I found
the ideas in Getting Things Done to be exhilarating. The focus on personal productivity
by corralling and shaping the flow of information has really helped me see my
work in a new way.
David Allen's concepts embrace the transition from "work" being
a place to a process. My goal, as I implemented the ideas in the book, was to create for myself the
best possible environment for effective and efficient living. Clearing mental
space for new growth in all my projects felt right.
I appreciated the author's
practical information (the actual how-to steps and checklists) as well as the
philosophical underpinnings. His illustration about how, and why, bright people
procrastinate made me smile.
He asks the reader to imagine slicing and tasting
a lemon--which should, if you are reading right now, cause your mouth to
salivate. Then he explains how the same principle of creative thought applies
to piles of unprocessed work. He describes a smart, sensitive, creative person
thinking about needing to do his taxes. That thought leads to wild, what-if
scenarios (WHICH forms do I use?! DO we have receipts?! What if we get
audited?! We're getting AUDITED?! Oh no!) that lead to thoughts of going to
jail. "And so," he writes, "a lot of people put themselves in
jail, just thinking about their 1040 tax forms." (p. 241 paperback copy).
What appeals to me is taking that same, creative, what-if energy and applying
it towards imagining, as he puts it, "wild success." The whole
principle of imagining wild success at the beginning of ANY project suits me.
For me, the word "excellence" is easier to see than
"success." So I started looking at each project and asking myself,
"what would excellence look like?" That was a good way of generating
what success would be for that particular project.
