I was just going to re-read parts of the book, but I'm pretty sure that I ended up reading the entire book. It was excellent again. I've read many books about being organized and getting your life in order. I know it's important. I've known it ever since I read that Brigham Young kept his workshop so organized that he could find any tool in it in the dark. I seem to remember him saying that we have to learn this kind of organization so that we can run worlds, solar systems and even universes. While that sounds good I'm nowhere near that level of organization although I think it is something to strive for.
Why do I like Getting Things Done (GTD)? I like it because it deals with how to get things done on an every day basis. I remember being in a class talking about how to use the Franklin Day Planner (which I love and think is a great system, and Hyrum Smith and Steven R. Covey are my heroes) and we were going through the exercise of determining if things were an A, B, or C task and he said sometimes you had to assign things an A when you didn't want to or nothing his boss wanted done would get done. And that's the point where all these systems they seem to break down on the day to day basis, at least they do for me. I would make a list and then copy it to the next day and that would depress me. I like the David Allen way of doing things. All work is either
1) Planned Work
2) Work that Showed up
3) Defining your work
Also, he says that you can't do projects you can only do actions. You might have many projects but you only have actions that you can do. Once you've decided your actions then you have a lot of freedom to decide what "actions" you will take in whatever situation you are in.
I really learned a lot from this book. When I read it the first time it said to reread the book in six months so I put down in my calender to reread it, and when it came up I didn't because the way I was using it was breaking down. So what caused me to reread it finally (and I'm glad I did)? Well when I bought an iPhone I gave my iPod to Kiki. Kiki called me and said that she was afraid that she had cleared my Todo account. I told her not to worry about it, that I should be able to download everything from the web. Well whatever happened we (Kiki and I) managed to wipe out my Todo lists on my iPhone. So since I was going to have to start over anyways I decided I should reread the book. I started out thinking that I would just reread parts of it that I thought would be applicable but I think that I eventually read all of it, and some parts twice. The book seemed different. I'd gotten a message from Amazon that there was a new version and it seemed very different. I don't know if that's because it actually changed or because I'd just forgot most of it. Anyway I liked the book quite a bit and recommend it to anyone who might be trying to improve there productivity or life.
No comments:
Post a Comment