Make it Physical (GTD) | Steven Thompson
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Image by Villius Kukanauskas from Pixabay
Note: This (updated) notation surfaced after reading Beth’s “ Reframing PKM as Personal Infrastructure?”, an article that unexpectedly pushed me back into my long‑standing folgezettel chain on Getting Things Done. I hadn’t revisited that chain in quite some time, and retirement had quietly loosened many of the routines and structures that once kept my system running smoothly. Beth’s framing made me realize just how much of my own infrastructure had grown rusty — and how much I needed to rethink what “trusted systems” look like now that my days are shaped less by deadlines and more by intention.
4.1a1a Make it physical (GTD) (2024)
David Allen’s foundational objective in “Getting Things Done” is deceptively simple: store what you think about in a trusted system outside your head.¹ It sounds obvious, almost trivial, until you examine how rarely we actually do it.
The first and often most difficult step is making a thought physical. Every idea begins as a fleeting electrical pulse, a momentary spark firing across synapses. Unless we transcribe it — onto paper, into a digital note, onto a calendar, or into a task list — it remains vapor. I’ve lost more insights than I care to admit simply because I assumed they were too profound to forget. The truth is that even the most striking ideas vanish if not captured.
What makes this especially ironic is how much effort we invest in preserving the ideas of others. We highlight books, annotate articles, build Zettelkasten, and maintain elaborate PKM systems. We back them up, sync them across devices, and protect them with the seriousness of archivists. Yet our own thoughts — the raw material of our lives — often remain undocumented, unprotected, and unexamined. They exist only as fragile impulses in the gray matter of our brains.
I’ve had moments where I was certain an idea would stay with me forever. A connection felt so clear, so elegant, that I believed it had carved itself into memory. Hours later, I could recall the feeling of insight but not the insight itself. That gap between the emotional charge and the missing content is a humbling reminder: memory is not a storage system. It is a sieve.[1]
Jason Womack, one of David Allen’s former coaches, captures this beautifully when he says he doesn’t write things down to get them done. He writes them down to forget about them — to release the mental pressure and return to the present moment.² That line resonates because it reframes capture not as a productivity tactic but as a form of mental hygiene. Writing something down is the only way to move it out of the mind and into a system where it can be reviewed, clarified, or acted upon later.
The more I reflect on this, the more I see that capturing thoughts is not about efficiency. It is about honoring the material of one’s own life. If I wouldn’t trust an important research project to a stack of unrecorded impressions, why would I trust my own ideas to the same fate?
Writing it down is the beginning of every reliable system.
Why This Matters: Thoughts that remain in the mind are unstable, easily forgotten, and impossible to evaluate. Externalizing them creates clarity, reduces cognitive load, and forms the foundation of a trusted system. Without this step, no productivity method — GTD or otherwise — can function.
Core Claim: Capturing thoughts by making them physical is the essential first move in building a trusted system. Nothing can be organized, clarified, or acted upon until it exists outside the mind.
Framing Shift:
- From: Relying on memory To: Relying on external systems.
- From: Assuming important ideas will stay with us To: Recognizing that ideas disappear unless captured.
- From: Treating capture as optional To: Treating capture as foundational.
- From: Writing things down to get them done To: Writing things down to free attention and return to the present.
TRY-THIS: When a thought surfaces — no matter how small, vague, or fleeting — capture it immediately. Use whatever medium is closest. Don’t evaluate it, refine it, or judge its importance. Make it physical first. Clarity and action come later.
Version 2.0, last modified: 2026–01–19
Footnotes and References
(1) Allen, D. (2001). “Getting Things Done: How to achieve stress-free productivity.” London, England: Penguin Books. p.3.
“The methods I present here are all based on two key objectives: capturing all the things that need to get done — now, later, someday, big, little, or in between — into a logical and trusted system outside of your head and off your mind.”
(2) Jason Womack (April 13, 2006) Blog (link no longer active).
“I don’t write things down to get them done. Whether they get done or not is up to future events unfolding in an order that may facilitate productive/efficient choice-making. I write things down to forget about them; get them out of my mind, and come back to where I am…when I am.”
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