Making It All Work has arrived

And I like MAW as an abbreviation more than MIAW, but time will tell on that. This is David Allen's follow up to the excellent oragnisational book, Getting things done (or in Australia, strangely, How to get things done).

This book does several things:

  • Reflects on the success of GTD and the many reactions, misunderstandings and questions that have arisen as it has infected the entire world (chapters 1-4),
  • Meditates on the underlaying values which make the 'horizontal' workflow stuff really hum along ('Getting Control' - chapters 5-10),
  • Spends much longer on the 'vertical' level of organisation - from 'runway' to '50Kft' or from actions to life goals ('Getting Perspective' - chapters 11-18).
I will post random reflections as I word my way through it, but for now, here's the first thing it has helped me with. I had struggled with projects that needed to be reviewed more than weekly. What if I have to do a string of time-restricted actions within one week?

My solution had been to put additional deadlines in my calendar. the MIAW solution is far neater - to acknowledge that some projects need to be reviewed more frequently, and so reviewing them should be placed in a checklist for daily or two-daily routine.