What is GTD?
GTD stands for Getting Things Done — a way of staying organized, from David Allen’s book of the same name. Behind the name sits one simple idea: your head is a great place to have ideas, and a terrible place to store them.
Your head is a bad to-do list.
Right now, some part of your mind is holding on to a dentist appointment, a reply you owe someone, and that thing you promised to fix. Each one pops up at the wrong moment — in the shower, at 2 a.m. — because your brain doesn’t trust that it’s written down anywhere. That quiet hum of “I’m forgetting something” is exhausting.
Your head is for having ideas, not holding them.
— David Allen, Getting Things Done
The whole method is five habits.
That’s really it. No colour codes, no priority matrix — five habits that turn a pile of worries into a list you can trust.
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1 · Capture
Write things down the moment they cross your mind — in one place, not on six sticky notes. Don’t sort anything yet. Just get it out of your head.
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2 · Clarify
Look at each note and ask: what’s the very next small step? Not “plan Mom’s birthday” — “call the restaurant”. If it takes under two minutes, do it right away.
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3 · Organize
Put each step where it belongs: things to do next, things you’re waiting on from someone else, ideas for someday, and anything with a real date on a calendar.
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4 · Reflect
Once a week, spend twenty minutes tidying up: cross off what’s done, drop what no longer matters. This small habit is what keeps the list trustworthy.
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5 · Engage
Then just work. With ten minutes at your desk, or one hour of good energy, the list shows what you can do right now. Pick one thing — and let the rest wait without guilt.
The five steps in Mindwtr.
Choose a step to see how it works in the app.
You can do GTD on paper.
Truly — a notebook works. The book came out in 2001, before smartphones. An app has to earn its place by making the habits easier: your phone is always in your pocket for writing things down, a gentle reminder nudges the weekly tidy-up, and the same list is waiting on every device you own.
That is exactly the job Mindwtr was built for. The method comes first; the app just carries it — free, without ads, and without an account.
Go deeper
If you want the thinking behind the habits, keep reading: the psychology of GTD — open loops, cognitive overload, and the extended mind — the upper horizons of goals and visions, and the Mindwtr Handbook, a fifteen-minute tour of the whole system in practice.