There are five stages that we go through as we deal with our life and work:

1. We capture what has our attention,
2. clarify what each thing means and what to do about it,
3. organize the results, which present the options
4. we reflect on, which we then choose to
5. engage with.

This is the core process of GTD. The quality of our workflow management is only as good as the weakest link if this five-stages chain, so all the links must be well integrated for greater effectiveness.