is exactly the GTD order.
• Large outcomes can be broken into next actions with AI breakdown, then edited by hand.

Templates for this

• 🗓️Weekly work reviewEvery Friday look back on the week; every Monday morning reset your priorities.7 tasks
• 🎯Project kickoffDefine goals and roles, run the kickoff meeting and review the first milestone.9 tasks

FAQ

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