Get Things Done, a self-help book written by David Allen, introduces some basic methods to arrange your daily tasks so that you can live a productive and stressless live. Here are my takeaways.

The workflow of GTD consists of 5 steps (but remember, no need to finished all the steps at the same time):

1. Capture. Get all things out of your mind and write down them to your inbox at any time.
2. Clarify. Check your inbox regularly. Clarify your target of each stuff and the way to reach your target.
3. Organize. If the stuff is just an idea that you might want to do but not now, you can leave it to a *someday* list. If it is a reference to materials helpful to your other goals, collect it to your *reference* system. Check your actionable goals and split your goals into action steps. If a step can be done within 2 minutes, just do it (without considering its priority). Or else, arrange a future time to do it in your *calendar* or *delegate* it to others.
4. Reflect. Review your inbox, someday list, next actions weekly and reorganize them if needed.
5. Engage. Pick one to-do and do it right now.

After your organization, the stuff can be divided into these places:

• Project list: Desired results which require more than one action step. And you can organize your project support material by theme or topic inside the project.
• Next Actions list: Actions needs to be done *today* or *anytime*.
• Waiting For list: Projects waiting for other people’s responses.
• Calendar: 1. time-specific actions such as an appointment that are going to happen on a specific time; 2. day-specific actions such as to call someone on his/her birthday; 3. day-specific information, such as directions for appointments.
• Someday list: Projects your don’t want to do recently, but you’d like to be reminded of them regularly on your weekly reviews.
• Reference System: Reference to materials you may need.

And when you get up every morning, what you should do is to check your Next Actions list and choose things needs to be done today.