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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
The nuts and bolts of getting things done, 24 Jan 2007
This is my number 1 self - help book because it is very practical for getting organised and helping me work towards personal goals. I have to say I have kicked all my other self-help books out because they were not earning their keep and have now made themselves redundant. This book details (ok at times labouriously) the nitty gritty of getting on with the jobs that have to be done.
I feel many other Time Management philosophies follow a basic 'priority' system, 'if it's not a priority, don't bother, or do it when it becomes a higher priority'. Unfortunately life is not like this and things that may not be a priority to you still need to be sorted out as efficiently as possible.
This shift, away from purely 'priority' to acting in a 'Context' of time is very refreshing. Another plus for me is the 'bottom up' (E.g 'do rough draft of application form for new job') approach to Project / Goal Management. This is very liberating and gives much more flexibility and a 'grass roots' realism for taking on your projects. In contrast, many Time Management dialogue runs with 'Top Down' (E.g. what job role will I have in 5 years)planning which, for me at least, leaves me feeling de-motivated and overwhelmed. Long-term planning has it's place but I think the author gets the approach right in this book.
On the negative side, the text is difficult reading at times and repetitive, that's why I have not given the book full marks.
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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
About as goos as these kind of books get., 14 Sep 2006
There are so many books on Time Management that it's hard to know were to start, ultimately you know if a book like this has worked because you are either getting things done or you aren't. Unfortunately no matter how well a book is written there really is no simple answer to a problem like this. You don't go from a badly organised person into a beautifully time managed one overnight, old hibits do die hard even if self help books tell you otherwise. To be fair to this book it's about as effective as it can be and for that reason I would recommend it to people. I read the book about a year ago and then again 6 months ago and I've now applied a few core ideas into my daily life and they have made a big difference, so on that fact alone this book has earned the cover price. My only gripe is that it is way too long and it repeats itself, perhaps this is by design in order to drive the message home but to me a lot of it is stating the obvious and acts as padding to a very simple technique.
If you want a bit of order and clarity in your life then this book might help but don't be under the illusion that you will get everything done and your life will be a stress free cluster of joyfull events,it won't. You have to put the work in and apply self discipline to get results and if you can do this the advice in this book is great. I found myself doing a lot of work to get my 'system' set up and it took months of personalising it for it to be truly effective, it makes me wonder exactly how much of it was the book and how much of it is just me being my usual anal self. So, on balance I think it's worth reading if you apply critical thinking to see past the piffle and get to the core which I believe to be very useful and it ultimately you will get 'more' things done.
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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
Main ideas in the book, 4 Dec 2004
This book contains some great ideas, even if it is not greatly written. The book is pragmatic, giving ideas you can use every day - even if some of them do take a bit of practice before they become habit. The main ideas the book covers are1) Collection Habit - how to collect all your "to do's" and why it makes such a difference if you collect all of them and not just most of them
2) Next Action - the idea of always deciding on the next action to take on a piece of work, the moment it comes into your life.
3) Outcome Focusing - this covers a very practical and productive method for envisioning and planning all the projects in your life, so you can start to make them happen before you start stressing about them. The book also gives a few interesting insights into why you may feel stressed and what to do about it. Highly recommended.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
An outstanding, clever and effective system, 14 Mar 2006
This book has literally rebuilt my own planning, decision-making and time-management skills from the inside out. I thought that I was pretty good at all these things, having come top of my management consultancy's training courses - but alas how wrong I was. The very most difficult, time-consuming and fuzzy-feeling things I used to do I now do almost without effort; almost unbelievable so, but yes it has happened.OK, that's the "GTD" system reviewed, but now let's talk about the book itself. The book is really hard work. It took me a week to get through the first 100 pages and I felt my brain choking on all the repetition and unstructured rambling, so dense is the style. That's not to say it's not worth reading, but I kept wondering "where are the diagrams?" and "if he's so good at organising and simplifying actually doing things, why isn't this book better organised and simplified?". It's really quite paradoxical and I found myself yearning for an executive summary or a cut down version. Even so, the GTD system is superb. It gets right to the core of how we think and how we attempt to "organise" when left to our own devices, and quite brilliantly explains how we already do everything we need to be more effective, but gives all the necessary nudges in all the right places. 5 stars for the system. 3 stars for the book.
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49 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
Unrealistic but contains some great ideas, 10 Nov 2004
Let me begin by recommending this book. You're sure to find something that will change your work habits. The author has lots of ideas about how to manage your time more effectively. And that's the problem...The book is over-the-top. It's time management gone mad. If you followed all of the advice you would spend half of your life creating lists and the other half completing them. There are lists for everything. Even lists about lists. My other problem with this book was the clunky English. I found myself constantly having to re-read sentences to get their meaning. And like most management books, it could have imparted the same advice in half the words. But there are enough nuggets of wisdom to easily justify the price. I have adopted several of his ideas. Just don't do everything this books suggests or you'll have lots of time to manage since you'll have no family or friends.
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
Useful but not for everyone, 14 Aug 2006
I got this book after reading about the system in the Guardian. The book was not what I would call an easy read but it was certainly easier going than any of the Stephen Covey books. Does it work? The answer is a partial yes. Getting "things to do" out of my brain and onto paper or into a PDA has really helped me. I confess to wasting some time looking at all the different US websites that reference the GTD system (43 folders, lifehacker etc). This lead me down a blind alley of trying out different time management software packages on my PDA and my computer. In the end the system that works best for me is pen and notebook (you don't need fancy pens or notebooks as suggested by various websites). The really important thing is not to get too hung up on the mechanics of the system, but to review your lists regularly. Priorities change and depending on your job this could happen on a daily basis. There is a danger, unless you block out time for regular review, that you become a slave to the lists and lose the "big picture". The lesson I learnt is that the GTD system does not fit everyone one, but has useful components that can be incorporated into your own system. Another time-management book that takes a more people-orientated approach is "No BS Time Management by Dan Kennedy". This author takes no prisoners and this makes for a very entertaining read.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
Great principles and ideas but a TOUGH read!, 2 Sep 2006
Organising myself is definitely my weak point. This book is the first book I have ever read that proposes a system that conceptually makes complete sense to me and that I can see myself actually using. The challenge is to enforce the discipline until it becomes natural.
I just wish he could have gone through the book with a view to making the message clearer (i.e. using a few less words in places). Having said that, it's worth the struggle.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Practically Brilliant, 24 Jun 2009
There are so many books out there that claim to have the answer to so many work problems and this is one of those books. Luckily, however, it really does offer a practical, well thought out methodology that really can stop you from being swamped at work if you follow its lead. The book doesn't always get to the point quickly enough for me, but it is filled with sound advice that is really worth taking note of. Well worth buying.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5th generation time management, 9 Sep 2008
This is a seminal book, which has in some ways been superseded by its own children. If you survey the Mac and PC software applications that offer help with time management, by far the most popular system implemented is Getting Things Done, or GTD for short.
GTD has been criticised for being no more than common sense. In a lot of ways this is both untrue, and unfair. More accurately, it's two simple ideas put together, and supported by a collection of useful ideas borrowed (with appropriate acknowledgement) from elsewhere. The two ideas are the idea of 'stuff', and what you do with it (collect, process, organise, review, do), and the idea of using (and relying on) a reliable filing system. It's backed up with other good ideas like brainstoming, mind-mapping, the 50,000 feet perspective, and other notions that you may have encountered in their original contexts, or in programmes like TQM.
GTD is less revolutionary than the 4th generation time-management that Stephen Covey introduced in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. However, it's more powerful for most of us in the sense that you can implement it easily on a computer or a PDA. David Allen makes the most of the power of easy storage of information. If you're a computer user (and if you're reading this on Amazon, then chances are that you are), then this is by the far the most practical system, whether you use a specialist piece of software like Omnifocus, or just make the most of the built-in functions of Outlook or iCal.
This is the strength, and the weakness of this book: get one of the many software packages, read the help-file, and you may not need to read the book at all.
Just one more thing about Getting Things Done. As the author points out, this is really a book for people on the fast-track to improve their personal organisation. It's not going to make a great gift for someone else who you _think_ should get organised.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, 25 April 2008
If you don't have time for one more thing in your life, read Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. While that advice may seem counterproductive, and a little crazy, (where will you find time to read it?) this book will assuredly give you some realistic advice about getting all those projects completed while staying sane.
This first thing that's apparent about this book is the author's enthusiasm. He presents workable solutions with this contagious "can-do" attitude. He uses a basic premise that everything we do--whether it's an assignment or work-related task--has a specific place and time. Once that's understood, it's easier to put those activities into the right slot in our lives. This provides a sense of freedom even though deadlines are mounting. Time is no longer the enemy; it's merely the container.
By having all these tasks in their proper places, it's almost like opening a filing cabinet, working on a specific project, then replacing the file and closing the drawer. There is a start and finish time and everything gets done. That terrible overwhelming feeling vanishes.
Another interesting aspect the author develops is how to achieve those wonderful moments when we are so in tune with our work, that it's really effortless. His strategies for managing time actually open up the unconscious mind by freeing it of negative stress. In other words, when our work is properly scheduled, we are cut loose of time constraints and are able to grab hold of maximum creativity and productivity. Even though there are still deadlines to meet, we would have already dealt with them before starting the project. Time is put in its proper place as well.
While author David Allen's advice is really on the mark, at times his system gets a little complicated. He coins some fancy terms and sub-terms that make these principles seem complex. But the gist of his ideas is presented on a one-page flowchart that makes the price of this book worthwhile. This single page is a terrific review of the key concepts.
Although some of his ideas may seem like good old-fashioned common sense, the author takes these thoughts and puts them within a system that operates in the contemporary workplace. Readers should be prepared to actually try out these ideas and not just read the book and put it on a shelf. Have a notebook handy to start organizing your thoughts and begin prioritizing your actions based on the advice presented.
One of the best pieces of advice, and one that can be immediately put into action, is the Two-Minute Rule. This states that if you need to do something and you can do it in two minutes or less, do it now, and therefore free up your mind and time. Ultimately, by completing these smaller, quicker tasks, you will gain an enormous amount of time and freedom of thought for those larger assignments. It works!
These pages have the power to unlock you from the chains of time that limit your actions and thinking. When you are finished reading this book, you will have learned some genuine principles that can be put into your life right now. The investment of time you put into reading this book will increase your productivity level and decrease your stress.
Raymond Le Blanc. Psychotherapist & economist
author: Achieving Objectives Made Easy! 978-9079397037
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