Canter Bridge

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

As a guy with a high-demand life and job, I have a hundred reasons to need a book with a title like this. But as a natural skeptic regarding techniques—especially one that promises `stress-free productivity’—I have a million reasons not to read it. You see, I think wisdom and courage have a lot more to do with stewarding the high demands and attractive opportunities that come our way than do `how to’s’ and `tips’.

So I find myself pretty profoundly surprised by how powerful David Allen’s system—he might prefer not to have it called that—has been in my life. The word that comes to mind for its result is `serenity’. Not quite `stress-free’, that’s a bit of a stretch and not true to life as I experience it. But serenity over tension and productive order over chaos.

Allen’s goal is to free you up to experience a `mind like water’ by managing all the things that rattle around in your brain on any give day into holding tanks where you’re not wasting energy trying to remember them or regretting not having resolved them when you’re trying to think about something else. That mental liquidity is a martial arts term, Allen explains, that means `a condition of working, doing, and being in which the mind is clear and constructive things are happening.’ Using common sense that’s been refined by a lot of observation and a critical core of analysis, Allen’s system gets you there.

I find myself—as the author promises—much more likely to focus creatively on this task in front of me or to be present for this person who is locked in conversation with me.

I rave. I recognize it. I rave about this book. I don’t like people who rave overmuch or protest too loudly. But this book is worth every bit of fevered praise that has come its way.

It’s not about managing your time or finding more of it. We each get the same 24 hours. It’s about taking the courageous and wise steps that alone are able to create or restore productive order that counts for the long hall. And makes your mind like water.