Book club summary #18 - Getting Things Done
David Allen’s personal productivity guide Getting Things Done was chosen as the 18th book club selection. An invaluable guide to navigating a world awash in email, it is to the past decade what The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was to the 1990’s. But while Steven Covey’s opus provides an overarching framework for being more effective at work, Allen’s book is an SOP from a guru of desktop jiujitsu.
Earlier in my career, I implemented several of Covey’s ideas — without success. In the end, I found my four “quadrants” (a 2×2 matrix of important and urgent tasks) got bogged down with a torrent of ideas. In the past couple years, I’ve enjoyed sustained success with the ideas from Getting Things Done. Particularly useful were the “waiting for” folder for tasks where I was waiting a response, and the “next actions” folder, for items awaiting my next move. Prefacing each item with a due date has allowed me to avoid a sense of overload, as I can pre-schedule activities months in advance, knowing that their presence on the list is okay, because they’re post-dated.
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