Everyfing.com

After Matthew comment in my previous post I decided to explain the system I use to get my things done.

Basically I use categories to separate my stuff. I have such categories as Personal/Business1/Business2/Studies/Blog/Someday, etc. Every category has its own tasks, projects, notes and files. Projects consists of tasks. Tasks may have subtasks. And I also use online calendar. I decide what to work on by my personal priorities. I also mind the deadlines if there are such. No need of contexts for me. Firstly I start to work on the most important stuff, then move on to less important things and so on. That’s it. Nothing fancy. To manage my system I used to use Word documents or simple .txt files. Now I use a custom programmed web app.

I like my system because it’s just dead-easy to use it. And it gives me the flexibility and freedom I need. You just need to put everything in its place and know which things are more important than others. And after that it all depends on you. I guess there are more people who use a system similar to mine because it’s just plain common sense. And in the end it doesn’t matter what type of system or software do you use. What matters are the results you produce.

Summary for the busy people:

• The book introduces a unique but complicated system to manage your workflow. If you like simple solutions and systems, then you won’t find them in this book.
  
• However it’s good to know the basics of GTD as it’s the most popular personal organization system around and you may use some parts of it in your own system.
  
• I found the book hard to read and way too long. I do not recommend buying the book. It’s better to read a summary about GTD here and here.

I guess today it’s just impossible not to know what “gtd” is. I’ve always heard positive reviews about this book. I saw people telling how implementing gtd system changed their lives. Before reading this book I have been familiar with the basic methodology behind gtd. However, when I got my hands on the actual book I was expecting for it to change my life too. But it hadn’t such a life-changing effect on me.

In the book “Getting Things Done” the author presents his system to manage your workflow. Some parts of his system are new to me and some of it are plain common sense. Overall his system is unique but I found it too complicated for me. I found some parts of this system completely useless to me. For example - contexts. The author suggests of working by contexts. I understand “context” as a place or state, for ex @phone @computer @home. However for me it just wouldn’t work. I choose what to do not by context but by priority. Some things are just more improtant than others. And as I mostly work by my computer and have the phone always with me it’s just a matter of priority. I see context as a way to filter your next actions if have lots of them. At the moment I have about 60 tasks but sorting them by project and priority seems more rational to me.

According to Allen, it takes two hours a week just to make this system work for you. I don’t know if I can afford it. I think I better stick to plain common sense(or basics of time and project management) and little productivity tricks that works for me. I guess the whole gtd system would be life-changing for those who lack discipline and need a strong and strict system to get them on track. If you don’t like complicated systems, know the basics of time management and/or have work expierence in management I don’t think that you will like this book. In that case this book is more intresting as a social psychology subject because of it’s phenomenal effect on the blogging community. And of course it’s good to be familiar with the things that gain such popularity.

OK, about the good stuff. Here are the ideas that that I liked:

• You have to put everything out of your head into a trusted system because in this age of information it’s very hard to keep up with everything. Doing so gives you a “mind like water”.
• If you can do the little tasks now, then do them know.
• If a project seems too big, break it down into small, easily manageable tasks.
• When defining a task (or “next action” how Allen calls it) you should make it as clear as possible. And every-time you need to do something just ask yourself “What’s the next action?”
• Having a someday/maybe folder where you put your ideas and things that are not so important at the moment.

These are the things that I liked about this book. These things may sound as common sense but I found them useful.

David Allen suggests the idea of having a “mind like water”. I agree with that. But his writing style doesn’t feel clear like water to me. I found it very hard to read his book. The author constantly repeats himself. He begins his chapters like this: “Do you always find yourself overhelmed by the things you have to do each day? Do you always forget to do something?”, etc. After asking you this type of questions he explains that after reading this chapter you will be able to handle all this stuff, your life will become better, etc. And finally he gets to the point and explains HOW to do it. Actually much time is spent telling us what he’s going to tell us and how it will affect our life and save us time. As I tried not to skim and read every page I found myself struggling through his BS to find that little piece of real advice. And that’s the sad part because I really liked some of his ideas. And the whole book is just too long. He could easily put all his ideas into 30 pages article. I just believe that the book of productivity expert should also be productive in the number of pages and the amount of advice in them.

I thought I am the only one thinks this way. I have checked reviews on amazon.com. There are 295 customer reviews. 95% of them are positive: 4 and mostly 5 stars. However about 5% of those reviews are negative. It seems that there were people who felt the same way as I did: in their opinion the book is too long, the author repeats himself. There were several straight to the point comments like: “I felt like I was reading a shopping list to buy office supplies”(it’s for the second part of the book where author explains how to setup his system) or “If you want to save yourself some money, just read some of the reviews on Amazon and you’ll get the point of this 267 page book.”. These two comments all alone pretty sums up my opinion on the way David Allen presented his idea.

I believe that GTD system could also have been life-changing for those 5% readers too. But they bought a book on productivity and it just was a pain to read it. If they bought such book it means that there was a mess or chaos in their life. They wanted to change that. But then they started to read and found a mess in the book they thought to themselves “Why should I even bother reading such a book when it’s a mess by itself?”. I suppose that’s the typical scenario. If Allen would have made his book much more shorter and clearer, he would have been given a chance to reach those 5% readers.

As I already told, author of the book could have made this book much, much shorter. In that case David Allen would have saved me time. And isn’t this book about saving our valuable time? And in first case shouldn’t time management and productivity expert try to save us time? Although I found some parts of this book useful but I spent 4 hours reading it. If this book were 30 pages long instead of a 267 pages I would have spent 30 minutes and would have walked away with the same advice.

Author and Editor of this book, you owe me 3 hours and 30 minutes of my time!