A book whose value is far beyond its price

I have learned GTD and tried many tools. But most of them are too complicated to implement practically to suit my own needs. Usually the GTD system have many things for me to worry about, such as labels, contexts, projects, and different levels of priority. Adding complexity to the management system sapped my energy that should be used to get real things done, and consequently led to the collapse of my planning. Then, I just abandoned my plans and lived as before, thinking that, well, this system should only be useful to those energetic businessmen who have a bunch of different tasks to deal with each day, not for people like me. “Zen To Done”, which I learned from a blog, offers a most simplified system to avoid this conundrum. This book provides a practical approach to manage tasks, time, and personal goals. The most important points in this book should be a simple and minimalist-taste task management system with specific goals in mind, and emphasis on the importance of setting routines and forming habits in a sane fashion. Sometimes, it is easy for one to get nonplussed by tasks or get lost in finishing tasks by “indulging” his/herself in doing trivial tasks with little value to his/her big goals. With year’s goal, week’s goal and daily MITs (Most Important Tasks) set in planning system in ZTD, one can easily find his/her way. All important tasks should be goal-centered. The author also writes that the ZTD system never forces you to change all your habits just in one night. Changing habits to accommodate to the new system takes energy. Changing too much habits at one time usually leads to giving up of the whole system. Everyone’s energy is limited and should focus on one thing at a time. Focus on fewer habits and after a year, a great deal can be achieved. This point is omitted by other management system and, IMHO, is the most important one in the book. This book offers not only its approaches on how to really “get things done” with stress on “do”, but also give an example and nice tables for readers to get a better sense of what an implementation of the ZTD system is actually like. Reading it is really worth the time.