Need To Be More Productive? ‘Getting Things Done’ by David Allen
Getting Things Done – The Art Of Stress-Free Productivity.
Amazon.com & Amazon.co.uk
Do you have multiple projects on the go, all crying out for your attention? Are people and things constantly vying, unsuccessfully, for your precious time and attention? Do you feel pressure and stress from lack of productivity? David Allen’s excellent book Getting Things Done: How to Achieve Stress-Free Productivity, addresses all of these issues and is packed full of help and advice for tackling time management issues, improving productivity and decreasing stress.
David Allen’s techniques stand the test of time. Written eleven years ago, Getting Things Done, distils his life’s work in productivity and action management. It is down to earth, practical advice which has proved to be extremely effective, especially for procrastinators and perfectionists. His simple and manageable system has increased understanding of what we need to do to be more productive and his books, justifiably, continue to ride high in the bestseller lists.
At the core of Allen’s approach is learning to fully master his straightforward five-stage method for managing tasks and jobs: collecting, processing, organising, reviewing and doing. He notes that while most of us loosely use a similar system, to tackle multiple tasks, there are vital improvements which we can all make in the management of each particular part of the process. Once employed, these improvements will greatly increase our personal productivity.
If you can currently only dream of having “an overwhelming number of things to do and still function productively with a clear head and a positive sense of relaxed control” (page 3), then Getting Things Done could be of great value to you. It could help you to enhance your time management techniques and increase your personal productivity while effectively managing your stress levels.
As a follow up, if you find Allen’s work helpful, his later books Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life and Making It All Work: Winning At the Game of Work and the Business of Life, further develop his time management principles.
Have you read David Allen’s book Getting Things Done and have you found it useful? Or, has his approach proved to be unhelpful? Would you like to share some time management tips which work for you? I really look forward to hearing from you.
NOTE – 30th August 2018 – There has been an update to this book, so I’ve included the new cover!
This Book is new to me Ruth, and I thank you for adding it for us to view here.
Now all I need is to time manage my own day so I get time to read it.. 🙂 😉 lol.
Working as I did long ago for in production, along with other useful things I learnt to do Was what was called in the Old days ‘Time and Motion’ in Work Study… along I would come with my stop-watch and time how long it took to do a job in the Textile industry.. ;-)… as I would Method Study the process.. and find ways in training of improving both production and quality standards..
I guess I never got out of that habit of trying to get numerous things done so I could have space to sit and do the things I love doing..
And still I am wondering how on earth do I fit it all in.. LOL..
It helps if we are Women,, as Multi Tasking comes better to us than our male counterparts.. 🙂
Hugs to you
Sue xx
Hi Sue, you are so right, the irony is clear, spend more precious time reading anther book to help you manage your rapidly diminishing time! This one is a good one though and well worth the effort as it really focuses very practically on getting more things done in a healthy way. Thanks so much for your great comment. Multi-tasking is such an important thing to be able to do but I sometimes think that as we engage in many things, and perhaps have less focus on several key objectives, we can end up doing a lot of things fairly well rather than a few things excellently. I wonder if we are encouraged to spread ourselves too thin these days? All interesting things to ponder! Lovely to see you here and thanks for your experience of ‘Time and Motion’ – really appreciated reading that. See you soon, Ruth 🙂 x
Hi! I just nominated you for the Liebster Blog Award– check details on my page at http://helpwithyourlife.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/second-liebster-blog-award/
Thanks so much Cathie, so kind of you to think of me – I appreciate it.
Ruth I so hope you are recovering… Sending you my heartfelt thoughts .. and Hope you are gaining your strength again and feeling less tired … Healing thoughts are being sent… Sue x
Thanks so much Sue – so kind of you and do appreciate your lovely thoughts. Ruth xx
This sounds like a very helpful and necessary approach to handling the pressure to increasingly multi-task and accomplish things with greater and greater speed. A well-written and informative review, Ruth. Thanks so much!
There are so many time management books, Angela, but I really think this one is effective – practical, realistic and straightforward. So glad you enjoyed the review – thanks so much! Always great to see you here 🙂