GTD for Academics: Capture

The first step to intentionality is freeing up your mental space.

Photo by Saketh Garuda on Unsplash

Today we’re beginning a series on the Getting Things Done (”GTD”) framework. It’s actually a reboot of a series on GTD for Academics I did back in 2017 — when the world was a lot different. Higher education and the entire idea of what it means to be “productive” in higher ed have evolved since then, so we could use a refresh.

Last week I mentioned the importance of simple actions, done consistently within a larger coherent framework if we’re serious about being intentional with our work and lives. GTD is one such framework — and a significant one. It was invented by David Allen, a productivity consultant, and rose to fame through his book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity. GTD is sometimes described as a “time management” system, but that’s not accurate. Allen himself has said:

So GTD is a framework (or a philosophy, or a system, etc.) for being intentional about how we use our attention, where we place our focus, and how we honor our commitments to ourselves and to others.

If this sounds Zen-like, you’re not far off (GTD has strong ties to eastern beliefs). But as we’ll see, GTD is about as concrete and real-life as it gets. It’s just one possible framework, and not necessarily the best one for all people. But it’s what I know and have practiced ever since the two pivotal moments I wrote about last week; and it suits the particular issues and needs of people in academia very well.

The GTD framework has five distinct and linked parts, phrased as action verbs: Capture, Clarify, Organize, Review, and Engage. We’re starting with the first one today.

Capture

In the Harry Potter universe, Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore has a magical device called a "pensieve". Whenever there's a thought Dumbledore wants to save, he just touches his wand to his head, extracts the thought as a ghostlike silvery thread, and drops it in the pensieve, where he can revisit it later in full definition.

The ideal capture device

We academics could really use something like a pensieve.

We’re in our professions because we really like big ideas and the connections between them. We enjoy the free play and free association of ideas. It’s what got us into and through graduate programs and drives our scholarship, and in teaching we hope to light that same fire in our students. Academia draws people with highly connected minds.

But all that intellectual traffic creates a constant churn in our brains, a dense and continuous flow of ideas, not just the big ones but all the small ones too. It’s difficult to separate the contents or slow down the flow. You’ll probably experience it today. Maybe you’ll be in the grocery store and while looking at the avocados, several things happen all at once:

• You think of a recipe you want to try.

• Then you realize you’ve been meaning to invite a friend over for dinner.

• That makes you recall that this friend wrote a paper recently, which you’d like to read.

• And that triggers a reminder that you need to complete a review of another paper.

• Which makes you think that there’s a conceptual connection between that paper and another you recently read, and you’d like to explore that.

• But that makes you remember you have grading to do by Friday.

• And because thinking about grading is unpleasant, you start wondering how to compute the surface area of the avocado that’s still in your hand. (Maybe this one's just me.)

And so on in a chain reaction, repeated dozens or even hundreds of times even before you go through the checkout lane. Some of the thoughts you have are just background noise, and like most sensory input you’ll let them drop. But some of them might really grab your attention for a moment, and you will think that maybe you’d like to come back to them.

You might be tempted to think that any idea worth having will come back to you later, at the right time for thinking about it. But that’s not how the human brain works. Short term memory can only hold up to seven, plus or minus two, distinct thoughts at any given time. In a best-case scenario, that brilliant idea you had will pop up again at another time that is equally inconvenient. The most likely scenario is that it will be lost.

What we (everyone, but especially those of us who work with ideas) need, is a way to grab those thoughts when they happen, get them out of your brain, and put into some kind of external storage where you can revisit them, with full clarity, when the situation is right for really engaging with them.

The process I just described is what GTD calls Capture.

How to capture

Capture is a habit that you build through practice. Once built, your brain will be freed to do what it does best: process information instead of storing it. You’ll waste less mental energy, get your stuff done in less time, and have the head space to focus on the right things to get done in the first place. Capture costs basically no money, takes negligible amounts of time, and nobody can prevent you from doing it. It’s the best first step toward real intentionality.

Some capturing happens automatically without any effort on your part. For example, your email inbox is at this moment capturing stuff that you will eventually need to process. You don’t have to think about this — in fact, don’t. (We’ll talk about the “processing” part of all this next week.)

But some capturing has to be done by you. For this, you will need simple tools that you always have on hand for grabbing ideas when they happen. These tools can be analog (sticky notes, paper notebooks, index cards, whiteboards, etc. along with something to write with) or digital (the notes app on your phone, voice recorders, Google Docs) or both. There are no rules for these tools, except that they must be simple, because complex tools usually lead to too much fuss and playing with the tool and not enough capture; and ubiquitous, because ideas occur unpredictably. Many successful GTD practitioners use nothing more than a spiral bound notebook and a ballpoint pen. David Allen invented GTD using 3x5 index cards.

Then, when something comes on your radar screen, take a moment to decide if you want to hang on to it. If not, then do nothing. If so, then capture it in a way that is appropriate for the context and the tools on hand; put the captured item into an appropriate place (if the tool doesn’t do this for you); and then move on with your life. You do not have to think about that thing you captured again, unless you want to, until it’s an appropriate time and place for doing so.

How I capture

I’m six years older than the first time I wrote about this, not to mention there’s been a global pandemic that’s upended my work. I’ve been leaning more and more on this idea of ubiquitous capture since 2017. Without it, I would be intellectual roadkill by 9:00am on most days. Here is what the process looks like for me. It’s a process that I have honed by trial and error over the last 15 years; if you are just starting, your process will look different and that’s OK.

I use five main tools: my email program (Outlook), a physical in-tray (like you get at an office supply store), a stack of Post-It notes and a pen, Google Keep (a digital notes app built into Android devices and available for free on the web), and ToDoist (a task management app that I will write a lot more about later). I could probably do just fine with only one of those last two tools; and I could get by with only Outlook and the Post-it notes.

As mentioned, emails are automatically captured, so those are not really part of my process. I have three different email accounts, but Outlook has a unified inbox that funnels them all to the same place. (Other email programs can do this too.)

Otherwise, when something comes on my radar screen, I apply two steps: First, I use my lizard brain to make a snap decision on whether the thing is worth keeping. This takes basically no time, and often the answer is “no”. But if it’s “yes”, I stop for 3-5 seconds and get it out of my head using one of my tools, and into a place where I can review it later.

How this takes place depends on the thing that’s on my radar screen, and my context and tools I have on hand.

• If it’s a digital item (a website, an article, a video, etc.) usually I capture it with Google Keep. Keep is available on, and synchronizes with, all my electronic devices. I either open a new note and copy/paste a link to the item, or better yet, use the Share button:

Capture to Google Keep is almost frictionless

I added a step at the end to show you that the link to the paper was in fact stored in Keep; the act of capture, though, only took about 5 seconds and three taps.

• If it’s an analog item (a letter, a book, a guitar cable, etc.) then I pick the item up and put it into the physical in-tray. (Or, it goes in my bag first if I’m out of the office, and then later gets transferred to the in-tray.) I could also just have a spot on the floor where things like this go; but it’s important that there is just one place for the physical inbox, not my entire office.

• If it’s neither digital nor analog, like an idea or a passing thought: Again it depends on where I am and what tool I can use. If I’m at my computer, I generally use ToDoist because it has a “Quick Add” feature that makes it easy to enter stuff into an “inbox” list where captured stuff goes. It is a background process that’s triggered by a keyboard shortcut (Command-Shift-A on a Mac, Control-Alt-A on Windows):

If I am not at my computer but my phone is handy, ToDoist has a similar quick-add feature on its Android and iOS apps. But often it’s simpler to just use Google Keep again, either by typing out a note or using Google Assistant to add a note with my voice.

But sometimes using any kind of digital tool is a hassle, and that’s where the Post-It notes come in. I keep a pad with me at all times, and sometimes the simplest thing is to just pull one out and write down what was on my mind. (And then either put the stickies in my physical inbox, or use Google Keep to take a photo of them and add them as a note.) I’ve used a notebook for this in the past, but I keep coming back to sticky notes because they are cheap and small.

Here’s an example of the process itself in action. This happened as I was writing this article. I was at our downtown Grand Rapids campus, and I needed to walk over to the library to pick up a book.

• Stepping out of the building, I saw cars on the road. This triggered a thought: My daughter’s car needs to have the insurance paid. I pulled out my phone, opened ToDoist, and typed “Check on [name of child’s] car insurance”. Time needed: About 10 seconds (would be faster, but it was cold out, also I am awful with with typing on a phone).

• Crossing the street, I passed by the campus bookstore and thought that it would be nice to get the sweatshirt I saw in the window. I could have captured this idea in the moment. But giving it a moment of reflection, I didn’t really think it was something I needed to think about. So I dropped it. This is an example of something I’ll expand on below — you don’t necessarily capture every thought. Time required: < 1 millisecond.

• At the library, the student worker informed me the book was due back on May 30. There is no way I’d remember this, so I thanked the student and then left myself another ToDoist item: Put library book due date into Outlook calendar¹. I don’t think I needed to do this because the library will send me an email when it’s time, but I thought I’d be on the safe side. At any rate I don’t have to think about that due date now until Outlook tells me to. Time required: 5-10 seconds.

• Walking back to the office, I realized that next week at that time I needed to be on a Zoom call, but I’m in a shared office and therefore I needed to find a quiet spot for the meeting. So again I triggered ToDoist on my phone and entered Find location for committee meeting by Friday. It’s out of my head and in the system (and ToDoist will read “by Friday” and add an actual deadline that will remind me later). Time needed: About 10 seconds

• Thinking back on this 10-minute experience, I thought this would make a good example to include in the article. I was done writing for the day, but back at my computer. So I entered Add example from campus to the Capture article into ToDoist using the quick-add trick. Time needed: About 5 seconds.

This process, using a combination of tools that I always have on hand², added maybe 60 seconds total to my errand (including the time needed to get my phone in and out of my pocket) and cost me $0 apart from the $35/year subscription for ToDoist. Notice: Once the habit is built, it does not add significantly to your daily workload; and what it does add, is subtracted off many times over because you are no longer having your attention diverted by things you thought you should remember but aren't.

Final notes

1. What about non-email messages like Slack DMs and text messages, that are also auto-captured but don’t go to an inbox as such? I’ve found you have to treat these like thoughts: When they happen, decide in the moment whether there’s something there worth hanging on to. And if there is, capture that into an “inbox” (your notebook, Keep, etc.) where you can deal with it later.

2. “Ubiquitous capture” does not mean “capture all the things”. Just because something invades your conscious mind doesn’t mean you should capture it. There is such a thing as “over-capturing”, so it’s important when building this habit to exercise a bit of snap judgment on the front end: Ask yourself in the moment whether the thing you are thinking about is something you might want to revisit later. A lot of times, the answer will be “no”; it’s OK to let it pass if that’s the case. Otherwise capture it.

Now you do it

My challenge to you this week is:

• Put together a very simple “tool stack” for capturing. This should be a small number of simple tools such that you have at least one of them with you at all times. If you have never tried Capture before, I recommend going completely analog first — just some sticky notes, or index cards with a binder clip, or a cheap 5x8 inch spiral notebook plus a ballpoint pen. Do not spend more than $5 on this. (You can probably just raid your department’s office supply cabinet. It’s OK because this is helping you do your job.)

• Then for at least one full day between now and next Monday, engage in this Capture process we’ve described. Give the process a full 24 hours of total engagement. (Remember this doesn’t mean “capture everything”; it means apply the Capture process consistently and don’t skip a moment.) If you can do that, then try another day of doing it. Then another.

It is completely OK and normal to miss a few important thoughts from time to time, especially if you are just starting to build this habit. Cut yourself some slack. The important thing is engaging in the process of building the habit. Most habits take around 66 days to fully install, so this is not something that appears overnight. But you can start now, and by the end of this semester capture will be an instinct.

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We have not yet talked about what to do with all these things you are capturing — in particular that email inbox that has too many messages in it. Next week we will deal with that issue by looking at the Clarify part of the GTD framework.

1. I could also have skipped Google Keep entirely and just added the date directly into Outlook. The upside of doing this, is that it cuts out a step later (reviewing the note and adding the date). The downside is that it adds a tool to the stack.

2. The one context I have yet to figure out how to do Capture in, is the shower. I often have my best ideas of the day and there is no way I have found to capture them there. I’ve experimented with dry-erase markers on the shower wall (that worked about as well as you’d expect) and voice capture on my phone (the water is too loud). It’s an ongoing struggle.