Slashdot Log In
Getting Things Done
from the make-haste-slowly dept.
| Getting things done | |
| author | David Allen |
| pages | 288 |
| publisher | Penguin |
| rating | 9 |
| reviewer | Alex Moskalyuk |
| ISBN | 0142000280 |
| summary | The art of stress-free productivity |
Allen's idea is to first look at the sources of stress. Whether you're working a cushy corporate job, are self-employed, or are still in college, what makes you feel frustrated and stressed? Unless you have had some major disasters in life, the answer will probably rotate around having too much to do and too little time to accomplish all the tasks. Moreover, people around you don't seem to realize how pressed for time you are as they keep coming up with every possible way to interrupt you.
Business people like to talk about multi-tasking. It fills one with feeling of self-importance, since it's obvious that if one multi-tasks, then he or she is involved in multiple projects, failure on most of which would probably result in the end of human civilization. But as Allen points out (his site contains a promotional WMV/QuickTime video), multi-tasking requires you to persist a bunch of projects (most of them unfinished) in your head.
If you count the time you spend on each actual project, and the time you spend switching between the projects, you'd be surprised how much time is spent on the overhead of going from one project to another. Basically (although Allen doesn't express it in these terms) we all would like to be Knoppix, with everything kept in RAM (our brains), nothing relegated to the hard drive (paper or information-management software), multi-tasking at its best. But as anyone would tell you, Knoppix can be quite resource-intensive, and you do not exactly get screaming speeds with it. We're all wired up like early DOS - single-tasking with everything else assigned to external storage, best at doing one thing at a time, if we're to do it well.
Allen develops a system to deal with projects and everyday interruptions accompanying them. Does the issue that came up require less than 2-3 minutes to respond to? Is it returning a call to confirm the dental appointment or e-mail to another developer saying you agree with his suggestion and would approve of it? If it takes you less than 2-3 minutes, do it right away. Do not file it under "Later," do not postpone it until lunch, because your brain keeps track of this stuff, and this unfinished while loop will be running in your brain, even if consciously you do not think about it every minute. In other words, keep the RAM clean.
Allen advocates the 3-D model, where the Ds stand for "Do it," "Delegate it," "Defer it" and advises all projects and small tasks to be processed in that order. The "Do it" part was described above for the tasks that take just a few minutes. The author promises you'd be surprised how much can be achieved by following this simple rule. At the same time, if the project just requires your approval, and you'd pass it to someone else after that, delegate it. But get it off your mind right away, because it's not yours and thus cannot occupy the precious RAM space. Delegate it -- send the e-mail, fax it away, or transfer it to another person in your organization. And if it's definitely a long task and it needs to be done by you, then defer it to the time slot when you're sure you can sit down and do it (by the time you get rid of all the doable and delegable, you will find yourself with plenty of time left to important projects).
Allen is pretty good at pointing out the various excuses that we come up with to excuse our lack of productivity. The rules sound simple, even simplistic, but that's the key to the efficiency of his system. I liked the author's approach, and adhering to his system seemed to bring a relaxed attitude into my daily schedule, since now I don't have a guilt trip over concentrating on a single task and refusing to multi-task. You can read an interview with an author at About.com. There's also an article about the methodology in Fast Company magazine with descriptive title You can do anything - but not everything. I would recommend this book to anyone who feels stress after work or someone who feels they are not at the top of their productivity and spend too much time doing inessential things.
In his spare time Alex enjoys reading business and technology books. He also keeps a list of free books for readers on a tight budget. You can purchase Getting Things Done from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Gotta say it... (Score:2, Funny)
Man, that was stressful. Now if only there was some way to decrease other stressors in my life, like work...
Re:Gotta say it... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
What i'd need... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What i'd need... (Score:5, Informative)
You mean like Guy Kawasaki's book, The Art Of The Start [guykawasaki.com]: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide For Anyone Starting Anything?
Now you have no excuses.
Parent
Re:What i'd need... (Score:2)
How to start reading the book in the first place.
Well worth the read... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, here's a nifty diagram [davidco.com] related to the system that will make sense once you read the book.
Re:Well worth the read... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Well worth the read... (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly you can reduce this book to someting like 10 pages.
BTW for most people the problem is not organizing things it actually doing them. When faced with your daily mountain of mindless, repetitive, do nothing, corporate bullshit work it's hard to get yourself motivated to anything. Instead you could organize all that work get a feeling of accomplishment.
Parent
Work versus play (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Work versus play (Score:2)
Re:Work versus play (Score:5, Insightful)
We could give you a 33% pay increase. For no reason other than you'd like more time to play.
Or, we could give your job to someone less lazy.
What a bunch of whiners people are these days. Shit, your grandfather probably could only dream of a 40 hour work week.
I find my time at work much more rewarding than sitting on the couch watching daytime TV. I get to accomplish something, I get respect from my peers, I get to spend the day discussing things I find interesting with like-minded people.
Is it stressful having to design, code, install, and support software for police and fire stations? Fuck, yeah. When my pager goes off at 2AM because some dispatching workstation froze in the middle of a natural disaster, and lives could literally be on the line, that's some fucking stress, let me tell you. But I wouldn't have it any other way.
McDonalds can provide you the 30 hour work week you want so bad. Some of us actually like working, even if we don't necessarily like our jobs.
We're indoctrinated with work=hard=stress=bad, play=fun=relaxing=good since we're kids. It's not cool to study hard in school, it's cool to smoke and drink beers out back behind the football field. I'm living proof you can do both.
Want to relieve stress? Just log in to slashdot, politely remind people there that only a fucking moron would spend 500 dollars on an mp3 player, even if it does fit nicely in your anal cavity. Read the replies. Instant stress relief.
Parent
Re:Work versus play (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Work versus play (Score:3, Insightful)
This applies to manual labor like assembly line work, but is not very useful for knowledge workers. For one thing, you are assuming that a 25% decrease in time on the job produces an equivalent decrease in output. While this is true at a steel mill, this is clearly not the case at companies like Google, who encourage their wor
Re:Work versus play (Score:5, Insightful)
For me its all about comfort while working. I treat myself to a powerful mac and a 23" screen while I program in a language I compleatly adore (ruby).
Productivity problems are the results of disagreement with your work environment. If the environment is inspiring you can stand it for much much longer than 30 or 40 hours.
Parent
Re:Work versus play (Score:3, Interesting)
The idea
Re:Work versus play (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing I think works even better is having
Re:Work versus play (Score:3, Insightful)
Or they'll just go bankrupt because their margins got
Re:Work versus play (Score:3, Interesting)
They tried this in France, and it was a dismal failure. Sure it might work for unskilled labour where everyone is interchangeable. But when all your doctors have done their 35 hour weeks, your unemployed bricklayers can't pick up the rest of the work. And when your doctors can't work, because they've hit their 35 hour cap and there are no more doctors because doctors a) are the cream of the crop intellectually speaking and
Re:Work versus play (Score:2)
Re:Work versus play (Score:2)
When asked about their solution to unemployment their Presidential candidate said that companies should just hire more employees.
What was the name of the party... it was like "American Christian Party" or something.
Forget this book... (Score:2, Funny)
This book... (Score:2)
it was actually b/c of an earlier slashdot article on said book that prompted me to get it too
Push and Pull (Score:2, Insightful)
The real problem isn't inefficiency so much as the weak bargaining power of labor.
All right, everyone together:
"when the union's inspiration through the coders' blood shall run..."
Is this site for real? (Score:3, Interesting)
Job stress results when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities, resources, or needs of the employee.
In other words it is completely your employers fault, not yours.
That whole page is an absolute bunch of garbage. F'en OSHA [cdc.gov]
Re:Is this site for real? (Score:2)
You do relize it is about workplace strees, right?
how does a worker create there own stress?
Healthcare... (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder if that barrier to leaving a job is exactly what the monied politicians want.
Hog Bay Notebook (Score:2, Informative)
Redneck Version (Score:2, Funny)
It will never work for some people (Score:2)
What is rather surprising is just how much of the content in that market is exactly the same. It basically comes down to either "get off your ass and do something worthwhile," or "only by will power and self determination will you ever accomplish anything." Unfortunately there are certain people who will never gain any benefit from reading t
not true (Score:2)
These books do help people. Your right, there is no magic pill, but there are things people can do to improve themselves.
Drew Cary attributes his success to motivational books.
wonder what the job stress figures are for Europe? (Score:2)
New & Improved (Score:3, Interesting)
The trick is to get the right balance of old comfortable with the new & improved, and different people can tolerate different levels of each. Forcing someone who has trouble internalizing new procedures quickly will be stressed in a fast changing environment, while someone who can learn fast will quickly become bored in a repetitive, slowly changing environment.
When its for myself, I'm more motivated (Score:2)
Oh really? (Score:2)
GTD blog (Score:5, Informative)
Re:GTD blog (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.43folders.com/ [43folders.com]
43Folders is an excellent blog, covering mainly Macs and Moleskines, but well worth subscribing for anyone interested in GTD or productivity. It's not been going long, but Merlin's already made a big impression.
Open space defeats productivity (Score:3, Insightful)
More or less, the loudest and the most noise tolerant are the ones who thrive. Never mind that I can shake a passle of bugs out of something that's already "passed" "testing". Because I need some peace and quiet to really hold all of the scopes, interfaces, etc. in my head, I'm at the mercy of my neighbors' schedules as far as getting this done.
People keep using my ideas. But Management won't acknowledge that a few extra square feet, some drywall, and insulation would keep them coming and coming faster. I'd probably also have some evenings and weekends to myself.
H-ll, even my alma mater, a small, well endowed school, seems to be going open space. It's kind of like taking that old joke about "designed by committee", and making it an institutional imperative.
I found this book tremendously useful (Score:4, Interesting)
The central idea of this book, which was not really covered in the Slashdot review, is that you should not be using your brain to remember things about work. Every time you have a thought relevant to work -- an idea, a task to accomplish, a goal to achieve -- you should have some kind of information management system in place so that your thought gets recorded for future review and action.
I married Allen's advice with a cheap digital voice recorder and with a great piece of free Windows software called Keynote. [tranglos.com] Keynote is a tabbed outliner, where each of the main ten or so components to my life each get their own outline (in my case: speaking dates, website development, to do's, etc). It's really the only software that is keeping me using Windows. I use my Mac for nearly everything else.
Getting Things Done is perhaps the only business book that I intend to re-read. If you feel stressed about your work, and have this lingering feeling you're not as effective as you need to be, I really suggest a weekend with this book. Just know that you should be joining its advice with a software solution like Keynote, plus a (real-world) filing cabinet, as you seek to empty the stuff in your brain into its appropriate places.
Oh, and one more thing. Getting Things Done is a great piece of writing. And how often can you say that about a business book?
The original is also a great book (Score:4, Insightful)
The book is a little dated now, but still a great read and still has useful ideas.
Great book (Score:3, Funny)
Getting Things Done works for me (Score:3, Informative)
Fundamentally Flawed (Score:4, Insightful)
A chance to blatantly self-promote (Score:3, Informative)
Introduction...
http://pigpog.com/michael/blog/2004/07/productivi
Methods...
http://pigpog.com/michael/blog/2004/08/productivi
The method I use...
http://pigpog.com/michael/blog/2004/08/productivi
Cutting it down *very* briefly, I don't keep a separate projects list, just have next actions with the project on the same line, sort of like...
Call Garage #Replace Tyres
It means you can only have one next action for a project, but saves a bit of overhead trying to match projects up to next actions.
Sources of stress (Score:4, Insightful)
Time management is one area where employees can help themselves but most causes of stress are out of their control. The stress caused by the work is typically the least of the problems.
Sources of stress in the workplace:
Any one of these can cause excessive stress and it is not unusual to have several of them part of the typical day. The only practical way of dealing with them is just don't let it get to you. Focus on getting through day and try to find a place where things are better. Try to be a calming influence in the office instead of stoking the rumour mill and predicting the worst.
If you look at the office [imdb.com] in a certain way, it can even be funny. Certainly, more comic than tragic.
Most Important Lesson In GTD In 3 words... (Score:3, Insightful)
The truth of this fact never occurred to me until I read GTD, but what David says in the book is totally true. Read that sentence carefuly- It takes a while to sink in!
When you decide what projects you're going to take on, you need to be brutally honest about which ones you really want to and will be able to complete and then put 100% of effort into them.
At this point, your goals are broken down into bite-sized chunks (called NAs) and are then placed on a completely flat list with no hierarchy or priority and handled in whatever order you feel is most efficient.
What about deadlines, you ask? The GTD paradigm argues that almost all of them are not real deadlines, since there is almost always plenty of time to complete the task, or, the deadline is flexible- Inflexible AND ALSO soon deadlines are extremely rare and just your own imagination.
Re:Quick rule of thumb (Score:2)
I'm willing to bet that since then, multi-tasking has taken on a whole new meaning.
Re:Quick rule of thumb (Score:2, Funny)
Ie; (26%, -40%)
A whopping 66% variance!
I dunno. Either that or he's using the new math.
Re:Blah blah blah (Score:2)
Re:Blah blah blah (Score:5, Informative)
I did. When I turned 14 I got a job at the local McD's. Later I added Burger King during lunch rush (I'd skip out of class early, run to BK, work, scarf, get to class a tad late).
Believe me when I say this is the most stressful job I've ever had. Your manager may or may not speak the same language as you. Your customers ditto. When the store owner comes in to bust someone's butt, it ALWAYS rolls downhill.
Slick greasy floors (no matter how many times you mop them). A constant barrage of noise. Loading and unloading crate after crate of frozen material in the walk-in. 400F grease splattering nearby.
Your manager knows you're replacable. The customers don't have time to look you in the eye. You'll get yelled at by every 10 year old who forgot to tell you not to put mayo on your burger. YOU know you're in one of the absolute worst dead-end jobs that exist, and you only take it because it's the only one available.
Try it sometime (for 2 years or so) and then come talk to me about how easy we pimple-faced teens could kick back and enjoy our idyllic lifestyle.
-theGreater Ranter.
Parent
Re:Blah blah blah (Score:3, Insightful)
"If you don't feel at least a little stress, you aren't working hard enough"
thats a pile of crap. I work very hard, but I am not stressed becasue my company know I work hard for forty, and then go home. They promote that.
"Work hard, play hard."
what the hell does that have to do with stress?
Digging a ditch is hard, but it's not stressfull.
No digging a ditch where ytou manager comes in a pes