Reading Report

Estrategias Interv. En Psic. Organizacional

NRC:21849 Sección: 002
Mtra. Claudia ÁngelicaArellano Bautista
Abundis, Mendivil Sofía 201516263
09/11/19

Getting things done

David Allen

Organizations has been experimenting multiple changes, with this has emerged a paradox:
people has a better quality of life, nevertheless they are adding more levels of stress. This
situation requires reaching a new level or way to establish the things that must be
organized. David Allen, American consultant, has been focusing his labor to find effective
strategies to execute the tasks we have. According to Allen (2001) “A major factor in the
mounting stress level is that the actual nature of our jobs has changed much more
dramatically and rapidly than have our training for and our ability to deal with work” (p.5).

Furthermore, industrialized world was transformed to “knowledge work”, term

created by Peter Drucker to designate the difficulty people have to determinate when the
work is finished. Nowadays there are not edges about the projects people have, thus this
condition could derivate in the conception of more work.

Indeed we have to considerate two relevant reasons related with those changes. First, the
organizations are in constant morph mode and most of the professionals are changing
careers (Allen, 2001). Therefore David Allen proposes a new approach of time
management.

Although many consultants suggest having a “bigger view” as a solution to be

organized, sometimes this could cause issues like: distractions at the day-to-day, the stress
created by an ineffective personal organizational system, and finally the loftier levels and
values, because when they are clarified, it raises the bar of our standards, getting
overwhelmed. As a result people must place first their values and focuses on primary
outcomes (Allen, 2001, p. 8-9).

This vision reflects about the necessity to organize, based in the values, with the
objective to have more power in our projects. To explain the “ready state” Allen (2001)
offers a simile where, if you throw a pebble into a pond, the water would respond according
to the force and mass of the input. As a result we discover that responding inappropriately,
overreacting or underreacting will lead to less effective results.

First, the book suggests having a clear mind to respond with the correct attitude. In
other words people must consider unfinished, those activities that are not clear, and capture
them in a system outside of the mind. Secondly review the level of commitment and the
steps you must follow and finally review those actions, keep reminders and to empty the
tasks that are not generating value to our projects.

Based on these points, the model proposed by David Allen explains five stages to master
the workflow:

1.-Collect

For this stage, people must get into the state of mind like water (the ready state).
Before to process you need to have a sense of the volume of your “stuff” you have, it gives
you an idea about where the end is, and this let you do not pay attention in other
information irrelevant.

It is helpful to mention to be careful meanwhile people is selection the information,

especially if there will be a purge of information, because this data would be relevant in
other stages.

Moreover Allen (2001) considers more helpful use a physical system to liberate our
brain to solve other kind of situations. Sometimes people try to remember all the things in
their minds; however this is exhausting and increase the stress levels.

2.-Process

After collecting all the tools and information needed, we must identify the meaning
of the task we have and decide the steps we are going to take. This stage have five results:
You should trash what you don´t need, complete those less-than-two-minutes tasks,
delegate, sort into an organizing system reminders of the actions that require more time,
and finally determinate larger commitments or projects (Allen, 2001, p. 120).
 During this stage people should process the top item first, process one item at the
time and never put anything back into “in”.

3.-Organize

What we found after these steps, it is the feeling of more power or control in the
situations. Our minds are more focus just to manage what we must do in seven categories:

A projects list, Project support material, calendared actions and information, “next
action” lists, a “waiting for” list, reference material and a “someday” list (Allen, 2001, p.
140). In order to be more effective it is necessary to determinate visual, physical and
psychological boundaries, to separate and have a better overview of your tasks.

Furthermore this would be helpful to dimension future projects or necessities.

4.-Review

Productivity needs a constant review to assure an optimum state; indeed reviewing

is a prerequisite for have more control. In order to have correct results and better choices
people need to look at in all this, and determinate when, what to do, how often and ensure a
consistent work.

Allen (2001) suggest review your system as much time as you need to feel
comfortable, and always paying attention first to the calendar, because it gives you time-
space parameters to establish what to do with the action list and take decisions about
moving a task of category (p.183).

Consequently as consultants it is a key to manage the activities looking at the

current realities and priorities in a context to do not take irresponsible decisions or
complicated the solutions. Moreover it would be essential booked meetings to weekly
review the changes in the organization and shape new ways to improve the project.

5.-Do

Take decisions is an relevant step Allen (2001) describes three frameworks to make
easier to take action: the four-criteria model for choosing actions in the moment, the
threefold model for evaluating daily work and the six-level model for reviewing your own
work (p.191).

The model four-criterion model considers first the context, this evaluates if you are
in the appropriate place to handle the problem. The second factor is time to figure it out the
actions to take, after people should look for increase the levels of energy and redirect to
what they can do, and finally rank the priorities to achieve the goals.

The threefold model focuses on doing predefined work, doing work as it shows up
and defining work. This methodology prevents to be wrapped in activities with non-sense
or interruptions that do not guide you to your final goal.

Finally the six-level model depicts the long-term, medium-term and short-term
goals as a runway. This gives us a vision about some critical points of our professional and
social life. Clarify
from the bottom
to up allow us
explore our life—
style and values
to increase
awareness about
our path. In this
way we reach
more clarity about
our
priorities and do
not waste our
time or energy
trying to reach
goals we do not
connect with.
 Fig. 1. Workflow diagram-processing

The model created by David Allen offers a solution for the issues everybody has
faced, not only in an organization, even in the daily-life. Allen has identified the situations
where people got stuck, creating ways of organizing; it does not matter the dimension of the
problem. Indeed this book guides the reflection about how a two-minute-activity or small
problem could derivate in a bigger one, if people do not have a correct system to organize.

The author offers different options to implement as delegate or delete it, this give us
a minimalistic perception of the way to schedule our activities and allow us to develop and
performance in a better way the commitments we have.

Finally it is relevant to mention the analysis David Allen made about the changes
professional careers and organizations are facing and how we must find new ways to
organize in order to performance a good role in our projects.
Reference:
Allen, D. (2001). Getting things done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. New
York: Penguin books.