My Lessons From the Book Getting Things Done

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

   Getting Things Done (GTD) is a book about personnel productivity techniques that help to do things in a better way. It teaches us how to efficiently handle and execute tasks, projects, and everything that you want to do or must do things in your mind. GTD provides useful advices on controlling things in personal and professional life, proposes the solutions on how to organize, execute the to-do lists and plans or abandoned commitments in your mind.

   I believe you can benefit from this book by applying the techniques provided in it. Particularly, if you are stuck with your agenda. Moreover, those techniques may help you to motivate to do the projects that you've been thinking about for a long time ago.
   It is interesting and practical book on productivity. I highly recommend reading it. Here I listed some of my lessons from this book.

   Collect. Collect all things in your mind that you have to do. Free your mind from everything that gets your attention by writing them some kind of means (paper, PC). This method helps to relax your mind and stop constantly thinking about them

   Process. Classify all the things you have collected in your mind. Separate them according to their urgency and value, your resource, time, and your capacity you can perform. Delegate or delay based on task type.

• The 2-minute rule. Do the task right now if it takes less than 2 minutes. Otherwise, delegate it or delay it to set a time to do it.
• Know your Why. Know what you are doing and why you are doing. Understanding the meaning of your performance provides motivation.

    Organize. Group the tasks according to their urgency and time. Separate them physically, visually, and mentally. Set priority level to implement and time to execute in your calendar.

   Review. Check your activity regularly whether you dong well or not. Try to find out some better ways of your performance.

• Review your progress daily and weekly, keep on eye on your priorities and progress.

   Act. Take action and do it. After all the steps you have done above, you have determined your next action and your task is clear, just execute it.

• Know your Why and meaning of your actions.

To understand better the above ideas, check the workflow schema illustrated in the book. 

   David Allen's method helps to review all the things that get your attention and to perform only the required procedures toward them. We don't need to do everything, we need to do only what needs to be done.
   I think the book is particularly useful for the people who have a lot of things on their agenda and deal with many people such as executives, managers, and influential individuals.