After reading Getting Things Done by David Allen again, I realized I don’t have a great “inbox” to capture all incoming information and thoughts. The inbox is a core piece of the GTD method. It’s the holding area where you place things until you have time to process and sort them properly. Sure, I have the inbox for my email, but I didn’t have a go-to inbox in a tool I used to manage my productivity.

I’ve been working on cleaning up my GTD system by creating a clean, short-term (to be completed within a year) project list and defining next actions for each project. That’s going pretty well and should be done shortly. But because I don’t have a solid inbox, my GTD system hasn’t been as effective as it could be.

So, this week, I created an inbox in Apple Notes, moved all unprocessed notes into it, and added all new notes to it. I must say, having a single place to drop all new thoughts and incoming information has been helpful. It’s taken some discipline to make sure I put everything there, but now that I have the hang of it, I feel more confident that everything important is being captured so I don’t have to try to remember everything.

Another thing I like about GTD is that processing and sorting are separate from capturing my thoughts and incoming information. I can quickly capture thoughts about an article, book, project, or podcast in a messy note and save the note in my inbox. When I process my inbox, I add more context to the note and save it in the appropriate folder or project so it’s where I need it when I need it.

I’m still early in the process of cleaning up my GTD system and creating new GTD habits, but I think this, along with Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain process, will boost my productivity in 2026.