Managing Commitments: Tips + Advice for a Hectic Life

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading.

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Do you need help managing commitments? Are there any programs or systems that can help?

In Getting Things Done, managing commitments is a central element of why the system works. Managing commitments helps you manage tasks and organize your life. Keep reading to find out how.

Horizontal vs. Vertical Control

There are two ways to manage your commitments and actions:

Horizontal control takes stock of your projects and tasks in all areas of your life—from getting your car repaired to finishing a report for work. This requires an organized system that can keep track of everything, helps you call up relevant reminders and information when you need it, and lets you switch your focus quickly and easily.
Vertical control goes into the details of one specific project or topic. This might be all the details, research, and planning you need to do for a work report or home addition. Vertical control requires a system that lets you organize and easily access plans, notes, and reminders about this one topic.

GTD is designed to accommodate both management systems because life requires both horizontal and vertical planning.

Managing Commitments Using the GTD Steps

The source of many people’s stress is having too many internal commitments or not managing them effectively. These commitments can be as big as hiring a new employee or as small as replacing a lightbulb—anything that’s floating around your mind and nagging at you.

In the GTD program, these are called “open loops.” Open loops pull your attention away from the task at hand and need to be addressed to get them off your mind. But you don’t have to actually complete the task in order to get it off your mind. You just need to take these steps:

Capture it in an external system called a collection tool, and regularly sort through the system.
Clarify exactly what you want to accomplish and what you need to do (next actions) to make progress on it.
Set up reminders to take the actionable steps you’ve identified.

Even though you haven’t actually taken any steps to complete the task, these simple steps make you feel more in control because you engaged your mind in how to resolve the problem rather than just thinking about the problem.

Manage Your Actions

Most to-do lists are made up of “stuff”—plans and commitments that you haven’t yet broken down into actionable steps. Lists full of stuff are ineffective and overwhelming.

An effective productivity system doesn’t manage your time, information, or priorities; it manages your actions. The GTD program teaches you how to take this stuff, give it meaning, and turn it into “next action” steps using three objectives:

Have a trusted external system (outside your memory) to capture everything you must do, might need to do, or might need later.
Be decisive about all your tasks and commitments and have a running to-do list of next actions.
Organize all of the information and to-dos into appropriate categories and contexts.

When you have an organized external system of actionable items and trusted reminders, your brain doesn’t have to juggle all these thoughts and information—which is good because your brain doesn’t do a great job of it anyway.

Research shows that your brain can’t help but continually remind you about all the things you have to do, which is more of a distraction from your current task than a motivator to accomplish those pending tasks. How often do you think of something you need to do at random times when you can do nothing about it? Not only is it ineffective, but it adds to your stress and anxiety about all the things you need to do.

Managing Commitments: Tips + Advice for a Hectic Life