The setup guide
Relay includes a complete GTD® system, which is useful only if you know what to do with it. So we wrote the manual: 41 pages that teach the method from scratch, then show where each part of the method appears in Relay.
The guide is free, and you do not need an email address or an account to read it. Download the PDF, print a copy, and send one to whoever you keep trying to explain GTD to.
PDF, 41 pages, 2.8 MB. No sign-up, no email address.
Written for two people
You have never read the book
Part One is a primer you can read on its own: why holding commitments in your head fails, the five moves that replace your memory (capture, clarify, organise, reflect and engage), a one-page map of the questions to ask about anything on your mind, and the weekly habit that keeps your lists true. No jargon, no prerequisites, and no homework before you can start.
You know GTD, and you want to know if Relay does it properly
The rest of the guide answers the question list by list: what belongs in each list, why Relay files each item from the facts you record rather than by dragging, how the Clarify wizard follows the clarifying questions, and where Waiting For ends and Agenda begins.
The guide teaches the method, not the buttons
Most app help tells you where the buttons are. The guide tells you what to do, with the whole decision tree for turning anything you have captured into a next action, a project with a defined outcome, something someone else owes you, or a decision to let the item go.
Relay's Clarify wizard asks you the questions on the map one at a time, so once you know the map, you know the wizard.
What the guide covers
The method
The five moves, the clarify map, and the weekly review checklist in three passes.
Every list
Inbox, Next Actions, Scheduled, Waiting For, Agenda, Someday/Maybe, Projects, Horizons and Reference, a page each and two for Projects.
Capture
Quick add, your private email address, sharing from other apps, home-screen widgets, the desktop hotkey and the watch folder.
The reviews
The daily and weekly reviews step by step, plus the mind sweep and how to make the weekly hour actually happen.
Email and calendar
Emptying your email inbox, and the only three things that belong on a calendar: fixed-time commitments, fixed-day commitments and information for the day.
Your first week
A day-by-day plan for your first week, and what to do the week you lapse.
We wrote the guide ourselves: it explains the Getting Things Done® method in our own words, and reproduces nothing from the book or from the David Allen Company's own materials. If the guide does its job, you will want the book too, and the guide says so.
Read the guide before you create an account. Or after.
30 days free, no card needed. Start in your browser or install the app.