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賰賷賮 鬲賳噩夭 噩賲賷毓 丕賱賲賴丕賲

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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

317 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

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About the author

David Allen

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Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the 欧宝娱乐 database with this name.

David Allen is an American author and productivity consultant. He created the time management method Getting Things Done.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 6,658 reviews
2 reviews
July 16, 2008
I like reading about organizing my life and being more productive, but I think the major lessons of this book could have been condensed in a page or two. Here are the things I remember:

- 2 minute rule: if you remember to do something and it takes you less than two minutes to do it, just go ahead and do it
- write things down in lists so that they don't float around your head and nag at you all of the time
- check your lists frequently and often, actually doing the things on the list (or delegating them, or archiving the info), otherwise you will lose faith in the system and it will never work
- get a filing cabinet, label-maker, and shredder; create a simple filing system and use your filing system often
- "tickler system" is a series of files for each day of the year. You file stuff away to be reminded or "tickled" on that specific day (i.e. magazine subscription renewal, buying tickets to a play, etc)
Profile Image for Jamie.
Author听6 books203 followers
August 15, 2008
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.
Profile Image for Jonatron.
84 reviews53 followers
October 9, 2022
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 , 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.
Profile Image for Lily  (LilyCReads).
93 reviews15.9k followers
February 4, 2021
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*
Profile Image for Michael Finocchiaro.
Author听3 books6,133 followers
January 1, 2020
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鈥檛 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 :-)

Profile Image for Sarah Heffern.
22 reviews20 followers
May 16, 2007
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.
Profile Image for Bria.
921 reviews78 followers
June 26, 2022
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.
Profile Image for Melynda.
18 reviews18 followers
July 29, 2007
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.
Profile Image for Letitia.
1,262 reviews95 followers
February 21, 2023
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. is written for a non-existent audience: a procrastinator with enough motivation to actually plow through Allen's dry instruction manual.
Profile Image for Saud Omar.
16 reviews279 followers
October 5, 2010
亘丕賱賳爻亘丞 賱賷, 賴匕丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賴賵 孬丕賱孬 兀賮囟賱 賰鬲丕亘 賯乇兀鬲賴 賮賷 賲噩丕賱 鬲胤賵賷乇 丕賱匕丕鬲, 亘毓丿 丕賱毓丕丿丕鬲 丕賱爻亘毓, 賵廿丿丕乇丞 丕賱兀賵賱賵賷丕鬲 賱爻鬲賷賮賳 賰賵賮賷.

賮賷 丕賱丨賯賷賯丞 丕賳賷 鬲乇丿丿鬲 賯亘賱 賰鬲丕亘丞 賴匕賴 丕賱賲乇丕噩毓丞, 賵爻亘亘 匕賱賰 丕賳賷 胤亘賯鬲 兀賮賰丕乇 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賱賮鬲乇丞 賱賷爻鬲 亘丕賱賯氐賷乇丞 ( 賵賱賷爻鬲 亘丕賱胤賵賷賱丞 兀賷囟丕賸 ) 賵兀賵丿 兀賳 兀卮丕乇賰 丕賱賯乇丕亍 丕賱賰孬賷乇 賲賳 丕賱丕乇卮丕丿丕鬲 賵丕賱鬲賳亘賷賴丕鬲 賵丕賱丨賷賱 賱鬲胤亘賷賯 賴匕賴 丕賱兀賮賰丕乇, 賵賰鬲丕亘丞 賲乇丕噩毓丞 賮賷" 賯賵丿 乇賷丿夭" 乇亘賲丕 賱賳 鬲爻賲丨 亘賰賱 賴匕丕 .. 賱匕賱賰 賯乇乇鬲 兀賳 兀賰鬲亘 賴賳丕 毓賳 賴匕丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 亘丕禺鬲氐丕乇, 賵丕賳 丕囟賷賮 丕賱賲乇丕噩毓丞 丕賱賲賮氐賱丞 賱丕 丨賯丕 賮賷 賲丿賵賳鬲賷.

賮賷 丕賱亘丿丕賷丞 丿毓賵賳賷 兀賳亘賾賴 兀賳 賱賱賰鬲丕亘 鬲乇噩賲丞 毓乇亘賷丞 亘毓賳賵丕賳 ( 賰賷賮賷丞 廿賳噩丕夭 丕賱兀卮賷丕亍 ) 賵賱賱兀爻賮 賱丕 兀爻鬲胤賷毓 丕賳 丕賵氐賷 亘賴丕 賱兀賳賷 賱賲 兀胤賱毓 毓賱賷賴丕, 賱賰賳賷 兀馗賳 兀賳賴丕 賲賳 廿氐丿乇丕鬲 噩乇賷乇, 賵廿氐丿乇丕鬲 噩乇賷乇 毓賲賵賲丕 賱賷爻鬲 爻賷卅丞 賱賱丨丿 丕賱匕賷 賱丕 鬲賮賴賲 賮賷賴 卮賷卅丕 賲賲丕 鬲賯乇兀, 賵賱賷爻鬲 噩賷丿丞 賱賱丨丿 丕賱匕賷 賷爻賲丨 賱賰 亘丕賱賯乇丕亍丞 賲賳 丿賵賳 賲毓丕賳丕丞 爻丿 孬睾乇丕鬲 丕賱鬲乇噩賲丞 .. 丕賱禺賷丕乇 賱賰賲.

氐丿乇 賴匕丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賮賷 毓丕賲 2002 賵鬲鬲胤賵乇鬲 卮毓亘賷鬲賴 亘賷賳 賯乇丕亍 賵賲鬲丕亘毓賷 賰鬲亘 鬲胤賵賷乇 丕賱匕丕鬲 廿賱賶 丿乇噩丞 丕賳賴 氐丕乇 馗丕賴乇丞 賴爻鬲賷乇賷賴 賮賷 賲噩丕賱賴, 丨鬲賶 兀賳 賲噩賱丞 "賵丕賷乇丿" 丕賱賲禺鬲氐賴 亘丕賱鬲賯賳賷賴 賵氐賮鬲賴 亘丕賳賴 氐丕乇 丿賷賳丕賸 賮賷 毓氐乇 丕賱賲毓賱賵賲丕鬲, 賵賲噩賱丞 "丕賱鬲丕賷賲" 兀賮乇丿鬲 賱賴 賲賯丕賱丕賸 賰丕賲賱丕賸 賵丕氐賮鬲賴 亘丕賳賴 賰鬲丕亘 鬲胤賵賷乇 丕賱匕丕鬲 賱賴匕丕 丕賱毓氐乇, 賴匕丕 亘丕賱廿囟丕賮丞 廿賱賶 兀賳 兀賮賰丕乇 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 氐丕乇鬲 賲毓丕賷賷乇 兀爻丕爻賷丞 賱賰賱 丕賱兀丿賵丕鬲 丕賱廿賳鬲丕噩賷丞 ( 鬲賯丕賵賷賲, 賯賵丕卅賲 賲賴丕賲, 兀賱禺 ).

丕賱賰鬲丕亘 毓亘丕乇丞 毓賳 賳馗丕賲 爻賴賱 賵亘爻賷胤 噩丿丕 丕賱睾乇囟 賲賳賴 鈥� 賰賲丕 賷賯賵賱 丕賱賲丐賱賮 丿賷賮賷丿 兀賱賷賳 鈥� 夭賷丕丿丞 丕賱廿賳鬲丕噩賷丞 賲毓 鬲賯賱賷賱 丕賱囟睾胤 丕賱賳賮爻賷.

賳馗丕賲 "賰賷賮賷丞 廿賳噩丕夭 丕賱兀卮賷丕亍" 鈥� 兀賵 賲丕 丕卮鬲賴乇 丕禺鬲氐丕乇丕賸 ( 亘賳馗丕賲 丕賱噩賷 鬲賷 丿賷 ) - 賷鬲賰賵賳 賲賳 禺賲爻 兀噩夭丕亍:

1 鈥� 噩賲毓 丕賱兀卮賷丕亍: 賵賮賷 賴匕賴 丕賱賲乇丨賱丞 鬲噩賲毓 賰賱 丕賱兀卮賷丕亍 丕賱鬲賷 鬲乇賷丿 丕賳 鬲賯賵賲 亘賴丕, 賵鬲囟毓賴丕 賮賷 賲賰丕賳 賵丕丨丿.

2 鈥� 丕賱賲毓丕賱噩丞: 賮賷 賴匕賴 丕賱賲乇丨賱丞 鬲丨丿丿 賲丕賴賷丞 丕賱兀卮賷丕亍 丕賱鬲賷 噩賲毓鬲賴丕 亘丕賱囟亘胤.

3 鈥� 丕賱鬲賳馗賷賲: 賴賳丕 鬲囟毓 賰賱 賲賴賲丞 賮賷 賯丕卅賲丞 賲丨丿丿丞.

4 鈥� 丕賱賲乇丕噩毓丞: 賴賳丕 鬲乇丕噩毓 賯賵丕卅賲 丕賱賲賴丕賲 丕賱鬲賷 賱丿賷賰.

5 鈥� 丕賱鬲賳賮賷匕: 賮賷 賴匕賴 丕賱賲乇丨賱丞 鬲賳賮匕 丕賱賲賴丕賲.

兀賱丕 鬲亘丿賵 賱賰 賴匕賴 丕賱禺胤賵丕鬲 賲賳 丕賱賵賴賱丞 丕賱兀賵賱賶 亘爻賷胤丞 賵亘丿賷賴賷丞 鈥� 賵乇亘賲丕 爻丕匕噩丞 - 廿賱賶 丿乇噩丞 賱丕 鬲丨鬲丕噩 賰賱 賴匕賴 丕賱囟噩丞責

賳毓賲 賴賷 禺胤賵丕鬲 亘爻賷胤丞 噩丿丕 賱賰賳 - 賵賴賳丕 "賱賰賳" 賰亘賷乇丞 鈥� 丨賷賳 鬲賳賮匕賴丕 鬲丨丿孬 兀賲賵乇 賲丿賴卮丞 賱丕 鬲氐丿賯貨 賵賴匕丕 賴賵 爻乇 卮毓亘賷丞 賵爻丨乇 丕賱賰鬲丕亘. 賮賷 丕賱丨賯賷賯丞 兀賳賴 賱賰賷 兀賰賵賳 丕賰孬乇 丿賯丞, 賮爻乇 卮毓亘賷丞 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賱賷爻 賴匕丕 賮丨爻亘, 亘賱 賰賵賳 賴匕賴 丕賱丕賮賰丕乇 賲賲賰賳丞 丕賱鬲胤亘賷賯 毓賱賶 爻賷丕賯丕鬲 賰孬賷乇丞, 賮賲孬賱丕賸 兀賳丕 兀毓丿鬲 鬲乇鬲賷亘 賲賱賮丕鬲 丕賱賰賲亘賷賵鬲乇, 賵鬲乇鬲賷亘 賲賮囟賱丞 賲賵丕賯毓賷, 賵兀賵乇丕賯賷 丕賱丿乇丕爻賷丞 ( 賴匕丕 亘丕賱胤亘毓 亘丕賱廿囟丕賮丞 賱鬲乇鬲賷亘 胤乇賷賯丞 兀丿丕卅賷 賱賲賴丕賲賷 丕賱賷賵賲賷丞 ) 亘賳丕亍 毓賱賶 兀賮賰丕乇賴. 賮賷 丕賱賵丕賯毓, 兀賳鬲 賱賳 鬲噩丿 賮賷 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 兀賷 卮賷亍 亘禺氐賵氐 鬲乇鬲賷亘 賴匕賴 丕賱兀卮賷丕亍, 賱賰賳賰 爻賵賮 鬲鬲毓賱賲 胤乇賷賯丞 丿賷賮賷丿 兀賱賷賳 毓賱賶 丕賱賳胤丕賯 丕賱賵丕爻毓 ( 賵賴賵 廿賳噩丕夭 丕賱賲賴丕賲 丕賱賷賵賲賷丞 ) 賵賲賳 孬賲 爻賵賮 鬲噩丿 丕賳賰 鬲爻鬲胤賷毓 鬲胤亘賷賯賴丕 毓賱賶 丕賱賰孬賷乇 賲賳 丕賱賲噩丕賱丕鬲 丨賵賱賰.

丕賱賰兀爻 丕賱賲賯丿爻丞 賱賴匕賴 丕賱賰鬲丕亘, 賵賱賴匕賴 丕賱禺胤賵丕鬲, 賴賷 丨丕賱賴 賷爻賲賷賴丕 丿賷賮賷丿 兀賱賷賳 ( 毓賯賱 賲孬賱 丕賱賲丕亍 ) 賮丕賱睾乇囟 賲賳 賰賱 賴匕賴 "丕賱賴賱賱賷賱賴" 賴賷 兀賳 賷賰賵賳 毓賯賱賰, 賲噩丕夭丕賸, 賲孬賱 丕賱賲丕亍. 賱賵 賰丕賳 丿賷賮賷丿 兀賱賷賳 亘賵匕丕 賮丨丕賱丞 ( 毓賯賱 賲孬賱 丕賱賲丕亍 ) 賴賷 ( 賳賷乇賮丕賳丕 ) 賰鬲丕亘 賰賷賮賷丞 廿賳噩丕夭 丕賱兀卮賷丕亍.

丨丕賱丞 ( 毓賯賱 賲孬賱 丕賱賲丕亍 ) 鬲毓賳賷 丕賳 鬲賮乇賾睾 毓賯賱賰 賲賳 賰賱 丕賱兀卮賷丕亍 丕賱鬲賷 賮賷賴, 兀賳 鬲爻鬲禺丿賲 毓賯賱賰 亘兀賰亘乇 氐賵乇丞 賲賲賰賳丞 賱賱鬲乇賰賷夭 賵丕賱鬲賮賰賷乇 賵賱賷爻 賱賱鬲匕賰乇 賵丕賱鬲禺夭賷賳, 賵兀賳 鬲鬲氐乇賮 亘丨爻亘 賲丕 賷賲賱賷賴 丕賱賲賵賯賮 亘丕賱囟亘胤 賲賳 丿賵賳 兀賷 賲亘丕賱睾丞 兀賵 鬲賯賱賷賱 賮賷 乇丿丞 丕賱賮毓賱.

賱丕 亘丿 兀賳賴 賲乇 毓賱賷賰 賲孬賱 賴匕丕 丕賱賰賱丕賲 賮賷 賰鬲亘 兀賵 賲丨丕囟乇丕鬲 鬲胤賵賷乇 丕賱匕丕鬲 丕賱兀禺乇賶, 賵賱丕 亘丿 兀賳賰 賱賲 鬲丨丕賵賱 賲賳毓 賳賮爻賰 賲賳 鬲氐賳賷賮賴 賰賴乇丕亍 胤丕夭噩 .. 賱賰賳 賲丨丕賵賱丞 丿賷賮賷丿 兀賱賷賳 賱鬲丨賯賷賯 賴匕丕 丕賱賴丿賮 賴賷 賲丨丕賵賱丞 噩丕丿丞 賵兀氐賷賱丞 .. 丕賱賳馗丕賲 賲氐賲賲 亘丕賱賮毓賱 亘胤乇賷賯丞 賱賷賮乇賾睾 毓賯賱賰 賲賳 賰賱 賲丕 鬲乇賷丿 丕賱賯賷丕賲 亘賴, 賵賲賳 孬賲 賷賳馗賲賴 丕賲丕賲賰 賮賷 賯賵丕卅賲 亘卮賰賱 賷爻賲丨 賱賰 賱賱賵氐賵賱 廿賱賶 丕賯氐賶 丨丕賱丞 賲賳 丕賱廿賳鬲丕噩賷丞.

賴賳丕賰 賯囟賷鬲丕賳 賱丕 亘丿 兀賳 賳卮賷乇 賱賴丕 亘禺氐賵氐 丕賱賰鬲丕亘:

1 鈥� 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賷鬲毓丕賲賱 賲毓 丕賱賲爻鬲賵賶 丕賱賲賳禺賮囟 賲賳 丕賱廿賳鬲丕噩賷丞. 賯囟賷丞 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 丕賱兀爻丕爻賷丞 賴賷 賰賷賮 鬲賳賮匕 賰賱 賲丕 賮賷 毓賯賱賰, 賱賰賳 賲賳 兀賷賳 鬲兀鬲賷 丕賱兀卮賷丕亍 丕賱鬲賷 賮賷 毓賯賱賰責 ... 賴匕賴 賮賷 丕賱賵丕賯毓 賱賷爻鬲 賯囟賷丞 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 .. 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賱丕 賷鬲毓丕賲賱 賲毓 丕賱乇丐賷丞 賵丕賱賯賷賲 賵丕賱丨賵丕賮夭 賵丕賱兀賴丿丕賮 亘毓賷丿丞 丕賱賲丿賶. 賴匕丕 賱賷爻 毓賷亘 賮賷 丕賱賰鬲丕亘, 賵賱賰賳賴丕 胤亘賷毓丞 丕賱賳馗丕賲. 賮賷 賲丿賵賳鬲賷 爻賵賮 丕鬲胤乇賯 賱賴匕丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賵賰鬲丕亘 爻鬲賷賮賳 賰賵賮賷 ( 廿丿丕乇丞 丕賱兀賱賵賷丕鬲 ). 賰鬲丕亘 丿賷賮賷丿 丕賱賷賳 賷鬲毓丕賲賱 賲毓 丕賱賲爻鬲賵賶 丕賱賲賳禺賮囟 賲賳 丕賱廿賳鬲丕噩賷丞, 賵賰鬲丕亘 爻鬲賷賮賳 賰賵賮賷 賷鬲毓丕賲賱 賲毓 丕賱賲爻鬲賵賶 丕賱毓丕賱賷 賲賳 丕賱廿賳鬲丕噩賷丞貨 賵丕賱賰鬲丕亘丕賳 賷賰賲賱丕賳 亘毓囟賴賲丕.

2 鈥� 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賷賯丿賲 賱賰 兀賮賰丕乇賴 亘卮賰賱 賲噩乇丿 賵賷賯丿賲 賱賰 亘毓囟 丕賱丕賯鬲乇丕丨丕鬲 賱鬲賳賮賷匕賴丕, 賱賰賳 丕禺鬲賷丕乇 丕賮囟賱 胤乇賷賯丞 亘丕賱賳爻亘丞 賱賰 賱鬲賳賮賷匕賴丕 賴賵 亘丕賱賮毓賱 鬲丨丿賷 丨賯賷賯賷. 爻賵賮 兀賯丿賲 賮賷 賲丿賵賳鬲賷 丕賱胤乇賯 丕賱鬲賷 丕爻鬲禺丿賲鬲賴丕 卮禺氐賷丕 賵鬲賯賷賷賲賷 賱賴丕, 賵爻賵賮 兀丿賱賰 毓賱賶 丕賱賰孬賷乇 賲賳 丕賱賲氐丕丿乇 丕賱鬲賷 鬲爻鬲胤賷毓 丕賳 鬲噩丿 賮賷賴丕 鬲噩丕乇亘 丕賱丕禺乇賷賳, 賱賰賳 賮賷 賳賴丕賷丞 丕賱賲胤丕賮 爻賵賮 鬲丨鬲丕噩 丕賳 鬲噩乇亘 毓丿丞 禺賷丕乇丕鬲 丨鬲賶 鬲噩丿 賲丕 賷賳丕爻亘賰 卮禺氐賷丕賸.

鬲賲賳賷丕鬲賷 賱賰賲 亘賯乇丕亍 賲賲鬲毓丞


Profile Image for Trevor.
1,470 reviews24.1k followers
May 21, 2021
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鈥檚 attorney general 鈥� you really couldn鈥檛 meet a nicer person 鈥� but she was perhaps also the most organised person I鈥檇 ever met. Given that she is Victoria鈥檚 attorney general, you鈥檇 have to say that being organised hasn鈥檛 particularly hurt her progress through life. I鈥檓 just not sure I鈥檓 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鈥檓 not boasting about that. I can see I would probably be a better person if that wasn鈥檛 the case.

A lot of the advice in this book is disturbingly obvious 鈥� disturbing because as obvious as it is, I鈥檇 never thought of it before. I really liked his 鈥榯wo-minute鈥� rule 鈥� 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 鈥榟andle it once鈥� rule, which he, rightly enough, says can鈥檛 possibly work. You know that, because one of the things on everyone鈥檚 list is apparently 鈥榳rite a novel鈥� 鈥� and so you can鈥檛 possibly do that by 鈥榟andling it once鈥�. 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 鈥榝ile in the rubbish bin鈥�, but what it can鈥檛 be is 鈥榩lan to invade Poland鈥� or 鈥榤arry Susan鈥�. The reason why it can鈥檛 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 鈥� in both of these cases that might well be 鈥榮pend more time in bars in Munich鈥�, for example.

I really like this idea 鈥� 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鈥檚 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鈥檛 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 鈥榤indless shit鈥� to be getting on with when you are not in what Wodehouse would call 鈥榤id-season form鈥� 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鈥檛 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鈥檓 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 鈥� a lot of it is clearly worthwhile 鈥� but even as I type this a phase involving 鈥榦ld dogs and new tricks鈥� is echoing about the place.

Oh, except, the other thing 鈥� he does say something that did make me think, 鈥極h, yeah, too bloody right!鈥� and that was that if you are about my age (or any age, really) and you can鈥檛 touch type then you should receive a slap across the back of the head every time someone sees you 鈥榟unting and pecking鈥�. Keyboards aren鈥檛 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鈥檛 allowing you to make the best use of that technology. You can learn to touch type in a couple of weeks 鈥� just do it, what the hell? Not being able to type isn鈥檛 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鈥檛 think I鈥檓 ever going to have a manila folder filing system with dynamo labels, but my 鈥榯o do鈥� lists are never going to be quite the same again either. I have one beside me now that I wrote last week 鈥� it has items on it like: 3. Vietnam Paper, 5 Ambitions and International Student Paper, 10 Jen W. check in 鈥� how鈥檚 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 鈥榯o do鈥� as 鈥榯hings you can actually do鈥� is a damn useful thing to learn from any book.
4 reviews8 followers
July 28, 2008
I have not had much success applying strategies from productivity gurus. I am referring to books like "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Steven Covey, and other books which share use top-down strategies to order our lives. There are two reasons why these have not worked for me. The first is technical: day-to-day life happens on the level of "stuff". The myriad of small tasks of varying importance and in multiple contexts hampers the effectiveness of top-down approaches. The second reason is a personal one. The entire mindset of these books is very unappealing to me. Books which simplify and systemize our entire lives, such as Covey's books, seem to suck the imagination and life right out of living. Peter Pan would barf and toss these books to his crocodile buddy.

Incredibly, one productivity book has managed to overcome my objections: David Allen's "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity" has succeeded where other books failed. "Getting Things Done" (from now on I'll refer to it as GTD) has made quite a splash since its release in 2001. It's influence is already pervasive and some of the most useful blogs on the internet swear by it. I probably see it randomly mentioned every week. So for anyone who doesn't know much about it, I'd like to summarize the book and at the same time show how beneficial Allen's method has been for me.

First of all, GTD is not a top-down approach. Allen explains that "...most people are so embroiled in commitments on a day-to-day level that their ability to focus successfully on the larger horizon is seriously impaired. Consequently, a bottom-up approach is usually more effective." Allen is dead on. I already do plenty of big-picture thinking, and it really hasn't helped me deal with the nitty-gritty details of whatever messy projects and tasks are on my plate. Allen admits that a lot of times what is needed are a few tricks. GTD has equipped me to better deal with my responsibilities, and in some cases gave me some trick that helped make all the difference.

The second problem I've had with productivity books is more complex. I believe it is important to maintain a little bit of a child-like disposition in life. My impressions of the professional world are that it creates uniformity and kills creativity. It's very easy to figure out where my attitudes come from: I grew up watching Mary Poppins and Peter Pan, and Peter Pan was the first "big book" that I owned and read. I think I got that book out of my grandpa's library after his funeral. Both of these stories portray growing up as a very dangerous thing to do, and I've never stopped worrying that I will become old, dry, boring, and bored. But whether I like it or not, life happens, and responsibilities accumulate. And here is how "Getting Things Done" succeeds where others fail: without wasting time suggesting a cookie-cutter pattern for my life, it aids in conquering mundane tasks and responisibilities so that my energy can return to the activities that excite me. As I've implemented Allen's method, I've found myself able to mentally relax and in general am feeling a lot more creative again. That's pretty much fantastic!

Here is a quick summary of the GTD method. Allen describes a five-stage workflow: collecting anything that commands our attention, processing, organizing the results, reviewing the options, and taking action. Going through these steps for the first time is a huge project; Allen suggests taking several days to do this. It took me quite awhile to get all the papers and "open-loops" collected or written down, and several hours of work to organize them. Fortunately, Allen does plenty of hand-holding through this. If someone as absent minded and flighty as myself can do it, anyone can. Allen also includes chapters on developing and tracking projects (really excellent stuff) and deciding what to do next at any given moment. As a manual, it is very well written. It gives brief overviews of everything before going into greater detail. By the time you are implementing it, you already have a decent grasp of the material.

Allen sold me in the early chapters, so I dived in with both feet. It took awhile, but the results are wonderful. I have no loose unorganized papers anywhere. Before I did GTD, my mind felt like it was completely in knots. It's felt that way for years. Now that I don't carry the anxiety of lots of unidentified mental baggage and millions of unsorted papers, my mind feels relaxed and focused. GTD also helps me keep a clear picture of any tasks in front of me, and it's much easier to decide what to do next. Tackling a "next action" list feels a bit like a game. I hope to get one down to zero someday. I am more productive and am feeling more energetic. The method is also somewhat flexible: everyone's implementation will vary a bit. I use a clipboard with next-action divded by context, big wallets to hold file folders in place of a file cabinet, basic office supplies, a paper calendar, and four trays for "inbox", "next action / outbox", "data entry" (for business cards and such), and "waiting for". Very low tech, which is how I like it.

Only time will tell what effect all this will have on me. Increased responsibilities will be the real test of GTD's effectiveness. Although GTD will hold special appeal to workaholics and productivity worshippers, it is potentially beneficial to anyone who struggles to keep track of all the little tasks we need to get done. Check it out!
Profile Image for Jarrodtrainque.
62 reviews2 followers
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September 12, 2007
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, 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/
Profile Image for Peter.
498 reviews2,608 followers
March 25, 2019
Time-Management
This is the best Self-Help Productivity book ever written. Well, I think so and I鈥檝e 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鈥檙e 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 鈥� today鈥檚 modern technology makes this easier. Plug for Toodledo.

I have read the typical time management books and if I hear the 鈥榖ig rocks first鈥� story one more time I鈥檒l 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鈥檛 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鈥檒l notice the difference immediately.

I would highly recommend this book and process for managing the To-Dos in your life.
Profile Image for Jan-Maat.
1,654 reviews2,379 followers
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October 5, 2020
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 or anything by .

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.
Profile Image for Emma Sea.
2,213 reviews1,199 followers
November 5, 2015
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.
8 reviews1 follower
May 7, 2010
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).
Profile Image for Josh.
24 reviews8 followers
July 17, 2012
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.
Profile Image for Miltos S..
119 reviews67 followers
November 28, 2019
韦苇位慰蟼. 韦慰 未喂维尾伪蟽伪 魏伪喂 蟺位苇慰谓 蔚委渭伪喂 苇蟿慰喂渭慰蟼 谓伪 纬委谓蠅 Master 蟿蠅谓 meetings, 蟿蠅谓 projects 魏伪喂 蟿蠅谓 brainstorming.
螤伪喂未喂维 渭畏谓 蟺伪委蟻谓蔚蟿蔚 蟺慰位蠉 蟽慰尾伪蟻维 蟿苇蟿慰喂伪 蟺慰谓萎渭伪蟿伪.
螝蟻伪蟿萎蟽蟿蔚 蟿畏 纬蔚谓喂魏蠈蟿蔚蟻畏 伪谓蟿委位畏蠄畏 蟺慰蠀 蟺蟻慰蟽蟺伪胃慰蠉谓 谓伪 蟺蔚蟻维蟽慰蠀谓 魏维蟺慰喂伪 蟿苇蟿慰喂伪 尾喂尾位委伪 魏伪喂 慰蟻喂蟽渭苇谓蔚蟼 魏伪位苇蟼 喂未苇蔚蟼 蟺慰蠀 渭蟺慰蟻蔚委 谓伪 蠀蟺维蟻蠂慰蠀谓 - 蠈蟺蠅蟼 喂蟽蠂蠉蔚喂 蔚未蠋, 魏伪喂 魏伪蟿维 蟿伪 维位位伪 谓慰渭委味蠅 蠈蟿喂 慰 魏伪胃苇谓伪蟼 渭蟺慰蟻蔚委 谓伪 尾蟻蔚喂 蟿慰 未喂魏蠈 蟿慰蠀 蟺蟻慰蟽蠅蟺喂魏蠈 蟿蟻蠈蟺慰 纬喂伪 谓伪 慰蟻纬伪谓蠋蟽蔚喂 蟿畏 味蠅萎 蟿慰蠀.
螁位位蠅蟽蟿蔚, 畏 蟿蔚蠂谓慰位慰纬委伪 蟺蟻慰蟽蠁苇蟻蔚喂 蟺位苇慰谓 蟿蠈蟽蔚蟼 未蠀谓伪蟿蠈蟿畏蟿蔚蟼 蟺慰蠀 萎未畏 胃蔚蠅蟻蠋 蟿慰 尾喂尾位喂慰 伪蠀蟿蠈 尉蔚蟺蔚蟻伪蟽渭苇谓慰.
韦慰 Internet 谓伪 蔚委谓伪喂 魏伪位维.
Profile Image for Tracy Miller.
1,016 reviews42 followers
did-not-finish
April 27, 2011
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.
Profile Image for Ruben.
104 reviews56 followers
February 6, 2009
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.
Profile Image for C.
1,203 reviews1,024 followers
April 15, 2025
This is my go-to productivity book. Since first reading it in 2009, I鈥檝e 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鈥檇 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
Introduction to the Revised Edition
This book is not so much concerned with getting things done as it is championing appropriate engagement with your world鈥攇uiding you to make the best choice of what to do in each moment, and to eliminate distraction and stress about what you're not doing.
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."

"There is usually an inverse relationship between how much something is on your mind and how much it's getting done."

Have a "mind like water" which reacts to input at the appropriate level, without over- or underreacting. Be like water; able to overwhelm, but not to be overwhelmed; able to be still, but not impatient; able to be forced to change course, but not frustrated.

Getting Control of Your Life: The 5 Steps of Mastering Workflow
5 Steps of Mastering Workflow
1. Capture what has your attention
2. Clarify what each item means and what to do about it
3. Organize results
4. Reflect on options
5. Engage with options

Workflow Diagram鈥擯rocessing
Getting Things Done Workflow Diagram
Image from

A "project" is any desired result that can be completed within one year and requires multiple steps.

Use your calendar only for things that absolutely must be done that day. Adding things that don鈥檛 have to be done that day is distracting and demoralizing.

Use the Weekly Review to "clean house." Don鈥檛 try to stay "squeaky clean" all the time, as it distracts from work at hand.

Getting Projects Creatively Underway: The 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鈥檙e doing. What are you really trying to accomplish?

The "what" of a project: what will this project really be like when it鈥檚 successfully completed?

Clarifying: Getting "In" to Empty
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

The action step needs to be the next physical, visible activity.

"Two-minute rule" ("If the next action can be done in two minutes or less, do it when you first pick the item up") doesn't mean spend all day doing two-minute tasks; it applies primarily when engaging with new input.

Organizing: Setting Up the Right Buckets
Track and manage the 7 categories around the outside of the Workflow Diagram (above) (all except Trash).

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.

Engaging: Making the Best Action Choices
The most important thing to deal with is whatever is most on your mind, regardless of whether you think it should be most on your mind. After you handle it, something else will be most on your mind. Repeat.

The Power of the Capturing Habit
Anxiety and guilt don't come from having too much to do, but from breaking agreements you made with yourself by not doing things you had decided to do. To avoid anxiety and guilt, choose not to do things, or complete them, or decide to do them later.

GTD and Cognitive Science
"The mind is for having ideas, not for holding them." The mind "is brilliant at recognition, but terrible at recall."

Making a reliable plan to do something relieves anxiety about it, even before it's done.
Having a complete picture of one's commitments in work and life can help individuals make better decisions about what to pay attention to in any given moment, which, in turn, will allow them to engage more fully in the task at hand, making flow a more likely outcome.
Recognize anything that has your attention (concerns, worries, problems, issues, tensions) and turn them into achievable outcomes (projects) to be executed with concrete next actions.

The Power of the Next-Action Decision
End every meeting, discussion, and interaction by asking, "What鈥檚 the next action?"
Profile Image for Elle (ellexamines on TT & Substack).
1,145 reviews19.1k followers
October 15, 2023
Easily one of the most genuinely helpful self-help books I鈥檝e ever read. Huge fan of this book鈥檚 simple takes on organizing complex systems; only writing down next steps is genuinely life-changing, and I love my someday/maybe list. One or two parts are slightly outdated as occurs with any productivity books in this era, but I really liked this one!

| | | |听
Profile Image for da AL.
380 reviews448 followers
August 18, 2017
nicely done & read - wish he'd bring out an updated edition ...
Profile Image for Amy.
175 reviews52 followers
September 5, 2012
Oy, this guy.

If you are a disorganized mess, his book does not have enough step-by-step to help you. If you have a hint of what you're doing, he is quite vague with no actual hands-on tips.

Here are his main ideas:
-- Your mind is always keeping a running to-do list in the background while you're doing other things. This noise distracts you from what you're doing and makes you feel worried that you should be doing something on that list. Shut out the running to-do list and you can focus on one thing at a time.
-- So, empty your head of every to-do, every thought and keep it all in one place. Write one idea on a piece of paper and scribble sub-ideas on the same sheet of paper.
-- Decide on what to do and when. Decide on the next action for each major thought and write it down.
-- Make a master to-do list and parse it out based on areas of your life (business/personal, calls vs writing, etc.)
-- Have your assistant/secretary do a lot of the remembering for you and remind you (oh, wow, that works so well for us peons)
-- Oh, and clear off your cluttered mess of a desk. It's mentally distracting you and see point two of gathering up every piece of information laying around.

Sound like new ideas? That's because they're not. The whole thing reads like an advert for his consulting business because he gives you just enough information to feel like you don't know what you're doing but not enough concrete tasks to actually get to work. Pretty ironic for a productivity guy. Unless he's trying to drive up the productivity of his consultancy. One more thing -- the guy doesn't even recommend e-mail filters as a time-saver. I use mostly Luddite organizing methods but seriously. Why can't I give this zero stars?
Profile Image for Bibliovoracious.
339 reviews35 followers
February 3, 2019
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.
Profile Image for Elizabeth.
736 reviews29.2k followers
Read
July 26, 2018
I need all the help I can get!
Profile Image for Niki Hawkes - The Obsessive Bookseller.
778 reviews1,593 followers
March 14, 2024
Check out my Booktube channel at:

I love this book. I鈥檝e read it twice and will probably read it again in the future to bask in the, as he calls it, 鈥渕ethodology鈥� of the GTD system. I took a ton of inspiration and new techniques from the book the first time around, and honed it even further upon this second read. This review will be mostly my takeaways from read two, as it鈥檚 the most recent.

My favorite tips:

Inbox Processing: When processing your inbox, deal with everything in a strict top to bottom (FIFO/LIFO) system. Make decisions on what needs to happen next before you move on to the next thing. Nothing goes back into the inbox to be dealt with later. I get trapped in the endless email-checking cycles every day where I open gmail periodically to glance through my inbox and focus on just the most interesting things. I don鈥檛 actually DEAL with any of it, which in my mind is a complete waste of time and energy. Addictive technologies suck. Allen鈥檚 inbox processing strategy can really help me out if I can retrain myself to handle only one thing at a time by deciding on next actions required for each item. Ideally I鈥檇 leave everything unopened until I鈥檓 ready to process it fully. I鈥檝e also heard this called the 鈥渙ne-touch鈥� method. I鈥檇 like to get to a point where I only open my email once or twice a day, and when I do it鈥檚 with the intention of handling the things rather than mindlessly scrolling the things. PROCESSING not LOOKING. Asking myself, 鈥淲hat鈥檚 the next action?鈥�

Capturing System: Each time I read this book I come away with a new perspective and more knowledge, but one valuable insight gets slammed home each time:
鈥淵our mind is for having ideas, not holding them.鈥�
The GTD system helps you identify every single thing on your mind that keeps you from being fully present, and offers a way to offload them into a trusted system until you鈥檙e ready to tend to them. Since I started putting it into practice, I don鈥檛 spend as much time in my own head planning and stressing. If I do find myself there, I know that鈥檚 a sign I need to get back to my system.

The biggest takeaway from this second read is that I needed a better capturing system. One that I can trust. I鈥檝e tried a few things over the years (everything from a bullet journal to emailing myself to-dos) and I think I finally found a tool that works for me (the app Todoist). Another thing I wasn鈥檛 doing well was taking time to REVIEW my captured items regularly. According to GTD, You need to review your captured items regularly enough to keep away the anxiety of forgetting things.
鈥淭he idea is to get comfortable enough with your system that you can completely rely on it not to let things slip through the cracks unintentionally. So that at any given moment you have the reassurance and confidence that whatever you鈥檙e choosing to do is what you ought to be doing.鈥� (paraphrased)
What鈥檚 more, it makes you more at peace with what you鈥檙e NOT doing. I have so many things going on that I often feel swamped and overwhelmed. Being able to emphatically declare that I鈥檓 ignoring certain things for the day is liberating. Applying this correctly also means I鈥檒l drop the ball less often.

The Two-Minute Rule: This is a concept from the book that often gets misconstrued. I鈥檝e heard on countless organization lists that to stay on top of life, do anything immediately that can be done in two minutes or less. In the book, this strategy was specifically applied to when you鈥檙e processing your inbox and deciding on next actionable items for each item. Basically, if creating a task to-do (like 鈥渞eply to this email鈥�) takes longer to write down and file than it does to just do the task鈥� just do the task. Allen even says that if you try the two-minute rule outside of the processing phase, you鈥檒l spend your whole day tending to under two minute items, which can feel productive in the moment but may not be high-value enough to ultimately justify that much time. Before getting clarity on the intention behind this origin of the rule, I tried the commercialized version of tending to EVERYTHING and always found myself at the mercy of unimportant tasks all day long. I like it much better in this context. I do, however, subscribe to the advice of 鈥減ut it away, not down鈥� which is of the same spirit as the commercialized two-minute rule, but only applies to things you are already actively handling. That鈥檚 my addendum.

Applying GTD to my Reading Life: A fun new thing I鈥檓 doing is taking strategies and inspiration from these personal development books and applying them to reading. I realized a lot of my stress about reading had to do with feeling anxious about getting back to unfinished series. Combined with the ever-present stress that I鈥檓 not reading what I SHOULD be reading. Enter the GTD method: I began by combing through my resources and CAPTURING all of the series (one per piece of paper) I intend to continue into a little notebook. I identified 71 of them. 71!! No wonder I was stressed! Having to keep track of that many pending 鈥減rojects鈥� is one of the main reasons my mind was always jumping around and trying to priorities and get organized. I took those listed pages and PROCESSED each one into piles of priority. The NEXT ACTION REQUIRED was either 鈥渞ead鈥� or 鈥渁bandon.鈥� After applying this process, that 71 list of open series turned into 15 high-priority series and 56 lesser-priorities. Much more manageable!! I don鈥檛 have 71 to focus on right now, just 15 (which is still high, but we鈥檙e working with baby steps here). I can also now rely on my stack of 鈥渃aptured鈥� to-dos to keep track of what鈥檚 outstanding so I no longer have to carry it around in my head and stress about it. I now have the confidence that what I鈥檓 currently choosing to read is indeed the best use of my limited time. Love it!

Recommendations: Read this book. If you鈥檙e like me, the nitty-gritty details of the system is like organization porn and you鈥檒l love every minute. It may even change your life.

Thank you to my : Dave, Katrin, Jen, Frank, Sonja, Staci, Kat, Betsy, Eliss, Mike, and Elizabeth! <3

Via The Obsessive Bookseller at

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Profile Image for Saeed Ramazany.
Author听1 book78 followers
April 10, 2018
禺蹖賱蹖 禺賵卮賲 丕賵賲丿. 丕夭 丕賵賳 讴鬲丕亘丕蹖蹖 亘賵丿 讴賴 賲蹖鈥屭佖� 讴丕卮 夭賵丿鬲乇 賲蹖鈥屫堎嗀�.
丕蹖丿賴鈥屰� 讴鬲丕亘 乇賵 趩賳丿 乇賵夭蹖鈥屫з� 卮乇賵毓 讴乇丿賲 亘賴 倬蹖丕丿賴鈥屫池ж槽� 賵 賵丕賯毓丕 丿賳蹖丕 卮賮丕賮鈥屫�(: 賵 爻丕丿賴鈥屫� 卮丿賴. 匕賴賳賲 乇丕丨鬲鈥屫� 卮丿賴 賵 爻乇蹖毓鈥屫� 讴丕乇賴丕 乇賵 丕賳噩丕賲 賲蹖丿賲.

丕賱亘鬲賴鈥� 丕蹖丿賴鈥屰� 讴鬲丕亘 禺蹖賱蹖 賮囟丕蹖蹖 賵 噩丕丿賵蹖蹖 賳蹖爻鬲. 氐乇賮丕 賲蹖诏賴 讴賴 賴賲賴 趩蹖夭賴丕 乇賵 亘賳賵蹖爻蹖賲. 賴賲賴 讴丕乇賴丕蹖蹖 讴賴 賯乇丕乇賴 亘讴賳蹖賲貙 賴賲賴 丕賵賳丕蹖蹖 讴賴 賯乇丕乇 亘賵丿賴 丕賳噩丕賲 亘丿蹖賲 賵 賳丿丕丿蹖賲(丨鬲蹖 賲孬賱丕 郾郯 爻丕賱賴 賴蹖 亘毓囟丕 賲蹖丕丿 鬲賵 匕賴賳賲賵賳 讴賴 丕賳噩丕賲 亘丿蹖賲) 賵 賴賲賴 丕賵賳 讴丕乇丕蹖蹖 讴賴 卮丕蹖丿 蹖賴 乇賵夭蹖 丕賳噩丕賲 亘丿蹖賲.
賴賲賴鈥屰� 丕蹖賳丕 亘丕蹖丿 鬲賵 爻蹖爻鬲賲蹖 亘丕卮賴 讴賴 賲胤賲卅賳 亘丕卮蹖賲 亘賴卮 爻乇 賲蹖鈥屫操嗃屬� 賵 趩讴 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗃屬�. 丕诏賴 趩讴 賳讴賳蹖賲貙 匕賴賳 賲丕 賲蹖鈥屬佡囐呝� 讴賴 丕蹖賳 賳賵卮鬲賳鈥屬囏� 亘丕夭蹖鈥屫й� 亘蹖卮 賳亘賵丿賴 賵 亘丕夭 爻毓蹖 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗁� 賴賲賴 趩蹖 乇賵 禺賵丿卮 丨賮馗 讴賳賴 賵 賳诏賴 丿丕乇賴.
丿乇 丨丕賱蹖讴賴 丕诏賴 鬲賵 蹖賴 爻蹖爻鬲賲 賲胤賲卅賳(賲孬賱丕 乇賵 讴丕睾匕賴丕蹖蹖 讴賴 爻乇 賲蹖鈥屫操嗃屬呚� 乇賵 蹖賴 賳乇賲鈥屫з佖藏ж�) 亘賳賵蹖爻蹖賲 賵 趩讴 讴賳蹖賲貙 賲睾夭 賲丕 賲蹖鈥屬佡囐呝� 讴賴 賱丕夭賲 賳蹖爻鬲 賵馗蹖賮賴鈥屰� 丕賳亘丕乇 亘賵丿賳 乇賵 賴賲 丕賳噩丕賲 亘丿賴. 賱丕夭賲 賳蹖爻鬲 鬲亘丿蹖賱 亘卮賴 亘賴 蹖賴 丨丕賮馗賴鈥�.
毓賵囟卮 鬲賲丕賲 鬲賵丕賳卮 乇賵 賲蹖鈥屫藏ж辟� 亘乇丕 丕賵賳 讴丕乇蹖 讴賴 亘乇丕卮 乇卮丿 讴乇丿賴貙鈥� 蹖毓賳蹖 丕賳噩丕賲 丿丕丿賳 賵 丿乇诏蹖乇 卮丿賳 賱丨馗賴鈥屫й� 亘丕 賮毓丕賱蹖鬲蹖 讴賴 丿乇 丨丕賱 丕賳噩丕賲 丿丕丿賳卮 賴爻鬲蹖賲.
賴賲趩賳蹖賳 乇丕丨鬲鈥屫� 賲蹖鈥屫堌жㄙ�. 趩賵賳 賲蹖鈥屫堎嗁� 蹖賴 噩丕蹖蹖 賱蹖爻鬲 讴丕乇丕蹖蹖 讴賴 賮乇丿丕 氐亘丨 亘丕蹖丿 丕賳噩丕賲 亘丿賴 賴爻鬲.
乇丕丨鬲鈥屫� 賴賲 亘賴 鬲賮乇蹖丨卮 賲蹖鈥屫必迟�. 趩賵賳 賵賯鬲蹖 鬲賮乇蹖丨 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗁囏� 賵賯鬲蹖 爻乇蹖丕賱 賲蹖鈥屫ㄛ屬嗁囏� 匕賴賳卮 賴蹖 丿乇诏蹖乇 丕蹖賳 賳蹖爻鬲 讴賴 芦賳讴賳賴 蹖賴 讴丕乇蹖 蹖丕丿賲 乇賮鬲賴 亘丕卮賴責禄 賴蹖 蹖賴 丕囟胤乇丕亘 賲亘賴賲 賳丿丕乇賴. 亘丕 禺賵丿卮 賵 丕賳鬲禺丕亘鈥屬囏ж� 乇丕丨鬲賴.

賵 丕賱亘鬲賴 丿蹖賵蹖丿 丌賱賳 亘賴 卮丿鬲 鬲賵氐蹖賴 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗁� 讴賴 賱蹖爻鬲鈥� 賮毓丕賱蹖鬲鈥屬囏й屰� 讴賴 亘丕蹖丿 丕賳噩丕賲 亘丿蹖賲 丨鬲賲丕 Actionable 亘丕卮賳. 蹖毓賳蹖 賲卮禺氐 亘丕卮賳丿 趩賴 讴丕乇蹖 賮蹖夭蹖讴蹖鈥屫й� 亘丕蹖丿 丕賳噩丕賲 亘卮賴. 芦鬲賵賱丿 倬爻乇禺丕賱賴禄 蹖賴 倬乇賵跇賴鈥屫池� 丕鬲賵蹖 賱亘丕爻 亘乇丕蹖 鬲賵賱丿 趩蹖夭蹖鈥屫з� 讴賴 亘丕蹖丿 亘乇賴 鬲賵 賱蹖爻鬲. 芦禺乇蹖丿 爻丕毓鬲 卮賳蹖 亘乇丕蹖 賴丿蹖賴 丕夭 亘丕夭丕乇 賵賱蹖毓氐乇禄 趩蹖夭蹖鈥屫з� 讴賴 亘丕蹖丿 亘乇賴 鬲賵 賱蹖爻鬲.


讴賱丕 倬蹖卮賳賴丕丿 丕讴蹖丿 丿丕乇賲 亘蹖卮鬲乇 丌丿賲丕 丕蹖賳賵 亘禺賵賳賳丿.
丿乇 囟賲賳 丌禺乇蹖賳 賳爻禺賴鈥屫� 亘乇丕 鄄郯郾鄣卅賴. 丕賵賳賵 亘禺賵賳蹖丿.
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