# Areas of responsibility

GTD in practice · 2 min read

Dmytro Sokolnikov, maker of Tasker · October 21, 2026

**In short.** An area of responsibility in GTD is a part of life you maintain all the time and that is never “finished”: work, health, family, home, money. A project ends, an area stays; splitting life into areas helps you notice when some part of it has gone without attention for a while.

## An area versus a project

A project has an end: “Submit visa documents” will be done one day. An area doesn’t: “Health” can’t be completed and closed — you can only look after it.

So an area is not a to-do list but a place where related projects and tasks live: in “Health” — “Get blood tests”, “Workouts three times a week”, “Book the dentist”.

## How many areas you need

Usually 3–7 are enough. Fewer, and everything piles into one heap; more, and you get confused about what goes where. To start, you could take these:

- Work;
- Health;
- Family and friends;
- Home;
- Money;
- Study or hobbies.

## Why it helps in practice

When everything sits in areas, the weekly review shows an imbalance easily: twenty open projects in “Work” and none in “Health”. That is a signal to stop and think.

Another benefit is order: a new task has an obvious place right away.

## How not to overcomplicate it

- don’t split areas into small sub-areas while you are fine without them;
- if a task belongs to two areas, put it where you would look first;
- every few months, look at your areas again: life changes, and so do they.

> 3–7 areas — and your whole life at a glance!

## How it works in Tasker

In Tasker areas have their own section, Areas. Type a name into the “Add area” line and press Enter — a new area appears. Inside, projects, folders, tasks and notes are added the same way, with the “Add item” line.

Areas are a tree: tap the arrow next to an item and its contents open right in place.

Each area can have a color — in the menu on its icon. Turn on “Colored icons” in your profile and choose “Areas”, and everything inside an area takes its color, on the calendar too.

Mark items you come back to every day as “Favorite” — they stay at hand in Favorites wherever they sit in the tree.

Areas are part of advanced mode.

[All Tasker features](https://tasker-me.app/#features)

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Next: [Calendar and deadlines in GTD](https://tasker-me.app/gtd/calendar/)

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