“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.