Getting Things Done: Book Review

February 8, 2010

At Raise Small Business Marketing we are constantly studying and learning to help our clients.  We follow many message boards, blogs, web sites, articles and books to make sure that we stay on top of current and future trends and ideas.  On our blog we will offer “reviews” of these learning tools, but not in the traditional way.  Our goal is to find the three to five things that stood out the most to us in our niche and how we might be able to use these ideas.

Getting Things Done

By David Allen

Getting Things Done is a productivity book, which is not necessarily marketing related- but time consumption is a big deal for many small business owners.  Proper use of time by small business can be the difference between success and failure.  Allen also argues that our productivity is directly related to our ability to relax, which I agree with wholeheartedly.  There is nothing worse than trying to relax knowing how much is on your plate at the office.  And when your office is at home, as mine is, it can make you crazy and really not ever allow you to relax.  So I was excited to get this information from David Allen.

1. Do it, delegate it, defer or drop it.  Those four words really do sum up Allen’s system.  At it’s simplest, you take every actionable item that comes across your desk or from your inbox and handle it one of four ways.  If it is something that can be handled quickly, do it; if a subordinate can handle it,let them; if it can’t be dealt witgh right now or shouldn’t be, put it in a tickler file until it is possible or appropriate to complete; or if it is not something that can be handled, let it go or throw it away.

2. This system is designed to not only help workers be more productive, but also allow them to be productive in the heat of the day.  The system can be used on your inbox on your desk, your mail, your email inbox or any other number of places.  It is a good system, that allows you to look at your life and work from different levels, from close up (day to day tasks) to far away (5-10 year plans).

3.  My main problem with this book is that I really just summed up the entire book in two bullet points, where Allen took 250.  For a book about productivity there i an awful lot of fluff and repeated information.  I honestly feel like the book could have been broken down into a flow chart that appears in the book and maybe 10 other pages.

In my opinion, while the book is fine, it wasted a lot more of my time than it saved.  With all the information available on the web from sites like Lifehacker, there is really no need for the book.  I do utilize parts of the system but still hobble together my index cards and Outlook as well.  If you really want ideas on productivity it isn’t bad, it just certainly was not worth the price I paid for it.