Getting Things Done by David Allen

Introduction

This was a very influential book on my life when I first read it in 2008. I decided to focus on personal productivity recently, so I had a perfect excuse to re-read it. I remember reading the book at least once more between 2008 and 2024, but I don’t have any notes about that.

Summary

Many have tried to summarize the book before. Let me give it a try.

• Put things that have to happen at a certain date and/or time in your calendar. Calendar can be paper or digital.
• Capture everything in a trusted system. Paper is good enough. Keeping it all in your head will not work.
• Process everything you have captured, at least weekly, ideally daily.
• While processing, if something will take less than two minutes, do it immediately.
• If it will take longer:
  • If there’s only one step, put it in an appropriate context. (Example context: at office, at home, in the car…)
  • If that’s something that doesn’t need to be done now, put it in someday/maybe list.
  • If you’re waiting for somebody, put it on the waiting list.
  • If it’s a reference (no action needed), store it as reference.
  • If it’s trash, put it in the trash. (Or recycle.)
  • If it has two or more steps to complete, create a project.
• Once a week do a weekly review of your system.

Misc

I vaguely remember (2008 was a long time ago) that after the first reading I have completely missed the point of projects. I only organized things in contexts. Capturing everything and organizing it in contexts was already a big improvement. (My process at the time was capturing only some things and organizing everything in one big list.) After the first read I got only the part of the system, contexts. Good enough for the first read.

After the second reading (or over the years) I have understood the value of projects and the weekly review. Those are two very important parts of the system.

There are some ideas in the book that I remember being confused about from the first reading. For example, natural planning model. I just don’t use it. I guess the projects I deal with are just not complex enough to justify natural planning.

Something that I completely missed in the first two readings are horizons. (Maybe it’s been added in the latest edition.) I find that very similar to Cal Newport’s multi-scale planning. Newport suggests having a plan for a quarter/semester, then a plan for each week in the quarter and a separate daily plan. I find multi-scale planning crucial. That was either something that wasn’t in the original book, or I completely missed it. That type of planning improved my system a lot.

Conclusion

The first two times I was reading the original 2001 edition of the book. This time I was reading a revised 2015 edition. I was not sure if I’ll find the third reading boring or exciting. It was a very interesting read. I would still recommend the book.

Quotes

Foreword

When the first edition of this book came out, e-mail was still an exciting new technology rather than a limitlessly guilt-inducing source of work still to be done.

Those were the days.

Introduction to the Revised Edition

Nothing is new, except how frequently it is.

Oh so true.

Welcome to Getting Things Done

And whatever you’re doing, you’d probably like to be more relaxed, confident that whatever you’re doing at the moment is just what you need to be doing…

There’s always more to do than time available. Being reasonably sure you’re doing things that have to be done leads to peace of mind.

And, more critically for many, people are not paying appropriate attention to their kids’ school plays, sports games, or going-to-bed questions about life, or they’re simply not able to “be here now,” anywhere, anytime.

I agree that this is a problem, but I’m not sure this book offers a solution. I found a solution for the above problem in Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.

Part 1 - The Art of Getting Things Done

Chapter 1 - A New Practice for a New Reality

Work No Longer Has Clear Boundaries

I remember the time when work ended when you closed the laptop. Those times are long gone.

Most of us have, in the past seventy-two hours, received more change-producing, project-creating, and priority-shifting inputs than our parents did in a month, maybe even in a year.

I feel this is correct, but it’s hard to verify.

Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.

I agree with this. I would add that your ability to create valuable things is directly proportional to your ability to disconnect from the global hyperactive hive mind. (Thanks to Cal Newport for the hyperactive hive mind term.)

You need to control commitments, projects, and actions in two ways—horizontally and vertically. Horizontal control maintains coherence across all the activities in which you are involved. (…) Vertical control, in contrast, manages thinking, development, and coordination of individual topics and projects.

Horizontal/vertical is a confusing concept for me, but I do do something like that.

There is no reason to ever have the same thought twice, unless you like having that thought.

I find it hard to believe, but I think I remember this quote from the very first time I’ve read the book. It was very influential for me. It enforced writing everything down in a trusted system.

Chapter 2 - Getting Control of Your Life: The Five Steps of Mastering Workflow

Most decisions for action and focus are driven by the latest and loudest inputs…

Even before I was a productivity machine I am today, I had a productivity system. It wasn’t very good. It was much better than having no system, at least. I clearly remember being very surprised when I met people that had no system at all and were just living their lives driven by the latest and loudest inputs.

And what about that e-mail from human resources, letting us know that blah-blah about the blah-blah is now the policy of blah-blah?

I’m sure Murderbot would have an appropriate reply. Something like: “This process is unnecessarily dramatic.”

At 3:22 on Wednesday, how do you choose what to do? At that moment there are four criteria you can apply, in this order: context, time available, energy available, and priority.

To my big surprise, I also remember this quote from my original reading. I remember how this simple rule was eye opening. Context, time available and priority were obvious, in retrospect. I think I was already making decisions with those inputs. The big improvement was realization that available energy is also a factor. Sometimes you just don’t have the energy for that complicated thing that needs to be done. Realizing you should schedule it for the time when your energy is at its highest (for me early in the morning) is the right thing to do.

The Six-Level Model for Reviewing Your Own Work

• Horizon 5: Purpose and principles
• Horizon 4: Vision
• Horizon 3: Goals
• Horizon 2: Areas of focus and accountabilities
• Horizon 1: Current projects
• Ground: Current actions

Very similar to Cal Newport’s multi-scale planning.

Chapter 3 Getting Projects Creatively Under Way: The Five Phases of Project Planning

A final 5 percent of projects might need the deliberate application of one or more of the five phases of the natural planning model.

I guess I just don’t have projects that fit into that 5 percent. I never felt a need for the natural planning model.

Part 2: Practicing Stress-Free Productivity

Chapter 4 Getting Started: Setting Up the Time, Space, and Tools

Interruptions can double the time it takes to get through everything.

I think double is an understatement. Being able to maintain focus is crucial.

You must have a dedicated, individual, self-contained workspace—at home, at work, and even in transit.

I agree with this more and more as the years pass. A finely tuned and almost perfectly optimized workspace significantly increases productivity.

Chapter 5 Capturing: Corralling Your “Stuff”

Clarifying requires a very different mind-set than capturing; it’s best to do them separately.

I very much agree.

Chapter 6 Clarifying: Getting “In” to Empty

Right now you probably have between thirty and a hundred projects.

Sometimes it feels like the list of projects goes into infinity. The good news is that the actual number of projects is probably a two-digit number. That’s a number that a human can feel comfortable with.

Chapter 7 Organizing: Setting Up the Right Buckets

…the Weekly Review is the critical success factor for marrying your larger commitments to your day-to-day activities.

I would add - the quarterly review is also critical.

Chapter 8 Reflecting: Keeping It All Fresh and Functional

You will invariably take in more opportunities than your system can process on a daily basis.

I remember posting on Twitter many years ago if it’s just me or are there more people like that. I guess it’s all of us.

Chapter 9 Engaging: Making the Best Action Choices

Research has now proven that you can’t actually multitask, i.e. put conscious focused attention on more than one thing at a time; and if you are trying to, it denigrates your performance considerably.

If Newport’s books have taught me anything, they have taught me the value of focus. If Allen also agrees, I consider it to be written in stone.

Chapter 10 Getting Projects Under Control

If you aren’t writing anything down, or inputting into a digital device, it’s extremely difficult to stay focused on anything for more than a few minutes, especially if you’re by yourself. But when you utilize physical tools to keep your thinking anchored and saved, you can stay engaged constructively for hours.

To quote Allen: “Your mind is for having ideas, not for holding them.”

Part 3: The Power of the Key Principles

Chapter 11 The Power of the Capturing Habit

Have you ever completed something that wasn’t initially on a list, so you wrote it down and checked it off? Then you know what I mean.

Add this to the list of things I remember from the first read. And yes, I do that.

Chapter 12 The Power of the Next-Action Decision

I am an old man, and I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. —Mark Twain

This describes me more than I like.

Too many meetings end with a vague feeling among the players that something ought to happen, and the hope that it’s not their personal job to make it so.

This reminds me of Murderbot: “I don’t know who was going to fix it except it sure as hell wasn’t me.”

Chapter 13 The Power of Outcome Focusing

As Steven Snyder, an expert in whole-brain learning and a friend of mine, put it, “There are only two problems in life: (1) you know what you want, and you don’t know how to get it; and/or (2) you don’t know what you want.”

I find Allen’s system solving both problems. It helps when you know what to do, but it’s overwhelming. It also helps clarify your thinking to figure out what you actually want.

Chapter 14 GTD and Cognitive Science

Your mind is for having ideas, not for holding them.

One more thing that I remember from the first time I’ve read the book.

Chapter 15 The Path of GTD Mastery

It’s Easy to Get Off Track … and Easy to Get Back On

Don’t worry if a bad day, week, or even a bad year happens. You can get back on track.

Conclusion

Review Getting Things Done again in three to six months. You’ll notice things you might have missed the first time through, and I guarantee it will seem like a whole new book.

I have read this book three times so far. I will probably read it again in a few years.