Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity Paperback – March 17, 2015

I read the first edition a few years ago and gave copies to everyone on my team. It was very actionable. This 2015 edition is not that.

This new edition goes into more theory, but that makes it much harder to use as a concise guide of how to get things done.

I loved the first edition, but the 2015 edition was tedious to read and I didn't have the patience to get through it. Too bad he ruined a good thing. It would have been better if he'd added a companion book with all the non-actionable theory, or separate chapters.

Months before purchasing this book, I read an article that discussed GTD and got interested interested in implementing some core ideas I gleaned from that abbreviated reading into my work flow. I didn't think there was that much more to it.... but then I took the time to read this book and I am glad I did.

Many of the core ideas of GTD are very simple, but an understanding of WHY those ideas have stood the test of time as opposed to other approaches isn't immediate obvious. With breadth, depth, and optimism (and in a concise, well-articulated, non-condescending manner), David Allen walks you through implementing a system to get complexity out of your head and onto an external/extended mind.

From this book, I was expecting mainly productivity tactics or "hacks", but instead I got a very comprehensive treatment of not just "getting things done", but how dealing with "low-level" or "trivial" things in our lives is essential for freeing ourselves to engage bigger issues. This book is not just a very practical volume, it is a work of philosophy in the sense that it explicitly states a path of living.

Summary: For anyone new to GTD, go ahead and buy this 2015 version, or save some money and buy the paperback original for $1.50. For anyone who already has a GTD book, just reread it and take a pass on this one, there's really nothing new.

I purchased the original in March 2001 for use with my Palm Pilot. I subsequently purchased the Outlook add-in around 2007; and my company had a GTD consultant onsite and provided us access to GTD Connect in 2008. I've found the workflow and methodology useful. The underlying original strength of GTD is that the book not only states "what" has to happen, but through a specific methodology also "how" to make it happen.

I was so excited about this 2015 update, with my expectations of entry to the digital age that I pre-purchased in Nov 2014. Just received the book today and I'm sorry to say that David is essentially punting on digital-age specifics in favor of generalities. Further, David admits that this is not a rewrite (though he did "retype the original manuscript").

I'm actually fine with the retype vs rewrite though - as he states, the core ideas and methodology of GTD remain the same. But the reason I went to GTD in the first place was that it provided specific workflows incorporating paper and pencil and Outlook and PDAs - he had done the work to figure out what works and I was happy to adopt his recommendations.

Since the original release there has been a profound shift in the use of technology - hardware, software, mobile and cloud. 2015 finds us in much more diversified and integrated data input/output environment than what the Palm and MSOffice suite offered in 2000, and so there is a very good reason to update the "how" part of the equation to manage this new information capture and task-list ecosystem.

In the new edition, the author provides some digital guideline feature specifics (software outline program should allow for sub-headings, expand/collapse ability), even more generalities, but mostly just derails the digital conversation of any 'how' by sweeping particulars under the carpet with a few ambiguities of "what" needs to be done, not "how" to do it, "Make sure you create comfort with the [computer] applications ["used for developing and capturing project plans and collateral"]. It will behoove you to do regular reviews and updating of this content and keep it current with consistent purging and reorganizing."

Punting on digital specifics of today's workflow world because, in his words, “the rate of innovation in this area means that any specific software program can easily be outdated, upgraded, or undermined by the next new thing", and that he has admittedly "hopped out of the fray, opting instead to provide a general model for how to evaluate the usefulness of any tool" is, for me, not useful. I *know* there is a plethora of digital tool options, and I wanted him to do the work and figure out what works. Fine, publish a revision when the tools change, I'll buy it. That's why he and his team get paid the big bucks. But if I wanted to spend my time figuring the complexity of tools out myself I'd have done that from day one. To me, this would be like Lonely Planets back-peddling on restaurant and hotel reviews. "Oh, there are just sooo many these days, let us tell you what to look for instead,,,, try to find a restaurant with lots of people in it, and look for a hotel with clean sheets." Uh, yea.

The original methodology and task-driven workflow remains true in the 2015 book as in the original. The "psycap" and other psychological drivers and underpinnings are interesting in the new book. But whereas I was confident that I had a pretty holistic system set-up as a result of the original book (and actually, as much a result of a smaller digital footprint, and I know I'm not the exception), I now feel, with this "completely updated" edition, that I have half a system with a digital divide, a "black hole" as the author even alludes.

I understand all the high reviews, the methodology is still very good as described, and yes, freshened. My rating of this book is as a version updated for what we would all agree is an increasingly digital world and unfortunately, whereas the "what" might be explained, I find the book lacking on the "how". I agree that it has helped me refine my thinking about how to use GTD in the digital age,,, i.e., I now think that I cannot rely just on this one book as a holistic model of how to get it all done ;)

For anyone new to GTD, go ahead and buy this 2015 version, or save some money and buy the paperback original for a $1.50 and you'll learn the essentials that have not changed. For anyone versed in GTD, I offer David's statement from this new book: "...whenever anyone loops back through the material, they invariably have a response like, "Oh my God, this is totally different information and perspective" than what they had remembered from earlier, "it was a totally different book each time!" So if you have an earlier GTD book? Just reread it and you'll likely get the same "new" experience and fresh perspective as from this 2015 book, particularly given that there really are no digital age specifics that many of us were hoping for.

I have mixed feelings on this book. I feel that over the years I've organically developed a very similar system as what David describes in his book. That said, the mere fact that David goes in to detail describing his system adds clarity and refinements to my existing system. Some of the things I did, I did not not even realize I did until they are mentioned in the first part of the book.

However, the implementation section of the book is wayyy too long, and honestly could be half as long or maybe even a few short pages. Hearing about all the executive offices David has been in and how to use things like post it notes and notebooks make it hard for me to take his actual implementation of his strategy serious.