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title = "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity - David Allen"
date = 2015-03-05
[taxonomies]
tags = ["books", "david allen", "reviews", "3 stars"]
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[GoodReads Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1633.Getting_Things_Done):
In today's world, yesterday's methods just don't work. In Getting Things Done,
veteran coach and management consultant David Allen shares the breakthrough
methods for stress-free performance that he has introduced to tens of
thousands of people across the country. Allen's premise is simple: our
productivity is directly proportional to our ability to relax. Only when our
minds are clear and our thoughts are organized can we achieve effective
productivity and unleash our creative potential.
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As a method, GTD is damn obvious to follow: Write things down so you don't
need to keep thinking that you need to remember something, which would just
lead into a constant need of keeping parts of your brain working on
remembering instead of producing stuff; focus on what you should do next to
complete said things you wrote down; and so on.
Part of the whole I was already following, so learning a few more tricks was
really welcomed.
The problem here is the telling itself.
There are references to PDAs, like it was something not so common. Right now,
almost everyone has a PDA in their pocket, although we call them "smartphones"
instead of PDAs; there are references to "common" binders and rolodexes and
that kind of furniture that, in today's world, is a pretty rare thing and most
of the stuff we deal each day is digital.
There are some topics which are largely just propaganda for the method itself
instead of going straight into it to give people an general idea of how things
work and then going deeper (he does it later, but the very start is boring as
hell).
Also, some final topics are mostly "One of my clients said she couldn't
understand how she lived till this day doing things not GTD" or "I do this
'cause I like it", which although good to know, it's not representative of the
method itself.
So while GTD is a pretty damn good method to keep things organized, the book
that describes this is not well written, IMHO.
Get it for the methodology, and be ready to skip a lot of useless stuff.