Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

by David Allen

Nothing is new, except how frequently it is.

a key challenge is applying and sustaining these practices as an ongoing set of habits, to the point that they will require the minimal application of conscious focus, or “juice,” and merely become an everyday part of keeping one’s mental and physical environment in good order.

How hard is it to write something down, decide what the next step is to move it forward, record the reminder of that on a list, and review the list? Most everyone admits he or she needs to establish a practice like this, and few do it consistently enough to feel good about it. How challenging it is for someone to internalize the need to consistently keep every unnecessary distraction out of his or her head has been one of my biggest surprises over the years.

Even people who have reread the original edition of GTD as many as five times have professed to me, “It was a totally different book each time!”

Anxiety is caused by a lack of control, organization, preparation, and action. —David Kekich

“When I habitually applied the tenets of this program it saved my life . . . when I faithfully applied them, it changed my life.

There is one thing we can do, and the happiest people are those who can do it to the limit of their ability. We can be completely present. We can be all here. We can give . . . our attention to the opportunity before us.

It’s also the best way to be fully present with whatever you’re doing, appropriately engaged in the moment.

Work No Longer Has Clear Boundaries

Nothing is really new in this high-tech, globally wired world, except how frequently it is.

Focusing on primary outcomes and values is a critical exercise, certainly. It provides needed criteria for making sometimes-difficult choices about what to stop doing, as well as what most ought to have our attention amid our excess of options. But it does not mean that there is less to do, or fewer challenges in getting the work done. Quite the contrary: it just ups the ante in the game, which still must be played day to day.

The power in a karate punch comes from speed, not muscle; it comes from a focused “pop” at the end of the whip.

most stress they experience comes from inappropriately managed commitments they make or accept.

These are the “incompletes,” or “open loops,” which I define as anything pulling at your attention that doesn’t belong where it is, the way it is. Open loops can include everything from really big to-do items like “End world hunger” to the more modest “Hire new assistant” to the tiniest task such as “Replace porch lightbulb.”

Anything that does not belong where it is, the way it is, is an “open loop,” which will be pulling on your attention if it’s not appropriately managed.

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. —Henri Bergson

But what created that? Not “getting organized” or “setting priorities.” The answer is, thinking.

Reacting is automatic, but thinking is not.

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

our daily activity is already defined for us by the undone and unmoved things staring at us when we come to work, or by the family to be fed, the laundry to be done, or the children to be dressed at home.

You can fool everyone else, but you can’t fool your own mind.

At the conclusion of one of my seminars, a senior manager of a major biotech firm looked back at the to-do list she had come in with and said, “Boy, that was an amorphous blob of undoability!”

They need to gather everything that requires thinking about and then do that thinking if their organizational efforts are to be successful.

Getting things done requires two basic components: defining (1) what “done” means (outcome) and (2) what “doing” looks like (action). And these are far from self-evident for most people about most things that have their attention.

Intellectually, the most appropriate way ought to be to work from the top down, first uncovering personal and organizational purpose and vision, then defining critical objectives, and finally focusing on the details of implementation.

capture and organize 100 percent of my stuff in and with objective tools at hand, not in my mind.

Recent research in the cognitive sciences has now validated this conclusion. Studies have demonstrated that our mental processes are hampered by the burden put on the mind to keep track of things we’re committed to finish, without a trusted plan or system in place to handle them.*