Methods for stress-free performance at work and in life

David Allen’s Getting Things Done was hailed as ‘the definitive business self-help book of the decade’ (Time) when it was first published in 2001, and GTD has since become shorthand for an entire culture of personal organisation that offers people a stress-free way to work and live.

Now the veteran coach and management consultant has rewritten the text from start to finish, tweaking his classic text with new perspectives on today’s workplace.

Allen’s premise is simple: only when our minds are clear and our thoughts are organised can we achieve effective results and unleash our creative potential. From core principles to proven tricks, Getting Things Done will teach you how to:

• Apply the ‘do it, delegate it, defer it, drop it’ rule to get your in-box empty
• Re-assess goals and stay focused in changing situations
• Plan and unstick projects
• Overcome feelings of confusion, anxiety and being overwhelmed
• Feel fine about what you’re not doing

What’s new?

Here are just a couple of the key areas that have influenced the revised edition.

• The rise of digital technology: the expansion of the digital world into our lives never fails to surprise, delight and overwhelm us. Accordingly, some of the earlier emphases on types of tools that are best suited to particular tasks have changed and the ubiquity of our new digital and mobile world is addressed.
• The 24-7 world: The necessity of dealing with a constant and complex barrage of potentially significant data, and the ease with which it can be accessed through technology, has increased dramatically. Whether your experience with it is ultimately positive or negative depends primarily on the application of GTD principles.

Today there is much more universal interest in the results that can be achieved with relaxed, focused control, and the realisation that it is not just a one-shot recipe of ‘time management’ tips simply for business professionals, but in fact a lifestyle practice, necessary to deal with the new world most of us are experiencing. David Allen regularly receives testimonials from a diversity of people around the world in a variety of situations about the life-changing value they have experienced applying GTD principles. This validation of the growing need across the planet for such a model has inspired the reframing of many of the examples and the focus of the text to support it.

The new edition of Getting Things Done by David Allen is available now.

David Allen is widely recognised as the world’s leading expert on personal and organisational productivity. His thirty-year pioneering research and coaching to corporate managers and CEOs of some of America’s most prestigious corporations and institutions has earned him Forbes‘ recognition as one of the top five executive coaches in the US. Time Magazine called his flagship book, Getting Things Done, ‘the definitive business self-help book of the decade.’