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Note-taking method

Best GTD for Creatives

Getting Things Done — a workflow for capturing and processing tasks. For creatives, the working week is fleeting ideas and visual references that dissolve before they become work. The rest of this page is the method, cut for that week.

By tentus team · Updated 2026-09-20

What GTD actually asks of you

Get every commitment out of your head and into one trusted inbox, then decide the very next physical action for each.

Lists are organized by the verb — call, draft, review — never by topic. The non-negotiable part is the review: without it the lists rot into noise within two weeks.

How creatives put it to work

  1. 1

    Reference with a reason

    Every saved image or piece carries the line: why it stopped you. A reference library of reasons is usable; a folder of pretty pictures is a landfill you never reopen.

  2. 2

    Material experiments, recorded

    What you tried, with what, and what happened — captured while the result is in front of you. Technique builds on recorded attempts, not on a feeling that last time went better.

  3. 3

    Old ideas next to new briefs

    Concepts from years ago surface beside the current brief, and recombination happens on its own. The idea you can't use yet is kept, not lost — that's the point of the shelf.

The capture habit, the linking, and the retrieval are the parts tentus automates — gtd without the daily upkeep.

Try it with tentus

tentus makes GTD practical for creatives. Capture, link, and retrieve without the busywork.

Other methods worth trying

GTD for other roles