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Getting Things Done 216

Posted by timothy from the make-haste-slowly dept.
prostoalex (Alex Moskalyuk) writes "Anywhere from 26% to 40% of U.S. employees refer to their work as stressful or very stressful. So it's not too surprising that the business motivation and self-improvement market, which includes books, courses, training seminars, etc. generates $5.7 billion a year. David Allen is the author of Getting Things Done, which on its cover promises the Holy Grail of business management -- stress-free productivity." Read on for the rest of Moskalyuk's review.
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.
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Getting Things Done More

Getting Things Done

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  • First post!

    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)

      by stupidfoo ( 836212 ) on Friday January 14, 2005 @04:42PM (#11367536)
      Was it as stressful as using Word 97 to create your website?
      <META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="Microsoft Word 97">
      <TITLE>NIOSH/Stress at Work</TITLE>
      <META NAME="Version" CONTENT="8.0.3410">
      <META NAME="Date" CONTENT="5-23-00">
      <META NAME="Template" CONTENT="C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\HTML.DOT">

  • What i'd need... (Score:4, Funny)

    by daniil ( 775990 ) * <evilbj8rn@hotmail.com> on Friday January 14, 2005 @04:22PM (#11367222) Journal
    ...is a book about how to get things started. After that, getting them done is easy.

  • Well worth the read... (Score:5, Informative)

    by danielrm26 ( 567852 ) * on Friday January 14, 2005 @04:23PM (#11367236) Homepage
    This book is absolutely awesome. I haven't even finished it yet (procrastination), but I have already implemented a few nuggets I've picked up, with great results. I strongly suggest this text for anyone who feels they have time management issues.

    Also, here's a nifty diagram [davidco.com] related to the system that will make sense once you read the book.
    • That's strange, my process more closely follows this flowchart [columbia.edu]!!!

    • Re:Well worth the read... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by killjoe ( 766577 ) on Friday January 14, 2005 @04:37PM (#11367466)
      Like most business books this book suffers from unneeded verboseness. The ideas are simple and could fit in a book quarter the size and yet he keeps constantly repeating himself hoping to fill more pages.

      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.
      • I'm not sure why (at the time of my writing this comment) this is modded as funny. Perhaps funny in a "haha, like putting my eyes out with a fork" really sad kind of funny.

        I'd think it's more insightful than anything. Getting Things Done has no magical recipe for actually Getting Things Done. A more appropriate title might be Getting Things Organized, or Keeping Your Shit Together. While not a bad book, it doesn't offer any breakthrough advice on actually motivating yourself to get things done.

        In fact
        • I think it is '+1 Funny:ironic'. The phrases 'unneeded verboseness', 'could fit in ... quarter the size', and 'constantly repeating himself hoping to fill more pages' are either sublime and understated irony or his genuine way of expressing displeasure with verbosity and hence unintentionally funny.

          Whichever is the truth the moderation is apt :)

      • Like most business books this book suffers from unneeded verboseness.

        I respectfully disagree. I did read the book, cover-to-cover, last Summer. Each time I thought the author would be going off the deep end, I'd force myself to keep reading and was surprised to find he had real insight and substance all the way through.

        Granted, I haven't followed his methods to the letter -- I've formed more of a variation on his theme, which better suits my circumstances. But it helped me a lot for him to give full

      • When faced with your daily mountain of mindless, repetitive, do nothing, corporate bullshit work it's hard to get yourself motivated to anything.

        Maybe you're in the wrong work environment for your skills / aptitude.

  • Work versus play (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Antony-Kyre ( 807195 )
    We currently have a 40 hour work-week. If we cut 10 hours from it, get paid the same salary, we'd have more time for recreation and family. That would sure relieve stress. It would also decrease unemployment since employers would need to hire more workers.
    • What makes you possibly think that would work if everyone would "get paid the same salary"? Businesses would have to conjure up fresh money for new hires (which can be a lot with training costs, insurance, etc.) and wouldn't get anything in return except the same amount of work as when they weren't paying as many people.

    • Re:Work versus play (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Friday January 14, 2005 @04:41PM (#11367531) Journal
      Sure, we could do that.

      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.

    • Re:Work versus play (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dark_requiem ( 806308 ) on Friday January 14, 2005 @04:50PM (#11367619)
      That's a little unreasonable. Companies don't have unlimited funds for labor costs. The only way it would be economically feasible to pay the same for less work is if that work was more productive, i.e. you do the same work in 30 hours that was previously done in 40. If each employee did less work per week, the company would have to hire more workers to achieve the same level of productivity, and if they paid you the same as if you had done the full 40 hours worth of work, they would have to hire 25% more workers. However, that would also increase their labor costs by 25%. The only way it is feasible for your employer to cut your hours by 25%, pay you the same, and not have to dramatically increase their labor costs, is if you can increase your productivity by 25%.

      • Re:Work versus play (Score:2, Insightful)

        by ppp ( 218671 )
        That's a little unreasonable. Companies don't have unlimited funds for labor costs. The only way it would be economically feasible to pay the same for less work is if that work was more productive, i.e. you do the same work in 30 hours that was previously done in 40.

        Actually, I'm pretty sure that if & when a company's senior management DOES find a way to get the same amount of work done with fewer manhours, they will just cut the staff proportionally and give themselves a nice fat raise. Just look at

      • Re:Work versus play (Score:3, Insightful)

        by version5 ( 540999 )
        The only way it would be economically feasible to pay the same for less work is if that work was more productive, i.e. you do the same work in 30 hours that was previously done in 40.

        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


      • The key question is: how do you objectively measure the "productivity" of a white collar worker?

    • Re:Work versus play (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tobias Luetke ( 707936 ) on Friday January 14, 2005 @04:50PM (#11367624)
      I work a 100 hour week easily and i'm very motivated and productive. Its all about the job and how much you know about how to motivate yourself.

      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.
    • Been there done that. The Dutch government encouraged a 32-hour week a few decades ago, and these days I know very few people who are not on a 32-hour week (excepting myself and most others in the IT industry; we still do 40 hours). It hasn't generated any extra work, we currently have a rather high unemployment ratio compared to the rest of Europe, and that's not even counting the people on Workman's Comp, (almost 1 million on a 16 million population! And no, most of these people aren't sick)

      The idea
    • More wisdom from the simple-solutions department:

      If the "40 hour" week was cut by ten hours, the typical American office worker would still be working 50 hours, plus spending 10 hours commuting.

    • Re:Work versus play (Score:3, Interesting)

      by snooo53 ( 663796 ) *
      There are a couple things I think some companies are doing right. One is the concept of a 9/80 schedule, in which you work 80 hours total every 2 weeks, but only 9 of the 10 normal days. So you work 9 hours M-Th, and only work every other Friday. I have done that and liked it. If you go to work at 7 and leave at 4 you not only avoid major traffic and unless you live way up north, you'll probably be getting home when it's still light out, even in the winter.

      The thing I think works even better is having

      • I love that schedule! man I was at a place thayt did it, not only was stressed reduced, but employed turnover all but stopped.
        I know people who were turnign down 15-20K raises so they could keep those 3 day weekends. Productivity increased.

        The most important rule about the 9/80 workweek:
        never sya write down or imply hom many fridays you will be off. Some people hear that number and they don't cre how much money they save, or productivity increases, they will bring it to an end.

    • All you would do is increase payroll (and associated) expenses by 25%. Twenty five percent! That money has to come from somewhere. Since sales aren't increasing by 25% either, it's got to come from the operating budget, research and development, cutting back on janitorial services, denying that erognomic chair you requested for your bad back last week, replacing the soft toilet paper in the stalls with that stuff that gives you butt splinters, etc, etc.

      Or they'll just go bankrupt because their margins got
    • My director recently revealed to me, following his two-week vacation to Disneyworld, that he had been suffering from terrible, terrible headaches. But just a few days into his vacation, they were totally gone. However, the moment he came back and picked up his work laptop again, he started feeling a stabbing pain between his eyes. He has been trying multiple means to relax, from meditation to gardening, without luck. "Why," he asked, "do I keep feeling this way?"

      I shared with him my take on stress and

    • We currently have a 40 hour work-week. If we cut 10 hours from it, get paid the same salary, we'd have more time for recreation and family.

      You'd have more time for recreation and family even if you didn't get paid the same salary. But we Americans are willing to trade those things for bigger houses, SUVs, toys, and 24/7 entertainment, because that's how we define "quality of life". If we were offered a 30-hour week for the same money, we'd just be thinking about all of the extra stuff we could have if we w

    • Re:Work versus play (Score:3, Interesting)

      by sql*kitten ( 1359 ) *
      It would also decrease unemployment since employers would need to hire more workers.

      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
    • Since the employer is unlikely to spontaneously spring for the big raise, just be a really good nerd, and automate everything you possibly can.

      When I started at my current job it was a meat-grinder. Maintain a hoard of databases on different platforms, with a herd of whiney users, using outdated tools. Nothing was automated, I was frantic from morning till evening just trying to fend off disaster. However, a few years later there's layers of neat scripts doing all the leg work, compiling all the minutia

  • Forget this book... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just read slashdot whenever you feel a bout of stress coming on. For me, that's why I'm here 24/7. No time for stress at all!
  • has really helped me organize myself, and reduce my stress level

    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)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Unfortunately, the bottom line is that management wants to get as much work out of its workers as possible. So if we increase our efficiency, they'll just pile more work on until we're stressed again.

    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..."
    • It's called rate-busting. You're working in a factory, and your quota is 100 doohickeys per hour. Then some new guy hires in, and wanting to impress management he busts his butt, sweating out 150 an hour. He doesn't understand why his mates are giving him a hard time; he's just trying to be the best that he can be, even if it isn't sustainable. But sure enough, on Monday morning everyone finds out that 150 is the new minimum!

  • Is this site for real? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stupidfoo ( 836212 ) on Friday January 14, 2005 @04:29PM (#11367332)
    What type of definition is this?

    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]

    • "In other words it is completely your employers fault, not yours."

      You do relize it is about workplace strees, right?
      how does a worker create there own stress?

    • In other words it is completely your employers fault, not yours.

      No, that's not what it says. As another poster said, you can put up with a lot of pressure and long days if you genuinely like your work. In contrast, if you hate your job, the smallest tasks like picking up a ringing phone can become a chore.

      If a job exceeds your capabilities, ask for help. I'm still surprised at how often people don't do that. If you cannot possibly complete all the tasks handed to you in the time you have, tell your

      • "If a job exceeds your capabilities, ask for help. I'm still surprised at how often people don't do that"

        People don't do that because its not often in a person's nature to ask for help. Further, it can make the person feel incompentant or incapable, and thus not something they often do. This happens everywhere, not just in the work place. People feel weak if they cannot solve problems on their own.

        "If you cannot possibly complete all the tasks handed to you in the time you have, tell your manager"

        Fine

        • Healthcare... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Duhavid ( 677874 )
          Something flashed into the Marxist part of my brain after I read your analysis of the health insurance issue WRT employment.

          I wonder if that barrier to leaving a job is exactly what the monied politicians want.
    • In other words it is completely your employers fault, not yours.

      Well, the employee is the one who pursued a job that did not match their capabilities, resources, or needs. I've been in stressful jobs where the requirements did not meet my resources (specifically I wasn't 5-6 people). Even if the employer puts the employee in over their head, it is still the employee's choice to stay or go or to request more manageable work.

  • Hog Bay Notebook (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have found Hog Bay Notebook [hogbaysoftware.com] (for OS X) to be a great support tool for GTD. If have OS check it out, especially the new 3.5 beta.
  • Git 'R Done!
  • it's not too surprising that the business motivation and self-improvement market, which includes books, courses, training seminars, etc. generates $5.7 billion a year

    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
  • Probably a lot less stressful. The people I worked with in France got beaucoup time off.....

  • New & Improved (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Friday January 14, 2005 @04:36PM (#11367448) Homepage
    I think a lot of stress comes from the pressure to do things in a different way we are not familiar with - something you've done dozens of times using procedure X gets pretty easy and routine. But when you're forced to now use procedure Z to accomplish the same task, suddenly it's unfamiliar, dangerous, uncertain, possibly will fail and what'll we do if it doesn't work, etc.

    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.


    • Yes, but if the "new way" is just going along with some recent VP's trendy new management fad initiative gleaned from a golf session with corporate buddies, you're always going to be playing catch up, cover-up and WTF.

      Try working for an engineering company (I.E., a firm that designs and builds stuff other than software) sometime. In that field there is a lot less bullshit from management since failure in what they do can kill people, not just CPU processes.
  • When it comes to doing things that I can take ownership in or that I thought of or are for my benifit, I find that I am much much more motivated than when I have to do a project for someone else's benifit.
  • People who are bad at time management get stress induced by time management problems? Ingenious!

  • GTD blog (Score:5, Informative)

    by c2005 ( 849883 ) on Friday January 14, 2005 @04:41PM (#11367522)
    www.43folders.com
    • I was going to say the same thing. 43 Folders [43folders.com] is a great blog for implementing GTD, the guy has a lot of great insight. Plus a lot of good info about integrating GTD with computer use, especially on the mac.

    • Re:GTD blog (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pigpogm ( 70382 )
      Link for the lazy...
      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.
  • "Put Down This Book And Get To Work, Slacker"

    There is no Chapter Two.
  • Tired of your boss bullying you around?

    Worry no more! Write a self-improvement book and get rich!

    [public]whoaaaaaa

    And now, introducing the... (drum rolls)

    "HOW TO WRITE A SELF-IMPROVEMENT BOOK AND GET RICH SELLING IT" book!

    [public] WHOA!!!! *APPLAUSE* *WHISTLES*

  • Open space defeats productivity (Score:3, Insightful)

    by behindthewall ( 231520 ) on Friday January 14, 2005 @04:46PM (#11367588)
    I have consistently found open space environments to be the biggest stressor in my work. I'm trying to solve complex problems, involving big bucks, but my employer insists this is aided by enforced, incidental participation in every nearby cube meeting and phone call.

    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.
  • We'd like to be Knoppix. That just sounds TOO nerdish. Geez!

  • I found this book tremendously useful (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Schlemphfer ( 556732 ) on Friday January 14, 2005 @04:56PM (#11367722) Homepage
    I read Getting Things Done about six months ago when I was starting my publishing company. It has been very, very useful to me. I got infinitely more from this book than from reading The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

    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)

    by winkydink ( 650484 ) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Friday January 14, 2005 @04:57PM (#11367745) Homepage Journal
    by Edwin C. Bliss It taught me the value of only touching things once (email, paper correspondence) and to never keep a copy of something you know you can easily get from somebody else, to name two examples.

    The book is a little dated now, but still a great read and still has useful ideas.

  • Great book (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tenebrious1 ( 530949 ) on Friday January 14, 2005 @04:58PM (#11367757) Homepage
    I started reading it two weeks ago. I'm still on chapter one but I'll finish it next week, I swear...

  • Having read this excellent review, I feel like I don't even need to buy the book any more :)

    What if your source of stress is your idiot boss? How does this book address that?
    • What if your source of stress is your idiot boss? How does this book address that?

      Then it's time to start looking for a new job.
      Have you started that yet?

  • As always, Slashdot book reviews are not exactly, uh, insightful, and are far too charitable.

    But I'm going to advocate for the book anyway. It actually is not simplistic at all. The power of Allen's approach is in seeing better than others have seen where productivity is lost. I did Franklin Planning for a bit and it was a bunch of bunkus -- mainly I found I could do just as well with a pad of paper and later with Ximian Evolution what they were charging an assload of money for. Allen's approach is ve

  • Getting Things Done works for me (Score:3, Informative)

    by chrisatslashdot ( 221127 ) <spamforchris@yahoo. c o m> on Friday January 14, 2005 @05:06PM (#11367916)
    Some things that I feel the reviewer left out:
    • Experience the most fundamental princilple of the GTD method. Try these three steps, finishing one before reading the next step. First consider the most stressfull, worrisome task or project that you curently deal with. Got it? Second picture the ideal outcome of the task or project. Got it? Lastly think of the very next physical action that you must perform to advance the project. This must not be something like 'organize a team meeting' or 'talk to bob'. It should be a physical action like 'email my secretary to setup a team meeting at 2pm next Tuesday' or 'phone bob at home'. Now how do you feel about the project? Better?
    • David offers very practical advice and stays away from pie-in-the-sky-warm-fuzzy crap. You can read the whole book without getting that nausiating feeling that usually accompanies such self-help books. For example he tells you how to setup a very functional filing system right down to which types of folders work best and why you should use a stand-alone labler.
    • The GTD method has a routing for every single responsibility that you might need to track in business or personal life. Whether its a customer file or your kids school play or spare batteries for you CD player, the GTD method can handle it. There is something magical about taking every task that you have to do and dropping it into an extremely simple and manageable system that you know will result in the best possible outcome with the least amount of stress.
  • "If it takes less than 2-3 minutes, do it right away."

    So I've been following such a policy myself, but this ends up having the net effect of putting the small stuff before the big stuff -- one of the big no-nos of time management. At the end of the day, I've gotten a ton of tiny tasks done and a clean to-do list except for the big one that can't be delegated, has to be done, and there isn't enough time left to do.

    Does this book address that problem at all? Anybody have any strategies to share?

  • 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.

    No, it probably rotates around not having any control over what you do or the conditions under which you do it.

  • Fundamentally Flawed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by __aavonx8281 ( 149913 ) on Friday January 14, 2005 @05:10PM (#11368003)
    I think the biggest flaw with this argument has to be with the idea that you can shift gears and take care of small tasks quickly without interrupting a larger task. This article [w-uh.com] on the tyranny of email pretty much sums it up. If you're in a zone, coding away, and you get a phone call, all those variables and processes, and whatever else you're holding onto and manipulating in your mind get crowded out and it takes you a lot of time to get back up to speed. Taking care of small tasks as they come up can actually take up more time than writing them down and taking care of them after you emerge from your creative cycle.
  • Although D. Allen's book is very much management-food, I found it a good read and still browse through it regularly. The best idea was to file stuff so you don't have to think about it anymore. It's so simple to do and eases those stresslevels during crunchtime.

    One of the areas I've become fanatical in is filing my email correctly. At this moment, my inbox is empty. Quite a difference back when I still kept hundreds of them shouting out at me, and my mail volume has doubled since that time. Setting up a f


  • My impression of the book/method was that it was really focused on executives who delegate virtually all the work they're responsible for, and whose tasks tend to involve phone calls, reviewing documents and signing them, and other executive tasks.

    The way it was presented, it didn't seem to be very relevant for someone whose work involves things like spending lots of time actually *working* on things, like writing code, or designing software, or writing a book.

    The longest task he ever addresses in the boo

  • A chance to blatantly self-promote (Score:3, Informative)

    by pigpogm ( 70382 ) <michael@pigpog.com> on Friday January 14, 2005 @05:24PM (#11368197) Homepage
    It *is* relevant, though. I've written some articles about GTD on my blog...

    Introduction...
    http://pigpog.com/michael/blog/2004/07/productivit y-gtd-getting-things-done.php [pigpog.com]

    Methods...
    http://pigpog.com/michael/blog/2004/08/productivit y-gtd-methods-for.php [pigpog.com]

    The method I use...
    http://pigpog.com/michael/blog/2004/08/productivit y-gtd-pigpog-method.php [pigpog.com]

    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)

    by tootlemonde ( 579170 ) on Friday January 14, 2005 @05:45PM (#11368463)

    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:

    • Unrealistic deadlines
    • Conflicting priorities
    • Inadequate resources
    • Interpersonal conflicts
    • Poorly defined objectives
    • Difficult economic conditions
    • Sudden or frequent changes in managers
    • Personal problems outside work

    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.

  • I've gotta hand it to David Allen; Getting Things Done has transformed the way I think about work and my life. It's a great system, and I highly recommend it for people who want to get more out of life. It's not for everyone, and the results take a while to mature, but the payoff is fabulous. It's truly transformational, and I'm glad that Slashdot picked up the review. I was going to review this book, but I wasn't sure if the community would have accepted it yet. I think the computer culture and GTD go very
  • Priority doesn't Matter.

    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.

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