Making It All Work

by David Allen

Viking Adult (256 pages)
Keyword(s): Nonfiction, Self-help
Dates read: December 30, 2008 - January 02, 2009, Rating: ****

David Allen's book Getting Things Done has had a big impact on how I think about organizing my life. I'm a huge believer in getting things out of my head and into a trusted system so that I can focus wholeheartedly on whatever I'm engaged in (though just because I believe in it, doesn't mean I'm always successful at it).

Making It All Work is in many ways a re-telling of Getting Things Done. Allen recognizes that many people who try to build their own GTD system have difficulty in specific areas, and the new book spends a lot of time explaining what those difficulties are likely to be and how to deal with them.

It's not a book that I can really recommend broadly. However, if you've read the original and you have struggled or fallen off the wagon, this refresher course might be just the thing you need. It certainly inspired me to dust off my system, do a complete brain dump onto paper, and then organize everything into projects and next-actions. I feel better having done it, and I hope to keep my system up and running again.

For what it's worth, I'm currently trying out OmniFocus on the iPhone and Mac as my task-management system. I really like the location-sensitive aspects of the iPhone app.

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