Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity Reviews

• 
  Jamie

  Ironically, looking in to the GTD (Getting Things Done) system has been bouncing around in the back of my head as something to do for quite some time now. This approach to maximizing productivity is popular among the nerdegalian, probably because of its minimum bullshit approach to actually processing, classifying, and executing what the author David Allen calls "stuff to do." This book discusses the GTD system in its entirety and, more importantly, teaches you how to put it in place.
  
  What I really liked about Allen's work is that it's very straight forward and focused on implementation. It seems like other self-help books in this vein that I've perused are all about inspiration, defining values, motivating yourself, getting in touch with your inner being and letting loose the full potential of you. To those authors I'd like to say the following: No. Stop it. I don't need nor want that, so you can cram it with walnuts, buddy. GTD, in comparison, is prescriptive. Allen gets touchy-feeling in a few places (such as discussing prioritization or project definition) but the vast majority of the book takes a very practical approach to digging yourself out of whatever mountain of commitments you've gotten yourself under and how to stay on top of it once you get there.
  
  In short, GTD focuses on getting "stuff" --commitments, to do items, reminders to gather information, requests for information or actions, etc.-- out of your short-term memory and into a physical, highly organized system that will remind you of the right stuff at the right time. Dumping everything out of your short-term memory allows you to do something that's very critical to productivity: focus on one thing at a time. If you're confident that your other commitments or to-dos are safely stored away somewhere and will not be lost or buried out of sight, you can devote all your attention, time, and mental energy to one thing before knocking it out and moving on to the next. I like to think of the system as an artificial, external, and infinitely scalable attention span that you can connect to and disconnect from as needed.
  
  That's all well and good, but it's probably not beyond the ken of your average retarded monkey. The tough (and in some places nonintuitive) part is the implementation. Again, there's tons more detail, tricks, and tips in the book, but I'll try to capture the gist of it. There are four major parts to the GTD system:
  
  1. Collecting incoming stuff
  2. Processing the stuff
  3. Doing the stuff
  4. Regularly reviewing your system to make sure your action items and project lists are up to date
  
  Collecting stuff is easy. That's just letting stuff accumulate in your physical or virtual receptacles like inboxes, voice mail, or e-mail.
  
  Processing stuff is more involved. It requires sitting down with your inboxes and emptying them. That doesn't mean immediately doing the work associated with each piece of stuff as you pick it up --prioritization is important. It means taking a piece of stuff --an e-mail, a document, a voice mail-- and doing something with it: act on it right then, file it, trash it, delegate it, or create what Allen calls a "Next Action" item associated with it. Again, the book is replete with practical tips, hacks, tools, and rules of thumb for deciding which of these things to do and how to keep it all straight. Therein lies some of the book's best value, but it's too detailed to go into here.
  
  Doing the stuff is self explanatory, but again I'll emphasize the value of being able to focus on one thing at a time without worrying that other things will be forgotten. It's much more productive and much less stressful.
  
  Regularly reviewing your system is also important, and comes in two flavors: as needed and weekly. You may review your action item list (a.k.a., your "to do list") several times a day as needed, if for nothing but that endorphin rush that comes with checking things off as "done" and deciding what to tackle next. Weekly reviews are also important, and are different in that you take the time to check on your list of active projects and make sure you have a Next Action item for each and every one.
  
  So I really like the book and its system. I'd recommend it to anyone who feels like they're not being productive enough or getting buried in work. Allen only gets mushy and non-specific in a few places that make it seem like he's trying to pad the page count, but the majority of the book is specific, direct, and practical. I also like that Allen is in tune with the modern technology that most professionals encounter. He spends appropriate amounts of time discussing things like e-mail, Outlook and voice mail. He also talks about implementing GTD with high-tech tools like PDAs, Web 2.0 systems, and palmtop computers, but while GTD lends itself well to these kinds of toys, at its heart it is technology agnostic. You could do the whole thing quite effectively with a pen, some paper, and a bunch of file folders. Indeed, some parts of the system, like the tickler file work best that way.
• 
  Jonatron

  I bought this book, and I read some of it. It sat on a shelf unfinished. I read some more. It sat in my car unfinished. I eventually made the decision to never finish it.
  
  I think this is self-explanatory.
  
  [Edit at a later date:]
  
  Now I'm reading
  26 Reasons Not to Use GTD, and it does a good job of articulating the "ehhhh"ness that I felt while reading this.
  
  [Edit at an even later date:]
  
  And if you think GTD's followers are a little cult-like (see, for instance, the angry comments on this review), check this out: When David Allen says in the acknowledgments "deepest thanks go to my spiritual coach, J-R", he's talking about a man named John-Roger "the Mystical Traveler", who believes he is a reincarnation of Jesus, St. Francis of Assisi, and Abraham Lincoln. Allen is a minister in his Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness church. Yup.
• 
  ❀ Lily ❀

  I feel like this book borders on being too outdated to be helpful in 2020. While there are still some tips that are useful and can be translated to modern day, in my opinion there aren't enough to warrant reading this whole book to hear them.
  Also this is way more of a book on 'organisation' (especially organising your work area) than a guide on how to be more 'productive'
  If you're anything like me; someone who knows how to plan properly but has trouble actually executing tasks and completing things, then this book isn't going to help you very much.
  
  * i've given the book a 3 star rating however because it's not the book's fault that it was published almost 20 years ago and isn't helpful anymore*
• 
  Michael Finocchiaro

  Probably the best self-help book I ever read - in any case the one I most adapted to the organization of my life. It does not have an annoying religious aura to it like 7 Habits or the selfish haberdashery spirit of How to Win Friends and Influence People, but is down to earth and highly practical. I was able to get to Inbox Zero and have held on to that principal for years now. If folks are interested, I can repost here my own adaptation of the techniques. Still for me a reference!
  
  My advice: the inbox method is truly important and infinitely helpful. I figured it out and truly feel less overwhelmed and stressed out by email.
  
  Step 1
  Create folders in your various mail programs called
  _01 TODO - this is for items that take more than 2 min to read and take action on
  _02 TO READ - these are for things you want to read later: newsletters, long explanatory emails, etc
  _03 FOLLOWUP - these are things you cannot completed but are waiting on feedback from someone else
  _04 WAITING FOR - these are actions you cannot complete and require action from someone else
  _05 TICKLER - projects you don’t have time for, but you want to get around to in the near future
  _06 UPCOMING TRAVEL - air, car, hotel, tickets for future events and travel
  
  Step 2
  With a free hour ahead of you, go through your inbox and apply the following rules
  1. If you can take action on the item in less than 2 minutes, do it
  2. Else, sort according to the rules above
  
  Step 3
  Rinse and repeat
  
  Let me know how it goes for you :-)
  
  
• 
  Melynda

  I'm a big geek, and here's proof (if you needed it). I learned about GTD from Merlin Mann's 43 Folders site, and became an instant convert. Because I love folders, lists, diagrams, flow charts, of course, but most of all because with GTD, you have to have a labeller. I love my labeller. I love making labels for my files, and admiring them in their serried ranks, all neat and labelly.
  
  And I do actually seem to be getting more done, even when I factor in all the time I spend labelling.
• 
  Bria

  If you find yourself turning a little moist and your pulse quickening with pleasure when you read words and phrases such as:
  
  -High-performance workflow management
  -Family commitments
  -Priority factors
  -The ability to be successful, relaxed, and in control during these fertile but turbulent times demands new ways of thinking and working
  -key work tool
  -assembly-line modality
  -workforce
  -values thinking
  -desired results
  -ups the ante in the game
  -deal effectively with the complexity of life in the twenty-first century
  
  as well as quotes around "colloquial" phrases, such as "ringing your bell" (which I think he uses incorrectly, at least according to MY understanding of a what a "bell" is and what it means to "ring" it)
  
  then not only is this the book for you, this is also the society and era for you, because these things are inescapable and even more so in this book. If such terms instead have you thinking wistfully of the sweet, enveloping darkness to be found at the bottom of your nearest 300-foot drop onto rocky crags, then you have, like me, found yourself woefully living in the wrong universe. You want to be three branes over, where there is still all this awesome new technology and decentralization of art and science and society but nary a hard-charger to be found. In that universe, if someone wants to help others to be more productive, that someone wouldn't expect their readers to slog through a 400-page book that contains about 370 pages of enthusiastic self-congratulation on the startling effectiveness of the method outlined in the remaining 30 pages. Writers in that universe also don't get bored of their own choking newspeak every two paragraphs or so, needing to take a break for a witty and apropos quote, one-sentence summary or reminder of the previous two paragraphs that passed as ephemerally through their own mind as it will through that of the readers, or to just start a new section on either the same or a new topic, either one, it doesn't matter, no one will notice, it's just the same randomly-generated buzzwords bouncing off their eyeballs.
  
  However, in that universe as well as our own, the general concept outlined in this book of turning yourself into an automaton of your own design is still valid. Only in that universe when someone wants to get more done in their life by exporting their brain to external resources, it's done matter-of-factly and with little fanfare, since that universe has also failed to create an entire race of creatures that can't figure out how to function without following explicitly outlined methodologies taught to them by highly paid professional consultants. People in that universe have external brains because it's obviously the thing to do, not because it'll make them more effective entrepreneurs, more successful businessmen, more highly admired community leaders not to mention better partners and parents. Half those things aren't taken seriously in this other universe and the other half are taken even less seriously but still done well. There, they learn how to be alive while they're being alive, by being alive, not from a book they read in middle age in desperation after having already failed miserably at living and this is the thing that'll finally get their shit together, I swear to high heaven this is it, for real, everything's gonna be different from here on out. God I wish I was in that universe.
• 
  Sarah Heffern

  This book should have been a 3,000-word article. It was full of useless details (e.g. listing the types of materials out of which an inbox might be made), redundant to the point of making me crazy, and overflowing with multi-step systems for this, that, and the other (seriously, keeping the 3- or 4- or 6-step filters straight would require flashcards).
  
  While it had some useful tips, I can't imagine anyone having the free time to implement the system fully. Clearly, though, I am wrong in this, just google "getting things done" or "gtd" and check out the millions of results.
  
• 
  Saud Omar

  بالنسبة لي, هذا الكتاب هو ثالث أفضل كتاب قرأته في مجال تطوير الذات, بعد العادات السبع, وإدارة الأولويات لستيفن كوفي.
  
  في الحقيقة اني ترددت قبل كتابة هذه المراجعة, وسبب ذلك اني طبقت أفكار الكتاب لفترة ليست بالقصيرة ( وليست بالطويلة أيضاً ) وأود أن أشارك القراء الكثير من الارشادات والتنبيهات والحيل لتطبيق هذه الأفكار, وكتابة مراجعة في" قود ريدز" ربما لن تسمح بكل هذا .. لذلك قررت أن أكتب هنا عن هذا الكتاب باختصار, وان اضيف المراجعة المفصلة لا حقا في مدونتي.
  
  في البداية دعوني أنبّه أن للكتاب ترجمة عربية بعنوان ( كيفية إنجاز الأشياء ) وللأسف لا أستطيع ان اوصي بها لأني لم أطلع عليها, لكني أظن أنها من إصدرات جرير, وإصدرات جرير عموما ليست سيئة للحد الذي لا تفهم فيه شيئا مما تقرأ, وليست جيدة للحد الذي يسمح لك بالقراءة من دون معاناة سد ثغرات الترجمة .. الخيار لكم.
  
  صدر هذا الكتاب في عام 2002 وتتطورت شعبيته بين قراء ومتابعي كتب تطوير الذات إلى درجة انه صار ظاهرة هستيريه في مجاله, حتى أن مجلة "وايرد" المختصه بالتقنيه وصفته بانه صار ديناً في عصر المعلومات, ومجلة "التايم" أفردت له مقالاً كاملاً واصفته بانه كتاب تطوير الذات لهذا العصر, هذا بالإضافة إلى أن أفكار الكتاب صارت معايير أساسية لكل الأدوات الإنتاجية ( تقاويم, قوائم مهام, ألخ ).
  
  الكتاب عبارة عن نظام سهل وبسيط جدا الغرض منه – كما يقول المؤلف ديفيد ألين – زيادة الإنتاجية مع تقليل الضغط النفسي.
  
  نظام "كيفية إنجاز الأشياء" – أو ما اشتهر اختصاراً ( بنظام الجي تي دي ) - يتكون من خمس أجزاء:
  
  1 – جمع الأشياء: وفي هذه المرحلة تجمع كل الأشياء التي تريد ان تقوم بها, وتضعها في مكان واحد.
  
  2 – المعالجة: في هذه المرحلة تحدد ماهية الأشياء التي جمعتها بالضبط.
  
  3 – التنظيم: هنا تضع كل مهمة في قائمة محددة.
  
  4 – المراجعة: هنا تراجع قوائم المهام التي لديك.
  
  5 – التنفيذ: في هذه المرحلة تنفذ المهام.
  
  ألا تبدو لك هذه الخطوات من الوهلة الأولى بسيطة وبديهية – وربما ساذجة - إلى درجة لا تحتاج كل هذه الضجة؟
  
  نعم هي خطوات بسيطة جدا لكن - وهنا "لكن" كبيرة – حين تنفذها تحدث أمور مدهشة لا تصدق؛ وهذا هو سر شعبية وسحر الكتاب. في الحقيقة أنه لكي أكون اكثر دقة, فسر شعبية الكتاب ليس هذا فحسب, بل كون هذه الافكار ممكنة التطبيق على سياقات كثيرة, فمثلاً أنا أعدت ترتيب ملفات الكمبيوتر, وترتيب مفضلة مواقعي, وأوراقي الدراسية ( هذا بالطبع بالإضافة لترتيب طريقة أدائي لمهامي اليومية ) بناء على أفكاره. في الواقع, أنت لن تجد في الكتاب أي شيء بخصوص ترتيب هذه الأشياء, لكنك سوف تتعلم طريقة ديفيد ألين على النطاق الواسع ( وهو إنجاز المهام اليومية ) ومن ثم سوف تجد انك تستطيع تطبيقها على الكثير من المجالات حولك.
  
  الكأس المقدسة لهذه الكتاب, ولهذه الخطوات, هي حاله يسميها ديفيد ألين ( عقل مثل الماء ) فالغرض من كل هذه "الهلليله" هي أن يكون عقلك, مجازاً, مثل الماء. لو كان ديفيد ألين بوذا فحالة ( عقل مثل الماء ) هي ( نيرفانا ) كتاب كيفية إنجاز الأشياء.
  
  حالة ( عقل مثل الماء ) تعني ان تفرّغ عقلك من كل الأشياء التي فيه, أن تستخدم عقلك بأكبر صورة ممكنة للتركيز والتفكير وليس للتذكر والتخزين, وأن تتصرف بحسب ما يمليه الموقف بالضبط من دون أي مبالغة أو تقليل في ردة الفعل.
  
  لا بد أنه مر عليك مثل هذا الكلام في كتب أو محاضرات تطوير الذات الأخرى, ولا بد أنك لم تحاول منع نفسك من تصنيفه كهراء طازج .. لكن محاولة ديفيد ألين لتحقيق هذا الهدف هي محاولة جادة وأصيلة .. النظام مصمم بالفعل بطريقة ليفرّغ عقلك من كل ما تريد القيام به, ومن ثم ينظمه امامك في قوائم بشكل يسمح لك للوصول إلى اقصى حالة من الإنتاجية.
  
  هناك قضيتان لا بد أن نشير لها بخصوص الكتاب:
  
  1 – الكتاب يتعامل مع المستوى المنخفض من الإنتاجية. قضية الكتاب الأساسية هي كيف تنفذ كل ما في عقلك, لكن من أين تأتي الأشياء التي في عقلك؟ ... هذه في الواقع ليست قضية الكتاب .. الكتاب لا يتعامل مع الرؤية والقيم والحوافز والأهداف بعيدة المدى. هذا ليس عيب في الكتاب, ولكنها طبيعة النظام. في مدونتي سوف اتطرق لهذا الكتاب وكتاب ستيفن كوفي ( إدارة الألويات ). كتاب ديفيد الين يتعامل مع المستوى المنخفض من الإنتاجية, وكتاب ستيفن كوفي يتعامل مع المستوى العالي من الإنتاجية؛ والكتابان يكملان بعضهما.
  
  2 – الكتاب يقدم لك أفكاره بشكل مجرد ويقدم لك بعض الاقتراحات لتنفيذها, لكن اختيار افضل طريقة بالنسبة لك لتنفيذها هو بالفعل تحدي حقيقي. سوف أقدم في مدونتي الطرق التي استخدمتها شخصيا وتقييمي لها, وسوف أدلك على الكثير من المصادر التي تستطيع ان تجد فيها تجارب الاخرين, لكن في نهاية المطاف سوف تحتاج ان تجرب عدة خيارات حتى تجد ما يناسبك شخصياً.
  
  تمنياتي لكم بقراء ممتعة
  
  
  
• 
  Letitia

  David Allen's smirking face on the cover of this book may convince that he's successful...but the man should reserve his smirk for one on one business dealings. The biggest issue with this book is, I couldn't get it done.
  Getting Things Done is written for a non-existent audience: a procrastinator with enough motivation to actually plow through Allen's dry instruction manual.
• 
  Jarrodtrainque

  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/
• 
  Trevor

  A friend of mine at work asked me to read over this and tell him what I made of it. Years ago I worked with a woman who is now my home state’s attorney general – you really couldn’t meet a nicer person – but she was perhaps also the most organised person I’d ever met. Given that she is Victoria’s attorney general, you’d have to say that being organised hasn’t particularly hurt her progress through life. I’m just not sure I’m the sort of person who can really do the kinds of hyper-organisation stuff that is implied as the baseline for this book. And I’m not boasting about that. I can see I would probably be a better person if that wasn’t the case.
  
  A lot of the advice in this book is disturbingly obvious – disturbing because as obvious as it is, I’d never thought of it before. I really liked his ‘two-minute’ rule – essentially, you need to sort stuff into piles to process them and work out what needs to happen next with them, if you can do whatever that is in under two-minutes, do it now. This is his version of the ‘handle it once’ rule, which he, rightly enough, says can’t possibly work. You know that, because one of the things on everyone’s list is apparently ‘write a novel’ – and so you can’t possibly do that by ‘handling it once’. To really know if something will take under two minutes requires you to have thought about it properly and in the right way.
  
  Which is his most important piece of advice, well, for me, anyway. Thinking about things in the right way is to decide what the next actual, literal action needs to be to move it forward. This can be anything from ‘file in the rubbish bin��, but what it can’t be is ‘plan to invade Poland’ or ‘marry Susan’. The reason why it can’t be either of these things, even if, ultimately, they are what you would like to do, is because there is no concrete action attached to either of those grand plans. The concrete task is whatever is the very next action you will need to take to move your overall plan one step closer to completion – in both of these cases that might well be ‘spend more time in bars in Munich’, for example.
  
  I really like this idea – not of marrying Susan or invading Poland so much, but of not finishing with something before you have figured out the next concrete action needs to be, and probably also the when, where, how and who that are likely to go along with that action. I mean, like I said, it’s bloody obvious once you are told, but the obvious is far too often a bit like that, only any good in retrospect, when it is too late.
  
  The other really nice thing I liked about this method was that it took into account the fact that we don’t work at 10/10 for all of 24-7. There are times when we are only able to function at a solid 3/10, and other times when we are topping 7/10 in spurts and starts. And since that is the case, being able to have what another book might call a store of ‘mindless shit’ to be getting on with when you are not in what Wodehouse would call ‘mid-season form’ is well worth thinking about. In that sense, this book is a kind of mindfulness for the anally retentive.
  
  And therein lies the problem for me, of course. I don’t see myself as anally retentive and the shift in self-image that would be necessary to go from what I am now to what I would need to become would require a kind of psychological funeral along the way. I’m not proud to admit of any of this, but self-awareness comes with age, I guess. All the same, I am going to try to do some of the things mentioned in this book – a lot of it is clearly worthwhile – but even as I type this a phase involving ‘old dogs and new tricks’ is echoing about the place.
  
  Oh, except, the other thing – he does say something that did make me think, ‘Oh, yeah, too bloody right!’ and that was that if you are about my age (or any age, really) and you can’t touch type then you should receive a slap across the back of the head every time someone sees you ‘hunting and pecking’. Keyboards aren’t going away anytime soon. If you are going to use technology in a way that allows you to sit and think and effectively hear and see what you are thinking as you type, wondering where the bloody D key is really isn’t allowing you to make the best use of that technology. You can learn to touch type in a couple of weeks – just do it, what the hell? Not being able to type isn’t something you should be proud of. You should be ashamed in the same way you would be ashamed if you owned a car but could only push it around the place because you never learnt how to drive.
  
  I don’t think I’m ever going to have a manila folder filing system with dynamo labels, but my ‘to do’ lists are never going to be quite the same again either. I have one beside me now that I wrote last week – it has items on it like: 3. Vietnam Paper, 5 Ambitions and International Student Paper, 10 Jen W. check in – how’s she going? Only the last one here is anything like an action I could actually do, or even know what the action is that I might need to do. I have to say, thinking of ‘to do’ as ‘things you can actually do’ is a damn useful thing to learn from any book.
  
• 
  Peter (on semi hiatus and trying to catch up)

  Time-Management
  This is the best Self-Help Productivity book ever written. Well, I think so and I’ve been using it for 13 years. It has had such a profound impact on my working life that to this day, it is a part of my daily practice. I have the GTD apps on my phones and tablets, and it is a default webpage I load automatically in my browser. The greatest fear we have when we’re dealing with so many projects or issues or people is that item that we forget because our brain is maxed out with everything else that is flying at us. We need to get it out of our heads and into a trusted system so we can function clearly – today’s modern technology makes this easier. Plug for Toodledo.
  
  I have read the typical time management books and if I hear the ‘big rocks first’ story one more time I’ll hurl one of them at someone. What struck home with me in this book was the recognition of things constantly coming our way throughout the day and more than probably from our bosses, or customers who don’t take kindly to being considered anything but a large rock. This book, therefore, deals with a very pragmatic and defined workflow for managing things we need to get done and understanding the priority. The workflow proffered here is

  1. Collect
  2. Process
  3. Organise
  4. Review.

  
  The book is well written with a style that is easy to read and provides margin notes and images where appropriate. He tends to use bullet points and flowcharts which help illustrate important concepts. If you can take on-board just some of his concepts you’ll notice the difference immediately.
  
  I would highly recommend this book and process for managing the To-Dos in your life.
• 
  Jan-Maat

  This is one of those optimistic books in which YOU THE READER can gain control by your own unaided (well almost unaided, you are meant to delegate) efforts, and which doesn't take account of that your workflow might very well be determined by things entirely outside of your control.
  
  Not to mention if your working space isn't under your control at all (for example with hot desking) or is very limited (if you are in a drone-zone) then physically some of the ideas here will be impossible. And of course everything in this book is best suited to someone with a secretary or personal assistant.
  
  But there are some practical bits and pieces to take away, I've found it useful to not just write a to-do list but also to write by each item what I'm waiting on or what has to be done next to progress the item and the book inspired me to use the email calender feature to pop up reminders of things to do and people to chase.
  
  Beware however, just because you can deal with something within two minutes doesn't mean that you should do so!
  
  For an absolutely different vision of how a business can work its worth reading
  Toyota Production System Beyond Large-Scale Production or anything by
  W. Edwards Deming.
  
  In a wider context this is an entirely depressing and soul destroyingly negative book. It's implicit message is that the modern corporate workplace is a meat mincer. Fresh employees are thrown in at one end, the dead and burnt out, ground down and generally used up ones removed and thrown out on to the scrap heap out of the other end. A functional view of the workplace might be so bold as to posit that people are employed to do a task which contributes towards the achievement of the overall goals and objectives of the organisation. Allen is writing for readers who have experienced something that is very different, in their world nobody cares. If you are struggling to deal with the task you have been employed to do, nobody will notice let alone step in to assist. Your only possible salvation is the life raft of books like this one, offering salvation from the threatening seas of an unlimited workload. Of peculiar interest is that the book is pitched to persons relatively senior - senior enough that they have secretaries or personal assistants. Bizarrely in Allen's world one is appointed to do a job, but there is no reliable way of knowing if you can cope with it or indeed if the job as defined by the organisation can be done by a single person, nor despite the money spent on the employee and their Personal assistant will anybody check or exercise oversight over one's performance.
  
  The workplace in Allen's vision is not rational but the site of a particularly lawless gold-rush. Interestingly to my view enough purchasers agree with him to keep him out of the hamster wheel.
  Like so many 'business' books it ought to be an A4 or A5 laminated card rather than a book hundreds of pages long but apparently there is no money to be made from people in a hurry or who are struggling to achieve stress free productivity.
• 
  Emma Sea

  2.65 stars.
  I've used a mutated version of this for years, but thought I'd try the original text. I was disappointed. I felt it gave equal weight to parts of GTD that are a cakewalk (emptying your mind onto a page) with parts that sound easy but are complex (deciding on next actions).
  
  Also I thought the weekly/quarterly review needed more focus. Allen talks about the 20,000/50,000 foot view, but without enough detail on how to accomplish these.
  
  I'd recommend reading through a summary instead of the whole book. There are people who explain Allen's system better than Allen.
• 
  Laurence Gonsalves

  The advice presented in GTD is not bad. It's pretty good, actually. If I was reviewing the GTD system I'd probably give it 4 stars.
  
  This is a book review, though, and while the system may be good, the book is terrible. It's extremely repetitive. I'm convinced the entire 267 pages could be condensed down to less than 10, but I guess nobody would pay $15 for a 10-page leaflet. Having to slog through the huge amount of redundancy made reading this book a real chore. Even the diagrams are repetitive. There are 6 diagrams in the book, and 4 of them are essentially copies of the same diagram!
  
  The book also uses a lot of terminology without first defining it. For example he uses the term "open loop" all the way through the book, but doesn't define what an open-loop is until about two thirds of the way through. He also uses normal words like "project", but about half way through the book he explains that when he says "project" he doesn't mean what everyone else means by "project".
  
  So overall, the book is poorly organized, poorly written, and chock-full of filler. If you want to learn GTD it would be better to just find a summary of the system on the web (eg: search for "toodledo Getting Things Done" for a good example).
• 
  Miltos S.

  Τέλος. Το διάβασα και πλέον είμαι έτοιμος να γίνω Master των meetings, των projects και των brainstorming.
  Παιδιά μην παίρνετε πολύ σοβαρά τέτοια πονήματα.
  Κρατήστε τη γενικότερη αντίληψη που προσπαθούν να περάσουν κάποια τέτοια βιβλία και ορισμένες καλές ιδέες που μπορεί να υπάρχουν - όπως ισχύει εδώ, και κατά τα άλλα νομίζω ότι ο καθένας μπορεί να βρει το δικό του προσωπικό τρόπο για να οργανώσει τη ζωή του.
  Άλλωστε, η τεχνολογία προσφέρει πλέον τόσες δυνατότητες που ήδη θεωρώ το βιβλιο αυτό ξεπερασμένο.
  Το Internet να είναι καλά.
• 
  Tracy Miller

  I'm listening to this because I need to get a grip on my life.
  
  I can't even focus enough to listen about how to get my life together, much less do it.
• 
  Josh

  Before I justify the five-star rating, there are a couple of qualifications:
  
  1. This book is written toward a certain audience: well-to-do people, mostly business executives, mostly men, mostly older. The large majority of examples mentioned are male corporate leaders. There is the occasional nod to a housewife using the system to get her chores done (I kid you not), and a single reference that I can remember to someone whose work is purely creative. I feel that if you know this coming in, it will be easier to peel the husk and get to the tasty nougat center.
  
  2. The system advocated here will not help you with amorphous creative projects. If you're a writer, Allen offers nothing in the way of how to parcel out a book into attackable chunks and bang out the pages. What it MIGHT do is help you get a clean brain in order to venture into the fog with confidence. If you're the kind of person who has a hard time focusing on creative work because less-important undone projects are nagging at you, this is a great system.
  
  I usually dislike business books for exactly the reasons above. But what Allen does is something more applicable to knowledge workers in general. He recognizes that the amount of potential work is infinite, and then says, "Okay, you'll never get it ALL done. Let's talk about how you can at least put everything in its place, so you can feel good about what you're NOT doing." It's way simple, and after using the system for about a month, I can say that it's way effective, at least for me.
  
  The essence of Allen's strategy is this: Develop a method for capturing everything you have to do in your life on an ongoing basis, periodically break it all down into actionable steps, arrange those actions in order, and then go to town on them. Let's say you realize one day that you need to get a new computer. In practice it means you should write down "get a new computer" in a central repository, and then your brain should be doing something like this:
  
  "Okay, I need a new computer. But first I need to figure out whether I'm getting a Mac or a PC. My friend Dana has a Mac and loves to talk about it. My next action on this should be to call Dana."
  
  It was a transformative experience to sit down with all the clutter in my life and break it down into next actions. Last night, I strung my guitar because it finally rose up to the top my big list of things to do. Right now I'm taking the time to write a review of this book because I feel on top of all the other things in my life. I am confident that writing this review is the best thing I could be doing at this exact moment. For the first time I can remember, the miscellaneous open loops in my life are not tugging at my attention. I've closed the ones I can close, and I'm okay with the ones I haven't closed yet. I'll get to them when it's time.
  
  In short, if you're a creative person who has any kind of outside commitments (i.e., you don't get to lounge about all day writing or painting or watching the stars), then GTD may be a way to give yourself a clean mental slate when you want to do personal creative work.
• 
  Ruben

  I'm really glad my wife and I read this book together. It's already been very helpful in getting us to look at the reason so many things never get done on time or sometimes not at all. The book is well written. The writing is very clear, with lots of examples, though it's a bit dry in the middle and a little flowery on the ends. (That sounds like a description of a scone or something.) We're still working on getting our system set up (I mean filing cabinets for reference material) so I might need to add more to this in a month's time. I'll let you know then if we're getting more things done. As a matter of fact, that's one test to see whether things are still slipping through the cracks. Read, go!
  
  Update: one month later, I can say that I do feel less stressed about things, and I'm getting things done like never before. Mind you, I'm not perfect, but I feel there's been a noticeable upswing in how aware I am of what needs to get done. Just having an organized filing cabinet and inbox and next actions list allows me to see at a glance the things that used to just float around my mind, fighting for attention. My wife and I look forward to our weekly review (Sunday nights at 7:30), when we get to go over every project and make sure that everything's on track. I've been implementing this system in my classroom, too, and that helps with the stacks and stacks of papers I collect as a teacher. I'd love to find some way to teach this to my high school students, who can never remember to do their homework or study for tests. Anyway, I highly recommend this book. Unless you already feel that your system is highly efficient, give it a shot.
• 
  C

  This is my go-to productivity book. Since reading it a few years ago, I’ve followed GTD in much of my professional and personal life. I highly recommended it to those who want to regain control of their time and become efficiently productive.
  
  It teaches how to be “maximally efficient and relaxed” by avoiding “the so-called urgent and crisis demands of any given workday.” Allen says that “if we planned more about our projects and lives, we’d relieve a lot of pressure on our psyches and produce enormous creative output with minimal effort.”
  
  Summary of GTD:
  1. Get things out of your head and into a trusted system.
  2. Clarify exactly what your commitment is and decide what you have to do.
  3. Set reminders for the actions you need to take.
  
  Notes
  A New Practice for a New Reality
  “[M]ost of the stress people experience comes from inappropriately managed commitments they make or accept.”
  
  “Things rarely get stuck because of lack of time. They get stuck because the doing of them has not been defined.”
  
  5 Stages of Mastering Workflow
  1. Collect things that command your attention
  2. Process what they mean and what to do about them
  3. Organize the results
  4. Review as options for what you choose to do
  5. Do
  
  Workflow Diagram - Processing
  
  Image from
  frankcrum.com
  
  Use your calendar only for things that absolutely must be done that day. Putting things that don’t have to be done that day is distracting and demoralizing.
  
  Use the Weekly Review to “clean house.” Don’t try to stay “squeaky clean” all the time, as it distracts from work at hand.
  
  5 Phases of Planning
  When a project is stuck, think of your purpose. Think of specifically what a successful outcome would look like. Brainstorm potential steps. Organize your ideas. Decide on the next action.
  
  The “why” of a project: Ask “why” to understand the purpose of what you’re doing. What are you really trying to accomplish?
  The “what” of a project: what will this project really be like when it’s successfully completed?
  
  Processing
  Is it actionable?
  - No: trash or keep for reference
  - Yes: decide what the next action is:
  -- Do it if it takes less than 2 minutes
  -- Delegate it if others can handle it
  -- Defer it if you must do it, but it will take more than 2 minutes
  -- Identify and list any projects (more than 1 action step)
  
  The action step needs to be the next physical, visible activity.
  
  Organizing
  Create an email folder named “Action” for emails you must act on. Create an email folder named “Waiting For” for emails you need to track because others are acting on them.
  
  Collection
  End every meeting, discussion, and interaction with asking, “What’s the next action?”
• 
  Douglas Wilson

  A bit too detailed for my taste, but there are some magnificent principles involved here. I learned a lot.
• 
  da AL

  nicely done & read - wish he'd bring out an updated edition ...
• 
  Bibliovoracious

  I don't know how I missed this productivity classic in all the years since it was published. Turns out there's a GTD cult to go with the book, it's SO popular.
  
  The book is all practical, all realism. It has nothing to do with thinking about your goals; it leaves that up to you. It's all about how to organize your stuff and your lists to get them done.
  
  It's been criticized for being both too general and too detailed, but the generality accommodates complexity, and the details are an essential component of the system.
  
  On the whole, I'm a fan. If I weren't already pretty tooled up with mental, emotional, and practical productivity skills, I would not think it worthy of the cult. I don't think it comprehensive enough to be a sole source of a system. What I got out of it was an essential suite of concepts that really filled the gaps in my process, and I'm looking forward to finding more efficiency refinements from it.
  
  What was truly life-changing for me, though, was processing all my paper in the prescribed method. My filing system is a functional beauty, and I save SO much time just being able to reach straight for something. THAT was worth every minute.
• 
  Saeed Ramazany

  خیلی خوشم اومد. از اون کتابایی بود که می‌گفتم کاش زودتر می‌خوندم.
  ایده‌ی کتاب رو چند روزی‌اه شروع کردم به پیاده‌سازی و واقعا دنیا شفاف‌تر(: و ساده‌تر شده. ذهنم راحت‌تر شده و سریع‌تر کارها رو انجام میدم.
  
  البته‌ ایده‌ی کتاب خیلی فضایی و جادویی نیست. صرفا میگه که همه چیزها رو بنویسیم. همه کارهایی که قراره بکنیم، همه اونایی که قرار بوده انجام بدیم و ندادیم(حتی مثلا ۱۰ ساله هی بعضا میاد تو ذهنمون که انجام بدیم) و همه اون کارایی که شاید یه روزی انجام بدیم.
  همه‌ی اینا باید تو سیستمی باشه که مطمئن باشیم بهش سر می‌زنیم و چک می‌کنیم. اگه چک نکنیم، ذهن ما می‌فهمه که این نوشتن‌ها بازی‌ای بیش نبوده و باز سعی می‌کنه همه چی رو خودش حفظ کنه و نگه داره.
  در حالیکه اگه تو یه سیستم مطمئن(مثلا رو کاغذهایی که سر می‌زنیم، رو یه نرم‌افزار) بنویسیم و چک کنیم، مغز ما می‌فهمه که لازم نیست وظیفه‌ی انبار بودن رو هم انجام بده. لازم نیست تبدیل بشه به یه حافظه‌.
  عوضش تمام توانش رو می‌زاره برا اون کاری که براش رشد کرده،‌ یعنی انجام دادن و درگیر شدن لحظه‌ای با فعالیتی که در حال انجام دادنش هستیم.
  همچنین راحت‌تر می‌خوابه. چون می‌دونه یه جایی لیست کارایی که فردا صبح باید انجام بده هست.
  راحت‌تر هم به تفریحش می‌رسه. چون وقتی تفریح می‌کنه، وقتی سریال می‌بینه، ذهنش هی درگیر این نیست که «نکنه یه کاری یادم رفته باشه؟» هی یه اضطراب مبهم نداره. با خودش و انتخاب‌هاش راحته.
  
  و البته دیوید آلن به شدت توصیه می‌کنه که لیست‌ فعالیت‌هایی که باید انجام بدیم حتما Actionable باشن. یعنی مشخص باشند چه کاری فیزیکی‌ای باید انجام بشه. «تولد پسرخاله» یه پروژه‌س، اتوی لباس برای تولد چیزی‌اه که باید بره تو لیست. «خرید ساعت شنی برای هدیه از بازار ولیعصر» چیزی‌اه که باید بره تو لیست.
  
  
  کلا پیشنهاد اکید دارم بیشتر آدما اینو بخونند.
  در ضمن آخرین نسخه‌ش برا ۲۰۱۵ئه. اونو بخونید.
• 
  Elizabeth

  I need all the help I can get!
• 
  Michelle Powers

  Tried the print and the audio and just couldn't grasp the system which would enable me to get lots and lots of stuff done in an easy manner without struggle. I guess once you get through the book, nothing else seems like as much of a struggle.
  
  I should have known it wasn’t for me, when the author said “stop making to-do lists.” I mean, really, what would I do with all the cute sticky note pads I have?
  
  
• 
  Dianna

  Recall the last time you went on a significant vacation from work: before you left you cleared all your to-dos, emptied your inbox, tied all the loose ends, and organized the things you'd tackle when you came back. Felt pretty good to leave that last day, right?
  
  David Allen teaches you how to live your life this way: take all your to-dos, projects, etc. then organize them out into Projects, Next Actions, Someday/Maybe projects, Read and Review, and more if you want. Take the Next Actions and either do them, defer them, delegate them, and/or delete them. It's really that logical and that simple. Now, make a weekly habit of reviewing all those categories. Now you're "GTD".
  
  Just like it ought to, the book starts out broad, then each chapter goes into more detail of the system. Unless you're some crazy detail-loving mogul, you only need to read about to the half-way mark. I went a bit further just because I loved it so much. For about three weeks now, it's worked for me both at work and more loosely at home.
  
  The chapter on organizing your email and keeping your inbox empty is BRILLIANT! If you want to see this book in action, I'll show you my email and desk. I recommend this book to just about everyone.
  
  Read the first chapter. I probably only buy 3-4 books a year -- usually because the library doesn't own it, but I bought this one after reading the first chapter in the library's copy. I knew I'd want my own.