Book review: Getting things overdone

"Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity"
By David Allen
Viking, 267 pages, January

By Porter Anderson
CNN Career

(CNN) -- No one can accuse David Allen of being shy.

"Welcome to a gold mine of insights into strategies for how to have more energy, be more relaxed, and get a lot more accomplished with much less effort," he writes in the opening line of his introduction to his own book, "Getting Things Done."

And pride goeth before the format. If Allen can get your life half as busied up as this book, you may be looking for some good meditation guides next to calm you down.

There are quotes in italics, some of them very good (Lily Tomlin: "I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific."). There are straight-up condensations of key points in the text ("You'll be surprised how many two-minute actions you can perform even on your most critical projects"). And there are footnotes (as in a suggestion that your company's Dumpster Day fall on "Christmas Eve Day or some similar near-holiday that falls on a workday"). And all that's just in the margins.

In the body of the text, there are diagrams, flow charts, lists, bold type, large type, italicized type. If anything, one of the book's best quotes seems to have been forgotten by Allen and his Viking editors and designers as soon as they'd used it, Albert Einstein's wry "Everything should be made as simple as possible -- but not simpler."

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This could have been simpler.

The book reads like a headache on paper.

While some of Allen's efficiency points clearly are valid, useful and not hard to apply to life and work, things seem to have gotten out of hand. Remember the days when we all lugged around those massive Covey organizers in binders and special cases with plastic inserts and refill pages? Well, if Stephen Covey's 1990 "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" was five or six habits too many for you, Allen's "Getting Things Done" will have you begging for mercy.

•   There are "five stages of mastering work flow."

•   And there are "five phases of project planning."

•   Allen offers three options for handling something that requires no action. Don't think too hard about that.

•   He cites two things that need to be determined about each actionable item.

•   He names three options for handling something that needs a "next action." Of these three, a favorite is sure to be this buck-passer: "Delegate it -- if the action will take longer than two minutes, ask yourself, 'Am I the right person to do this?' If the answer is no, delegate it to the appropriate entity." Maybe Allen wrote his manuscript before so many United States corporations, from Deere to Gap Inc., had laid off those "appropriate entities."

•   He gives you "three models for making action choices."

•   He proposes "the four-criteria model for choosing actions in the moment."

•   He describes a "threefold model for evaluating daily work."

•   And then there's a "six-level model for reviewing your own work." Here, Allen resorts to what he calls his "aerospace analogy" to give us some really big numbers: At 10,000 feet, you're reviewing your current projects; at 20,000 feet, you're into "areas of responsibility"; at 30,000 feet, it's "one- to two-year goals"; at 40,000 feet, you're into your "three- to five-year vision"; and at 50,000 feet and higher, you're simply talking "life."

•   There are three basic principles for "brainstorming and out-of-the-box thinking."

•   Four sets of things, Allen says, can be left where they are when you start organizing your workspace. Thank goodness.

•   There are even three "options" for dealing with negative feelings from broken agreements.

And yet, here's this irony from the final chapter of the book: "My intent is not to add more to the plethora of modern theories and models about how to be successful." Too late -- by our unofficial count, he's just added 44 points to the pile.

The two-minute rule

In order to "stay in touch with people who are broadcasting and reflecting these behaviors and models," Allen directs you to his Web site -- which turns out to be a "Getting Things Done" boutique. Among the products here, you can find the "Getting Things Done" Black (or Brown) Note Taker Wallet with a pen, five pen refills and 10 paper pad refills -- for $109, or a $99 "Web price." You can also buy four double-sided laminated templates with Allen's principles on them for $15.95 ($12.95 Web price) -- these will remind you of the weekly review, the "project planning trigger list," the "natural planning model" and more of Allen's tenets. He's even got baseball caps. And seminars, coming to a venue near you.

David Allen's two-minute rule from 'Getting Things Done' Do it: If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it's defined. Delegate it: If the action will take longer than two minutes, ask yourself, "Am I the right person to do this?" If the answer is no, delegate it to the appropriate entity. Defer it: If the action will take longer than two minutes, and you're the right person to do it, you'll have to defer acting on it until later and track it on one or more "next actions" lists.

Allen has been praised by some for this two-minute rule of his -- if there's some task that will take two minutes or less, just do it now. Truly, that's not bad. We all know how a job that might have been done in two minutes can turn into two hours of procrastination.

But around page 93, you may find yourself beginning to falter as you read, "The labeler is a surprisingly critical tool in our work."

The labeler?

Yes, the automatic labeler.

"Thousands of executives and professionals and homemakers have their own automatic labelers," Allen writes, "and my archives are full of their comments, like, 'Incredible -- I wouldn't have believed what a difference it makes!' the labeler will be used to label your file folders, binder spines and numerous other things."

The labeler. Thousands of homemakers and business types are writing Allen to thank him for steering them toward a labeler. Can you imagine what the insides of their joyously labeled homes and offices must look like?

Enough.

Guess what we can do in under two minutes in one clean, efficient, soul-satisfying action that need be broken down into no parts, no categories and no "key principles?" -- We can toss this book right out the window.