Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
by David Allen
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Book Summary Information
Author: David AllenEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-12-31
ISBN: 0142000280
Number of pages: 267
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780142000281
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Book Review: There aren't many books you need - You NEED this book NOW!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Who would not benefit from being more efficient about everything one has to do? Think about it for a moment. We go to school and learn a standard curriculum. We go to college, and again learn some sort of structured set of subject matter. There are two extremely important subjects that I never learned anything about in a lifetime of formal learning.
· How to manage my time
· How to manage relationships
In both cases, you and I are on our own. Is it any wonder that the divorce rate in America hangs out at about 50%? We are all winging it, and how often does winging it get it done in real life. In the movies sure, in real life, not likely. The same is true for the management of time. I have probably read 50 books in my lifetime on time management, and I have attended a few seminars also.
NOTHING COMPARES TO THIS BOOK in helping you to change the way you handle your affairs. Here is why you need this book.
1) You need to understand that your brain operates like a random memory computer. The author David Allen explains why you will be sitting in the car and all of a sudden you will start realizing that you have to do this, and you have to do that. This always happens when you are in a position that powerless to act like having both hands on the steering wheel of a car.
2) You will learn why your brain treats all "to do" items the same, with equal weighting, and you have to consciously overcome this tendency.
3) If it's on your mind, your mind isn't clear. You must capture your to do items in a system that is outside your mind.
4) The key to success is to determine YOUR NEXT ACTION. You just don't want to write down on your to do list, FIX THECAR. You want to write down the name of the service center and the phone number because that is an action you can execute on. You have to learn to think in terms of ACTION STEPS. If it's not actionable, it's not anything. Once you start thinking and planning this way, your efficiency will skyrocket immediately.
5) The essence of the system is to keep nothing in your mind. EVERYTHING has to come out of your mind, and put into some kind of system. It could be paper, it could be on your PC. Perhaps you used a Blackberry or a small voice recorder. It really doesn't matter. What does matter is you have to get it out of your mind.
6) You can never really do a PROJECT. You can only do some kind of ACTION associated with a project. Do enough ACTIONS, and the project is complete.
There are a couple of very simple concepts that you can implement immediately that will CHANGE your life. Try these on:
A) Never let your file drawers get more than 3/4th filled.
B) Purge your files on a regular basis - once a month, or once a quarter
C) I love this one - If you can get something done in under two minutes - Just get it done. Don't put it on a list - JUST DO IT. I guess Nike had it right.
D) Handle things once. Yes, we have heard this before. This happens because you take something out of your "IN" basket, look at it, decide you are not going to process it now and put it right back in the basket. No, no, no - You process it right there, and then. Do it NOW.
I have already begun to implement many of the suggestions that David Allen has suggested in this very helpful book. They are working. I am getting things off my desk. I keep a small notebook in each of my cars, if something occurs to me, I write it down immediately, and deal with it later.
I keep a TO DO list on my personal computer. I update (delete and add) all day, and then at the end of the day, I e-mail the updated list to my home computer, and deal with it there. You need to implement the MINIMUM amount possible that will work for you. You do not want to add complexity to your life; there is already complexity enough.
You will find yourself getting much more done than you are use to. This means you free up YOUR time, and what's more important than that. You have to be flexible though. What works for you, may not work for someone else. Allen's got the concepts right. Now you have to make adjustments to see what works for you.
Always remember the POWER OF NO. You have to learn to say NO when it benefits you because if you don't take care of number 1, who is going to. My friends, you want to buy this book and take OWNERSHIP of the contents. You will change your life. Change your systems and you change your world. If fact, you will rock your world, and that's everything, isn't it.
There aren't many books you need - You NEED this book NOW!!!
Who would not benefit from being more efficient about everything one has to do? Think about it for a moment. We go to school and learn a standard curriculum. We go to college, and again learn some sort of structured set of subject matter. There are two extremely important subjects that I never learned anything about in a lifetime of formal learning.
· How to manage my time
· How to manage relationships
In both cases, you and I are on our own. Is it any wonder that the divorce rate in America hangs out at about 50%? We are all winging it, and how often does winging it get it done in real life. In the movies sure, in real life, not likely. The same is true for the management of time. I have probably read 50 books in my lifetime on time management, and I have attended a few seminars also.
NOTHING COMPARES TO THIS BOOK in helping you to change the way you handle your affairs. Here is why you need this book.
1) You need to understand that your brain operates like a random memory computer. The author David Allen explains why you will be sitting in the car and all of a sudden you will start realizing that you have to do this, and you have to do that. This always happens when you are in a position that powerless to act like having both hands on the steering wheel of a car.
2) You will learn why your brain treats all "to do" items the same, with equal weighting, and you have to consciously overcome this tendency.
3) If it's on your mind, your mind isn't clear. You must capture your to do items in a system that is outside your mind.
4) The key to success is to determine YOUR NEXT ACTION. You just don't want to write down on your to do list, FIX THECAR. You want to write down the name of the service center and the phone number because that is an action you can execute on. You have to learn to think in terms of ACTION STEPS. If it's not actionable, it's not anything. Once you start thinking and planning this way, your efficiency will skyrocket immediately.
5) The essence of the system is to keep nothing in your mind. EVERYTHING has to come out of your mind, and put into some kind of system. It could be paper, it could be on your PC. Perhaps you used a Blackberry or a small voice recorder. It really doesn't matter. What does matter is you have to get it out of your mind.
6) You can never really do a PROJECT. You can only do some kind of ACTION associated with a project. Do enough ACTIONS, and the project is complete.
There are a couple of very simple concepts that you can implement immediately that will CHANGE your life. Try these on:
A) Never let your file drawers get more than 3/4th filled.
B) Purge your files on a regular basis - once a month, or once a quarter
C) I love this one - If you can get something done in under two minutes - Just get it done. Don't put it on a list - JUST DO IT. I guess Nike had it right.
D) Handle things once. Yes, we have heard this before. This happens because you take something out of your "IN" basket, look at it, decide you are not going to process it now and put it right back in the basket. No, no, no - You process it right there, and then. Do it NOW.
I have already begun to implement many of the suggestions that David Allen has suggested in this very helpful book. They are working. I am getting things off my desk. I keep a small notebook in each of my cars, if something occurs to me, I write it down immediately, and deal with it later.
I keep a TO DO list on my personal computer. I update (delete and add) all day, and then at the end of the day, I e-mail the updated list to my home computer, and deal with it there. You need to implement the MINIMUM amount possible that will work for you. You do not want to add complexity to your life; there is already complexity enough.
You will find yourself getting much more done than you are use to. This means you free up YOUR time, and what's more important than that. You have to be flexible though. What works for you, may not work for someone else. Allen's got the concepts right. Now you have to make adjustments to see what works for you.
Always remember the POWER OF NO. You have to learn to say NO when it benefits you because if you don't take care of number 1, who is going to. My friends, you want to buy this book and take OWNERSHIP of the contents. You will change your life. Change your systems and you change your world. If fact, you will rock your world, and that's everything, isn't it.
Summary of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
In today's world, yesterday's methods just don't work. In Getting Things Done, veteran coach and management consultant David Allen shares the breakthrough methods for stress-free performance that he has introduced to tens of thousands of people across the country. Allen's premise is simple: our productivity is directly proportional to our ability to relax. Only when our minds are clear and our thoughts are organized can we achieve effective productivity and unleash our creative potential. In Getting Things Done Allen shows how to:* Apply the "do it, delegate it, defer it, drop it" rule to get your in-box to empty
* Reassess goals and stay focused in changing situations
* Plan projects as well as get them unstuck
* Overcome feelings of confusion, anxiety, and being overwhelmed
* Feel fine about what you're not doing
From core principles to proven tricks, Getting Things Done can transform the way you work, showing you how to pick up the pace without wearing yourself down.
With first-chapter allusions to martial arts, "flow," "mind like water," and other concepts borrowed from the East (and usually mangled), you'd almost think this self-helper from David Allen should have been called Zen and the Art of Schedule Maintenance.
Not quite. Yes, Getting Things Done offers a complete system for downloading all those free-floating gotta-do's clogging your brain into a sophisticated framework of files and action lists--all purportedly to free your mind to focus on whatever you're working on. However, it still operates from the decidedly Western notion that if we could just get really, really organized, we could turn ourselves into 24/7 productivity machines. (To wit, Allen, whom the New Economy bible Fast Company has dubbed "the personal productivity guru," suggests that instead of meditating on crouching tigers and hidden dragons while you wait for a plane, you should unsheathe that high-tech saber known as the cell phone and attack that list of calls you need to return.)
As whole-life-organizing systems go, Allen's is pretty good, even fun and therapeutic. It starts with the exhortation to take every unaccounted-for scrap of paper in your workstation that you can't junk, The next step is to write down every unaccounted-for gotta-do cramming your head onto its own scrap of paper. Finally, throw the whole stew into a giant "in-basket"
That's where the processing and prioritizing begin; in Allen's system, it get a little convoluted at times, rife as it is with fancy terms, subterms, and sub-subterms for even the simplest concepts. Thank goodness the spine of his system is captured on a straightforward, one-page flowchart that you can pin over your desk and repeatedly consult without having to refer back to the book. That alone is worth the purchase price. Also of value is Allen's ingenious Two-Minute Rule: if there's anything you absolutely must do that you can do right now in two minutes or less, then do it now, thus freeing up your time and mind tenfold over the long term. It's commonsense advice so obvious that most of us completely overlook it, much to our detriment; Allen excels at dispensing such wisdom in this useful, if somewhat belabored, self-improver aimed at everyone from CEOs to soccer moms (who we all know are more organized than most CEOs to start with). --Timothy Murphy
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