Get Everything Done

Fun idea!

Best when you know you need a change, but you don't know what it is:
How to Make your Dreams come True, Mark Forster

Best for Goal Setting: Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day, Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky

Best for life advice: 4000 Weeks, Oliver Burkman

Best Little-Known book: Making it All Work, David Allen

The book with the greatest padding : useful content ratio

The Five Second Rule, Mel Robbins

(The rule appears as 3 paragraphs in Steve Peters' The Chimp Paradox)

For the neuro-diverse folks I've been really enjoying this one:

Order from Chaos: The Everyday Grind of Staying Organized with Adult ADHD By Jaclyn Paul

It is mostly GTD type tips but she presents some really helpful and thought provoking stories about how some of us think differently.

Brent

(Apologies for post length; this is a revision of a blog post I wrote)

For a book that made me think differently about tasks and productivity, I'd suggest skimming _Life Admin: How I Learned to Do Less, Do Better, and Live More_ by Elizabeth Emens.

The book has helped me see the admin in my life–and who does it–differently. So while I can’t say it was a great book (I skimmed and skipped whole sections of it), I can say it was a very *useful* book and it has affected how I think about and approach the work I–and others–do.

_Life Admin_ is a book for the normal people who have never heard of and don’t care about GTD or Pomodoros or Bullet Journals. It’s a book for people like the author: an overworked, overbusy, single working mom who faces a world of administrivia and wonders, “How do people *do* it all?”

Emens’ chief innovation, for me, was separating the idea of “admin” as a concept and type of work all on its own, from the tasks that it supports. Grocery shopping is a task; figuring out what the meals will be this week and creating the grocery list is the admin. Admin is the work *around* the work.

For instance, she breaks household projects down into three key parts: “planning/research, decision-making, and execution.” Most people think of the execution as the task, but that's usually the least of it; what winds up happening is all of that work usually falls to one person.

She writes: "If you want to share a project, decide who does each part. For instance, one person can do the front-end research, and the other can do the back-end implementation. You can make the decisions together or make one person the decider."

This quote illustrates one of the key differences of Emens’ book from typical productivity tomes. The latter are focused on how the individual can organize and optimize their environment. But _Life Admin_ focuses on how people deal with admin while in relationship to other people, and how some partners -– no matter how they feel about admin -– bear the burden of domestic admin, child care admin, meals admin, bill-paying admin, etc. These are mainly women in heterosexual unions, but even in gay or polyamory relationships, Emens makes the point there is typically one person who does the admin.

Emens discovers in her surveys and focus groups, and in her own life, people vary in their emotional reactions to the idea of admin, from dread to denial to grim stoicism to not-a-big-deal to actual enjoyment. Each person in a relationship needs to understand how their partner views admin so they can set their expectations of each other (and the task( accordingly.

Somehow making that admin visible -– or seen as relevant –- to partners who deny or simply don’t care about the importance of admin, is also a key theme of the book.

I resonated with Emens' point about how admin can be “sticky”: whoever does a particular admin chore first is often stuck with the job whether they like it or not, whether it’s dealing with the landlord or planning the kids’ play dates. In my own life, my wife did all the admin related to the utility bills because they were in her name when I moved in with her. I now also consciously take the lead, for example, in helping with meal planning and grocery-listing when I realized how much I was taking that admin for granted and how frustrating my wife was finding it.

Avrum -

I just officially finished "Order from Chaos". It had lots of familiar stuff but my top two take-a-ways were 1) the importance of keeping things visual and not "out of sight out of mind" and 2) the pros and cons of hyper-focus and how to break out of it if it isn't meeting your goals.

Sometimes being able to focus on a single project for long hours is considered a "super-power" and can produce some amazing results. Sometimes that hyper focus can be a take us further away from our goals. I'm frankly fascinated by the focusing subject lately and have been searching around to learn more about it. So far, I think my approach to go deeper on that topic has been a healthy one :) but who knows....

I have found more practical help on this forum and Mark Forster's blog than in any one book.
Some of the books that have been mentioned here I have read and enjoyed.
However, the more the book is a complete system I find the more difficult it is to implement.
If the author uses peculiar language unique to the particular system, the language needs to decoded. This is perhaps necessary at times.
I find David Allen's books to be intellectually satisfying, and as a framework it is useful, but it is difficult to implement all at once. It is like a beginner learning to play tennis by reading a book written by a Wimbledon champion, or learning to play piano from a book written by a concert pianist describing his advanced techniques.

The methods here such as Simple Scanning, No-list, FVP, and dynamic lists are easier to understand and implement, and can be combined. This is enough to get started and it can keep evolving. The forum has hacks and tips that are concrete, but are perhaps too much so to be put in book form. I have recently read through previous posts, and will come across tips that I have adopted and continue to use. I have used some version of a long list for about 10 years. I also use a No-list, FVP, and dynamic list when I feel the need, and then I return to the long list. Scheduling timeblocks to focus or brainstorm (a la Cal Newport) hasn't worked for me, and I might pick an afternoon to do what comes to me, unscheduled. One gets better at it too, and I have found myself devising workarounds, and combining long list with other methods.

Perhaps Mark Forster's best ideas are his most recent ones on the blog and forum since his books have been published. (?)

The book "Making It Work" by David Allen has been mentioned in posts in this thread.
I own the book, and I have been re-reading it lately.
I also have the book "Getting Things Done for Teens". This book has charts and pictures and graphs to make more appealing to teenagers.
I am impressed with these books, and David Allen is good at explaining, and is comprehensive - he doesn't seem to have left anything out. As a intellectual framework it is very good, and can be inspiring and motivating and give mental order to the process. He likely has had much experience in coaching which has sharpened his understanding and communicating and given it a comprehensiveness which is awe-inspiring.
However - what is presented is an ideal that is perhaps never achieved but only approximated. It is at an advanced skill level, which probably needs years to learn, about something that is done. It is not just an intellectual system like a philosophy or theology. It results in activity and productivity. So for a beginner or novice, GTD might be overwhelming and discouraging. I don't know that is David Allen's fault though. He likely has on his website a lot of help to climb the mountain. Many of these books are alike in that the reader must decide if and how to implement the advice given. There might be other ways to conceptualize the process, and explain it, from a different perspective, that might be more agreeable to one's personality, however, it still has to be translated into action, and the book can't do it, but it is up to the reader.

So one can read all the books every published on it, but in the end each of us has to do it.
Perhaps someone who keeps a long list up for a month and using Simple Scanning can organically evolve their method into something more, so that once the car is started and moving it can steered. I have found it difficult to implement David Allen's flowchart, or other flowcharts - the work doesn't flow.

The art of taking action by Gregg Krech - http://www.thirtythousanddays.org/product/the-art-of-taking-action-lessons-from-japanese-psychology/

The best books on goal setting I've read are:

"Release Your Brakes!" by James W. Newmann

This book is BTW the original source of the concept of the "comfort zone", you may have heard of that a couple of times.

The other one is

"The 10X Rule" by Grant Cardone

In terms of "system" both of these books are almost the same.

These books are also written for people who mean it, who really want to reach their goals and not just dabble in "self-help" lit.

These books are very compatible to Mark's DREAMS method.

Also, in his "Secrets of Productive People" book, Mark says a few very useful things about goal setting.

Finally, Michael Hyatt's "Your Best Year Ever" contains a solid approach to planning your year with personal goal-setting.

Just searched my local library for "Release Your Brakes" and it came up with a train driver's manual.

Oh well.

Looking at the Goodreads reviews though I think I have to read it so just ordered a copy.

Thanks for the recommendation.