lifehack.org: David Allen’s Getting Things Done book has been around for over ten years now and has totally changed the way that many knowledge workers work and play. The system has helped me and many editors and contributors here at Lifehack get their most important work done on a daily, monthly, weekly, and “lifely” basis.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Why Getting Things Done is The Best Productivity System
lifehack.org: David Allen’s Getting Things Done book has been around for over ten years now and has totally changed the way that many knowledge workers work and play. The system has helped me and many editors and contributors here at Lifehack get their most important work done on a daily, monthly, weekly, and “lifely” basis.
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7 comments:
Amen! I have not read "getting things done", but I think that this article emphasizes the fact that we should not live our lives by the model of a book, we do not need "things" to accomplish other things. Sure, purchasing specific items can make things easier, but we do not live in an ideal world, we should make use of the things we have. I think the important thing to take away from this is, all in all is, you need to start somewhere, anywhere, even in a small way, and just continue on with that idea of doing, and just keep going until your task is complete. At least reading this book can be another way to "start on accomplishing something", but I think it is important not to get distracted by theories of what would make for more affective time management, instead of just starting on it to get the ball rolling.
I feel that the GTD method is far far too much to handle in order to actually get things done. I would worry about making the lists and filing the files more than I would worry about the things on the lists and in the files. getting tasks accomplished is a very personalized event. Everyone works in different ways. While making a list might work for one person, another might simply need to start working in the thing itself. Just start working because this too shall pass!!!
I'm anxious to read some of this book in PRM in the second half of the semester. I already do some of the things that Allen suggests, but I probably don't do them faithfully or often enough for them to work to my full benefit. I love the idea of "capturing" a task the second you think of it. I have been trying to do that but I sometimes capture things in too many places and then it gets confusing! I guess the first step for me would be to go back and re-organize, as Allen suggests. What's great about this article is that it proves that Allen's methods can be adapted for all sorts of people and, therefore, can also work for all area of our lives. I don't know if it's really valid to say any one productivity system is better than another, but it does make sense to say that one system (such as Allen's) has the greatest appeal and can be useful to the widest audience.
This sounds to me like a big list of how to organize your life as a way of procrastinating from actually going to get done what you need to do. I didn't really find anything in this methodology to be groundbreaking or innovative, but rather, just iterations on what people already do, and doing it in an organized matter. You don't need anything fancy, just a schedule and a drive to get things accomplished.
From what the article says about this system, it sounds like a great articulation of the process of getting out from huge piles of backed up work (much like Dave Ramsey's "debt snowball" method helps people create a plan of attack for large amounts of consumer debt), however, I didn't quite understand why Lifehack wrote what seemed to me a review of a book that tells people much of what Lifehack itself focuses on, techniques and heuristics to get those overwhelmed but unproductivity back on the horse. To me this article seemed to be telling readers, "Hey, you know that thing we've been writing about for awhile? Yeah, this one guys book, who's unaffiliated with us, tells it the best, so go read him." I don't know... it just doesn't seem like a great business model to me.
This article makes valid points about getting things done, but I would have boiled it down to make it slightly less convoluted. The big point of getting things done is a flow chart (perhaps on page 47, but I don't recall exactly) which comes down to:
Look at each task; if it can be done in two minutes, do it then; if it needs additional attention, schedule a time to do it on your calendar and write it on a list.
Within that framework there are ways to make the latter part more efficient, e.g., by adding contexts to the tasks. For instance, I add 'computer' or 'purnell' tags to my tasks regardless of project so that I if I find myself with free time in one of those contexts I know what I can get done.
This looks like a really good book to read, based on the article. It sounds like it approaches the situation from a slightly different angle than most procrastination-stopping articles or "how to maximize your time" articles. I also think it's neat how the Getting Things Done system appears to apply in a much larger sense than simply in one's work life. It applies to your general life goals and all activities including outside commitments too.
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