Any other authors out there like David Allen?

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Peopleware is (I hear) a good book. It's based loosely on flow and talks about how task switching is bad because of the ramp up time involved, and how a good, quiet work environment is necessary for certain kinds of book.

Flow itself was a good book, but I couldn't read past the first half or so. Ironically, the book didn't seem to be written by someone in a flow-state, or cause a flow-state in me.
 
Peopleware is an excellent book -- a very streetsmart look at project management from a software development perspective. For some reason, even though I'm not a professional programmer, I've always been attracted to books on software project methodology and software project management research. Programmers, analytical by nature, are very good at empirically determining what works and what doesn't, and how this doesn't necessarily comport with our assumptions. For instance, Peopleware was the first book to argue and back up with metrics that giving programmers individual offices instead of mere cubicles dramatically increased productivity, despite the ostensible increase in overhead. I believe Microsoft continues to adopt the office-per-programmer approach as a best practice. I'm looking forward to reading DeMarco and Lister's newest book, Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency.

I wish I could be as excited about Flow as so many people on this board are. I don't really disagree with anything Csikszentmihalyi says; I just think he's milked a rather simple concept into numerous book-length publications, where a single essay would've been sufficient. Abe Maslow seemed to place the theme (he called flow "peak states") in a more appropriate perspective. The one exception in Csikszentmihalyi's work is his exposition on the research he did on flow vis-a-vis the Experience Sampling Method: Optimal Experience: Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness.
 
I just think he's milked a rather simple concept into numerous book-length publications, where a single essay would've been sufficient.
That's how I feel about the book as well. I reference it a lot because it's the fountainhead of a lot of other stuff, but I almost always disclaim it by saying the book itself is dry.

Thanks for the pointers on the other books.
 
Axialent

Go to the website for Axialent ... there are an number of pdf articles that can be downloaded and they complement the GTD information in a variety of ways. Some that I have found interesting and very closely related are about making and keeping commitments. Fred Kofman one of Axialents principles and his CD series on Conscious Business are good also. Here is the website for the resource center. http://www.axialent.com/eng/resource_center.asp
 
Some of my fav's

In no particular order, and not at all a thorough inventory...

PsychoCybernetics (Maltz)
What to Say When You Talk to Yourself (Helmstetter)
Atlas Shrugged (Rand)
Effective Executive (Drucker)
Release Your Brakes (Newman)
Tiger's Fang (Twitchell)
Anything by John-Roger
Candide (Voltaire)

and, most recently, The Shadow of the Wind...
 
Speed Reading

Can anyone give me some advice about particularly helpful speed reading classes. I am a General Manager with loads trade articles and internal reports to read and feel like I am also falling behind on my "personal development" type reading. I currently read about 700 wpm but would like a course that would increase that substantially as well as my comprehension?
 
I have some books to recommend. I learned of each of these books (except for the Ellis book) on this site.

By far the most important book I can recommend is The Feeling Good Handbook by David D. Burns. It is a true tour de force despite its sappy title. It should more properly be titled Workbook rather than Handbook. The book works only if you complete the exercises within 30 days after starting the book. It will teach you to face your demons and overcome them. Just like GTD. This has had more impact on my life in this last year than anything else.

Jinny S. Ditzler's Your Best Year Yet provides a nice organizational structure for creating year-long goals. I have done goal-setting before. But I found her structure to be just what I needed. I used this book to set goals for the June '04 through May '05 year. It was a useful exercise.

Smart Choices by Hammond, Keeney, and Raiffa is a layperson's guide to doing cost-benefit analysis. Cost-benefit analyses conflict with my deep-rooted humanistic tendencies but they do have their place. This is an important book for helping me structure important decisions. I just read it in the last week, so it has not had any signficant impact yet on my life. But it is clearly an important tool for my toolbox. I do intend to start using it.

Self-Help Without the Hype by Robert Epstein is out of print. I just finished it this week as well. It takes about an hour to read. I learned nothing new from it. It presents psychological behaviorism in a novelistic form, where the main character has weekly meetings with a fictionalized version of BF Skinner. Despite learning nothing new from it, this book gave me a well-needed kick in the butt to use behavioristic techniques to eliminate a bad habit. The actual technique I decided to use was placing side bets, an idea I got from Albert Elllis's Overcoming Procrastination.

Epstein reiterates the point that we each must find our own path. I do feel that GTD has a place in the pantheon of innovations right next to the invenstion of Arabic numerals. It is that important. But we all know that some people are just naturally organized and productive and don't like GTD. Others are disorganized and unproductive and don't like GTD. So we must each find what works for us. Epstein is a hard advocate for behavioristic techniques. But he stresses in his book that he will not tell us which particular behavioristic technique we must use. We will each learn this for ourselves by failing with some techniques and succeeding with others.

I have read a good number of the books mentioned by others already in this thread. To be perfectly honest, many of those books just were not useful for me. But I would never attempt to minimize the impact these books have had on others.

Lastly, I suggest that those who are interested explore www.emofree.com . It is free and it may be of some use. I have found it to be inconsistent and yet, nonetheless, to be breathtakingly powerful at times.
 
Two more books, not from the self-help shelves

"The Executive Brain: frontal lobes and the civilized mind", by Elkhonon Goldberg, is an excellent book on how the brain works, focusing on higher-level integrative activities and decision-making.

"Quality is Personal", by Roberts and Sergesketter, is a quirky book about the benefits of measurement (actually statistical quality control) in daily life. It has helped me in developing better habits and skills. It was intended to help people really FEEL how quality control techniques improve things, but, judiciously applied, it can be useful.
 
1. The path of least resistance - Robert Fritz (amazing)
2. Your Life as Art - Robert Fritz (as above)
3. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance - Robert Persig (makes you think)
4. Pychocybenetics - Maxwell Maltz (great tips and tricks)
5. Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want - Barbara Sher (practical good advice)
 
Flylady

I have to put in another plug for Flylady, who has a lot of the same approach as GTD, just expressed differently.
 
moises said:
Jinny S. Ditzler's Your Best Year Yet provides a nice organizational structure for creating year-long goals. I have done goal-setting before. But I found her structure to be just what I needed. I used this book to set goals for the June '04 through May '05 year. It was a useful exercise.

Lastly, I suggest that those who are interested explore www.emofree.com . It is free and it may be of some use. I have found it to be inconsistent and yet, nonetheless, to be breathtakingly powerful at times.

I like Ditzler's book too, and agree that it gives a useful structure for goal-setting. However, the emofree website set off alarms and bells for me. I strongly recommend that anyone with emotional/psychological issues consult local professionals of impeccable reputation. You can ask your physician or clergyperson in confidence for recommendations (you trust them, I hope). A good therapist will be happy to discuss his/her credentials and expertise. Contrary to the claims on this website, there are no 2 minute cures for years of depression.
 
mcogilvie said:
I like Ditzler's book too, and agree that it gives a useful structure for goal-setting. However, the emofree website set off alarms and bells for me. I strongly recommend that anyone with emotional/psychological issues consult local professionals of impeccable reputation. You can ask your physician or clergyperson in confidence for recommendations (you trust them, I hope). A good therapist will be happy to discuss his/her credentials and expertise. Contrary to the claims on this website, there are no 2 minute cures for years of depression.

I agree that anyone with serious issues seek professional help.

That said, I believe that for people without major psychological illness, self-help is worth exploring. Procrastination is a problem many have. And others on this forum have recommended books, like The Now Habit, to deal with procrastination. Albert Ellis has a good book called Overcoming Procrastination. Of course you could also visit a mental health professional to help you with your procrastination problem.

I would recommend that people read and practice what is in The Feeling Good Handbook by David D. Burns. That has been of great benefit to me and to many, many people. Likewise, I strongly recommend that people give EFT a try. Just as with cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), with EFT you rank your emotional distress on a numerical scale. If the distress does not diminish after practicing EFT, then EFT did not work for you. If the negative emotions did not diminish after practicing CBT, then CBT did not work for you.

It's not unlike GTD. For me it was a godsend. I've recommended to numerous people. So far none of them have implemented it. I've given The Feeling Good Handbook to some people. They did not implement. I have seen EFT help other people. The very people who admitted being helped by EFT had no interest in pursuing it.

I suggest that people with serious illness seek professional help. I also recommend that rational stable people take a rational approach to methods and practices that are unusual. First, do no harm. If you think that tapping a few acupuncture points will do you harm, don't do it. If you have a scientist's perspective, test it. Report your experimental results here.

My results have been uneven. EFT is not a panacea for anything. I have found it more useful than doing nothing for emotional distress. I have found it useful for overcoming blocks to implementing GTD more fully. And I have used it to bring someone in minutes from the midst of a full-blown raging panic attack to light-hearted giggling-filled banter in front of the very object that had instigated the attack.

I have no training in mental health. Thanks for reminding us that there are serious problems for which a visit to mental health professional is the best option.
 
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