r/gtd rules, stats, and what to post

r/gtd is a community for people who follow Getting Things Done, the productivity methodology from the book by David Allen. People come here to discuss how the method works and to ask questions about putting it into practice, which the rules describe as implementation and execution. The community draws a hard line in its own description: it is not a general productivity subreddit. So the room is for GTD practitioners comparing workflows, capture habits, reviews, and how they run the method day to day, not for broad productivity chatter.

Three rules decide almost everything here. “No self-promotion in posts, comments, or DMs to mods or members” is the big one, and it is unusually thorough: no links, no “I built this,” no discount codes, no waitlists, no launch posts, and no private messages to moderators or members to seek an exception. If you are unsure whether something is allowed, the rule says to use modmail. “Posts and comments must be on-topic” matters because this is not a general productivity subreddit, so a broad post about habits or focus tools will not survive. “No product research, surveys, or recruitment” closes the other door marketers like to walk through: no gathering requirements, no surveys, no feature idea requests, no recruiting testers or interview participants. “Be civil” is the baseline rule, and it asks you to critique ideas and workflows rather than people.

The honest answer for a founder is that this community rewards pure participation, not positioning. A good post is a genuine question or story about running the GTD method: how you handle capture, what your weekly review looks like, where your system breaks down, or how you adapted a specific part of the methodology to your work. If you built a tool, you can still be here, but as a practitioner, so talk about your own GTD practice and leave your product out of it completely. That means no links, no mentions of your app, no soft launches in comments. If you want to know whether some borderline thing is allowed, the rules point you to modmail, so ask there before posting rather than testing the room.

The fastest way to get removed is anything that smells like promotion. Do not post links, say “I built this,” share discount codes, announce a waitlist, or write a launch post, because “No self-promotion in posts, comments, or DMs to mods or members” bans all of it, including products you are only affiliated with. Do not try to get around the rule by messaging moderators or members directly, since the rule names that move explicitly. Do not post surveys, ask for feature ideas, gather requirements, or recruit testers, because “No product research, surveys, or recruitment” treats that as using the community to build or validate a product. Keep every post on the methodology itself, because off-topic general productivity content fails “Posts and comments must be on-topic.” And stay respectful under “Be civil,” which means critique ideas and workflows, never the person.

The rule that stands out to me is the one about private messages. Some communities only police the public feed, but here the moderators explicitly closed the back door of DMing people to pitch them, which tells you they have seen every workaround before. I also respect how clearly the description draws the line: this is a room about one methodology, not a general productivity hangout. If your product touches GTD, the honest move is to learn from this community in public and keep your marketing somewhere else.