Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Brett M. Nelson - Wednesday, January 4, 2017
It's that time of year where people reflect on things they would like to improve in their life. As a software developer one area that may need improvement is organization and the book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen may provide some help with that by introducing the Getting Things Done methodology.
We will call it GTD from this point forward.
Laid out in 3 sections:
- The Art of Getting Things Done
- Practicing Stress-Free Productivity
- The Power of the Key Principles
Getting Things Done lays the ground work for the core concepts of GTD by describing the methodology and benefits in the first section: The Art of Getting Things Done.
The second section Practicing Stress-Free Productivity goes into detail more details on what your work space may need. How to get started, or as David describes it "Corralling Your 'Stuff'". Processing, Organizing, Reviewing and Doing are also covered.
The third section The Power of the Key Principles covers some of the "whys?". What is the reason behind collecting tasks or ideas in the inbox. What is the benefit of making decisions on what the next action is. And focussing on outcomes helps train the mind to for the more creative thought work of todays knowledge workers
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen describes a system of capturing, determining next actions, doing/delegating/defering as appropriate, and retaining information based on it's potential relevance. Will you be able to implement the system the first time you read the book? Probably not because every ones system if going to be different. But if you read it again after you have been using the system for a while you will probably uncover more nuanced ideas to help you improve the system you are evolving.
What do You Think?
I think Getting Things Done could help most of us find some areas we could improve if we wanted to be a little more organized. Do you have a system or method you would like to share? Let me know by leaving a comment below or emailing brett@wipdeveloper.com.