Maybe the best productivity book so far, this book has inspired me to build a system to get things done. When it comes down to principle, these are the two cores that David emphasized…

(1) capturing all the things that need to get done, both now and later, both big and small into a logical and trusted system. And it has to be created outside of your head and off your mind, so that you can vacate it for the thing you need to do.

(2) disciplining yourself to make front-end decisions about all of those “inputs”, so that you will always have the “next actions” that will move you forward to get things done.

The process itself consists of 5 stages:

1. Collect: capture all the things that might represent something you have to do!
2. Process: as you have your “stuffs”, the next thing is to process it, that is to question them with the following questions: “What is it?”, “Is it actionable?”, “What’s the next action?” (if it is actionable), and just do it if the action takes less than 2 minutes.
3. Organize: processing your stuffs will organize them into 8 categories, those are “trash”, “incubation tools”, or “reference storage” if it’s not actionable. Actionable items will go to “Projects” and “Project plans” if it requires multi-step actions, otherwise, you can either delegate it (”Waiting list”), defer it to be done at specific time (”Calendar”), or do it as soon as you can (”Next action”).
4. Review: Simply putting it into the list will have no point if you don’t remember the list. Therefore review is necessary. David suggested weekly review, and as you’re doing it, you’ll trust your system more, and you’ll be more motivated to keep it.
5. Do: The process is created for you to feel good about what you’re doing at any point of time. And for that, David mentioned the challenge very clearly, that is “to migrate from hoping it’s the right choice to trusting it’s the right choice”.

Here is the image that explains the whole process much better…

To help you with the challenge of choosing the right actions to do, David suggested the 4 criteria to pick the action to do; those are context, time available, energy available, and priority.

To prioritize your actions, I found that the six-level model that David shared is helpful, it starts with your current actions, current projects, area of responsibility, 1-2 years goal, 3-5 years goal, and eventually your life goal.

The book also suggested many more details and tips to increase your productivity. I’m also still in the process of integrating this system into my life. I hope to share more updates on the actions/tools I’m experimenting to get things done.

Enjoy the book, and get more things done!
Robert