Getting Things Done: How to achieve stress-free productivity

by David Allen

Instead, the key to managing all of your “stuff” is managing your actions.

The big problem is that your mind keeps reminding you of things when you can’t do anything about them. It has no sense of past or future.

You can’t organize what’s incoming—you can only collect it and process it. Instead, you organize the actions you’ll need to take based on the decisions you’ve made about what needs to be done.

And I still see outlines done after the fact, just to please the authorities. In the business world, they’re often headed “Goals” and “Objectives.” But they still have very little to do with what people are doing or what they’re inspired about. These documents are sitting in drawers and in e-mails somewhere, bearing little relationship to operational reality.

I admit it: this is nothing but advanced common sense.

you won’t see how to do it until you see yourself doing it.