Book Details

Getting Things Done The Art of Stress-Free Productivity [link]

• David Allen
• Penguin
• December 2002

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Welcome to Getting Things Done

The book is divided into 3 parts:

• Part 1 describes the whole game, providing a brief overview of the system and an explanation of why it's unique and timely,

  and then presenting the basic methodologies themselves in their most condensed and basic form.

• Part 2 shows you how to implement the system. It's your personal coaching, step by step, on the nitty-gritty application of the models.
• Part 3 goes even deeper, describing the subtler and more profound results you can expect

  when you incorporate the methodologies and models into your work and your life.

Top

Chap 1 A New Practice for a New Reality

The methods here are all based on 2 key objectives:

• capturing all the things that need to get done—now, later, someday, big, little, or in between—

  into a logical and trusted system outside of your head and off your mind

• disciplining yourself to make front-end decisions about all of me "inputs" you let into your life

  so that you will always have a plan for "next actions" that you can implement or renegotiate at any moment.

The Problem: New Demands, Insufficient Resources

People have enhanced quality of life, but at the same time they are adding to their stress levels

by taking on more than they have resources to handle.

Work No Longer Has Clear Boundaries

• What constituted "work" in the industrialized world was transformed from assemblyline, make-it and move-it kinds of activity

  to what Peter Drucker has so aptly termed "knowledge work."

• In the old days, work was self-evident. You knew what work had to be done. It was clear when the work was finished, or not finished.
• Now, there are no edges to most of our projects.

  Almost every project could be done better, and an infinite quantity of information is now available that could make that happen.

  On another front, the lack of edges can create more work for everyone.

  Many of today's organizational outcomes require cross-divisional communication, cooperation, and engagement.

The Old Models and Habits Are Insufficient

The traditional approaches to time management and personal organization were useful in their time.

• personal calendar, though important, can really effectively manage only a small portion of what you need to organize.
• daily to-do lists and simplified priority coding have proven inadequate

  to deal with the volume and variable nature of the average professional's workload.

The "Big Picture" vs. the Nitty-Gritty

• At the other end of the spectrum, a huge number of business books, models, seminars, and gurus

  have championed the "bigger view" as the solution to dealing with our complex world.

  Clarifying major goals and values, so the thinking goes, gives order, meaning, and direction to our work

• In practice, however, the well-intentioned exercise of values thinking too often does not achieve its desired results.

  Focusing on values does not simplify your life. It gives meaning and direction—and a lot more complexity.

• Focusing on primary outcomes and values is a critical exercise, certainly.

  But it does not mean there is less to do, or fewer challenges in getting the work done.

The Promise: The "Ready State" of the Martial Artist

• Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.
• World-class rower Craig Lambert has described how it feels in Mind Over Water:

  Recall the pure joy of riding on a backyard swing: an easy cycle of motion, the momentum coming from the swing itself.

  The swing carries us; we do not force it. We pump our legs to drive our arc higher, but gravity does most of the work.

  ......

  Our job is simply to work with the shell, to stop holding it back with our thrashing struggles to go faster.

  Trying too hard sabotages boat speed. Trying becomes striving and striving undoes itself

The "Mind Like Water" Simile

• In karate there is an image that's used to define the position of perfect readiness: "mind like water."

  Throwing a pebble into a still pond, it responds totally appropriately to the force and mass of the input; then it returns to calm.

  It doesn't overreact or underreact.

• The power in a karate punch comes from speed, not muscle; it comes from a focused "pop" at the end of the whip.

  It just the ability to generate a focused thrust with speed. But a tense muscle is a slow one.

  So the high levels of training in the martial arts teach and demand balance and relaxation as much as anything else.

  Clearing the mind and being flexible are key.

• Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does.

  Most people give either more or less attention to things than they deserve, simply because they don't operate with a "mind like water."

The Principle: Dealing Effectively with Internal Commitments

The Basic Requirements for Managing Commitments

1. if it's on your mind, your mind isn't clear.

   Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside your mind,

   or what I call a collection bucket, that you know you'll come back to regularly and sort through.

2. you must clarify exactly what your commitment is and decide what you have to do, if anything, to make progress toward fulfilling it.
3. once you've decided on all the actions you need to take, you must keep reminders of them organized in a system you review regularly.

An Important Exercise to Test This Model

1. write down the project or situation that is most on your mind at this moment.
2. describe, in a single written sentence, your intended successful outcome for this problem or situation.

   In other words, what would need to happen for you to check this "project" off as "done"?

3. write down the very next physical action required to move the situation forward.

After these two minutes of thinking, you'll be experiencing at least a tiny bit of enhanced control, relaxation, and focus.

You'll also be feeling more motivated to actually do something about that situation you've merely been thinking about till now.