How functional is the reorganization for the Anderson report?

by Will

Getting Things Done
If you’ve talked to me for more than 10 minutes the past week you’ve heard me mention how I’m reading Getting Things Done, a book on better organizing your time. I’m halfway through and while I do think it’s a helpful, sensible book — I also find it hilarious because of the incredibly vague “business” specifics these type of books use as examples.

How good could that conference potentially be? How effective could the training program be, or the structure of your executives’ compensation package? How inspiring is the essay you’re writing? How motivating the staff meeting? How functional the reorganization?

On one hand, I understand why David Allen, the author, chooses such non-examples as “how functional the reorganization.” The bulk of his audience is probably busy executives, and by keeping it somewhat vague, but still “businessy” he’s sure to not leave any of them out. Still, good writing is having the guts to choose a specific example, knowing that it will illuminate your point even if your reader has not had the same experience. If I were writing that paragraph, I would shamelessly use real examples from my current life:

How good could that sketch about the hyper-evolved burro be? How effective could PHP be for building the web site of that celebrity news magazine? How inspiring is the post you’re writing for the blog which you named after yourself? How motivating is the footage of your friend punching another friend in the nuts which you’re using to open a five minute homage to the Three Stooges? How functional the reorganization?

I’ve read a handful of these “make yourself a better businessmen” productivity books, but I’ve also read a handful of “you’re having a nervous breakdown” self-help books. They are almost identical in their tone. That chatty, just-between-you-and-me tone. The only difference is in the examples. The first has sentences like “Let’s say you’re planning a presentation for your vice-president” and the second has “Let’s say your husband has left you for your sister.”

How To Stop Worrying and Stop LivingThe only one that tried to cross both is the hilarious Dale Carnegie book How To Stop Worrying and Start Living which I read while super-depressed and unemployed in Cape Cod in 1995. It is the most subtly hilarious book I have ever read. Old-school Dale Carnegie tries to talk you out of depression with the same folksy advice and examples he used to psyche up salesmen in the 1940s. Sample chapters:

  • A Law That Will Outlaw Many Of Your Worries
  • Put A “Stop-Loss” Order On Your Worries
  • A Magic Formula For Solving Your Worry Problems

I don’t know — it’s probably a good book. How To Win Friends And Influence People is a truly good book, I think. But If I could bottle the humor I get from reading How To Stop Worrying And Start Living, I could be the most famous comedy writer on the planet Everywhere.