Spirituality and GTD
To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.
— Eckhart Tolle
Tolle’s statement points to something I’ve experienced through meditation. There's something deeper than the constant chatter in my head. What surprised me was finding a similar experience through something as mundane as a productivity system.
Getting Things Done (GTD) is a productivity methodology developed by David Allen, first described in his 2001 book of the same name and later revised in 2015. I've used GTD for years now. It helps me be more efficient and effective, and it has reduced my stress level. But beyond these practical benefits, I've discovered that GTD creates space for a kind of awareness that feels fundamentally spiritual.
The GTD Workflow
The heart of GTD lies in its five-step workflow: capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage. Each step serves a specific purpose in creating what Allen calls a "trusted system."
Capture happens continually throughout the day. Emails arrive, physical mail accumulates, texts ping, and I jot down notes and ideas. Everything that crosses my path gets collected somewhere—my phone, a notebook, an inbox.
The clarify step is where the real work happens. I process these inputs to determine their meaning. An email might contain a task I need to complete, a calendar event, reference information for later, or all three. It might contain nothing actionable at all. The key question becomes: what does this mean, and what, if anything, am I committing to do?
This step can be surprisingly challenging. Some emails leave me puzzling over what exactly I'm being asked to do. Others bury important information in casual conversation. Extracting meaning from the noise requires focused attention.
During the organize step, I store these clarified items in their proper places. Events go on my calendar. Tasks enter my task manager with appropriate contexts such as “calls," "errands," "home," and “waiting.” Reference materials get filed where I can find them later.
In the reflect step, I review my calendar and task lists to decide what to do next. This happens multiple times throughout the day in quick scans, and once weekly in a comprehensive review where I update and maintain the entire system. The reflect step is a vital part of the system.
Finally, I engage—I do the actual work.
What stands out to me about this process is how contexts transform my relationship with tasks. When I'm running errands, I can easily see other errands I can complete in the same trip. If I arrive early for an appointment, I know exactly which phone calls I can make while waiting. Grouping tasks by context also keeps my lists shorter and more manageable. I'm far more likely to engage with a list of five items than fifty.
GTD also includes a context called “someday/maybe”. These are tasks I want to track but not commit to doing. When someone suggests a book to read or a place to visit that sounds interesting, I’ll add it to this list.
The Mind as a Task Manager
Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.
— David Allen
When I follow GTD consistently, I get all my commitments into an external system. As long as I maintain and review this system regularly, my mind can let go of trying to track everything internally.
Most people already experience this with calendars. We add events as we commit to them and review the calendar as needed. Our minds don't constantly remind us about next Wednesday's appointment because we trust our use of the calendar to handle that.
Tasks present a different challenge. Most people lack a trusted system for managing them, so their minds, afraid that something important will be forgotten, create a constant stream of distracting reminders. During a meeting, I may suddenly remember I need to buy batteries—but I'm not at the store. This reminder serves no useful purpose and creates mental noise.
When I use GTD consistently, my mind becomes noticeably quieter. The part concerned with keeping commitments knows I'll review the system regularly and handle tasks as needed. This mental quiet allows me to focus on whatever I'm doing in the present moment.
Something else happens too. Because I'm aware of all my commitments, I can intuitively decide what to do next based on the ever-changing priorities of my current situation. This represents bottom-up wisdom rather than top-down control. I still engage in strategic planning, but I don't need rigid schedules or prioritized task lists to feel secure. The two modes work together harmoniously.
The Narrator and the Witness
The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly—you usually don't use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.
— Eckhart Tolle
Sometimes I meditate by sitting quietly and focusing on my breathing. Inevitably, thoughts pull my attention away, and I gently return focus to my breath. This occurs repeatedly. Eventually, I can observe thoughts while maintaining awareness of my breathing. In that moment, I experience that there's a part of me that thinks and another part that observes the thinking.
We might call the thinking part the narrator and the observing part the witness. The narrator tells stories, some helpful, others decidedly not. In the past, my narrator ran destructive loops: "I'm a failure. I'm no good!" Through cognitive behavioral therapy, I learned to recognize these as irrational thoughts and replace them with rational alternatives: "I failed that time" instead of "I'm a failure."
This cognitive approach helps, but recognizing that the narrator isn't me, or isn't all of me, can be even more powerful. I can witness what the narrator says and observe the relationship between those thoughts and my emotional responses. The narrator's power diminishes when I'm no longer identified with it.
The Unexpected Connection
GTD creates a similar kind of spaciousness. When my mind isn't trying to remember everything I need to do, when I'm not constantly second-guessing whether I'm forgetting something important, I experience the same expanded awareness I find in meditation.
Both GTD and meditation provide perspective and foster detachment. In meditation, I observe thoughts without being consumed by them. In GTD, I observe my commitments and tasks without being overwhelmed by them. Both support conscious choice in place of reactive behavior.
The trusted system in GTD functions like the witness in meditation. It holds awareness of what needs attention without the emotional charge of constant worry. Just as the witness can observe the narrator's stories without identifying with them, my GTD system can track my commitments without my mind needing to grip them tightly.
This connection runs deeper than mere productivity. When Allen writes that "your mind is for having ideas, not holding them," he's pointing toward the same insight Tolle describes: the mind works best when it's not trying to be everything. It's a tool for thinking, not a system for storing and tracking commitments.
The Gentle Way Forward
What strikes me most about this connection is how practical spirituality can be. I found expanded consciousness through better task management. GTD didn't just help me to be more productive; it helped me to be more present.
This suggests that spirituality isn't separate from the mundane aspects of life but arises through how we relate to them. The way I manage my email inbox can be as much a spiritual practice as meditating if approached with the same level of awareness. The stillness underneath the mental noise that Tolle describes is always present, waiting to be noticed.
I'm curious about your own experience with this. What does spirituality mean to you? Have you found unexpected doorways to expanded awareness in the practical aspects of your daily life? Sometimes the most ordinary activities become gateways to something far more profound than we initially imagined.