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Getting Things Done by David Allen was very helpful to me. It's barely a book - if you skim over the cruft it's more like a pamphlet. I don't follow it religiou

Getting Things Done by David Allen was very helpful to me. It's barely a book - if you skim over the cruft it's more like a pamphlet. I don't follow it religiously but some of his ideas have made a big difference in my productivity.

tailspin2019 5y ago
> if you skim over the cruft it's more like a pamphlet I think this describes about 80-90% of business related books!
- huge87 5y ago
  I've thought about this for awhile, and I think it's reasonable to read some books in their entirety to better understand certain things (although I will agree that some books are just fluff and can be condensed into a blog post). Take for instance the Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande. We get it, make checklists because they're good for making sure you don't miss stuff. Got it. But in reading the stories and personal anecdotes, we get a felt sense for why and how we should implement a system of checklists to offload cognitive load so that we can focus on things that require more discursive thinking. I guess what I'm saying is that you can tell someone to do something, but you may have a better shot at getting them to remember (edit: understand deeply) if you tell them a story. Humans may just be like that. Not saying these authors aren't trying to hit publisher mandated word counts or whatever, but it may not always be that.
  - tailspin2019 5y ago
    Yeah I do agree. I think some books are just obviously padded out, but others have legitimate repetition of the message, which does have value, eg. your example (great book!)
CPLX 5y ago
Second this. I ignored it for 15 years unnecessarily because it sort of looks like a goofy self-help book. It’s not. It’s a matter of fact analysis and framework for understanding the problem of how to keep track of all the varied messages and projects that come at you. And the advice is simple and highly effective.
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  > it sort of looks like a goofy self-help book I always think it's a shame that many of the books that have impacted my life in incredibly positive ways, all look like goofy self-help books at a first glance! Some of them contain incredible wisdom. Aside from some of the inevitable fluff/padding, GTD is one of these.
- huge87 5y ago
  Same. I had to force myself to continue with the book because I had the same thoughts: goofy, self help. But I finished it and now implement the system across work and school (back to school in my mid 30s). It was like a level up in terms of how much I can handle at once while simultaneously lowering my levels of stress and increasing the feeling of control.
westurner 5y ago
There's a flowchart of the GTD procedures with something like standard flowchart symbols in [1] PDF, [2] Search query (/?) [3] PNG / MP4 gif. But not yet a meme MP4 GIF, FWIU. Given that URLs are the workflow improvement of the web, watch if these citations is most useful to you? 1: Heylighen, Francis, and Clément Vidal. "Getting things done: the science behind stress-free productivity." Long Range Planning 41, no. 6 (2008): 585-605. 2: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C43&q=Getting+Things+Done%3A+The+Science+Behind+Stress-Free+Productivity&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3D-Yr-QUgUzigJ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C43&q=Get... 3: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Francis-Heylighen/publication/222552899/figure/fig1/AS:304772235186176@1449674771358/a-flowchart-depicting-the-GTD-process-for-organizing-and-processing-incoming-stuff.png https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Francis-Heylighen/publi... 6: https://westurner.github.io/wiki/workflow https://westurner.github.io/wiki/workflow 5: https://github.com/westurner/wiki/blob/master/workflow.rest https://github.com/westurner/wiki/blob/master/workflow.rest 5 is editable by the author in their - the original - fork; which may include local and remote branches that Pull Requests and ("#DevOpsSec") Continuous Integration build task automation that help collaborators collaborate on [open source] software in free public git repos.
lawn 5y ago
I totally agree. Some specific ideas that are helpful for me: - If a thing takes less than 2 minutes to do, just do it immediately. - Don't try to remember the things you need to do in your head, write them down. - A weekly(-ish) review. Things happen, and things will get disorganized, but spending some time to reorganize things again really helps to keep it from spiraling out of control. - Inbox zero (emails). I chuck things into "Action", "Waiting", "References" or "Archive" instead of letting them pile up in the inbox making me stressed. There are tons of rules in GTD, but really, even a single of these tips have helped me tremendously.
- garrickvanburen 5y ago
  +1 for weekly review & write things down (I prefer writing these things down in my calendar). I’m also a fan of a “someday maybe” list
  - hiptobecubic 5y ago
    The benefit of the someday maybe list is that let's you truck yourself into thinking it's ok to forget these things, since they're written down. They almost never get done, but it feels better this way.
- huge87 5y ago
  I really like the idea that projects really just consist of "the next step". What do I need to do to advance this project/assignment/thing by one step? Define that and put it away to act on at some point. It helps me manage feelings of overwhelm.
  - lawn 5y ago
    Oh yes this is great. I've found that emphasizing the next action for the receiver in emails has been hugely beneficial. And sending summary emails after meetings that simply details the next actions, and who is responsible, is s simple thing but oh so effective.

tailspin2019 5y ago

> if you skim over the cruft it's more like a pamphlet I think this describes about 80-90% of business related books!

huge87 5y ago
I've thought about this for awhile, and I think it's reasonable to read some books in their entirety to better understand certain things (although I will agree that some books are just fluff and can be condensed into a blog post). Take for instance the Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande. We get it, make checklists because they're good for making sure you don't miss stuff. Got it. But in reading the stories and personal anecdotes, we get a felt sense for why and how we should implement a system of checklists to offload cognitive load so that we can focus on things that require more discursive thinking. I guess what I'm saying is that you can tell someone to do something, but you may have a better shot at getting them to remember (edit: understand deeply) if you tell them a story. Humans may just be like that. Not saying these authors aren't trying to hit publisher mandated word counts or whatever, but it may not always be that.
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  Yeah I do agree. I think some books are just obviously padded out, but others have legitimate repetition of the message, which does have value, eg. your example (great book!)

CPLX 5y ago

Second this. I ignored it for 15 years unnecessarily because it sort of looks like a goofy self-help book. It’s not. It’s a matter of fact analysis and framework for understanding the problem of how to keep track of all the varied messages and projects that come at you. And the advice is simple and highly effective.

tailspin2019 5y ago
> it sort of looks like a goofy self-help book I always think it's a shame that many of the books that have impacted my life in incredibly positive ways, all look like goofy self-help books at a first glance! Some of them contain incredible wisdom. Aside from some of the inevitable fluff/padding, GTD is one of these.
huge87 5y ago
Same. I had to force myself to continue with the book because I had the same thoughts: goofy, self help. But I finished it and now implement the system across work and school (back to school in my mid 30s). It was like a level up in terms of how much I can handle at once while simultaneously lowering my levels of stress and increasing the feeling of control.

westurner 5y ago

There's a flowchart of the GTD procedures with something like standard flowchart symbols in [1] PDF, [2] Search query (/?) [3] PNG / MP4 gif. But not yet a meme MP4 GIF, FWIU. Given that URLs are the workflow improvement of the web, watch if these citations is most useful to you? 1: Heylighen, Francis, and Clément Vidal. "Getting things done: the science behind stress-free productivity." Long Range Planning 41, no. 6 (2008): 585-605. 2: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C43&q=Getting+Things+Done%3A+The+Science+Behind+Stress-Free+Productivity&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3D-Yr-QUgUzigJ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C43&q=Get... 3: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Francis-Heylighen/publication/222552899/figure/fig1/AS:304772235186176@1449674771358/a-flowchart-depicting-the-GTD-process-for-organizing-and-processing-incoming-stuff.png https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Francis-Heylighen/publi... 6: https://westurner.github.io/wiki/workflow https://westurner.github.io/wiki/workflow 5: https://github.com/westurner/wiki/blob/master/workflow.rest https://github.com/westurner/wiki/blob/master/workflow.rest 5 is editable by the author in their - the original - fork; which may include local and remote branches that Pull Requests and ("#DevOpsSec") Continuous Integration build task automation that help collaborators collaborate on [open source] software in free public git repos.

lawn 5y ago

I totally agree. Some specific ideas that are helpful for me: - If a thing takes less than 2 minutes to do, just do it immediately. - Don't try to remember the things you need to do in your head, write them down. - A weekly(-ish) review. Things happen, and things will get disorganized, but spending some time to reorganize things again really helps to keep it from spiraling out of control. - Inbox zero (emails). I chuck things into "Action", "Waiting", "References" or "Archive" instead of letting them pile up in the inbox making me stressed. There are tons of rules in GTD, but really, even a single of these tips have helped me tremendously.

garrickvanburen 5y ago
+1 for weekly review & write things down (I prefer writing these things down in my calendar). I’m also a fan of a “someday maybe” list
- hiptobecubic 5y ago
  The benefit of the someday maybe list is that let's you truck yourself into thinking it's ok to forget these things, since they're written down. They almost never get done, but it feels better this way.
huge87 5y ago
I really like the idea that projects really just consist of "the next step". What do I need to do to advance this project/assignment/thing by one step? Define that and put it away to act on at some point. It helps me manage feelings of overwhelm.
- lawn 5y ago
  Oh yes this is great. I've found that emphasizing the next action for the receiver in emails has been hugely beneficial. And sending summary emails after meetings that simply details the next actions, and who is responsible, is s simple thing but oh so effective.