Filled with overall great advice, and a proven methodology and step-by-step program towards a more organized life.

Granted, the first half of the book wasn't particularly useful, since it had only two things:
* advice that seems a bit outdated in the digital age. At least to me and anyone that may have moved to a more paper-less life
* advice that, as it turns out, I was already doing. Perhaps just not to the extent that the book teaches.

The biggest takeway was by far the concept of completely emptying your mind, by taking notes, setting up reminders, and removing distractions, for 100% of your projects & goals. While I already relied a lot on reminders, a digital calendar, etc, the idea of going 100% on this never ocurred to me. But the principle makes sense. The brain doesn't deal well with time. We remember important things when they're not relevant or actionable. And then we forget about them in the worst possible situations. We're good at doing whatever is on our minds right now. We're not so good at controling what is on our mind right now.
That was for me the biggest take-away.

And it already made me adopt some changes in my life. I spent a few hours offloading a lot of my thoughts to digital notes & reminders. It might just be a temporary burst of productivity and motivation, but it already proved the book's point.

The roadmap for your life

Easy to read and easy to implement the techniques to have a better control of your life and your thoughts. For everyone who procrastinates and still hasn't find the right way to get back on track and take control of their life.

I'd heard about David Allen and his "Getting Things Done" system in the past, but I never paid it much attention. I decided to investigate further a little while back, and finally picked up the book two weeks ago. And now I've read it; and I expect I'll go back and re-read this book in a couple months. I may revise my rating at that time.

The things that irritate me in this book are exactly the things I expected might irritate me. There are plenty of the obligatory breezy anecdotes about the clients Allen has worked with and how impressed they were with the system; the margins of every page are filled with quotes; there are lapses into business motivation jargon; and there are numbered lists in droves. I skimmed some parts. But at the same time, there is something I didn't really expect: very concrete advice about organizational tricks and tactics, introduced with the words "let me assure you that a lot of the value people get from this material is good 'tricks.'" Recognizable meat! No wonder there are so many technical readers who have latched on to this guy.

Of course, I still have to see whether I can get the meat to work for me. It's possible that I'll char it into unrecognizability, or that it will give me food poisoning. But I think I've decided to try some of it anyhow.

The rating that i gave reflects the quality of the book rather than the general gtd system. the actual system is great, I've used it for about two weeks now with remember the milk and so far it has really made me more productive and focused. but separately the book really really sucks. i think this is a prime example of how long form text can be a terrible medium to communicate. if you read the "implementing gtd in rtm" blog post from 2008 it probably covers 33 percent of the book's material. the other 33 percent of psychological study tiradr and project managing 101 could be conveyed better graphically. the last 33 percent of the book (and I actually mean about 30 percent of all text in the book) is hype. I would recommend reading distilled versions of the book online rather than wasting your time picking out the actual gtd system from this haystack of bad prose.