Using Things for GTD

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 08:45:07 -0800

I’ve been using Things as my to-do app and GTD (aka the Getting Things Done productivity system) for over 10 years. It’s helped me stay organized through multiple years of startups, house moves, vacations, two kids, complicated financial situations, and other life complexities, and I wanted to write about how I use them together.

Inbox

First, the Inbox. The purpose of the Inbox is simply to get something out of my head and onto my computer. Whenever I think of something that I want or need to do, I type the fewest necessary words to get an item in the Inbox. These words are short and leave just enough info that I can look at it a few hours later and still be able to know what it means.

I have configured Things to have the badge number represent the number of tasks in Today and in the Inbox. I want to burn this number down to zero by the end of the day, which means nothing dangling in the Inbox and no tasks I’ve picked left incomplete.

I try and go through the Inbox a few times per day. I follow the guideline that if a task takes less than 2 minutes, just do it, and for everything else, prioritize it.

Most things that comes into the inbox will be a ‘someday’ task, which conveniently shares the same meaning across Things and in GTD.

If something is important, and I need to do it today and I can’t get to it immediately, I’ll give the task a more descriptive name, and move it to Today.

In summary, quick notes come in, and then throughout the day, process the list: either do it quickly if I can, or prioritize it.

Projects

In GTD, every task that has more than one step is a project. For me, that is too detailed most of the time. I’ve adopted a different angle: every project should have a next step that immediately gets me back into the flow of the project.

I don’t bother creating a full project in Things for a “someday” task. That’s wasted effort as planning something I may never do, or at least for a while, is not a great use of time.

I do have some recurring projects like planning birthdays or holidays, or completing taxes. I give them a deadline of when they should complete. Then, to keep the projects out of the sidebar until it’s time to think about them, I set an appropriate ‘When’. This maps to GTD’s “tickler file” concept.

With this setup, I typically only have 2-5 projects visible in the left sidebar which keeps noise and clutter down. I can also click into ‘Anytime’ and that view only shows me the next action for my active projects. So, if my Today is clear and I’m looking for something to do, I can click in there and see what I can get done.

Today

The Today view only holds the things that I must do today, or have committed to doing today.

Every night, or over my morning coffee, I’ll skim through my active projects and pick out a small handful of things to do today from my ‘Anytime’ list. If that Anytime list is empty, I’ll browse through the ‘Someday’ list and see if there are any projects I want to start on.

It’s easy to be ambitious and say I’m going to do more than is reasonable in a day, but I really try to keep this list short. If things roll over to the next day, I’ve found I trust my list less to tell me what is important. And, there is some benefit in looking at what I didn’t get done and figuring out why that is.

I really try not to shame or guilt myself into doing tasks by putting them in the Today view. I tend to punt on those things and they roll over to the next day (and the next day, and the next day…), which changes the list from being practical to aspirational.

Weekly review

This is the part that’s easy to skip, but I believe is the key to the whole system.

In GTD, the weekly review helps me get my plans in good shape. I have time set aside on my calendar every Friday afternoon, where I do the following:

Empty the Things Inbox list
Use the ‘deadlines’ view in Things to see if anything that is coming up soon
Go through all projects and make sure each has a clear next step
Look through the Someday list and see if there is anything important I want to schedule soon
Look through my calendar and see if there is anything I should prepare for
Then, a full braindump where I think of anything that’s been floating in my head

At the end of this, I have a solid grasp of what’s happening, what’s coming up, and get anything nagging me out of my head.

Things is a very natural fit for the GTD system, and I haven’t found there’s any places in the GTD system that I’ve had to hack or hammer into the software. As always, picking what’s important to do is the hard part, but Things + GTD makes it easy to make progress on those things, with little falling through the cracks.

Posts tagged "productivity" - nolan caudill's internet house

Using Things for GTD

Inbox

Projects

Today

Weekly review