A planning method

Waiting On

What you are waiting for from other people: who, what, and since when.

Waiting for the Mailm.

Grant Wright Christian, Waiting for the Mail, mural study for the post office in Nappanee, Indiana, Smithsonian American Art Museum (cropped). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Waiting On module as it prints, on the weekly spread. The dots are the page’s quarter-inch grid.

The Waiting For list

In Getting Things Done, David Allen keeps a separate list for everything you have handed to someone else or are expecting from them: the reply to an email, a part on order, a decision from your manager. He calls it Waiting For.

Keeping it separate means your own lists hold only what you can act on, and nothing you are owed slips out of sight.

How the module works

A table on the weekly spread with three columns: Who, What and Since. The date matters most, because it tells you when to follow up. Cross out what arrives.

At the end of the week, chase anything that has waited too long, and carry the rest to next week's spread.

Sources

David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (Viking, 2001; revised 2015).

Put it in your planner

Start your planner

Find Waiting On in the module drawer, under Planning. Free, and no account needed to try it.