What is BlitzGTD?

So, somehow you ended up here. Either someone gave you the link, Google sent you here, or you just rolled your head over the keyboard and got lucky. Doesn’t matter, you just want to know now what the fuss is about! You came to the right place, sit down and listen to my story:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far … wait, no wrong story. A long time ago, like five years or so, I started my journey into the realms of productivity. Like many others, I ended up in an endless rabbit hole of productivity tools. I even tried timeboxing my day, which ended horribly. I just wanted to get my things done! Luckily, there was a method for this: GTD (Getting Things Done) by the brilliant productivity guru, David Allen. I tried tools that implemented it, and it was good, but not perfect. I still spent time moving stuff around, clicking here, clicking there, and so on. So I thought to myself, why not streamline it further? So I can not only get my things done but also get them done fast, like a Blitz!

Enter BlitzGTD. It’s a personal productivity system that helps you get your things done without spending too much time on the tools. Here are the key points:

Phases

Similar to modern agile software projects, BlitzGTD tasks have different phases:

Today

This is the phase where everything starts and ends. GTD has the Inbox where everything gets thrown in as soon as possible. Whenever something comes in, be it tasks, notes, etc., everything gets thrown into the inbox and later cleaned, prioritized, and categorized during a review. To be honest, I never made it to the review point. Instead, I looked into the Inbox after finishing my tasks for today, which was much more efficient for me. I didn’t need to remember what I meant yesterday with a totally cryptic note. Also, I often added tasks there that I needed to tackle today, so I didn’t need to spend time moving these items.

BlitzGTD has a different approach: Every kind of task needs to be as quickly as possible thrown at the Top of the Today Phase list. Every day, you go through the list from top to bottom and handle the tasks one-by-one. But be aware, I said handle, not finish. The goal is to get the task off the list. If it’s a task that takes less than 2 minutes, you resolve it directly. If it’s a longer task, you can decide whether to work on it or clean, prioritize, and move it to another Phase list. This means that new tasks are always present but don’t block your flow until the other things are done. And this system ensures that when you tackle these tasks, not a full day has passed, so you still remember enough to write more details into the task.

Keep the list short in this phase. It’s better to take your tasks from the Sprint than constantly taking tasks from day to day.

Sprint

Here, you put everything you want to tackle this week. Its list is the first one you will look into for more to do after you finish your Today list. Keep this list reasonable. It’s fine to put unimportant tasks in the Backlog. They are not forgotten.

Backlog

This is the equivalent of GTD’s Someday. You put everything here that you want to tackle in the next sprint or later. Everything you put here must be clean and labeled, if necessary. But like in GTD, this is not a graveyard for your tasks. See below how we keep this list active and clean.

Schedule

Every task that must be tackled on a specific date can be put into the schedule with at least a day when it should be pushed to today. Optionally, you can add the time to remind you about the task or add a repeating schedule.

Planning

Moving through the main phases Today, Sprint, and Backlog mainly happens during the Planning events. The Planning events are:

Daily

This event happens every day. For me, the morning is the best time for it. During this event, you look into your calendar for the next day and into Today and Sprint in detail. You move tasks around until you have a reasonable plan for the day.

Weekly

This event happens every week. For me, Sunday evening is the perfect time for it. During this event, you look into your calendar for the next week and into Sprint and Backlog in detail. You move tasks around until you have a reasonable plan for the week. This is also the time to look a bit more into your Backlog to make sure everything is clean and up-to-date. In the end, this ensures that you have looked at least once a week into all your open tasks without constantly hovering over them.

Item organization

As soon as you have more things to tackle, just throwing all tasks into the lists is not enough. When you look for productivity tools, you don’t just have 3 tasks and then you’re done. No, there are more tasks, they are more complicated, often changing, and might even require completely different contexts. So BlitzGTD provides the following features for support:

Hierarchy

I found other systems to be annoying. For instance, in GTD, you use projects for complex tasks. Some tools allow you to add extra bullet points to a task, but it gets complicated when there are more tasks within a task or when a project becomes more complex. I wondered why bother with that. When I work on a complex task, it’s a project, but I don’t need to manage it in my task management system. That’s what my project management system is for! The task itself is simple: “Work on the project.” I just need to plan it in my Day and Sprint, and that’s it. I add a link to my project management system and that’s the reason I only use subtasks in my task management system, nothing more.