About GTD

Conceived by David Allen, Getting Things Done (GTD) is a simple system to help work with one’s needs and desires. Some might consider such a system to be a “productivity aid”, but this is not the point of GTD. “Mind like water,” is Allen’s description of the experience of the result of embracing such a system. By this he means: being in a state which is relaxed, clear, focused, with appropriately full attention to whatever is at hand, while still remaining in touch with all that one cares about. In short, “mind like water” might describe the experience of being in contact with your cares, but without them “occupying” you.

To accomplish such a state, one must first capture and clarify ideas. That is, one must record and organize all of one’s unfinished projects or todo items. Until these are captured and clarified, these are considered “open loops” in the parlance of GTD. The purpose of capturing these items (on lists, notes, calendar items, whatever is appropriate), is that, once you have sufficient faith in your reliability in working with such a system, capturing such an item effectively allows you to relax about it, without worry of it “falling through the cracks.”

Additionally one must regularly reflect on whatever has been captured. That is, one must keep in touch with all that one cares about. This can happen in the form of daily refreshers, and weekly reviews. These reviews might involve dropping items one has decided that they do not care enough about to ever tackle, or determining a “next concrete action” one can take for a long term project, etc. The refreshers and reviews serve to help consolidate and clarify one’s cares, effectively pacifying general worry around forgetting about what matters.

Finally one must engage with possible next actions. At the most basic level captured GTD items fall into two categories: projects and next actions. Projects are not things that you are able to “do” but rather, they are outcomes that you desire. “Build a house,” is not actually a doable action. Instead, in addition to a project, you would have a single “next physical action” associated with it (in this case, perhaps “buy wood & nails”). So you engage with next actions. Some next actions might be complete in and of themselves, while others are the next action for some captured project. Some projects don’t yet have a next action captured, but that can be revisited during the regular reviews. Generally one picks a next action to engage with that is congruent with one’s context, available time, and energy level. I.e.: You do now what is appropriate to do now. Eventually this becomes intuitive and spontaneous.

About Carebeary

Carebeary is an attempt at a free, minimal desktop & mobile app to help embrace GTD. Its UI and features are straightforward:

• Capture projects & next actions separately:
  • Allow drag-and-drop ordering for the clarity
  • Optionally categorize
  • Optionally add markdown notes
• Review:
  • Daily summary emails (daily reflection)
  • Weekly interactive review: click through projects one at a time while tweaking next actions (weekly clarification)

That’s about it. I am accepting feature requests, but would like to keep it somewhat simple.

About me

TODO