Getting Things Done (GTD)

Getting Things Done-The Art of Stress-Free Productivity-David Allen

Chapters

1. A New Practice for a New Reality
2. Getting Control of Your Life: the Five Stages of Mastering Workflow
3. Getting Projects Creatively Under Way: The Five Phases of Project Planning
4. Getting Started: Setting up the Time, Space, and Tools
5. Collection: Corralling Your “Stuff”
6. Processing: Getting “In” to Empty
7. Organizing: Setting up the Right Buckets
8. Reviewing: Keeping System Functional
9. Doing: Making the Best Action Choices
10. Getting Projects under Control
11. The Power of the Collection Habit
12. The Power of the Next-Action
13. The Power of Outcome Focusing

It is possible for a person to have an overwhelming number of things to do and still function productively with a clear head and a positive sense of relaxed control.

Chapter One:

In the old days, work was self-evident and we can see it. It was clear when the work was finished, or not. Now, for many of us, there are no edges to most of our projects. People have at least half a dozen things they are trying to achieve right now, and even if they had the rest of their lives to try, they would not be able to finish these to perfection. On the other front, the lack of edges can create more work for everyone. The Old Models and Habits Are Insufficient: When “time” itself turned into a work factor, personal calendars became a key work tool (May people think of their calendar as the central tool for being in control.) However, a calendar, though important, can really effectively manage only a small portion of what you need to organize. And daily to-do lists and simplified priority coding have proven inadequate to deal with the volume and variable nature of the average professional’s workload.

The “Big Picture” vs. the Nitty-Gritty

Focusing on primary outcomes and values is a critical exercise, certainly, but it just ups the ante in the game, which still must be played day to day. There has been a missing piece in our new culture of knowledge work: a system with a coherent set of behaviors and tools that functions effectively at the level at which work really happens.

The Promise: The “Ready State” of the Martial Artist

In Karate there is an image that is used to define the position of perfect readiness: “mind like water.” Imagine throwing a pebble into a still pond. How does the water respond? The answer is totally appropriately to the force and mass of the input: then it returns to calm. It doesn’t overreact or under react.

The power in karate punch comes from speed, not muscle. A tense muscle is a slow one. Clearing the mind and being flexible are key.

Can You Get into Your “Productive State” When required?

Think about the last time you felt highly productive. Your probably had a sense of being in control; you were not stressed out you were highly focused on what you were doing; time tended to disappear ; and you felt you were making noticeable progress toward a meaningful outcome.

The Principle: Dealing Effectively with Internal Commitments

Capture everything you consider unfinished to your “Collection Bucket”, that you know you will come back to regularly and sort through.

Clarify exactly what your commitment is and decide what you have to do.

Once decided on all the actions you need to take, you must keep reminders of them organized in a system you review regularly.

“Thank like a man of action, act like a man of thought.—Henry Bergson”

“Why Things Are on Your Mind?”

Most often, the reason sth is “on your mind” is that you want to be different that it currently is, and yet:

You haven’t clarified exactly what the intended outcome is:

You haven’t decided what the very next physical action step is.

You haven’t put reminders of the outcome and the action required in a system you trust.

(Your Mind Doesn’t Have a Mind of Its Own: Do you have a flashlight somewhere with dead batteries in it?)

Between the time you woke up today and now, did you think of anything you needed to do that you still haven’t done? Have you had that thought more than once? Why? It’s a waste of time and energy to keep thinking about sth that you make on progress on. And it only adds to your anxieties about what you should be doing and aren’t.

“Things rarely get stuck because of lack of time. They get stuck because the doing of them, has not been defined.”

“There is no reason ever to have the same thought twice, unless you like having that thought.”

Most people feel best about their work the week before their vacation, but its not only because of the vacation itself. What do you do the last week before you leave on a big trip? You clean up, close up, clarify, and renegotiate all your

Chapter Two:

1. Collect Things that command our attention

2. Process what they mean and what to do about them

3. Organize the results, which we

4. Review as options for what we chose to

5. Do