Why Your Lists Aren’t Working (And How to Fix It)

You’re already getting into the habit of capturing everything that catches your attention. Instead of trying to remember things or letting them slip away, you’ve realized that getting them out of your head and putting them in a safe place (your notebook, your notes or to-do app, whatever) gives you a clearer view of your reality.

But if you don’t do anything else, the benefit of capturing is limited. Capturing everything that catches your attention is only the first step. If you stop there, the accumulation of notes, unanswered emails, and endless lists will end up causing you more stress than you had initially.

Real change happens when you take the time to clarify everything you’ve captured. This is the moment when you think, decide, and transform those vague “things” into specific, actionable items.

When you don’t clarify what you’ve captured, your mind is forced to continuously process the same information over and over again. Every time you see “call John” on your list, your brain has to ask itself again: Why do I need to call John? Is it urgent? What do I want to achieve with this call? Can I do it now?

This repetitive and consistent mental processing depletes your mental energy and creates a persistent feeling that “there are many things pending” without you really knowing what to do about them.

But clarifying isn’t a selective activity. It’s not about reviewing one or two items when you feel like it, or processing only those that seem most urgent. The goal of clarifying is to completely empty your inboxes. Everything you’ve captured must be processed, without exception. Only then will you achieve the state of control and peace of mind that GTD promises.

In practice, clarifying is not a separate step from organizing. Both processes occur simultaneously. As you define what each item is and what you should do with it, you immediately put a reminder on the corresponding list. You clarify and organize in one fluid motion, until your inbox is empty and each item is exactly where it should be.

What does clarifying involve?

Clarifying is the mental process of examining each captured item and transforming it into something obvious. It’s achieved by answering a specific series of questions:

1. What is it exactly? Define precisely what it is, what it means to you. “Call John” is not enough. “Call John before the weekend to invite him to lunch and talk about the Christmas holidays” is clearer.
2. Is it actionable? The term “actionable” has an internal component (do I want, need, or have to do something?) and an external component (can it be done? — I can’t paint the wall if I don’t have paint). Does it require you to do something about it or not?
3. If it’s not actionable, what are you going to do?
   ➊ Discard it, if it’s of no interest,
   ➋ File it away, if it’s information or reference material that could be useful in the future (contract, warranty, invoice, meeting notes, etc.), or
   ➌ Incubate it. In this context, incubating means consciously postponing the decision to commit. You decide not to decide (putting a reminder in the Someday/Maybe list.)
4. If it’s actionable, what’s the next action and what are you going to do with it? What result do you want to achieve? What’s the next physical and visible action that brings you closer to that result? The next action is a unit of work that is started and finished in one go. Once you’ve defined it, you can
   ➊ Do it now, if it’s something that can be done in a couple of minutes,
   ➋ Delegate it, if you’re not the right person to do it, or
   ➌ Postpone it, that is, set a reminder to do it as soon as possible.
   Delegated actions need a reminder in the Waiting For list. Postponed actions need a reminder in the Next Actions list or on the Calendar, if they need to be done by a specific date.
5. If it requires more than one step, what should the final result be? Can you consider the capture complete, or would you need to do something else after performing the next action you’ve defined? If so, you’ll need to write down the final result in a list of pending projects (in GTD terminology, a project is any result that requires more than one action step).

A new mental process

You’ve probably never stopped to think systematically about everything that catches your attention. We usually act in a reactive way: we see an email and respond immediately, or we leave it there “for later” without really deciding what to do with it.

GTD asks you to be intentional. To stop, think, and decide before acting (or not acting). At first, this may seem slow and even frustrating. But with practice, it becomes a quick and automatic habit that allows you to maximize your effectiveness, that is, your ability to achieve goals with the least possible effort.

At first, you’ll need to consciously ask yourself these questions for each item. You may even want to have them written down in front of you while you process your inbox. Over time, this internal dialogue will become automatic, and you’ll be able to sort things out in seconds.

The important thing is to be disciplined at the beginning. Don’t allow yourself to leave things unclear “because I don’t have time right now.” That’s precisely the mistake that keeps you overloaded.

Clarification isn’t optional. It’s the process that transforms chaos into control and anxiety into confidence. It’s where a qualitative leap really takes place in what has come to be called personal productivity.