CONCEPT
The Open Loop
Allen's name for any uncommitted commitment that cycles through awareness demanding resolution — the fundamental unit of cognitive drag, and the object the entire GTD methodology was built to externalize.
The open loop is David Allen's most durable diagnostic concept: any task, idea, or commitment that occupies cognitive real estate without being fully resolved or externalized into a trusted system. Allen discovered through decades of consulting that the human brain treats uncommitted commitments like alarms that cannot be silenced — cycling through awareness at unpredictable intervals, demanding attention not because they are urgent but because they are unresolved. The entire GTD methodology exists to close this gap, capturing open loops into external systems so the mind can achieve the state Allen calls mind like water. In the AI age, the open loop's mechanics remain, but its ecology transforms: closing loops now generates loops faster than they can be processed.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Allen developed the open loop concept through direct observation of overwhelmed executives across industries and decades of consulting practice. The pattern was remarkably consistent: people's productivity was throttled not by insufficient skill or time but