Capture is half the system. Processing is the other half. David Allen's Getting Things Done made the first half famous — the idea that everything in your head should be transferred to a trusted external system. What it covered less viscerally is the Sunday workflow that turns the accumulated capture into a defined week. The capture is the gathering. The processing is what makes the gathering useful.
This post is the workflow. How the Brain Dump Page and the Weekly Review sheet work together to turn whatever has accumulated during the week into a sorted, prioritised, scheduled week ahead. The GTD four-bucket sort. The cascade box. The schedule sketch. The thirty-minute version that runs every Sunday.
The Capture side · what flows in
The Capture pillar of the Groundwork system has two artefacts: the Brain Dump Page for the Sunday session, and the Quick Capture inbox inside the OS for the rest of the week. Together they ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
During the week, items get added to the Quick Capture inbox as they arise — a passing thought, an action item from a meeting, a half-formed idea. The inbox is always one keystroke away. The friction between thought and capture is near zero, which is what makes the discipline sustainable.
By Sunday, the inbox typically has 30-60 items in it. Some are actions. Some are reference. Some are projects with multiple sub-steps. Some are noise. None of them have been processed yet — they've just been captured.
The Processing side · the GTD four-bucket sort
Sunday's Weekly Review begins with the Brain Dump (six minutes — see the deep-dive) and then moves into Processing (another six minutes). The Processing section is where the GTD four-bucket sort runs. Each item from the dump and the Quick Capture inbox gets sorted into exactly one of four buckets:
- Action. Something that needs doing this week. Assign it a day. Write the day next to it. Move on.
- Project. Something that needs doing but has multiple steps. Write down what the next single action is, and treat that as an Action.
- Reference. Information you'll need later but is not actionable. File it where it lives (note, folder, email label) and cross it off the list.
- Trash. Things that, when you look at them honestly, are not going to happen. Cross them off without ceremony. This is the most freeing bucket.
By the end of Processing, every captured item is either gone or has a day next to it. The buffer is empty. The head is quieter than it has been all week.
The cascade · what the week is for
After Processing comes the Cascade box (six minutes). This is the section that connects the captured-and-sorted items to the broader plan. The question being asked: given this quarter's three objectives, what does this specific week need to deliver?
Three weekly intentions, each inheriting from one of this quarter's objectives. The actions sorted in the previous section get distributed across the week in service of these three intentions. Items that don't serve any of the intentions are either administrative (they need handling but aren't strategic) or they were noise (the Trash bucket gets bigger when the cascade question is honest).
This is the integration of GTD (the capture-and-processing layer) with the Cascade (the long-horizon planning layer). Allen's framework works at the operational level but is light on how the operational connects to the strategic. The Groundwork synthesis makes the connection explicit.
From inbox to action, every Sunday
The Brain Dump Page (£2.99) and Weekly Review (£3.99) are the two-artefact print version of the GTD weekly workflow. Inside the Groundwork OS, the workflow is automated — the Quick Capture inbox sits one click away during the week, the Sunday review pulls the inbox in for processing, the cascade box auto-populates from this quarter's objectives, and the sorted items get assigned to days that flow through to the next seven Daily Focus Sheets. The full GTD weekly cycle, running inside one connected Notion workspace. £19.99 for the OS, £54.99 for the complete bundle.
See the Groundwork OS →The schedule sketch · projecting forward
The fifth section of the Weekly Review (six more minutes) is the Week Ahead grid. With the three weekly intentions decided and the actions sorted, the schedule sketch turns these into a strategic week-shape. Which day is each intention's main day? Where are the deep work blocks? Which meetings are immovable? Where's the Friday afternoon hole that needs filling deliberately rather than letting it fill itself?
This isn't a literal calendar — it's a structural overview. The literal time-blocking happens each morning on the Daily Focus Sheet, inheriting from the schedule sketch. The sketch sets the shape; the daily fills in the details.
The whole workflow in 30 minutes
The complete Sunday GTD-and-Cascade workflow takes thirty minutes. Six minutes per section, five sections, with the Brain Dump and Processing handling the GTD half and the Debrief, Cascade, and Week Ahead handling the planning half. (See the full weekly review post for the section-by-section breakdown.)
The result is a Monday morning that's structurally different from a Monday morning without this workflow. The capture has been processed. The actions are sorted by day. The week's intentions are clear. The Daily Focus Sheet on Monday morning isn't being filled from scratch — it's inheriting from a structured plan that was completed yesterday.
The honest next step
If you've never run a structured GTD weekly workflow, start with the Brain Dump Page (£2.99) and the Weekly Review (£3.99). Under £7 for the two-artefact print version. Run the workflow next Sunday and see what Monday morning feels like.
The free 7-Day Focus Sprint includes both, plus the Daily Focus Sheet — enough to run the full workflow for a week without payment. The complete Groundwork bundle at £54.99 includes the workflow alongside the rest of the 28-tool ecosystem. The Groundwork OS at £19.99 automates the GTD-and-Cascade cycle inside a connected Notion workspace.
Capture is half the system. Processing is the other half. The Sunday workflow is what makes both halves useful.