Get Everything Done

Get Everything Done (2000) by Mark Forster
ISBN: 0340746203
Condition: Used (and probably judging you)
Sold by: Crappy Old Books

If you’ve ever looked at your to-do list and thought, “Actually, I might just lie down instead,” then Mark Forster’s Get Everything Done is the self-help classic you definitely didn’t ask for but now feel strangely pressured to own. Published in the golden age of optimism (the year 2000, when people still thought inboxes could be tamed), this book promises that you can finally conquer the chaos of your life with systems. Lots of systems. Systems inside systems. Systems observing other systems. It’s organisational Inception.

Our particular copy — sourced from the dusty lair of Crappy Old Books, where paperbacks go when they’ve seen too much — arrives gently worn, possibly annotated by a previous owner who tried the method for six days before abandoning it for biscuits. The pages have that faint, nostalgic smell of old ambition. One can only assume that Forster’s techniques worked beautifully… for someone else.

Inside, you’ll meet concepts like closed lists, time-boxed intentions, and the reassuring suggestion that you can “get everything done” if you simply stop doing most of the things you thought you needed to do. It’s productivity advice bordering on philosophy, the kind that makes you go, “Huh… that actually makes sense,” followed immediately by, “But also no, absolutely not.”

Still, this book has a cult following of people who have finally triumphed over procrastination — or at least learned to procrastinate in a more structured and respectable manner. And there’s something soothing about reading productivity advice from a world before smartphones ruined all our brains.

Perfect for:

• People who enjoy to-do lists more than doing the things on them

• Fans of the “I’ll start on Monday” lifestyle

• Anyone who likes their self-help with a side of irony and a sprinkle of existential dread

Pick up this gently battered copy of Get Everything Done, and maybe—just maybe—you’ll get something done. Probably reading this blurb again in several weeks when you rediscover the book under a pile of unopened mail.

Keep browsing: See more Self-Help books Other books by Mark Forster