Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
by David Allen
I spent quite some time on this book. The reason why it took me so long to finish it is because I would like to practice it on my daily life. In fact, I’m practicing it in the past few weeks. All in all, I have to say I really learned something from it.
The fundamental idea of the whole practice is to capture everything we need to do (or we think we need to do) out of our mind and into a trusty system. That way we can be relaxed and needn’t worry about forgetting anything. That’s the key! People in our age simply have too many things to do (or to remember), and spending time on remembering to finish the things we need to do itself can already drain out most of our energy. If we could have a system helping us manage our lives, we could have more energy to do the things we really need to do, and do it more productively.
This book provides a system (or a set of methods) which could help us achieve this goal. It defines a workflow composed of the following five stages:
- Collect
- Process
- Organize
- Review
- Do
The greatest thing I like about this practice is that it separates the workflow into separate phases. When we are in one phase, we focus on that phase and not worrying about others. I think that helps relaxed our minds. For example, during collecting, I don’t need to worry about how I’m going to process the things. I just collect all things and put them into the “In” basket. And during processing, I don’t need to worry about whether I have all the information needed to process the things. That’s because I am sure that I have collected everything I need during the previous phase. I can be more focused, more productive, and more relaxed.
The most obvious effect on myself after practicing GettingThingsDone during the past few weeks is that I did not forget anything important as long as I follow the practice. That makes me feel more organized and hence more confident. Also, I feel more relaxed than ever because I rarely need to worry that I might forget doing something (I guess I need to get more accustomed to this and stop wasting my time on worrying since it gets me nothing).
I sincerely recommend anyone to read this book and actually practice it. It won’t solve all of our problems, but it will no doubt give you more return than you expect.
