GTD in practice · 2 min read

Start GTD in one evening

Dmytro Sokolnikov, maker of Tasker · November 1, 2026

Before you start

pick an evening when nobody will interrupt you;
make some tea and have your phone or computer at hand;
don’t aim for perfect: you will polish the system over the first weeks.

Hour one: get everything out

Write down everything that comes to mind: tasks, promises, ideas, worries. Walk through the areas of your life — work, home, money, health, family, shopping — and through the places where papers pile up: the desk, the drawers, the fridge door.

No sorting and no dates. The goal of the first hour is to leave nothing in your head “just in case”.

Hour two: clarify

Take the items one by one. Under two minutes — do it right away. Has a day — give it a date. More than one step — start a project and write down its first action. Not needed — delete it.

Can’t get through everything? No problem: clarify at least what is urgent, the rest can wait until tomorrow.

Half an hour: put things in place

Set up 3–7 areas and put projects into them. Look a week ahead: is any day overloaded? Mark separately what you need to keep an eye on.

And last — schedule the weekly review as a recurring task: without it the system stalls within a month.

The first week

every morning — the list for today: what has a time and what matters most;
everything new — straight into one place for capture;
every day — a few minutes to clarify;
at the end of the week — your first review: what works and what to simplify.

Not perfect, but done today!

How it works in Tasker

The same evening in Tasker:

If you are still in basic mode, turn on advanced mode — the rocket at the end of the section menu (on a phone — bottom right). It has the Inbox, Today and Areas.
Dump everything into the Inbox: “+” at the top, the thought, “To Inbox” — or just type them one after another into the “Add to Inbox” line.
Clarify: tap an item in the Inbox and in the “Sort out” window choose a date, “Keep track of”, “Remember”, “Done” or “Delete”.
In Areas, add 3–7 areas, and in them — projects with a first task, using the “Add item” line.
Create a “Weekly review” task for Friday or Sunday and choose “Weekly” instead of “Don’t repeat” in the date window.
In the morning, open Today — and get going.

To capture on the go, keep Tasker at hand: in Telegram — the “Tasker” button in the bot’s menu, on your phone — install Tasker as an app, on a computer — tasker-me.app in the browser.

All Tasker features →