Getting Things Done
A review of

Getting Things Done

The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

David AllenPenguin • 2002

Beyond the Calendar

David Allan advocates allocating your limited time by managing your resources, workplace and actions. To begin, identify what you need to do well in advance of when you need to do it.

Many people today take on more projects than they can handle, David Allen argues, thereby increasing their stress. Continual change and fuzzy boundaries hamper many projects, he explains, so you may not be sure when you’ve even finished a job. This lack of borders creates added work and spurs unnecessary, frequent memos and discussions. “If it’s on your mind,” the author writes, “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.David Allen

An author, lecturer and founder of his own management consulting, coaching, and training company, Allen has another bestseller to his credit, Ready for Anything. He is a popular speaker on personal and organizational effectiveness. He explains that to accomplish your projects effectively and efficiently, you need to reach two goals. First, capture everything you need to do, now or in the future, in a logical, organized, reliable system that records everything outside your memory, so you don’t have to think about these issues until you are ready. Second, discipline yourself to make advance decisions about how much information and instruction you need to facilitate planning what you’re doing and to change plans as necessary.


Comment on this review

  • Avatar
  • Avatar
    G. L. 7 months ago
    The key ingredient is to prioritize activities and have clarity of times to define emergencies and priorities, focusing on one thing until it is finished.
  • Avatar
    N. R. 1 year ago
    great ideas
  • Avatar
    A. C. 4 years ago
    Very unfortunate that you only carry his Version from 2002 where people still used fax. There is a new revised version from 2015.
    Also very sad that you put your personal opinions into the summary. It should contain the essence of the book and not transmit the opinion of whoever wrote the summary.