Review: Getting things done by David Allen

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen is a fabulous book whose teachings if incorporated into your daily life can work wonders for your personal productivity.

If you take a look online, you'll read again and again in reviews about how this book has changed peoples lives. Not only does it give you a workable solution to handling the daily stressors but you will soon have the freedom to envision a life beyond the moment to moment tasks that fill your time and you will be able to draw up mid-term goals and lifetime dreams in a way that will no longer feel like the makings of a mushy fairytale but the gritty stuff of a documentary of a successful life come to pass. Enough with the flowery words.

Sure you can buy the book tomorrow, hunker down and read it cover to cover but I bet you're busy - where can you even find the time for reading when you have projects that need completing? Not only that - but David makes it plain that for this book to be most effect you need to put in at least 2 days of solid organizing to put his teachings in place. Sure you can skimp and cut corners - but you wont receive the full benefits this book is capable of administering if you do. Once you've seen how it works in the office - trust me you are going to want to take GTD home with you too.

I found a solution. Listen to the book in audio format with a physical copy of the book close at hand. You'll want a notepad too so you can jot down notes as you go along. The audio book is steady paced and easy to follow. Once you hit chapter 5 you'll be glad you have the physical book -  Let's face it scanning backwards through audio files is frightfully annoying and time consuming. There's just too much to note down if you would like to reference it later when it comes to putting the tasks into practice. The audio book does come with a set of pdf's - but this I found to be of little value as it meant I had to be at my computer to view them or squint at them on my iPhone. Trust me on this - buy the book and sunscreen. The audio book is just to help you get through it quickly. On the drive home, in the bathroom, while you're cooking - in fact anywhere your iPod goes David can come too.

What areas of personal productivity this book deals with:

• How to prioritize


• Email organization


• Paper work flow


• Time management - using your time in the most productive fashion