Getting things done is an encyclopedic volume of how David Allen thinks personal organization should be done. In honesty, I found it so dry that I didn’t even finish it! In my inspirational vs informational quadrant, the GTD method falls squarely into informational. This isn’t to say that the information is bad, merely that it’s unreadable. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I would have actually read it as opposed to listening to it.
The overall theme is laudable. The point of the system, as he explains it, is to make your mind like water. When something is thrown into it, it causes momentary ripples but quickly returns to a placid surface. To accomplish this he describes a six-step system.
First, find a trustable system you trust to capture every action that might be accomplished into your life. If you can’t rely on your system, you will constantly fret about things you might be forgetting. He talks about a filing cabinet or an app.
Second, collect all the tasks that need to be done, don’t do anything until you know everything that needs to be done.
Third process the tasks that you’ve collected. That means prioritizing by importance and urgency and categorizing. It also means having a good idea of the effort demanded by each task.
Fourth, organize the actions of each task. Start by deciding if each task should be done, delegated, or deferred. If a task takes less than two minutes, do it right then. Delegate it if someone else can do it faster or better (There are so many other reasons to delegate, but I won’t mention them here). For tasks that need deferring, write out in detail, each step of the process.
Fifth, review your system a few minutes every day and a few minutes more each week to ensure it is up to date and capturing all the things that need to be done.
Finally, execute. Cross off each task according to available time, priority, urgency, context, etc.
There you have it! Honestly, this is one of those books that should be summed up in an article, not suck away 10 hours of your life.