Execute
Stage 5: Work through Today by Mode.
The execution loop
Execution in OTD is simple in principle: open Today, work through it in Mode order, close it when it's empty.
Review items → Delegate items → Do itemsWhen Today is empty, you're done for the day.
Working through Today
Review first
Results are already waiting. Someone handed back work. An AI draft is ready. A colleague replied.
Pick up each Review item. Read the result. Make a decision:
- Approve — the result is good. Check the Review Action. The next Action in that Flow unlocks.
- Re-delegate — needs more work. Create a new Delegate Action with refined instructions.
- Take it from here — you'll finish this yourself. Convert to a Do Action.
Review actions are usually fast. You're not doing the work — you're evaluating it. Five minutes per Review item is a reasonable expectation for most knowledge work deliverables.
Don't skip Reviews because they feel like overhead. Every Review you skip leaves a Flow blocked. A blocked Flow means no further Actions surface from it until you unblock it.
Delegate second
Send instructions to your delegates — AI, teammates, contractors, service providers.
The key discipline: send complete instructions. A Delegate Action is checked when you send — not when you think about sending. Fully articulate the request before checking it off. Vague instructions produce Await cycles that come back as re-delegation, not approvals.
What complete instructions look like:
- Context: why this matters, what it's for
- Scope: what specifically to do
- Constraints: format, length, deadline, style
- Output: what a good result looks like
For AI delegation specifically, the quality of your instructions directly determines the quality of the Review that comes back. A poorly articulated Delegate creates a poor Review, which requires re-delegation, which extends the cycle. Invest 2 extra minutes in clarity now to save 30 minutes of rework later.
After delegating, the Action moves to Await in your Flow. You've done your part; the ball is in their court.
Do last
Direct execution. Full focus.
By the time you get to Do items, you've already set other Flows in motion:
- Review items unblocked waiting Flows
- Delegate items are with your delegates, doing work in parallel
Now you can work on Do items without the nagging sense that you've left something blocked. Everything that could be moving is moving. Give the Do work your full attention.
Batching Do items: Similar Do items can be batched if you have many. Writing tasks together, calls together, administrative tasks together. Within the same Mode, the order is your call.
Energy management: If you have the option, save high-focus Do items for your peak energy hours. Save low-focus Do items (administrative, mechanical) for lower-energy periods. OTD doesn't dictate when to do what — but the Mode structure makes it easy to see what types of work are in Today.
When Today is empty
This is the signal. Not "it's 6pm." Not "I'm tired." Today is empty.
Every item in Today was completable today — by design. An empty Today means real things happened. Actions were completed, delegated, or reviewed. Flows advanced. Progress was made.
If you have energy left after Today is empty, you have options:
- Preview upcoming Actions — look at what's next in your Flows
- Review Someday — is anything ready to activate?
- Extend with additional Actions — pull more from active Flows if you want to keep going
- Stop — an empty Today is permission to stop. You've done what you set out to do.
The last option is underrated. The ability to stop without guilt — because there's an objective signal that today's work is done — is one of OTD's most practical benefits. You're not stopping because you're lazy; you're stopping because Today is empty.
Mode-based batching in practice
A realistic Today might look like:
Review (start here):
- [Review] Read AI draft of market analysis → approve or re-delegate
- [Review] Check contractor's design mockup → approve or revise
Delegate (next):
- [Delegate] Ask AI to research competitor pricing
- [Delegate] Send legal doc to attorney for review
- [Delegate] Ask colleague to confirm meeting time
Do (then):
- [Do] Write intro section of proposal
- [Do] Update project timeline
- [Do] Book follow-up call with client
This is nine items. Two Reviews take maybe 20 minutes. Three Delegates take maybe 15 minutes. Three Do items take... however long they take.
But critically: by 35 minutes in, you've unblocked two Flows (via Review) and initiated parallel work in three more (via Delegate). The remaining Do work happens with all of that moving in the background.
Compare this to starting with Do items: you spend your best focus hours on direct work, but the Reviews are still sitting. Those blocked Flows stay blocked. The Delegates wait until you get to them, which might be afternoon — losing hours of parallel time.
Order matters.
Handling interruptions
Today will be disrupted. Meetings run long. Emergencies arrive. Someone drops an urgent request.
The principle: keep Today honest.
When something new arrives mid-day, it goes through the same process as Inbox items. If it's urgent enough to do today, pull it into Today. If it displaces something else, accept that — but consciously. Don't let Today silently expand into an amorphous list of everything that could be done.
If Today regularly gets disrupted and ends up incomplete, that's a signal to either reduce what you put in Today at the start, or to protect your work time more aggressively.