I normally post book reviews over in a LiveJournal community, but I wanted to share two books which, hopefully, are changing my life.
The first is Getting Things Done by David Allen. Now, if you have been in the blogosphere for more than a day, you’ve probably run into someone referring to “GTD.” This is to organization what BPAL is to scent. It’s elite and popular. It also, seemingly, works.
For the last month or so, I’ve been gradually ramping up on my GTD system, trying out software and organizers and generally trying to find the “right” system to capture and organize my world. What I have is not perfect, by any stretch, but it is helping. For someone who natural instinct is to write reminders on the back of her hand and then wash them off later, it’s an improvement.
The second book is You: On a Diet. I haven’t read the first, extremely popular book in this series (“YOU: The Owner’s Manual: An Insider’s Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger” (by Michael F. Roizen, Mehmet Oz)), but I took about two evenings where I turned off the TV and read this book. It’s excellent, and helps me understand some of why dieting hasn’t really worked for me since I was 25. An interesting thing to note is that the majority of the dietary choices are things I already do, like choosing whole wheat breads, eating fruits and vegetables, and always drinking water instead of soda. But there are other things, like “walk for 30 minutes a day” that I haven’t been doing. So, when I get back from my trip to Michigan next week, I’ll try their program for a couple of weeks and see if it really does result in losing 2 inches off my waist.