Image: Penguin Random House
The sequel to Getting Things Done: where GTD is the toolkit for control, this is the road map for perspective — knowing where you are and where you want to go.
Type: book
By: David Allen
When: 2008
Where it sits in their arc: After — the deepening of GTD
Where to get it / join: Making It All Work by David Allen: 9780143116622 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
What it is
Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life is Allen’s follow-up to Getting Things Done. If GTD answered the question of how to get on top of all this, this book answers how to make sure the right things are getting done at all. It organizes life around two axes — control (the GTD mechanics most readers already know) and perspective (the higher-altitude questions of focus, goals, and purpose). It is for readers who have tried GTD and want to understand the thinking underneath it, and for those who feel productive but not necessarily aimed in the right direction.
Core ideas
- Control and perspective — The two dimensions of being on top of your life: the mechanics of managing commitments, and the clarity about which commitments matter.
- The six horizons of focus — From the ground (current actions) up through projects, areas of responsibility, goals, vision, and life purpose. GTD operates mostly at ground level; this book climbs the ladder.
- The map metaphor — GTD gives you bearings; this book gives you directions, so the two together cover both where things stand and where they are going.
- Diagnosing the stuck — A framework for spotting why someone feels off — too little control, too little perspective, or the wrong balance of the two.
How it connects to the Guild’s practice
PKM systems are very good at control — capture, organize, retrieve — and often weak on perspective. This book is the corrective: it pushes a Guild member to ask what their second brain is actually for, not just how to tend it. It sits in the productivity / action-management lens (see The Disciplines — Many Lenses, One Room) but reaches up toward the goals-and-direction questions that PKM tooling rarely addresses on its own.
Related works
- Getting Things Done — The prerequisite. This book assumes you know the GTD method and builds the philosophy and higher horizons on top of it.
Notes from the room
Space for members to add takeaways and how they used it.