Ready for Anything

52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life

By: David Allen

Narrated by: David Allen

Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

Discover David Allen's powerful productivity principles and vastly increase your ability to work better, not harder - every day.

The "guru of personal productivity" - Fast Company - asks listeners what's holding them back and shows how all of us can be "ready for anything" - with a clear mind, a clear deck, and clear intentions.

Ready for Anything offers you ways to immediately:

Clear your head for creativity

Focus your attention

Create structures that work

Take action to get things moving

Allen's simple yet powerful principles help us master the mental game of productivity - what he calls "managing your mind, not your time." In motivational, bite-size lessons, we learn how to bring the calm focus of the martial artist to the onslaught of choices, decisions, and new circumstances we are faced with daily. Each principle - from "speed up by slowing down" to "the value of a future goal is the present change it fosters" - encourages us to think in fresh ways and to take action in order to achieve more relaxed control, ease, and fun in all our activities.

With wit, inspiration, and know-how, Ready for Anything shows us how to make things happen with less effort, stress, and ineffectiveness, and lots more energy, creativity, and clarity. This is the perfect audiobook for anyone wanting to work and live at his or her very best.

©2003 David Allen (P)2003 Simon & Schuster Inc. All Rights Reserved. AUDIOWORKS is an imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division, Simon & Schuster, Inc.

David Allen is a productivity champion

Would you consider the audio edition of Ready for Anything to be better than the print version?

Not necessarily. I own both, but I am a fan of highlighting.

Who was your favorite character and why?

David Allen. He knows what he is talking about.

What did you learn from Ready for Anything that you would use in your daily life?

The Getting Things Done system is nearly fool proof. This direction can be life changing in the event that you put these ideas into practice.

Explore a new approach to managing time-and life!

If you could sum up Ready for Anything in three words, what would they be?

Promising clarity, challenging.

Who was your favorite character and why?

David Allen could have presented this new and refreshing approach to time management using examples of clients and company executives who have engaged his expertise. However, he has chosen to honestly and openly share his own experiences in an practical and engaging way to explain how we can get trapped by what at times seem like overwhelming workloads and expectations, or dreary and uninteresting tasks whether they be in work or personal life. While explaining the causes and solutions to these issues - building in capacity to cope with the additional ever expanding possibilities for using one's time and being better prepared to cope with life's unexpected circumstances, David Allen also gives candid illustrations of his own life experiences and how much better he has been able to manage using his well researched philosophy and approach to what I think might have once been termed 'effective time management'.

What does David Allen bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

As David is reading his own book, the experience for me was like sitting in on a live presentation of a person who had something well researched and very special to share with anyone who was interested in managing their many life demands more effectively. In a way, I got the impression that David was on a journey of self discovery and exploring approaches to self fulfillment which I would not have appreciated as much if I had read the book and focused on understanding and applying the approach which he is expounding.

What did you learn from Ready for Anything that you would use in your daily life?

I found the ideas and strategies so well explained and promising of their effectiveness that I am starting to use David Allen's management approach to my personal life and work life tasks, to sort, order, prioritise, resource, execute and evaluate on a regular fortnightly basis. David suggests it can take from one to two years to fully integrate his work/life management strategies and philosophy into one's modus operandi, but already after only 6 weeks, I am discovering benefits of applying his approach and feeling better able to accommodate requests, to undertake extra tasks and to respond to additional creative opportunities when they arise.

Any additional comments?

A good book for people who are feeling overwhelmed with the tasks they want to complete or creative opportunities they would like to take up, if they only had the time!

It's good book for people learning GTD and have read the first book

Don't start with this one but it's a good book to deepen the general principles outlined in the original GTD book

A thought-provoking follow-up to GTD

This more informal and less-technical follow-up to Getting Things Done is aimed at people who've read the first book, and could use some more inspiration and thinking around the topic. As a big fan of GTD, I found this hugely enjoyable and inspiring, and would strongly recommend it.

Indispensible

Best book ever on creating peace in one's life through getting organized.

Excellent follow-up

This is a follow-up from David Allen's first book "Getting things done". I highly recommend both, but this book makes better sense if you read "Getting things done" first.

"Getting things done" tells all the techniques to get things done. "Ready for anything" is a collection of essays about how to make sure the system works better, and thoughts about how to organize yourself and how to think about this. This is one of the audiobooks I listen to the most, as the different thoughts David Allen has about things becomes useful for me as I learn to organize my life, my stuff and my thoughts.

My advice: Buy "Getting things done" first. Use it for a month or three, then buy this one. And re-listen to it every six months. Or when you need some advice or inspiration for your life.

Rendundant Material

This is a good book, especially if you have not read the original "Getting Things Done." I felt there was a significant amount of overlap between the two books, and generally preferred the delivery in the original better.

If you are new to Dave Allen, you might like "Getting Things Done" better. If you are already a follower, you might scan through the pages of the print book for content review before committing to the audio book.

Worth the investment

This book includes several practical and helpful suggestions. Worthwhile.

Good enough but perhaps get hardcover

Dry and I had difficulty finishing it (still have to). But, I like David Allen as far as self development and personal efficiency go. Getting Things Done which I have in hardcover is more to the point and contains actionable recommendations. Personally for this sort of book I prefer hardcover.

Excellent follow-up to Getting Things Done

Love it.
Thank you David.

This books is a perfect follow-up, to the point as always, but feels even sharper.