A How-To Classic: David Allen's Getting Things Done

This isn't a new book, but one I've found invaluable: David Allen's Getting Things Done. The subtitle is The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, and that sums it up. Allen's target readers are primarily information workers and executives, but anyone with a lot to do and at least some autonomy in deciding how to do it would benefit (school teachers, office workers of all kinds, small business owners, etc.).

What Allen offers is a process (GTD for short) to help you wade through all the information coming at you and get the work done that will move you toward your goals, with a minimum of panic or running around like the proverbial beheaded chicken.

As Allen himself points out, the big difference between his strategy and others' (especially Covey's) is his is a bottom-up, rather than top-down strategy: get sane first on the day to day, mundane work details that make you feel overwhelmed (in other words, become more efficient), then you'll have time and mental energy to take a look at the larger picture (so you can become more effective). When you use methods that start at the big-picture level, sometimes you never get down to the day-to-day reality, and the system falls apart (or sits, pristine and unused, like that gleaming leather Daytimer you bought six years ago).

The GTD process is simple and logical at its core (here's a preview), and highly adaptable to how you work -- you can use this method with a paper planner, with Outlook, with GMail (there's even a GTD plug-in that works with GMail now) and Google Calendar, whatever you like. You keep track of projects (anything that takes more than one step/task to accomplish, so "Call Mom" is a task, but "Plan Chicago vacation" is a project. For each project, you ask yourself these magic words:

What is the next action?

Those words are also magic in meetings at work in which not a lot is happening. Asking this focuses your attention on what the very next step is toward getting that thing done. Then you either "do it, delegate it, or defer it" (that's part of the process). Deferring it means scheduling the task at a specific later date.

Allen has a web site, of course, and many other GTD-related blogs and sites have sprung up, too; my favorites are 43Folders and LifeHack.org. A new (to me) site I just found is Black Belt Productivity, which I'll have to check out...I'll just put it on my "Read/Review" list.

Highly recommended.