Get Everything Done

I recently managed to get a relative copy of "How to make your dreams come true" through Amazon.co.uk.

I've started reading it and really like it and have ordered the other books of Mark's tonight, and of course, having found my way here, will get to using Autofocus.

So amid this praise, a straightforward question - Is "Dreams" going to get republished, either a printed book, ebook in some format etc, I'd love to spread the message and urge friends and family to buy the book, although just looked tonight and the only two copies are going for £70+ each!

Any update/comment appreciated!

Thanks!

LiberatedRebel

Wow, I just looked at amazon.de and there is a used copy for 114 Euro. Mark, some people a making serious money with your work. I too would propose a reprint so you can be one of them.

Okaaay, there's a new copy on amazon.com for $441.57. That must be one amazing book you wrote. I'd like to read it now, too. :-)

I asked Mark the same question in April, his reply is at

http://www.markforster.net/forum/post/716129#post720026

Note that he has just posted an excerpt at

http://www.markforster.net/blog/2009/6/3/acting-in-ones-own-best-interests.html

This certainly made me hope he follows up with electronic publication of the whole book

>>Jaroslav

Thanks for that, though if Mark himself would provide some further insight that would be great!

I really like the article today, there's a strong message in it and when I read it online and in the book it make absolute sense to me.

LiberatedRebel

Always worth giving ABEBooks a try for a second hand copy. (There was one a couple of minutes ago - and no less than 26 "Get what you want..."). At reasonable prices.

Will,

Is that abebooks.co.uk?

I can only see 1 copy of the book, but for a corking £2.99 though!

This is one of about half a dozen books I shall be recommending in my talk on Sunday. It would be excellent were it easy to obtain.

What's an economic print run? Anyone up for a Twitter campaign?

regards,

Will

Surely rather than reprinting it in paper, an ebook download (either free or via an online store) or on demand printing service like the one offered by lulu:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lulu_(publisher)

Would be a web 2.0 way to go?

Plus possibly more efficent to boot?!

After reading the beginning of this post, I got one of those copies from amazon.co.uk for a single figure continental transport included. Up to now, my reading speed lags Marks writing speed :)

Me again,

Just checked http://www.abebooks.co.uk and there is a copy from a German seller for a £98.97!

Of those people on the forums who **have** the book, have you used/benefitted from the techniques?

Thanks,

LiberatedRebel

I am re-reading for the third time "Do It Tomorrow" now with AF in mind. And it is being quite interesting. I hope there will be a forth book coming soon! If I have the opportunity I will buy the other books, too. ( I read DIT just a few weeks it was published, then re read it a second time slowly).

I have a near pristine copy of How to make your dreams come true on my bookcase, that I bought soon after it was released; however it is not available for sale even if some of those prices are tempting!

I have to admit, I was disappointed with the topic of the book as it was about achieving goals and not productivity like Mark's first book. At the time I read the book I had a lot of resistance to thinking about what I wanted from life so I did not not use any of the techniques suggested.

Its getting on for 7 years since I bought the book, but I am almost at the point where I am ready to reread it. Over the last year I have spent time developing my goals and will soon be looking at how I can achieve them and I'm sure Mark's suggestions will be valuable in helping me make progress.

If no one else provides comments on the book before I have read it I will come back and let you know my thoughts.

Out of interest, think the only reason I've noticed this change in my focus has been due to the blog I've kept for 2 years. When I first started writing many of my posts were about organisation and productivity, but now they are more about goal setting and reviews (although there are a few about autofocus as well).

"At the time I read the book I had a lot of resistance to thinking about what I wanted from life so I did not not use any of the techniques suggested"

I found the exercises in the book (especially in the Goal Achievement section) very useful in bringing to the surface things you might consider as your goals in life. I had the same resistance you talk about, but in actual fact Mark encourages building up this facet in bite sized chunks. For eg, having a goal on a subject that will take no more than a day, then extending this to longer time frames as the methods take root.

I hope you have a pleasant experience with it. I've picked it up again myself, as I found some of my long term goals going stale (mainly the result of not revising them). I am finding the same level of excitement building up as when I first set out my goals with the book 2 years ago.

I have just acquired a copy of Dreams (Mark you'll be pleased to know I now have the full set!) which I found for an excellent £5.99 on Amazon UK nearly new. I am looking forward to reading it hugely. AF has enabled me to get my "Do's" in better shape which in turn has made me realise that I actually had no real idea as to why I was actually doing many of them!! Through marriage, children, caring for elderly and working in a pressured environment I had lost sight of any dreams I may have had and become totally lost in the Get it Done culture, trying to fit more into less and less available/discretionary time, not doing it well and often not doing it all.

AF has enabled me to get some space to not have to spend seemingly endless tracks of time micro managing what I had to to (as opposed to actually doing it), I have my list I work through it. That in turn, i.e. the act of putting on to and reviewing the lists so regularly has really forced me to take a long hard look at my life again and what it contained and required of me, combined with a very timely easing of caring responsibilities, redundancy (which I see as a gift) and a golden opportunity to take my life in a new direction. Whilst I don't yet know where that will be I already know I am in for one heck of a journey finding out :-)

Sure, AF still has its short comings, we are all trying to develop the basic system to suit our many and varied needs through this forum me included, but AF has truly been one of the key aspects in my being able to reclaim my life, through giving me secure knowledge that what I have to do is in one place.. Thank you Mark for sharing your work so generously and for all on the forum who so freely share their knowledge and time.

I'll keep you posted! Oh, and I'll try and more succinct next time...

- Titch

I have all Mark's books, including Dreams, which I bought new on one of my London visits several years ago. I read it at the time, so it's already a bit hazy in my memory.

What I remember however is this. From Mark's 3 books, it's the one that appealed to me the least (I'd say the order would now be 1. DIT - 2. GED - 3. Dreams). This may be for the same reason as Kate mentions above.

But there is one bright idea in the book that struck me: the what's better list, which I tried to put into practice from time to time (alhtough never with any consistency).

In view of the discussion here, and taking into account that I'm several years further down the road, now may be a good time to reread it and see what I can get from it...

I also bought Dreams when it first came out. It represented a very different approach to Get Everything Done; its message about how to get what you want in life seemed very compelling. I was rather surprised when Do it Tomorrow returned to the question of productivity, the theme of GED, though of course in a more developed way. It was almost as if Mark had repudiated the thinking in Dreams. Is there some problem with the Dreams techniques that Mark discovered after publishing the book?

Having said the above, I have to say that my experiments with the techniques in Dreams were not entirely successful. In part this may be due to a difficulty I have in carving out the time/being flexible enough to give any new technique a proper chance of working. But maybe my problems related in part to a bigger issue I have with the approach of creating a vision. The best visions/goals are those which are simple and few in number. A good example is that of the professional athlete who is trying to break a record and will subordinate everything else to that end. But I want my life to balance quite a lot of different things, with the result that my vision, which Mark suggested you wrote out each day, was long, complex and not very visual. Therefore it was not very effective in pulling me towards it.

Of the other techniques in the book, I liked the What's Better List, which seemed like a good way to motivate oneself. I never quite got the hang of the dialoguing - when I did it it seemed to mirror the What's Better List.

I would be very interested in Mark's take on the Dreams techniques given seven years of hindsight and the different direction his techniques have taken since.

I received the dreams book 2 days ago and have started reading it. It echoes a lot what was being said in the goal setting thread. I had read the reviews on amazon a long time ago which were quite mixed. I can see why but I have to say I've really appreciated this book so far, probably more so than DIT.

It's definitely a little more out there in terms of how the book is written. I think the dialogue style is interesting though as it lays open some of the thought processes of M.F. I do wonder if the average person would do as good of a job coaching themselves from a 'future self' in comparison to a life coach.

As far as the exercises go, I've seen variations of them in other books but the style of the book really lends power to doing the three exercises collectively. I like the 'what's better list' and started doing that daily in an empty notebook I had that seemed to pretty to write in. It's a little more nuanced than ordinary journaling or writing a 'gratitude journal', both of which I've done on and off many times before.

Journaling is one of the activities I've been able to stick with for a long stretch of time, I think if I add a dialogue element to it, it will become more focused.

Like James T, would like to hear what the authors current self has to say about his prior work!

I've just been able to order a copy of 'Dreams' from AbeBooks.co.uk for just under £5 including delivery. They had just the one.

I'm looking forward to finding out which side of those mixed readers' responses I come down on.