David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology is built on five phases that transform chaotic inputs into confident action. Capture GTD implements each phase as a distinct workflow with enforced rules, not optional suggestions. This page explains the GTD principle behind each step and how the app brings it to life.
1. Capture
GTD principle: Get everything out of your head. Every thought, commitment, idea, or nagging concern should flow into a single inbox. The capture step demands zero decision-making — you are not deciding what to do with an item, only recording that it exists. The threshold for capture must be as low as possible, because any friction means things stay in your head, and things in your head erode trust in the system.
How Capture GTD implements it: When you capture a task, it enters your inbox as “Stuff” — the domain’s term for raw, unclarified input. The only required field is a title. No importance, no effort estimate, no context, no due date. The app deliberately withholds those fields at capture time because filling them out would slow you down and violate the separation between capturing and clarifying.
Captured items default to Medium importance, no contexts, and no areas of focus. They sit in the inbox until you process them during the Clarify phase. The system enforces one validation rule: the title cannot be blank. Everything else is deferred to later.
This design reflects a core GTD insight: the value of 100% capture is not in any single item — it is in the confidence that nothing has been missed. If your inbox is comprehensive, your mind can let go.
Related guide: How to capture tasks
2. Clarify
GTD principle: Process each inbox item by asking a series of questions. Is it actionable? If not, trash it or file it as reference. If actionable, is it a single step or multiple steps? Does it have a specific date? Could it wait? Clarification is the critical thinking step that turns vague inputs into concrete commitments with clear next actions.
How Capture GTD implements it: The clarification flow is a structured decision tree enforced by the domain model. You cannot simply drag an item out of the inbox — you must declare what it becomes. Each path produces a different task type with its own required metadata:
- Reference — Non-actionable material you want to keep. No effort, no deadline. Filed and retrievable.
- Someday/Maybe — Something you might act on but not now. Accepts an effort estimate and optional dependencies on other tasks.
- Scheduled — A time-specific commitment. Requires an effort estimate and either a one-time date or an RRULE recurrence pattern (e.g.,
FREQ=DAILY;BYDAY=MO,TU,WE,TH,FRfor weekday standups). - Project — An outcome requiring multiple steps. Requires a defined outcome statement (what “done” looks like), effort estimate, and optional deadline and dependencies.
- Todo (Next Action) — A single concrete action. Requires an effort estimate. Accepts optional deadlines (one-time or recurring) and dependencies on other tasks.
- Waiting For — A task delegated to someone else. Requires the person you are waiting on, effort, and optional deadline.
You can also rename the task during clarification. A vague inbox item like “garage” can become “Organize garage” with the outcome “Garage is clean and organized with labeled storage bins.” This renaming step is how fuzzy inputs become actionable commitments.
The domain enforces that only Stuff can be clarified. Once an item has been clarified, it leaves the inbox permanently and appears in its corresponding list. Dependencies can only reference tasks that have already been clarified — you cannot depend on unclarified Stuff.
Related guide: How to clarify inbox items
3. Organize
GTD principle: Put things where they belong. Every clarified item needs a home in the right list, with the right metadata, so you can find it when you need it. Organization is not about creating elaborate folder hierarchies — it is about ensuring that when you are at your computer with 30 minutes of energy, you can instantly see every action that fits that situation.
How Capture GTD implements it: Once clarified, tasks land in their corresponding GTD lists automatically: Next Actions, Projects, Someday/Maybe, Waiting For, Scheduled, or Reference. Organization in Capture GTD is about enriching those items with the metadata that makes them findable and filterable.
Contexts represent where or with what you can act. Examples: @computer, @phone, @errands, @office, @high-energy. You create your own contexts and assign them to tasks. The Engage view can then filter by context, so when you are running errands you see only errand-appropriate actions.
Areas of Focus represent the life domains you want to dedicate energy to: Health, Career, Family, Finances, Personal Development. Assigning areas of focus to tasks connects ground-level work to higher-level priorities and provides analytics data during reviews.
Dependencies model the sequencing between tasks. “Write documentation” can depend on “Gather requirements,” which means the documentation task will not appear in the Engage list until requirements gathering is complete. Dependencies also apply to projects and someday/maybe items.
Project membership groups tasks under a project. A project like “Launch website” can have sub-tasks like “Design mockups” and “Set up hosting,” each tracked independently but visible as part of the project during reviews.
Importance (ExtraLow through Critical) and Effort (XSmall through XLarge) are editable after clarification. You can adjust these as your understanding of a task evolves. The domain enforces that certain properties only apply to certain task types — you cannot set effort on unclarified Stuff, and you cannot set a deadline on a Scheduled item (which uses schedules, not deadlines).
Related guides: How to organize your lists | How to manage contexts | How to manage areas of focus
4. Reflect
GTD principle: Regular reviews are what keep the system trusted. Without them, lists go stale, projects drift, and your mind starts holding items again because it no longer believes the system is current. The weekly review is the keystone habit of GTD — David Allen calls it the “critical success factor” for the methodology.
How Capture GTD implements it: The app provides five review cadences, each scoped to its appropriate time horizon:
Morning Review surfaces what is due today or overdue, plus anything scheduled for the current day. It answers: “What does today look like?” You start the day knowing exactly what demands your attention.
Nightly Review shows what you completed today with analytics broken down by context and area of focus. It also previews tomorrow’s schedule and deadlines, and flags projects that have no next action defined — stuck projects that will lose momentum if not addressed.
Weekly Review is the most comprehensive. It covers tasks completed in the past week (with context and area of focus analytics), everything scheduled and due this week, projects without next actions, and stale projects that have had no activity in the past seven days. The weekly review is where you process your inbox to zero, ensure every active project has a next action, and check whether your someday/maybe list still reflects your interests. This is the single most important habit in GTD. When stale or stuck projects surface during the review, you can add a next action directly from the review screen.
Monthly Review expands the lens to the past month. Same structure — completions, schedule, deadlines, stuck projects, stale projects — but scoped to 30 days. This is where you assess whether your areas of focus are getting the attention they deserve.
Yearly Review shows all completions for the current year with analytics. This is the horizon where you evaluate purpose, principles, and long-term visions.
The app also provides Project Reviews that let you drill into a specific project to see its progress (completed vs. incomplete tasks), blocked tasks with unresolved dependencies, and whether the project currently has a defined next action.
Related guide: How to run reviews
5. Engage
GTD principle: With a trusted system in place, you choose what to work on based on four criteria: context (where you are), time available, energy level, and priority. GTD does not prescribe a rigid priority system — it trusts that a well-maintained system gives you the information to make good in-the-moment decisions.
How Capture GTD implements it: The Engage view shows your next actions sorted by an impact scoring algorithm. Only actionable tasks appear here — unclarified Stuff, completed tasks, and tasks with unresolved dependencies are excluded. You can filter by context (show only @computer tasks) or by project (show only tasks for “Launch website”).
The impact score is a computed priority that weighs five factors:
| Factor | Weight | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| Importance | 2.0x | Critical = 5, High = 4, Medium = 3, Low = 2, ExtraLow = 1 |
| Effort | 1.5x | Inverted: XSmall = 5, Small = 4, Medium = 3, Large = 2, XLarge = 1. Smaller tasks score higher, favoring quick wins. |
| Dependencies | 1.0x | Number of tasks this depends on. More dependencies = higher coordination overhead = higher score. |
| Age | 1.0x | Tasks older than 30 days score 3.0; 14+ days = 2.5; 7+ = 2.0; 3+ = 1.5; 1+ = 1.0; newer = 0.5. Older tasks gradually rise in priority. |
| Urgency | 2.0x | Overdue = 10, due today = 8, within 3 days = 6, within a week = 4, within 2 weeks = 2, further out = 1. No deadline = 0. |
The formula: (importance * 2) + (effort * 1.5) + dependencies + age + (urgency * 2).
This scoring encodes several GTD-aligned intuitions. A small, high-importance task with a deadline tomorrow will dominate the list. A large, low-importance task with no deadline will sink to the bottom. Overdue items receive the strongest boost, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. And tasks with no deadline at all still rise gradually through the age factor, preventing them from being perpetually deferred.
Completing a task removes it from the Engage list and records a completion timestamp used by review analytics. Recurring tasks (those with RRULE deadlines) track each occurrence independently — completing “Pay rent” for January does not complete it for February. The task reappears when the next occurrence arrives.
Related guide: How to engage with next actions
The phases are a cycle, not a pipeline
These five steps are not something you do once. They are a continuous loop. You capture throughout the day. You clarify during processing sessions. You organize as part of clarification. You reflect on a cadence — daily, weekly, monthly. And you engage whenever you have time to work. The weekly review is the point where you verify that every part of the cycle is functioning: inbox processed, projects reviewed, next actions current, someday/maybe still relevant. When the cycle runs consistently, the system earns your trust, and your mind lets go.