Getting Things Done, David Allen is a collection of relatively simple tactics for coping with, prioritizing, and organizing the things you want to do. Many of the methods relate to organizing your own projects, using a handful of context-based to-do lists (e.g. a list of things to do at the office, at home, while waiting in line, etc). These lists consist of simple tasks. Those tasks are, in turn, derived from another list, of "projects" – things that require more than one task, which can be anything from planning dinner to writing a novel to helping your kid apply to university.

The promise of Getting Things Done, David Allen is that it will help you consciously choose not to do some of the things you set out to accomplish. This is in contrast to how most of us operate: we have a bunch of things we want to do, and we end up doing the things that are easiest, or at top of mind, even if they're not the most important things.

But while good to-do lists can take you very far in life, they have a hard limit: other people. Almost every ambitious thing you want to do involves someone else's contribution

That's where the other kind of GTD list comes in: the list of things you're waiting for from other people

can see that I've been chasing Ted about Sacramento for months now (this is a fake entry – no plans to go to Sacto at the moment, sorry):
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>WAITING EMAIL Ted about Sacramento event 8/12/24 9/5/24 10/5/24 10/20/24
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>So now I've emailed Ted four times. Maybe my email's going to his spam, and so I could try emailing a friend of Ted and ask them to check whether he's getting my messages. B

In essence, a suspense file is a way for me to manage other people's to-do lists

Lifehacking gets a bad rap, and justifiably so. Many of the tips that traffick as "lifehacks" are trivial or stupid or both. What's more, too much lifehacking can paint you into a corner where you've hacked any flexibility out of your life:

Daily habits are superpowers. Once something is a habit, you get it for free.