David Allen's book, Getting Things Done is one of the hottest time management books on the market today. Getting Things Done is not only the title of his book, but is a time management system he created. Most fortune 500 companies employ some or all of his techniques. Here is a brief review of the core principles of his system.

The core principles of Getting Things Done (GTD) are collect, process, organize, review, and do.

Collect:

David wants you to dump all the ideas and tasks that you need to get done that are in your head down on paper or some other collecting device. He emphasizes stress free productivity. The basis of this is to get everything out of your head and onto paper.

Process:

Now deal with every item you have written down. If it takes less than two minutes David says to do it right away. If not, then either delegate it or defer it. If an item does not require action than either file it, throw it away, or put it in a file for possible action later.

Organize:

Allen then describes the lists to keep track of and organize your tasks. They are "next actions," which means what is the next action for this task. The next list is "projects," anything that requires more than one task to complete becomes a project. The "waiting for" list is for tasks you delegated to someone else to remind you to check on them again. The last list is "someday/maybe," this is for things that will be done at some point, like learning Spanish.

Review:

Allen wants you to review every list you have every day to help keep you on task. Any item not done this week, needs to be reviewed weekly for the next action step.

Do:

This one is obvious, but you can't spend all your time organizing and making lists. At some point you need to take action.

Getting Things Done is a great time management book by David Allen. He has many books and tools available to help you achieve more with less.

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	About this book : Category: Time Management Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (December 31, 2002) Language: English Pages: 267 pages Available from: Amazon ISBN-10: 0142000280 ISBN-13: 978-0142000281 Awards Received: N/A

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