Book Review: Getting Things Done

Book Review: Getting Things Done

Reading through much of this book peaked my interest on many different viewpoints and ideas. David Allen has indeed done his homework and talked to many different people in various careers and summarized helping others in this informative book. This book is very interesting and could help people with reducing stress in high profile jobs.

A couple of ideas Mr. Allen wrote in this book could be very helpful to me in my career. I really like the do it, delegate it, defer it theory. The do it action will take less than two minutes and should be done at the moment it is defined. The delegate it action will take longer than two minutes and the key objective is to ask yourself "Am I the right person to do this?", the defer it action is an action that will take longer than two minutes and you will have to defer acting on it until later and track it on one or more "Next Actions" lists. As a college baseball coach, I find these three actions very helpful in organizing and assisting a collegiate baseball program. It is very common for coaches to do everything at once and feel stressful about situations that they cannot control or could delegate to someone else.

The second group of idea's that I really liked was the projects lists, next actions lists, and someday/maybe lists. Mr. Allen defines a project as any desired result that requires more than one action step. Again, very helpful in my career in defining projects. The next actions list are actions longer than two-minutes and I have identified needs to be tracked elsewhere. In this list you can define them even further with calls, emails, voice messages, etc. The someday/maybe list is compiled of goals we would like to achieve in the future, so we write them down and review them accordingly to remind ourselves of these goals.

There were a couple of statements and quotes in this book that I could really identify with. "I got it all together, but I forgot where I put it," by Anonymous. This quote has really defined me over my life. I feel organized, but at the same time I tell people that I have an organized mess, and that's honestly how I feel about it. "The calendar should show only the 'hard landscape' around which you do the rest of your actions." This is very important to me in explaining how to use a calendar appropriately. I should