Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

by David Allen

The ancestor of every action is a thought. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Getting things done requires two basic components: defining (1) what “done” means (outcome) and (2) what “doing” looks like (action).

That means as soon as you tell yourself that you might need to do something, and store it only in your head, there’s a part of you that thinks you should be doing that something all the time.

1 | Every open loop must be in your capture system and out of your head. 2 | You must have as few capturing buckets as you can get by with. 3 | You must empty them regularly.

You can’t organize what’s incoming—you can only capture 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.

What’s the Next Action? This is the critical question for anything you’ve captured; if you answer it appropriately, you’ll have the key substantive thing to organize. The “next action” is the next physical, visible activity that needs to be engaged in, in order to move the current reality of this thing toward completion.

Once you’ve decided on the next action, you have three options: 1. Do it. If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it is defined. 2. Delegate it. If the action will take longer than two minutes, ask yourself, Am I the right person to do this? If the answer is no, delegate it to the appropriate entity. 3. Defer it, If the action will take longer than two minutes, and you are the right person to do it, you will have to defer acting on it until later and track it on one or more “Next Actions” lists.

I define a project as any desired result that can be accomplished within a year that requires more than one action step.

Here are just some of the benefits of asking why: It defines success. It creates decision-making criteria. It aligns resources. It motivates. It clarifies focus. It expands options.