This week, I committed to reading my highlights from David Allen’s Getting Things Done and Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain. It’s been a few months since I read them. Today, I read highlights from Getting Things Done. A few thoughts:

• This is a framework book (mostly). It teaches you a method you can use when executing your work to get more done with less stress.
• In school and at my first job, I was never taught how to work; I was just expected to get a lot of work done. Looking back, I was pretty inefficient, and I wish I’d known about this framework. I suspect most people are never taught how to work efficiently. They work hard but might not be efficient or strategic in their efforts.
• Context switching is a challenge for many. Often, the ramp-up period when starting a new task is a pain point. Some of this book’s methods can resolve this.
• Teaching this framework to employees at smaller companies could increase the velocity (which matters more than speed) of the company’s execution.
• A lot of entrepreneurs approach managing execution as a top-down activity. Some end up micromanaging because of this approach. This framework is more bottom-up—it empowers the employee and removes the need to micromanage.
• I like the idea of equipping employees with training on this framework, combined with a strong vision/mission and a goal-setting framework (such as OKRs or EOS), to create a company with high execution velocity.

I’m looking forward to fine-tuning how I execute the ideas in these books.