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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
Excellent advice but unnecessarily verbose.
While I enjoy gleaning helpful techniques from varied organizational tomes, this one was a bit too business-focused.
I was pleasantly surprised by Getting Things Done. Although hearing a lot about it for years (and having it on my read list for way too long), I somehow thought that the book would be obsessed with 'checking of to-do's' and doing as much as possible. But it isn't. Especially in the last chapters Allen zooms in on how GTD can help you to define and actually work on long-term goals, whether it's work or private.
Amazing how much overlap with Marie Kondo there is here.
Got it done. Ha ha. Probably 4.5. This book helped me get back on track. It is dated and refers to palm pilots and a lot of paper, but the principles are the same. I just applied them to my phone, which is everything in one. I admit that after a few days, I'm tired from getting lots done. Two of my favorite principles are if it takes less then 2 minutes, just do it, and asking "What is the next action".
Ugh, I struggle with ratings. I think there is a lot of value in this book. But it was so... repetitive and convoluted and boring. It’s hard to articulate how difficult it was for me to close the open loop of reading this book. I should have just abandoned it, honestly, but I kept telling myself ‘give it another try! You love this stuff!’ I do. I love this stuff. I love organization and productivity and optimization. I want to streamline and minimize and live my best life. I recognize that Allen has done a lot of good for individuals and corporations, and his method makes sense. It’s just not simple to initiate and so I’m probably not going to utilize it in its entirety. So the bits I’m going to take with me aren’t that different from other organization books, from ‘The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up’ to ‘The Bullet Journal Method.’ Basically you need to know how much ‘stuff’ you have, pile all that stuff in one place, then deal with the stuff bit by bit. I did not need to take eleven boring years to read a book about a complicated method with lists and horizons and blah blah blah to figure that out. The two minute rule is pretty dope though.
informative
medium-paced
After reading the book I would say that it surprised me pleasantly, as it does not give you a direct solution but more like guidance of how to find it yourself. There are some major principles that are being reviewed and then some examples are given, but from that point on - it's the reader that has to develop a system that works for him.
A lot of the discussed methods I already had in use, but the book helped me organize these and hopefully increase my performance. Surely the 2-min rule is a new thing that I implement already (with really good results btw).
And here comes a quotation of a footnote in the book, that can summarize the whole idea of "why should I read this":
"Of course, the people that are most attracted to implementing Getting Thing Done are usually already on a self-development track and don't assume that they'll be doing the same thing a year from now that they are doing now, anyway. But they love the fact that this method gets them there faster and more easily."
A lot of the discussed methods I already had in use, but the book helped me organize these and hopefully increase my performance. Surely the 2-min rule is a new thing that I implement already (with really good results btw).
And here comes a quotation of a footnote in the book, that can summarize the whole idea of "why should I read this":
"Of course, the people that are most attracted to implementing Getting Thing Done are usually already on a self-development track and don't assume that they'll be doing the same thing a year from now that they are doing now, anyway. But they love the fact that this method gets them there faster and more easily."