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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
My system is somewhat different, but because of that I was able to learn a couple of things.
As far as personal productivity management books go, this one is a keeper. David Allen's "Getting Things Done" method is extremely intuitive and simple. The central concept is to constantly purge your mind of all your open actions to ensure that you are not only getting things done, but that you are keenly aware of what you are not getting done. I have started using this method at work and find that I am getting better at delivering on my commitments and have a much better grasp on all of my open actions. Another central theme of Mr. Allen's is: if something can be done in 2 minutes or less, do it. Ignore priority thinking and get the action off your list.[return][return]If you are looking for a productivity management solution to get your life in order give this book a shot.
All my geek friends have probably heard of the GTD methodology. I had never actually read the book but tried to implement it many times. Very good book.
This is the second time this book awoken a drive to organise my life. I do not do things by the book, but I take some things in and make some up myself. Having the mindset of gtd give me a flow and helps me find direction.
Good advice and need to refresh to keep the process going.
The basic premise is about five steps, and there were Lots if helpful tips but a lot of filler. Watching a YouTube video would probably give more helpful examples and practical applications.
Tried to listen in the car. Impossible. You need a pen and paper to really use this book as intended.
Update: I finally finished this book! It took me almost a year of starting and stopping, which should tell you something. But, just because the material isn't scintillating doesn't mean that this is not excellent personal and professional advice. I am sure I will need to reread at some point but I really want to put Allen's filing system and "what is next action?" to use in my daily life.
Update: I finally finished this book! It took me almost a year of starting and stopping, which should tell you something. But, just because the material isn't scintillating doesn't mean that this is not excellent personal and professional advice. I am sure I will need to reread at some point but I really want to put Allen's filing system and "what is next action?" to use in my daily life.
I'm so humiliated. And yet, I have never been more productive and less stressed out at work.
3.5⭐️
I enjoyed reading this cult book on productivity. It seems that the methodology is malleable with the bujo method. I like that the author insisted on optimising brain functionality by alleging cognitive loads: it is to think and generate ideas and not to remember (unnecessary) tasks. The GTD concept and its well-being part are explained well in the first chapters. It also helps me understand why the classic to-do list can be demoralising when it’s not respected and/or insufficient, although everything is checked as done.
Honestly, reading the first part of the book (2015 edition) is enough for me. I thought parts 2 and 3 would be detailed explanations of the first part, but they are basically repetitive phrases, jargon, and examples of the first part. But, I understand that step-by-step in part two might be helpful for those unfamiliar with journaling or planning.
I like one chapter in part 3 that talks about the similarities and positive impacts of GTDs in cognitive science and psychology research. However, the drawbacks might exist and thus need to be discussed and shared.
I enjoyed reading this cult book on productivity. It seems that the methodology is malleable with the bujo method. I like that the author insisted on optimising brain functionality by alleging cognitive loads: it is to think and generate ideas and not to remember (unnecessary) tasks. The GTD concept and its well-being part are explained well in the first chapters. It also helps me understand why the classic to-do list can be demoralising when it’s not respected and/or insufficient, although everything is checked as done.
Honestly, reading the first part of the book (2015 edition) is enough for me. I thought parts 2 and 3 would be detailed explanations of the first part, but they are basically repetitive phrases, jargon, and examples of the first part. But, I understand that step-by-step in part two might be helpful for those unfamiliar with journaling or planning.
I like one chapter in part 3 that talks about the similarities and positive impacts of GTDs in cognitive science and psychology research. However, the drawbacks might exist and thus need to be discussed and shared.
I first read this book over 15 years ago and I've been implementing this productivity system consistently all these years. The part of the process that I adopted faithfully was understanding the psychological benefit of writing down what you have to do so that you don't need to carry it in your head. Over the years I've tried different ways to use technology to interpret David Allens paper based system, and have never quite achieved the full system running smoothly. I've read countless forums and watched many YouTube videos, and there seems to be a million interpretations of how to implement the GTD system digitally, and I've never been quite able to adopt any of them. I've spent countless hours this year trialling different software and have made great improvement to my overall management of tasks, but still isn't quite hitting the mark. I decided to go back to the original content and reread the book from start to finish and I'm very glad I did. Especially listening to it in audiobook form really helped the conversational develivery of messages get into my brain. This makes sense as David Allen is a consultant and has verbally coached thousands of executives, so his writing style is just how he talks. I have had several major shifts in understanding the fundamentals that I have already started to implement with great benefit. These are:
1) The Someday/Maybe list is not just a dumping ground for everything too hard to deal with. It still needs to be organised and reviewed regularly so that you have that confidence in your system that everything is handled and you will be reminded about it when you need to be. This list is just supposed to be a parking space to incubate tasks for a distant time for when you feel like starting a new project, such as "Learn Spanish" I see the 175+ tasks in my Someday/Maybe list and feel dread and hide from it! It definitely contains things that I should be doing.
2) The Tickler File is not just some outdated paper date based filing system. It should be a list of things you want to be reminded about at some point later on, but at a specific time. I've been struggling with what to do with tasks that can't start yet, but don't have an exact date that they must start or finish. The Tickler File is the missing list I've needed in my system.
3) I need to manage Next Actions, i.e. I need to manage WHERE/WHEN/HOW to do something, not WHAT/WHY. I'm very focused on categorising what the thing is. I have Areas of Focus, Projects, Sub projects and Tasks, and all of these are consumed with that the thing is, none of which are actually how I'm going to physically do it, or where I need to do it, or when I need to do it. I've always been very resistant to separating the Next Action away from the Project List because I don't want to loose the link of what the Next Action relates to. I plan on looking at ways to have looser links between actions and projects such as tags to move my system away from a task categorisation system and more into a really productivity system.
4) My Next Actions are rarely Next Actions, I usually define are goals, outcomes, "shoulds", and haven't done the natural planning step to work out what I need to do to progress. Perhaps this is an ADHD impact, but with ChatGPT I can ask it to help me breakdown starts and identify how I get started on tasks.
Overall highly recommend the Getting Things Done methodology. It's got to be one of the biggest contributors to the productivity that society has seen in the 23 years since this book was released. It's amazing the amount of resources available online, and the size of the community providing insights and support, but there is nothing quite like going back to the original creator and hearing his simple explanations and genius that started this whole craze.
1) The Someday/Maybe list is not just a dumping ground for everything too hard to deal with. It still needs to be organised and reviewed regularly so that you have that confidence in your system that everything is handled and you will be reminded about it when you need to be. This list is just supposed to be a parking space to incubate tasks for a distant time for when you feel like starting a new project, such as "Learn Spanish" I see the 175+ tasks in my Someday/Maybe list and feel dread and hide from it! It definitely contains things that I should be doing.
2) The Tickler File is not just some outdated paper date based filing system. It should be a list of things you want to be reminded about at some point later on, but at a specific time. I've been struggling with what to do with tasks that can't start yet, but don't have an exact date that they must start or finish. The Tickler File is the missing list I've needed in my system.
3) I need to manage Next Actions, i.e. I need to manage WHERE/WHEN/HOW to do something, not WHAT/WHY. I'm very focused on categorising what the thing is. I have Areas of Focus, Projects, Sub projects and Tasks, and all of these are consumed with that the thing is, none of which are actually how I'm going to physically do it, or where I need to do it, or when I need to do it. I've always been very resistant to separating the Next Action away from the Project List because I don't want to loose the link of what the Next Action relates to. I plan on looking at ways to have looser links between actions and projects such as tags to move my system away from a task categorisation system and more into a really productivity system.
4) My Next Actions are rarely Next Actions, I usually define are goals, outcomes, "shoulds", and haven't done the natural planning step to work out what I need to do to progress. Perhaps this is an ADHD impact, but with ChatGPT I can ask it to help me breakdown starts and identify how I get started on tasks.
Overall highly recommend the Getting Things Done methodology. It's got to be one of the biggest contributors to the productivity that society has seen in the 23 years since this book was released. It's amazing the amount of resources available online, and the size of the community providing insights and support, but there is nothing quite like going back to the original creator and hearing his simple explanations and genius that started this whole craze.