Product Description

Is your workload overwhelming? Does it just keep mounting up while your stress levels reach fever pitch? In Getting Things Done David Allen teaches you how to keep a clear head, relax and organise your thoughts while implementing the methods that he has introduced at organisations like Microsoft, Lockheed and the US Department of Justice: Learn the 'do it, delegate it, defer it, drop it' principle to empty your in-tray. Handle e-mail, paperwork and unexpected demands in a system of self-management. Plan and progress projects. Reasses goals and stay focused. Apply the two minute rule when deciding what to do now and what to defer. Overcome feelings of anxiety and being overwhelmed. With clear and specific methods and advice, David Allen's tried and trusted formula for business efficiency could transform the way you operate and your experience of work.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #653 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 282 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
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-dos 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 organised, 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 sabre known as the mobile phone and attack that list of calls you need to return.)

As whole-life-organising 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 prioritising 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 common sense 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 belaboured, self-improver aimed at everyone from CEOs to football mums (who, we all know, are more organised than most CEOs to start with). --Timothy Murphy

Review
'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-dos 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 organised, 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 sabre known as the mobile phone and attack that list of calls you need to return.) As whole-life-organising 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 prioritising 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 common sense 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 belaboured, self-improver aimed at everyone from CEOs to football mums (who, we all know, are more organised than most CEOs to start with).' - Timothy Murphy , AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW

Synopsis
Is your workload overwhelming? Does it just keep mounting up while your stress levels reach fever pitch? In Getting Things Done David Allen teaches you how to keep a clear head, relax and organise your thoughts while implementing the methods that he has introduced at organisations like Microsoft, Lockheed and the US Department of Justice: Learn the 'do it, delegate it, defer it, drop it' principle to empty your in-tray. Handle e-mail, paperwork and unexpected demands in a system of self-management. Plan and progress projects. Reasses goals and stay focused. Apply the two minute rule when deciding what to do now and what to defer. Overcome feelings of anxiety and being overwhelmed. With clear and specific methods and advice, David Allen's tried and trusted formula for business efficiency could transform the way you operate and your experience of work.

Customer Reviews

5th generation time management
This is a seminal book, which has in some ways been superseded by its own children. If you survey the Mac and PC software applications that offer help with time management, by far the most popular system implemented is Getting Things Done, or GTD for short.

GTD has been criticised for being no more than common sense. In a lot of ways this is both untrue, and unfair. More accurately, it's two simple ideas put together, and supported by a collection of useful ideas borrowed (with appropriate acknowledgement) from elsewhere. The two ideas are the idea of 'stuff', and what you do with it (collect, process, organise, review, do), and the idea of using (and relying on) a reliable filing system. It's backed up with other good ideas like brainstoming, mind-mapping, the 50,000 feet perspective, and other notions that you may have encountered in their original contexts, or in programmes like TQM.

GTD is less revolutionary than the 4th generation time-management that Stephen Covey introduced in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. However, it's more powerful for most of us in the sense that you can implement it easily on a computer or a PDA. David Allen makes the most of the power of easy storage of information. If you're a computer user (and if you're reading this on Amazon, then chances are that you are), then this is by the far the most practical system, whether you use a specialist piece of software like Omnifocus, or just make the most of the built-in functions of Outlook or iCal.

This is the strength, and the weakness of this book: get one of the many software packages, read the help-file, and you may not need to read the book at all.

Just one more thing about Getting Things Done. As the author points out, this is really a book for people on the fast-track to improve their personal organisation. It's not going to make a great gift for someone else who you _think_ should get organised.

may be good for you but definitely bad for me
I've read this book three or four times around of May-June 2004, and then tried to implement into my work - without any significant success. Most probably this is book for inbox slaves and formal process worshippers, otherwise it might be not for your job-without-formal-description. In worst case trying to follow it took me actually spending _more_ time on things I used to do quicker. Most probably it might be valuable for you, but not for me, and I don't want to take inbox slavery job.

Good For All
Any information on being more organised and reducing stress in our lives is worth reading. Even people who are generally organised will gain benefits fom this book. We all have areas of our lives that could be more productive, less cluttered and more stress-free. Definitely worth a read.

How To Keep Your Man: And Keep Him For Good

Real Life Dramas - Volume One: 1

Darren G. Burton