Area
An Area is an ongoing domain of your life. It never ends.
Examples: Career, Health, Finance, Family, Learning, Side Projects, Home.
What an Area is
Areas are the top-level containers in OTD. Everything lives inside an Area — Projects, Flows, and standalone Actions all belong to at least one.
An Area is defined by ongoing responsibility, not a goal. You don't complete an Area. You maintain it. "Health" doesn't have a finish line. "Career" doesn't. These are domains you'll be tending for years, decades, for the rest of your life.
This is the same concept as GTD's Areas of Responsibility. OTD keeps it intact.
Setting up your Areas
Think about the major domains of responsibility in your life. Write them down without filtering. Then review the list.
Aim for 5–10 Areas. Most people find their lives fit into roughly this range when they're honest about what they're actually responsible for.
If you have more than 12, you're probably slicing too thin. "Reading" and "Learning" might be one Area. "Side Project A" and "Side Project B" might both belong under "Side Projects." Granularity at this level adds overhead without adding clarity.
If you have fewer than 4, you're probably aggregating too much. "Everything Else" is not an Area — it's a sign something isn't categorized yet.
Common Area sets
These are patterns, not prescriptions:
Individual contributor: Career, Health, Finance, Learning, Relationships, Side Projects, Home
Founder / entrepreneur: Company, Product, Team, Finance, Health, Personal
Student: Academics, Career, Health, Social, Finance, Personal Projects
Parent + professional: Work, Family, Health, Finance, Personal Development, Home
What goes inside an Area
An Area can contain:
- Projects — large goals with multiple related Flows
- Flows — specific streams of work (when no Project grouping is needed)
- Standalone Actions — single tasks that don't belong to a Flow
Area: Health
├─ Project: Annual checkup preparation
│ ├─ Flow: Schedule and logistics
│ └─ Flow: Pre-exam bloodwork
├─ Flow: Morning routine (ongoing habit work)
└─ Action: [Do] Book dentist appointmentNot every Area will have Projects. A Flow can live directly under an Area when it doesn't share a goal with other Flows. A single Action can live directly under an Area when it doesn't belong to any ongoing stream.
Anti-patterns
The catch-all Area. If you have an Area called "Miscellaneous" or "General" that accumulates things that don't fit elsewhere, that's a symptom: either your Areas aren't covering your actual life, or you're avoiding decisions about where things belong. Process those items properly.
Area as a project. "Launch new product" is not an Area — it's a Project. Areas are ongoing. Projects end. If your "Area" has a finish line, rename it to a Project and put it inside the appropriate Area (probably Career or Side Projects).
Too many narrow Areas. "Fitness" and "Nutrition" and "Sleep" can probably all live under "Health." Splitting them means three Area reviews per Weekly Review instead of one, with little extra clarity to show for it.
Neglected Areas. During your Weekly Review, if you consistently skip an Area because "nothing's happening there right now," that's a signal. Either that Area genuinely needs attention and you're avoiding it, or it's not really an Area — it's a dormant Project that belongs in Someday.
Areas and Weekly Review
Every Area gets reviewed once per week. The question is simple: Is anything being neglected here?
You're not auditing every Action in the Area. You're looking at the Area from above: Are its active Flows progressing? Is there work that should be happening that isn't? Is there a Project that's been stalled for too long?
This high-level check is what keeps your entire system honest. Individual tasks surface through Flows and Today. Areas surface the pattern across all of it.