Best GTD Note-Taking Apps for 2023

GTD Note-Taking Applications for 2023

GTD or better known as Getting Things Done - a system developed by productivity guru David Allen is a popular productivity technique that helps you better organize tasks, notes and calendar events too.

The system is regarded as timeless by many productivity lovers and is something many use within their note-taking systems to capture, organize and process notes.

How to Use GTD in Notes?

Getting Things Done is based off of 5 core stages.

The stages are capture, clarify, organize, reflect & engage. Something that is similar in nature to the system developed by Tiago Forte called Second Brain. Each stage helps to best position your notes, tasks and events as not to remember them in your brain and to capture them in a system outside of your brain.

  • Capture - Bring them into your system, in this case a notes app.
  • Clarity - Be clear with them. What are they? What value to they have?
  • Organize - Find a location for them to live. Place them in that location.
  • Reflect - Resurface notes and find value in it, this could be for a weekly review.
  • Engage - Make sense of your note and action it.

One of the guiding principles, don't use your brain for remembering - but for thinking only.

Well Illustrated by Leonie Dawson, Getting Things Done explained 
https://leoniedawson.com/getting-things-done-notes/

Well illustrated above by L Dawson, the concept is perfect for bringing things together.

GTD: Beginner's Guide

Now, if this isnt' making any sense and you visited this page curious what GTD and note-taking applications had to do with each other, we recommend exploring the basics of the concept and see how it works first.

Our GTD Note-Taking Recommendations

All of these note-taking applications map well to Getting Things Done as a system.

What's Best For Your GTD?

Expanded on, let's find what notes app works best for your GTD.

  • Evernote - One of the leading web clippers allow you to capture your note, organization notebook system will help you to place it in the correct location and finally search allows you to use it for later. Evernote also has tasks and calendar to make more sense of notes. Evernote also has a new AI cleanup, allowing you to clarify your note better.
  • Mem - A newer application that reminds us a lot of Evernote. Capture is great with Mem's clipper allowing you to clip web pages, "mems" and even snippets to add onto the end of existing notes. Mem doesn't have an organization system, as it auto-tags notes, making it an anti-GTD tool in some ways, but a good auto-organizer. Mem also has AI too that allows you to resurface notes for later in their Mem X (premium).
  • Nimbus Notes - A good alternative to Evernote, Nimbus presents a good base for capture, organize and reflect. They have a clipper that also allows you to capture web pages, screen recordings and more multimedia. Perfect for those visual note-takers.
  • Notion - Notion has a good capture source and newer database abilities to make sure you organize, tag and place in the correct location. Many GTD users headed to Notion after Evernote became a little slower in nature.
  • Obsidian - Obsidian is a bit more advanced as a GTD tool, with linking notes, graph and connected tags, Obsidian is one place that will work be good for resurfacing notes for later, thanks to graph view and the nature of bi-directional linking.

As you can see, each app brings a better experience for areas of GTD, but all follow a system well, if you set things up using the guidelines presented in David Allen's book.


Looking for more note-taking applications or notes app that translate well to systems like Second Brain concept developed by Tiago Forte? We've got you covered.