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[Tom_Hagen]

After so many years of practicing GTD, after reading David Allen's book countless times, and thinking I understood everything, I realized I was making a mistake at the basic level.

This came to light after a conversation with Chat GPT, which made me realize that GTD is an "action-based" system (which I knew), but which consequently meant that my prior planning of a whole list of next actions (sequential, not parallel) in the project wasn't what David Allen recommended. I don't know why I didn't notice. However, GPT did provide me with the sources for these statements—including in the book, and indeed, they are—perhaps they weren't emphasized enough for me. GPT cites, among others, Kelly Forrister's quotes: "If you plan more than the next action, you're probably wasting time." from Q&A GTD Connect.

Am I the only "airhead" here who missed this principle, or is anyone else here also mapping out the entire project?

 

[Y_Lherieau]

After so many years of practicing GTD, after reading David Allen's book countless times, and thinking I understood everything, I realized I was making a mistake at the basic level.

This came to light after a conversation with Chat GPT, which made me realize that GTD is an "action-based" system (which I knew), but which consequently meant that my prior planning of a whole list of next actions (sequential, not parallel) in the project wasn't what David Allen recommended. I don't know why I didn't notice. However, GPT did provide me with the sources for these statements—including in the book, and indeed, they are—perhaps they weren't emphasized enough for me. GPT cites, among others, Kelly Forrister's quotes: "If you plan more than the next action, you're probably wasting time." from Q&A GTD Connect.

Am I the only "airhead" here who missed this principle, or is anyone else here also mapping out the entire project?

What you’re describing is actually a perfect example of why GTD and Lean reach the same conclusion through two different doors: reality is simply too variable to justify planning a whole chain of future actions.

In Lean, anything that cannot be predicted with stability is classified as Muda (waste). And David Allen says the same thing in a different language: you only ever need to know the very next visible action. Everything beyond that is speculation.

The reason is brutally simple:
Real life will punch your beautiful plan in the face.

New information shows up. Dependencies shift. People don’t reply. Priorities change. Constraints appear out of nowhere. So the more you’ve pre-designed a “sequence”, the more you’ll have to re-design it… which is pure rework — the most expensive waste category in Lean.

Kelly Forrister’s line that GPT quoted — “If you plan more than the next action, you’re probably wasting time” — is exactly about this. It’s not that planning is bad; it’s that over-planning creates inventory you cannot execute yet, and that inventory decays very fast in knowledge work.

You’re absolutely not an “airhead”. You just uncovered the moment where GTD clicks at a deeper level: the project plan is not a choreography — it’s a commitment to keep deciding the next right move as reality unfolds.

 

[fooddude]

I have been saying that ever since being on this forum. I never have anything but the very next action in the right context to move the project forward. You can do many actions at one sitting, stop and put the very next action on your list to pick it up the next time. Or just stop and enter the next action during your weekly review. That is why the review is so important (and necessary).

 

[mcogilvie]

I came to GTD shortly before the book was first published, after a fairly long exposure to older “time management systems”. These did not work very well for me, but may have left me with a leaning towards “project planning.” I knew what David Allen said about just enough planning, but I resisted for a long time.

 

[Tom_Hagen]

I came to GTD shortly before the book was first published, after a fairly long exposure to older “time management systems”. These did not work very well for me, but may have left me with a leaning towards “project planning.” I knew what David Allen said about just enough planning, but I resisted for a long time.

And how did this story end?

 

[mcogilvie]

And how did this story end?

I resisted not just simple planning (desired project outcome plus next actions) but was inconsistent with processing all inboxes and with doing good weekly reviews. I tried for years to make OmniFocus work for me, and eventually gave up. In my defense, my life was and is fairly complicated. However, I would say that over-complication has been a large barrier, as it is to many people. I’ve been working on GTD for decades now. My email inbox is usually empty at the end of the day, I do a daily review every morning that takes less than five minutes, and my last weekly review was under a half hour. I think I’m actually a bit stubborn for taking so long to get where I am, and I still have more to work on. You have my respect for telling everyone on the forum about your recent moment of enlightenment- people need to hear such stories.

 

[Tom_Hagen]

You have my respect for telling everyone on the forum about your recent moment of enlightenment- people need to hear such stories.

Thank you.

 

[davidsavoie]

David Allen didn’t state any hard rule about this except this one: "Pay close attention to what has your attention".

If you feel you need to unload many different actions for a project in order to get them out of your head, go ahead! You’ll be able to pick in this list for the next action once you complete one… or write a new one from scratch if circumstances evolved. The list might get irrelevant, yet it’s the idea of getting it off your mind that matters most here.

Having a single next action for a desired outcome is also totally fine. It depends on what has your attention and how clear you need to be. Trust your intuition.

 

[gtd solo-studente]

David Allen didn’t state any hard rule about this except this one: "Pay close attention to what has your attention".

If you feel you need to unload many different actions for a project in order to get them out of your head, go ahead! You’ll be able to pick in this list for the next action once you complete one… or write a new one from scratch if circumstances evolved. The list might get irrelevant, yet it’s the idea of getting it off your mind that matters most here.

Having a single next action for a desired outcome is also totally fine. It depends on what has your attention and how clear you need to be. Trust your intuition.

@davidsavoie

Great life lesson for understanding:
"Pay close attention to what has your attention" . . . until it no longer has one's attention . . . without inappropriately shirking it off . . . while being patient with oneself ?

Thank you very much

 

[Oogiem]

David Allen says the same thing in a different language: you only ever need to know the very next visible action. Everything beyond that is speculation.

I respectfully disagree. In my world I can and do plan the larger outcomes months, years and even decades in advance and those rarely change over time unless overcome by climate change, health and money issues.

It's not at all uncommon for me to have a "project"that spans multiple years in part because I can often only move forward on projects within very specific limited time frames intimately tied to the seasons.

I also realize that I, and my projects, and way of approaching GTD, are an outlier in the GTD ecosystem.

 

[mcogilvie]

I also realize that I, and my projects, and way of approaching GTD, are an outlier in the GTD ecosystem.

I don’t think you’re alone. Before GTD, there were two primary audiences for time management advice: white-collar corporate types and homemakers. GTD was born out of corporate consulting, but over the years it has developed into something that most people can use for most things. It needs to bend a bit whenever strong constraints impact core practices..The shoe business runs in my family, and there are seasonal constraints there. Junior people may struggle to blend corporate systems with their personal needs and preferences, while more senior people may have more flexibility. Hearing and learning from other people’s experiences is so very helpful.

 

[Y_Lherieau]

I respectfully disagree. In my world I can and do plan the larger outcomes months, years and even decades in advance and those rarely change over time unless overcome by climate change, health and money issues.

It's not at all uncommon for me to have a "project"that spans multiple years in part because I can often only move forward on projects within very specific limited time frames intimately tied to the seasons.

I also realize that I, and my projects, and way of approaching GTD, are an outlier in the GTD ecosystem.

I hear what you’re saying — if your environment still allows for long-range, low-variance planning, that’s a real asset. GTD works beautifully in those conditions.

What I’ve been noticing on my side, though, is that the “predictable world” assumption isn’t holding as well as it used to. Not so much philosophically, but practically. Energy volatility, supply-chain friction, ecological disruptions — all of that has increased the amount of variability I have to manage day-to-day.

Over the last few years I’ve had to shift from “performance through tight planning” to “performance through adaptability.” Not because planning stopped working, but because the cost of re-planning skyrocketed.

That’s actually what pushed me to reinterpret GTD less as a planning system and more as a resilience system:

• Decide only the next reversible action.
• Keep horizons but hold the path lightly.
• Reduce the waste of over-committing to long chains of assumptions.

Out of curiosity — how often do your multi-year sequences stay stable without major re-design? Genuinely asking, because if that’s still the case for you, it’s extremely valuable to understand what conditions make that possible.

For many of us, the variance in the environment has already crossed the threshold where adaptability beats pre-decision. And GTD — at least the way I now practice it — is what allows me to stay functional inside that variability.

 

[gtd solo-studente]

I hear what you’re saying — if your environment still allows for long-range, low-variance planning, that’s a real asset. GTD works beautifully in those conditions.

What I’ve been noticing on my side, though, is that the “predictable world” assumption isn’t holding as well as it used to. Not so much philosophically, but practically. Energy volatility, supply-chain friction, ecological disruptions — all of that has increased the amount of variability I have to manage day-to-day.

Over the last few years I’ve had to shift from “performance through tight planning” to “performance through adaptability.” Not because planning stopped working, but because the cost of re-planning skyrocketed.

That’s actually what pushed me to reinterpret GTD less as a planning system and more as a resilience system:

• Decide only the next reversible action.
• Keep horizons but hold the path lightly.
• Reduce the waste of over-committing to long chains of assumptions.

Out of curiosity — how often do your multi-year sequences stay stable without major re-design? Genuinely asking, because if that’s still the case for you, it’s extremely valuable to understand what conditions make that possible.

For many of us, the variance in the environment has already crossed the threshold where adaptability beats pre-decision. And GTD — at least the way I now practice it — is what allows me to stay functional inside that variability.

@Y_Lherieau


"That’s actually what pushed me to reinterpret GTD less as a planning system and more as a resilience system:

• Decide only the next reversible action.
• Keep horizons but hold the path lightly.
• Reduce the waste of over-committing to long chains of assumptions."

All of the above are most GTD appreciated


Next Actions that are 'reversible' can really help keep things moving

Thank you very much


Ps. Hopefully appropriately expressing without harshness:
GTD is seeming much more suited to dynamically increasing adaptability resilience capacity over time than to excessive imaginative fortune-telling escapism prior to one's 'love' in fulfilling necessary commitments/obligations ?

 

[TesTeq]

I respectfully disagree. In my world I can and do plan the larger outcomes months, years and even decades in advance and those rarely change over time unless overcome by climate change, health and money issues.

@Oogiem I think that long-time planning is OK but not at the Next Action level. I don't believe that you've already planned @errands Next Action "Buy 10 pounds od nine inch nails" because you want to build a barn in 2033…

 

[gtd solo-studente]

@Oogiem I think that long-time planning is OK but not at the Next Action level. I don't believe that you've already planned @errands Next Action "Buy 10 pounds od nine inch nails" because you want to build a barn in 2033…

@TesTeq

Good reminder of how much David Allen has appreciatively, through GTD, has done to encourage GTD practitioners to keep their Next Action enthusiasm in check ?

Thank you very much

 

[Tom_Hagen]

I hear what you’re saying — if your environment still allows for long-range, low-variance planning, that’s a real asset. GTD works beautifully in those conditions.

[...]

Hmm, so the doubts are back...

I thought that there were two main reasons why you should not write down the next steps in the project:
* variability - and I see everyone agrees here
* psychological aspect

Developing the latter - from what I understand - the idea is for the project to simply have one (sometimes several parallel) next actions + possible reference materials but without a sequence of specific next actions (even if we call them later actions). The idea is not to "burden yourself" mentally with the amount of work to be done right away.

However, as I see - there are two approaches here and as I understand, considering the flexibility of GTD, both are correct (if they work for someone) even though it is officially recommended not to create such sequences.

Are there any other factors that speak for or against these solutions?

 

[Y_Lherieau]

Hmm, so the doubts are back...

I thought that there were two main reasons why you should not write down the next steps in the project:
* variability - and I see everyone agrees here
* psychological aspect

Developing the latter - from what I understand - the idea is for the project to simply have one (sometimes several parallel) next actions + possible reference materials but without a sequence of specific next actions (even if we call them later actions). The idea is not to "burden yourself" mentally with the amount of work to be done right away.

However, as I see - there are two approaches here and as I understand, considering the flexibility of GTD, both are correct (if they work for someone) even though it is officially recommended not to create such sequences.

Are there any other factors that speak for or against these solutions?

I agree with you — variability and the psychological load are two big reasons why GTD recommends having only the very next physical action on your Next Actions lists.

But there’s a third factor that often gets overlooked: keeping the workflow architecture clean.

When you mix future steps into your Next Actions lists, you collapse two GTD layers that are meant to stay separate:

• Project thinking (where all possibilities and later steps can live), and
• Next Action lists (the runway you use to make moment-to-moment choices).

Keeping those separated is what preserves clarity, cognitive ease, and agility when the world shifts.

Here’s how I handle this practically in Todoist — because GTD must work in the real world, not just in theory.

In my own system, every project in Todoist is structured using Board View with three columns:

1. Next Action —
   This column always contains exactly one card: the single next visible action.
   Nothing else lives here. It’s the runway.
2. Backlog —
   This is where I dump anything that pops into my head during planning or brainstorming.
   Future ideas, potential steps, “maybe this later,” alternative routes — everything goes here.
   It keeps my head clear, and it keeps the noise off my action lists.
3. Waiting For (WF) —
   Simple, clean tracking of all actions or deliverables that depend on others.

This structure lets me embrace the full flexibility of GTD:

I can capture as many later actions as I want — instantly — but they never pollute my Next Actions list which I obtain thanks to the label @NA.

The NA column stays frictionless, and I don’t feel burdened psychologically by seeing a whole sequence.

Everything beyond the “one true” Next Action lives safely in project support (the backlog).

During the Weekly Review ®, I sweep through the board and very naturally promote the next action from backlog → NA.

It’s simple, lightweight, and resilient when things change.

So yes — both approaches can “work,” but GTD has a clear functional preference.

Capture all the future thinking you want — just don’t put it in the Next Actions bucket.

If you preserve that boundary, you get all the benefits: lower stress, higher adaptability, and smoother engagement.

 

[mcogilvie]

Are there any other factors that speak for or against these solutions?

I think it’s largely a matter of experience and self-awareness. I’ve read some of the literature on why very large projects fail. It can be factors which are known but ignored, like budget, or it can be unknown factors which someone outside the planning process might have foreseen. David Allen says you need to do as much planning as you need to, but as little as you can get away with. I think one signal that you may be over-planning is when you plan beyond a waiting for where you really don’t know the answer.

 

[Tom_Hagen]

I agree with you — variability and the psychological load are two big reasons why GTD recommends having only the very next physical action on your Next Actions lists.

[...]

At least 80% of my projects have a predetermined structure that I am 100% + 1% sure of
Due to the nature of my work, for example, when learning from a given textbook, I know for sure what scope of material (topics) I need to cover. So far, I've thrown it straight into the project. I use Evernote and I apply the principle that @TesTeq once mentioned (I don't remember the name, I suppose: ping-pong workflow), i.e. in the note I have the name of the project, start date, etc. and then a list of activities in the form of tasks (Evernote has this functionality). However, I only include one upcoming action in the title of the note. I have many templates in Evernote that I use. For example, when I buy something on Allegro.pl (the Polish better version of Amazon ), the sequence is always the same:
* Buy <product> on Allegro
* Wait for <product> arrival information
* Collect <product> from the parcel locker
Initially, in the note in the title I have: Buy <product> on Allegro. When I do it, I mark the task in the project (note) as completed and copy: Wait for <product> arrival information. I am modifying the note tags that I need for the so-called saved searches. As a result, when using "saved search" I only see a list of next actions. It doesn't interfere with the tasks next in line for me.
Thanks to this, I could see on the task list how many steps I had to complete if I wanted to complete everything. On the one hand, this is valuable information, but on the other hand, it can be mentally burdensome.
Hence my question.

 

[gtd solo-studente]

I agree with you — variability and the psychological load are two big reasons why GTD recommends having only the very next physical action on your Next Actions lists.

But there’s a third factor that often gets overlooked: keeping the workflow architecture clean.

When you mix future steps into your Next Actions lists, you collapse two GTD layers that are meant to stay separate:

• Project thinking (where all possibilities and later steps can live), and
• Next Action lists (the runway you use to make moment-to-moment choices).

Keeping those separated is what preserves clarity, cognitive ease, and agility when the world shifts.

Here’s how I handle this practically in Todoist — because GTD must work in the real world, not just in theory.

In my own system, every project in Todoist is structured using Board View with three columns:

1. Next Action —
   This column always contains exactly one card: the single next visible action.
   Nothing else lives here. It’s the runway.
2. Backlog —
   This is where I dump anything that pops into my head during planning or brainstorming.
   Future ideas, potential steps, “maybe this later,” alternative routes — everything goes here.
   It keeps my head clear, and it keeps the noise off my action lists.
3. Waiting For (WF) —
   Simple, clean tracking of all actions or deliverables that depend on others.

This structure lets me embrace the full flexibility of GTD:

I can capture as many later actions as I want — instantly — but they never pollute my Next Actions list which I obtain thanks to the label @NA.

The NA column stays frictionless, and I don’t feel burdened psychologically by seeing a whole sequence.

Everything beyond the “one true” Next Action lives safely in project support (the backlog).

During the Weekly Review ®, I sweep through the board and very naturally promote the next action from backlog → NA.

It’s simple, lightweight, and resilient when things change.

So yes — both approaches can “work,” but GTD has a clear functional preference.

Capture all the future thinking you want — just don’t put it in the Next Actions bucket.

If you preserve that boundary, you get all the benefits: lower stress, higher adaptability, and smoother engagement.

@Y_Lherieau

Thank you for the below post of GTD fundamentals for increasing GTD understanding to make GTD easier without 'easier' necessarily suggesting what one might deem as comfort

"But there’s a third factor that often gets overlooked: keeping the workflow architecture clean.

When you mix future steps into your Next Actions lists, you collapse two GTD layers that are meant to stay separate:

• Project thinking (where all possibilities and later steps can live), and
• Next Action lists (the runway you use to make moment-to-moment choices).

Keeping those separated is what preserves clarity, cognitive ease, and agility when the world shifts."


Human behavior seemingly has two intrinsic 'behaviors' for three particular end realities (as seemingly only God, angels, and man can objectify their own existence of being):

Intrinsic, Extrinsic, and as social beings; Externally with decreasing control, respectively, as reality seemingly often ruthlessly commands

Thus, the GTD model seems be the best human model capable of harnesses man's Two Predominant Intrinsic 'behaviors', which might be worth understanding as an 80/20 Pareto intrinsic dynamism . . . all in light of what is understood as the 'information' age as might possibly seem excessive in one's life to a fatiguing degree ?

Thus, Man's Two Predominant Intrinsic 'behaviors' being expressed through the GTD model:

I. Intellectual behavior that is predominately Conscious-&-Subconscious Considering, Contemplation, Deliberation, Meditation, Reasoning, etc. for Horizons, Areas-of-Focus, Projects, Clarifying, Organizing, Reflecting, Reviewing as seemingly sufficiently described by GTD terminology

II. Volitional behavior that is predominately used for Attention, Capturing, Contexts, Focus, Mind-Sweeping, Natural Planning Model, Next Actions, Engagement (at least ideally in the midst of what healthy might mean), etc.

Thus, as much as one might hope to keep these intrinsic operatives as 'separate' as possible for the very good reasons you generously provide, one must still endure random distraction(s) even when 'best' countered through random Capturing to remain on current Next Action; as such, some degree of healthy 'detached agility capacity' is seemingly always worth increasing for oneself and others as the GTD model might arduously facilitate due to life being so blessedly arduous in the hopes of becoming all the more human for the glory of His most Holy Name ?

Again, thank you for your good GTD post

As you see GTD fit. . . .