Getting Organized in the Google Era: How to Get Stuff out of Your Head, Find It When You Will need It, and Get It Completed Correct
- ISBN13: 9780385528177
- Condition: New
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Whether it’s a faulty memory, a tendency to multitask, or difficulty managing our time, every single one of us has limitations conspiring to keep us from being organized. But, as organizational guru and former Google CIO Douglas C. Merrill points out, it isn’t our fault. Our brains just aren’t created to deal with the pressures and competing demands on our attention in today’s fast-paced, details-saturated, digital world. What’s much more, he says, several of the methods in which our society is structured are outdated, imposing extra chaos that makes us feel stressed, scattered, and disorganized.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Luckily, we have a myriad of wonderful new digital tools and technologies at our fingertips to aid us manage the strains on our brains and on our lives; the trick is knowing when and how to use them. This is why Merrill, who helped spearhead Google’s effort to “organize the world’s info,” provides a wealth of ideas and methods for how to use these new tools to turn out to be a lot more organized, efficient, and productive than ever.
But if you’re looking for standard, rigid, one-size-fits-all methods for organization, this isn’t the book for you. Instead, Merrill draws on his intimate knowledge of how the brain works to support us develop fresh, innovative, and flexible systems of organization tailored to our individual goals, constraints, and lifestyles.
From how to harness the incredible power of search, to how to get the most out of cloud computing, to methods for filtering via the enormous avalanche of info that assaults us at each turn, to ideas for minimizing distractions and better integrating work and life, Acquiring Organized in the Google Era is chock-full of practical, invaluable, and often counterintuitive advice for anybody who wants to be much more organized and productive–and less stressed–in our 21st-century world.
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{ 3 comments }
Mostly Useful,
For someone who has been striving to go paperless, this is a helpful book. The information on using specific applications is the best aspect of the book, although it takes awhile for this part of the book to start. I found the most useful part of the book did not start until chapter 8. The early part of the book feels padded with personal stories and vague generalizations about organization and memory.
It is mainly , though not totally, Google-centric, which is not surprising from a former high-ranking Google employee.The author does state that his recommendations of Google apps is because he truly feels they are the best and in a helpful epilogue, Stuff We Love, some other companies’ products are evaluated. There is also a 21- point recap of principles that summarize the whole book.
The part of the book I found tedious was the author’s heavy reliance on personal anecdotes, and I especially disliked the use of story of the illness and death of the author’s girlfriend to illustrate organizational principles . He could have presented this information without resorting to this. Overall, the personal anecdotes detract rather than enhance the book, and the sprinkling of song lyrics throughout the text adds nothing and feels like the author is trying too hard. But if you skip the personal stuff, this is a useful book.
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|There’s way better out there…,
First, in full disclosure I am a GTD nut, I follow David Allen’s system pretty rigorously. That said, I do read most books I can find on organization simply because it is an interesting hobby of mine, and a lot of my acquaintances come to me for advice on getting organized.
The issues I have with the book:
1. Distracting format. I don’t really need song lyrics in little blurbs to help me connect with the text better. Some of these lyrics are obscure and it is unclear how they relate to the text.
2. Way too much personal content. Look, it sounds like the author has lived through some harrowing experiences in his relationships, and that if he had been better organized, some of the pain would have been lessened. I sympathize. But the way he goes into detail seems very indulgent. I didn’t pick up the book to hear about your sad stories, I wanted to hear what the former CIO of Google had to say about getting organized. Instead I get all this personal history. That’s probably my biggest problem with the book.
3. The author is way to narrow minded about non-cloud based applications. For example, he is not a big fan of Outlook because it is usually hooked into Exchange, server space is expensive, and so you cannot keep years worth of data on the server. Um, why not archive your files and access your data that way? I get that the cloud will eventually be an ideal place to keep all of our stuff so that you can have everything instantly accessible and search-able, but as of now, the interoperability of the various applications just isn’t where it needs to be for this to realistically work for most people.
Check out the book “Total Recall” for more on this.
4. The author is way too idealistic. The author points out a ton of perceived social problems (5 day work week, summer vacations for the kids?), no solutions, but then suggests we organize ourselves toward the ideal, even though the ideal doesn’t really exist for most people. Most people work for a company that uses Exchange or Domino, and so there is a clear distinction between work and personal for most people. The author would argue that there shouldn’t be; perhaps. But to insist that your systems must eradicate that line may not be realistic for most people whose primary tools they will have to use at work with company resources. How about we start with what’s true now instead of using some idealized vision of the world as a launching point?
Bottom line: this book adds very little to the conversation that is unique or interesting to getting organized. Borrow it from the library if you still want to have a go.
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|Mixed Messages,
It’s strange how a book about how to un-clutter your mind so that you can work with greater focus and efficiency is overrun with distracting sidebars and pop-up song lyrics.
The book itself is distracting to the reader. There is useful information in here for the technophobe and technophile alike (however, I assume that everything in here will be old news to someone who is already a tech-head). If you are willing to have the book open in your lap and your hands on your keyboard, you may feel emboldened to try a variety of internet based applications that can help you arrange and organize information that you are getting on the web. Through the book I was introduced to a variety of apps that I didn’t know existed, and that hold out some promise. The net result, however, is that if you are someone who doesn’t organically use systems and tools to organize yourself, you will find that the only thing this book has helped you to un-clutter is your wallet – of $23.00.
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