The method
The loop
Six moves, what each one produces, and why they don't run in order.
Every piece of work passes through the same five moves. Each move produces one kind of record, and knowing which record a move produces is most of knowing how to do it.
| Move | In GTD | Produces | Who has the last word |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capture | Capture | A capture: what arrived, verbatim, with its source | Nobody. Nothing is decided. |
| Clarify | Clarify | A task with a status, or a decision that it is none | The person |
| Connect | Organize | Edges, references and waits between tasks | Whoever has the evidence |
| Engage | Engage | Work done, and the task’s result written back | The person chooses. The agent reports. |
| Review | Reflect | A confirmation, or a change and its cause | The person |
Not a sequence
GTD is often taught as stages run in order: collect everything, process everything, organise, review, then do. Get Things Flowing drops the order. Each move runs when it is due:
- Capture runs all day, whenever anything arrives. Much of it comes from agents in the middle of other work.
- Clarify runs in batches, when you have a few minutes and the inbox has something in it. Letting it wait costs nothing (P9).
- Connect happens while clarifying, and again whenever you learn what something really waits on.
- Engage is most of the day.
- Review is driven by dates. A commitment comes up once nobody has written or confirmed it for a week, and the system tells you which are due. There is still a weekly habit (Sessions), but it works through what came due rather than sweeping everything. After a gap long enough that you no longer trust the system, it runs in a fixed order, risks first, before anything else.
The one invariant across all five
Each move either writes nothing about commitments (Capture, and Connect when it adds an edge or a reference) or writes a change together with its cause (Clarify, Engage, Review, and Connect when it retracts one). No move changes what you are committed to without leaving the reason behind (P4). If an agent cannot say what justifies a write, it does not make the write. It proposes it.
What Flow stores and computes is described once, in How Flow works. The move pages link to it rather than repeating it.