Lessons tagged “GTD”
9 published lessons with this tag.
Review completes the capture loop
Captured thoughts that are never reviewed are effectively still lost. The capture habit preserves raw material; the review habit transforms it into usable knowledge. Without review, your capture system becomes a graveyard of good intentions.
Processing is not organizing
Processing means deciding what to do with each item — organizing is a later step. Conflating the two creates systems that look tidy but never get worked.
The two-minute rule for capture
If processing an item takes less than two minutes, do it immediately — deferring it costs more than completing it.
The weekly review as safety net
A weekly review catches anything your daily capture missed — it is the redundancy layer that keeps your entire epistemic system trustworthy.
Externalization mastery means nothing stays trapped in your head
When everything important is externalized — every decision, reasoning chain, emotion, goal, assumption, commitment, priority, mental model, blocker, energy pattern, learning, feedback signal, failure, progress marker, thinking condition, and system design — you gain complete cognitive freedom. The mind that holds nothing becomes the mind that can do anything.
The weekly priority reset
Each week deliberately choose your top priorities rather than continuing last weeks by default.
The two-minute rule for small tasks
If a task takes less than two minutes do it immediately rather than scheduling it — because the overhead of capturing, organizing, and tracking it exceeds the cost of doing it now.
The action filing system
Information that requires action goes into your task management system.
The weekly review
A longer weekly review identifies patterns and adjusts plans.