Reddit reviews Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
We found 9 Reddit comments about Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Getting Things Done (GTD) is a classic for a reason. When I've implemented it I had the "mind like water" that the author puts as a goal. The other thing I love about it is that it allows for bottom up organization. You can just dive in and use it to better your life immediately. Lots of books want you to sit down and plan you perfect life before you can use the system. This doesn't do that and that's great.
How to win friends and influence people is another classic. I've been impressed with the people who took dale carnegie courses and the book has some good stuff in it, though I haven't re-read it recently so I'm not sure how actionable it is.
The Tools is a great book. It isn't for everyone and every part isn't for everyone. But it gives 5 actionable brief mental exercises that do what they purport to do. Each exercise or Tool is designed to counter a specific problem many people have. The authors are therapists and the Tools come from their practices. Many of them are very woo sounding, but if its stupid and it works then it ain't stupid. Every Tool I've used has worked, often shockingly well. But I haven't used them all because they don't all apply to me.
Yup! It's a book that explains a productivity workflow called Getting Things Done or "GTD". Basically a bunch of good tricks strung together:
https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity-ebook/dp/B00KWG9M2E
I can't express how useful this has been in my life.
> I know my time management needs to improve
You need Getting Things Done.
I use my Outlook task list to store everything I need to do, rather than trying to keep it all in my head, and it reduces my stress enormously. Every morning I start the day by cleaning out my Outlook inbox.
If someone needs something from me that I can't complete the same day, I reply back to them letting them know I'm working on it.
Throughout the day, I check my inbox periodically and clean it out again. I have new email notifications turned off, so they don't distract me.
This episode and Equestria Games fit into the category of bad episodes with fantastic lessons.
Equestria Games was based around "forgive yourself," which is one of most difficult things to learn and apply. However, that episode has since been eclipsed by Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep? as most effective way that moral has been taught in MLP.
Applejack's Day Off's lesson was about productivity. Pretty much every business book ever, from The Four Hour Workweek to Getting Things Done, is about doing things faster.
These are critical, crucial skills in the modern day and can help people get jobs. But the way the lesson was packaged in this episode was frankly pretty boring. Although a realistic apple harvesting productivity workflow with spreadsheets and cost-benefit-analysis charts could have also been pretty boring.
All in all, they did an okay job for the moral they were trying to teach.
Looks like u/FI-or-fly is talking about this book.
First, congratulations! Exciting to be going out on your own.
Getting your contracting license is just the first step to running your own business. There is SO much to know. You may know the contracting field backwards and forwards, but as a business owner you also have to know accounting, bookkeeping, marketing, legal (business formation), management, and more.
While I can't give you any advice about contracting, I've owned a company for more than 17 years. I'd like to suggest a few books I think will really help you on the business/marketing aspects.
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
How to work ON your business, not IN it. Great book on building systems and processes in your business.
Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs
What the numbers really mean. How to read the financial statements and know what they mean to your business.
Getting Things Done by David Allen
The best productivity book out there.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Not as much a book on productivity as it is on priorities, leadership, and purpose. Probably the most impactful book I've ever read... it was given to me at my first job (almost 20 years ago) and I reread it every couple of years.
If you aren't into reading books, at least take some online courses in business, marketing, management, etc. Watch some TED talks. Go to a conference or two.
And be sure to post here and ask questions when you're stumped... lots of really helpful people here in /r/Entrepreneur!
I understand how you feel – I've been going back and forth between paper and digital for a long time. I love the feeling of paper planners, but it's a bit iffy to change dates etc., and that one day when you forget your planner you wish you had a digital one in your phone.
I've settled for two great apps which I enjoy to use and help me greatly with planning. The calendar app is Timepage. The second app is OmniFocus, which adheres to the Getting Things Done mentality.
Both apps are for iOS, not sure what's out there for android.
Doesn't look like it is in Kindle Unlimited, but I got a lot out of Getting Things Done
https://smile.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity-ebook/dp/B00KWG9M2E/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1543589702&sr=8-3&keywords=getting+things+done
> And not to forget things
I hope you're not trying to keep it all in your head. Your head asplode. In the absence of external issue tracking, I'd likely roll all the issues (or at least the ones I've spotted) into my personal time management system so they don't get lost. If it's not written down somewhere, I will forget it. (I don't know where you are with WRT time management; for myself, I'm in the middle of trying personal Kanban against my current GTD setup, but if you're new to TM, Limoncelli's book is a good place to start.) But all that is just a temporary fix.
> because no issue tracking exists her and some people actually vocally despise and reject this idea.
The "why" here would be as interesting as the "who." If it's fellow IT teammates, I'd find out if it's opposition to performance metrics. I've long resisted using ticket metrics to judge personal performance because they're crap for that even when people aren't gaming the metrics, so you might need to get assurances that your management won't try to do that. If it's your users, perhaps they've had problems with tickets falling into a black hole never to be seen again, in which case you have some organizational issues to sort out and some trust to rebuild.
In any case, it sounds like you know the value of an issue tracking system. Hold onto that in case it takes a while to get everyone to come around on the idea.