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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
David Allen
Read between
November 16, 2023 - January 31, 2024
In the fire zone of real work, if it takes longer than sixty seconds to file something where it belongs, you won’t file, you’ll “stack.”
Don’t let things to be handled that you have considered “not so important” gnaw away at your energy and focus.
Personal Projects started, not completed Projects that need to be started Projects—other organizations Service Community Volunteer Spiritual organization Commitments/promises to others Partner/spouse Children Parents Family Friends Professionals Returnable items Debts Communications to make/get Calls E-mails Cards and letters Thank-yous Texts Social media postings Upcoming events Birthdays Anniversaries Weddings Graduations Receptions Outings Holidays Vacation Travel Dinners Parties Cultural events Sporting events Administration Home office supplies Equipment Phones Mobile devices Audio/video
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Doing a straightforward, clear-cut task that has a beginning and an end balances out the complexity-without-end that often vexes the rest of my life. Sacred simplicity.
Until you know what the next physical action is, there’s still more thinking required before anything can happen—before you’re appropriately engaged.
Determine what physical activity needs to happen to get you to decide.
You’ll probably find that at least a few of the following common list headings for next actions will make sense for you: Calls At Computer Errands At Office (miscellaneous) At Home Anywhere Agendas (for people and meetings) Read/Review
Think carefully about where and when and under what circumstances you can do which actions, and organize your lists accordingly.
The right amount of complexity is whatever creates optimal simplicity.
What continues to talk to you psychologically in your environment, demanding that you do something about it?
Your reference and filing system should be a simple library of data, easily retrievable—not your reminder for actions, projects, priorities, or prospects.
If material is purely for reference, the only issue is whether it’s worth the time and space to keep it.
Activating and maintaining your Someday/Maybe category unleashes the flow of your creative thinking—you have permission to imagine cool things to do without having to commit to doing anything about them yet.
It’s OK to decide not to decide—as long as you have a decide-not-to-decide system.
Checklists can be highly useful to let you know what you don’t need to be concerned about.
Capability and willingness to instantly make a checklist, accessible and used when needed, is a core component of high-performance self-management.
Every now and then go away and have a little relaxation. To remain constantly at work will diminish your judgment. Go some distance away, because work will be in perspective and a lack of harmony is more readily seen. —Leonardo da Vinci
If you have a bunch of things to do on one to-do list, but you actually can’t do many of them in the same context, you force yourself to continually keep reconsidering all of them.
People who give themselves a Miscellaneous action list (i.e. one not specific in context) often let themselves slide in the next-action decision, too.
I recommend that you always keep an inventory of things that need to be done that require very little mental or creative horsepower.
It is often easier to get wrapped up in the urgent demands of the moment than to deal with your in-tray, e-mail, and the rest of your open loops.
There are no interruptions—there are only mismanaged inputs.
There are no interruptions, really—there are simply mismanaged occurrences.
Research has now proven that you can’t actually multitask, i.e. put conscious focused attention on more than one thing at a time; and if you are trying to, it denigrates your performance considerably.
If your head is your only system for placeholding, you will experience an attempted multitasking internally, which is psychologically impossible and the source of much stress for many people.
Handle what has your attention and you’ll then discover what really has your attention.
If you’re not totally sure what your job is, it will always feel overwhelming.
“What new things are my children going to be doing in the next couple of years, and what do I need to do differently because of that?”
Function often follows form. Give yourself a context for capturing thoughts, and thoughts will occur that you don’t yet know you have.
If you don’t have a good system for storing bad ideas, you probably don’t have one for filing good ones, either.
Let our advance worrying become our advance thinking and planning. —Winston Churchill
The sense of anxiety and guilt doesn’t come from having too much to do; it’s the automatic result of breaking agreements with yourself.
Maintaining an objective and complete inventory of your work, regularly reviewed, makes it much easier to say no with integrity.
That means that as soon as you tell yourself that you should do something, if you file it only in your short-term memory, that part of you thinks you should be doing it all the time. And that means that as soon as you’ve given yourself two things to do, and filed them only in your head, you’ve created instant and automatic stress and failure, because you can’t do them both at once, and that (apparently significant) part of your psyche will continue to hold you accountable.
anything that is held only in your head will take up either more or less attention than it deserves.
The reason to collect everything is not that everything is equally important; it’s that it’s not. Incompletions, uncaptured, take on a dull sameness in the sense of the pressure they create and the attention they tie up.
When the only thing on your mind is the only thing on your mind, you’ll be “present,” in your “zone,” with no distinction between work and play.
use your mind to think about things, rather than think of them.
Having to bail water in a leaky boat undermines your ability to direct it and move it forward.
Without a next action, there remains a potentially infinite gap between current reality and what you need to do.
Ceasing negative imaging will always cause your energy to increase.
Everything on your lists and in your stacks is either attractive or repulsive to you—there’s no neutral ground when it comes to your stuff.
Avoiding action decisions until the pressure of the last minute creates huge inefficiencies and unnecessary stress.
test it out—take a small risk and ask, “So what’s the next action on this?” at the end of each discussion point in your next staff meeting, or in your next family conversation around the dinner table.
The next time someone moans about something, try asking, “So what’s the next action?” People will complain only about something that they assume could be better than it currently is. The action question forces the issue. If it can be changed, there’s some action that will change it. If it can’t, it must be considered part of the landscape to be incorporated in strategy and tactics. Complaining is a sign that someone isn’t willing to risk moving on a changeable situation, or won’t consider the immutable circumstance in his or her plans. This is a temporary and hollow form of self-validation.
An idealist believes that the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run. —Sydney J. Harris
Your mind is for having ideas, not for holding them.
Providing yourself the right cues, which you will notice at the right time, about the right things, is a core practice of stress-free productivity.
Most people resist acknowledging issues and opportunities until they know they can be handled successfully, not realizing that exploring, looking into, or in some way accepting or putting something to bed because there is no solution is an appropriate outcome (project) itself.
