Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity

GetAbstract Summary: Get the key points from this book in less than 10 minutes. The metaphor of the stress-free mind as a still pond encapsulates the message of David Allen's best-selling book. When a stone is thrown into a pond, the size of the ripples correspond to the size of the stone. Allen points out that the essence of stress-free living is getting the ripples of your mind to correspond with the size of the tasks on your to-do list. But you don't reach Allen's placid pond via a quiet, Zen-like path. Instead, you calm the waters of your mind by building and maintaining a rigid organizational system that's so efficient that you never have to worry about any task once it's been fed into the machine. The popularity of this book probably owes as much to the stress level of the book-buying public as it does to the level of innovation to be found in Allen's method of organization. Often, the actual time-management techniques that Allen offers can get lost in fancy jargon and fall short of his general observations about stress, productivity and the mind.