​Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen is a true classic in productivity circles. For that reason, I'd put off reading it for ages, figuring I would've already heard its best ideas through other authors who've been influenced by it. To my pleasant surprise, I still found it useful to read about Allen's original system and picked up a few "good tricks" along the way!

As usual, the key takeaways are below, and you can find the full summary by clicking the link above.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The aim of Getting Things Done (GTD) is not simply to get more done.

• The point is to become appropriately engaged with your work and life and to eliminate distractions, stress and anxiety. You want have a mind like water, able to respond and focus when you need to.
• Open loops distract us and make it hard to focus. The GTD system gets these loops out of your mind and into a reliable, trusted system.

GTD involves 5 steps (the flowchart below summarises steps 2 and 3):

1. Capture. Put everything into physical or digital in-trays so you have no open loops.
2. Clarify. Separate out the actionable from non-actionable items. For all actionable items, decide on what the next action will be. If the next action takes less than 2 minutes, just do it immediately (the 2-minute rule).
3. Organise. Put your remaining ‘next actions’ on your calendar or on separate lists so they are available when and where you need them. If a task involves more than one action, treat it as a project and record it on a Projects list.
4. Reflect. Do a weekly review of your open loops and make sure your system is complete and up-to-date.
5. Engage. As long as you’ve done the previous steps, you can trust your intuition to decide what to focus on at any point.

GTD is a lifelong practice and you’ll get better at it over time.

• You can expect to get blown off course a few times, but it’s easy to get back on track.
• It can easily take 2 years to get to a stage where GTD feels fully integrated with your life.
• But you don’t have to implement GTD in full to benefit from it. Finding a few “good tricks” may be enough to make reading the book (or this summary) worthwhile.

As usual, you can find the full detailed summary on the website. If you found this summary useful, consider forwarding to a friend you think might enjoy it.

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​To Summarise​