Over the last few days I’ve been reading through Making It All Work, the eagerly awaited follow-up to Getting Things Done. For somebody who writes a lot about productivity and personal growth here at Organize IT, I often have a hard time reading such books. Most advice you get from them can be distilled down considerably, but of course a fifteen page book wouldn’t sell so well. However, I found MIAW a comparative joy to read. It not only discusses how GTD works but how the mind works when it comes to doing stuff. It’s so full of common-sense discussion. Rather than thinking, “That’s a great idea but personally I’d do it differently,” like I get with most books, I find myself nodding along in agreement at what Allen has written. It’s difficult, after all, to argue with common-sense.
MIAW really fills in many of the holes and criticisms GTD had. Much of the faults I’ve felt about GTD in the past have been answered well here. Where the original book was open to a lot of mis-interpretation due to its lack of detail at times, MIAW goes into much more depth to clarify things, including a nice, detailed example about a fictitious Gracie’s Gardens, to demonstrate the key points. In particular, Allen attempts to resolve one of the bigger criticisms aimed at GTD by expanding it out of the business world and into other areas of your life. However, this is with mixed success. Despite the value of getting things done in both your work and personal life, it acutely avoids the fact work is often a big, hard chore. Allen still has some way to go to convince me that my work and personal life should be viewed as one and the same.
What rather irritated me about this book initially was the GTD lovefest that covered the first few chapters. Now I appreciate that GTD is very popular, arguably even a phenomenon as far as these sort of things go. But is it really as world changing as Allen suggests? This is not to say that he goes on some ego boost because he does admit to failings in GTD. However, to me this part of of the book felt out of place and was probably primarily there to pull in newbies to Allen’s system.
The book however, is a very good read and primarily revolves around achieving control and perspective, with the latter being about the horizons of focus, something that was barely discussed in the original book. It’s been dramatically expanded in MIAW, so much so that it could cover a book all to itself. It fits comfortably into the bigger picture now, effortlessly resolving a further criticism of GTD. There is little excuse to not gain a higher perspective after reading it.
The control element revolves around the traditional GTD workflow, with slight word changes: capture, clarify, organize, reflect and engage. Much of this is common GTD knowledge written in a fresh and detailed way but what’s particularly good here is that Allen focuses a lot on getting you out of the capture stage and onto the doing stage. If you listen to the average GTD-er they will talk at great length about what fancy tools they use to capture stuff but never about how they take all that and do something with it. MIAW goes a long way to resolving that.
Does this book stand up well on it’s own? It’s not as to-the-point and simple as the original which will almost certainly make it less appealing to any new audience. I’d probably recommend you read and experiment a little with GTD first if you haven’t already, otherwise many of the points made in MIAW may go over your head. What is certainly true though, is that it’s a great accompaniment and will give any GTD-er a fresh shot of motivation and food for thought. And even if David Allen’s system isn’t your thing, there is so much non-GTD specific smart discussion here that you could apply it to whatever methodology you use.
February 23, 2009 at 10:44PM
A fair yet concise review.
“What rather irritated me about this book initially was the GTD lovefest that covered the first few chapters.”
Amen to that! Chapter two in particular is syrupy self-aggrandizement.
“Probably recommend you read and experiment a little with GTD first if you haven’t already”
Despite this book’s many merits and the vociferous chorus of claims coming out of David Allen and his coaches, this book should NOT be read before the first book. No way. But therein lies MIAW’s real value. It takes almost any GTD practitioner to higher levels. It has especially prompted me to start really fleshing out my 30K, 40K and 50K horizons and tying them to my projects and one-to-two year goals. Stuff at 10k & 20K that I have trouble tying to my goals and vision have received special, “Why am I doing this?” scrutiny.
My oversimplified summary of MIAW might be that control comes from optimizing and expanding the five stages of standard GTD, Collect, process, organize, review, do (for the life of me, I can’t figure out why he renamed these steps in MIAW).
PERSPECTIVE comes from trying to be really honest and intentional at all horizons.
My opinion is that there is lots of worthwhile fodder here for anyone already serious about GTD but skip the first three chapters.
February 24, 2009 at 03:32PM
Thanks for the comments Mark. It was difficult to decide objectively at first whether this could be read separately from GTD. However, I think the reason I was able to really appreciate many of the points it made was because of my own personal experiences. In the absence of a David Allen book that is half-way between MIAW and GTD in detail and complexity I would definitely recommend that a person read both though.
March 4, 2009 at 12:34PM
Hmm, this book looks good. The last book I read was by Donald Trump, I might pick this one up at the local library!