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Ready For
Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life by David Allen Rating: DNR (Do Not Read) |
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Click on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Oz For the past few years, I’ve received
David Allen’s monthly e-mail with a productivity principle. I read them
quickly, and trash them. When I picked up his new book, Ready for
Anything, I did the same thing. My advice: don’t even bother. Allen
barely bothered, and that inclined me toward the DNR rating from page one.
That’s when Allen said he “tasked” someone to organize his productivity principles
into themes. He couldn’t be bothered to do that himself, proving what I long
suspected: his principles are fleeting and random, not based on any factual
data, and certainly not based on any overall pattern for success. Here’s an excerpt, Chapter 5, “Infinite
opportunity is utilized by finite possibility” (pp. 15-17): Trying to do it
all, have it all, and be it all
will exhaust the human mechanism. "More
and better" will always stretch out
in front of you, as you attain it. To
surf on top of the game instead
of drowning, infinite "everything you could
ever want" must be corralled into
doable, physical chunks. Expansive expressiveness
requires intelligence and conscious limitation to be
sustainable. The One-Minute Workflow Manager I've
given numerous "drive-by" radio and TV interviews, the type that
give you about fifty-three seconds to deliver the keys to health, wealth, and
happiness. They've forced me to distill my message to the bare essentials. A
typical question is, "David, what's the one thing we do that gets in the
way of being productive?" Here's my answer: "It's
not one thing but five things all wrapped together: People keep stuff in
their head. They don't decide what they need to do about stuff they know they
need to do something about. They don't organize action reminders and support materials in
functional categories. They don't maintain and review a complete and
objective inventory of their commitments. Then they waste energy and burn
out, allowing their busyness to be driven by what's latest and loudest,
hoping it's the right thing to do but never feeling the relief that it
is." How'd I do? I
merely bottom-lined the worst practices for the five stages of managing
workflow: collect, process, organize, review, and do. I can't give an
interviewer any one of these as the problem. You could do four of
these workflow steps really well, but let one slip and the whole thing slips
with it. The process is only as good as the weakest link in that chain. Most people keep stuff only in their head, which
short-circuits the process to begin with. Plenty of people write lots
of things down, but they don't decide the next actions on them. And even when
people actually think about the actions required (before it's in crisis
mode), they don't organize the reminders so that they'll be seen when they
are in the contexts where the action is possible. And even most of those
people who do get these lists together in a burst of inspired
productivity let their systems quickly become out of date and inconsistent.
As a consequence, without the care and feeding of their thinking tools, life
and work become reactive responses instead of dearly directed action choices. "So, David, what do we need to do
instead?" (Some interviewers actually allow another fifty-three seconds
for this follow-up question!) "It's a combined set of the five best-practice
behaviors," I tell them. "Get everything out of your head. Make
decisions about actions required on stuff when it shows up—not when it blows
up. Organize reminders of your projects and the next actions on them in
appropriate categories. Keep your system current, complete, and reviewed
sufficiently to trust your intuitive choices about what you're doing (and not
doing) at any time." I suppose I could have made it even simpler: “Focus
on positive outcomes and continuously take the next action on the most
important thing.” But who doesn’t know that? Consistent implementation of
that principal, fully integrating every aspect of our life, is the biggest
challenge – and not so simple. Each chapter has quotes from a variety of sources.
Here are the ones from the Chapter 5: If not controlled,
work will flow to the competent man until
he submerges. —CHARLES
BOYLE When
life demands more of people than they demand
of life—as is ordinarily the case—what results is
a resentment of life almost as deep-seated as
the fear of death. —TOM
ROBBINS It's possible to
own too much. A man with one watch
knows what time it is; a man with
two watches is never quite sure. —LEE
SEGALL Each
chapter ends with a box titled “By the way…”. Here’s what was in that box for
chapter 5: q
Have you lately gone
over your checklist of your job descriptions (for to seven key areas of focus
and responsibility)? q Have
you reviewed the five to ten areas of focus in your personal life (health,
finances, career, relationships, etc.) to ensure that you have all the needed
projects defined and keep all those intact and up to standard? The title of Chapter 5, like most of what Allen writes, sounds like it
makes sense on first reading, but really doesn’t mean anything when you look
closer. After my initial irritation at Allen “tasking” someone else to figure
out what he’s been writing, I became more convinced as I turned the pages of Ready for
Anything, that the wizard of productivity doesn’t have much behind the
curtain. Take a pass and do something productive instead. Steve Hopkins, October 28, 2003 |
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ã 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the November 2003
issue of Executive
Times URL
for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Ready
for Anything.htm For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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