There was no question in the team’s mind that this should be the first book we reviewed on the site - David Allen’s Getting Things Done. 

As a busy physician I tried several different organizational systems over the years, and never truly felt  any served my real needs optimally.  It was during a meeting with Dave Lindahl in Boston in May of 2005 that I first heard of this amazing book, and at Dave’s encouragement I purchased it that evening and read it on the flight back to Montana the next day. 

The results of Allen’s simple system has been nothing but revolutionary in my life, the life of my partners in this business and our real estate investing business, and my family.  Allen’s premise is pretty simple - you can’t be organized and productive if your mind is cluttered and stressed.  The publisher even expounded further - “Only when our minds are clear and our thoughts are organized can we achieve stress-free productivity and unleash our creative potential.” 

We’ve found his suggestions of creating a comprehensive record of all the “projects” in your life, every realm of your life, and organizing the “next actions” you need to take to accomplish those projects to be extraordinarily liberating, and productivity has increased in our setting exponentially. 

I’ve just been on Barnes and Noble’s site reading reviews of this book - interestingly the low rated reviewers appear to have not even tried Allen’s approach, and several eschewed the “simplicity” of the system.  Amazing - that’s what makes it truly work.  The busier you are, the more you need this book.

The biggest initial downside in our opinion is that it takes most people an entire day to gather all the loose ends in your life and “tie them down” with Allen’s suggestions.  Your investment of time and effort will return itself over and over - starting with a better night’s sleep that first night after getting started. 

Another warning - Allen’s Getting Things Done system has evoked almost a cult like following - you may be next………

A repeated disclosure - for the convenience of our readers we’ll be posting a link to either Amazon or Barnes and Noble to make it easy for you to purchase a book that interests you.  Your time and fuel costs make it much less expensive to order the book and have it shipped right to your door.  You can’t have too many great books in your home / business library - we’re collectors of great books ourselves.  The few pennies that we receive from the books purchased through these affiliate links we pledge to donate to one of our One Percent for the Planet charities. 

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