Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

by David Allen

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. For a human resources executive, for example, deciding to deal with quality-of-work-life issues in order to attract and keep key talent does not make things simpler. Nor would there be less to do for a mother recognizing the importance of providing valuable experiences for her teenage daughter in the few vacations left they may take together before she leaves home for work or college.

Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open for everything. —Shunryu Suzuki

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

Reacting is automatic, but thinking is not.

This consistent, unproductive preoccupation with all the things we have to do is the single largest consumer of time and energy. —Kerry Gleeson

There is no reason to ever have the same thought twice, unless you like having that thought.

Any “would, could, or should” commitment held only in the psyche creates irrational and unresolvable pressure, 24-7.

It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head. —Sally Kempton

We (1) capture what has our attention; (2) clarify what each item means and what to do about it; (3) organize the results, which presents the options we (4) reflect on, which we then choose to (5) engage with.

The dynamics of these five steps need to be understood, and good techniques and tools implemented to facilitate their functioning at an optimal level. I have found it very helpful, if not essential, to separate these stages as I move through my day.

A task left undone remains undone in two places—at the actual location of the task, and inside your head. Incomplete tasks in your head consume the energy of your attention as they gnaw at your conscience. —Brahma Kumaris

Get a purge for your brain. It will do better than for your stomach. —Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Keep everything in your head or out of your head. If it’s in between, you won’t trust either one.

Blockage in the flow of anything undermines the ability to be present, fresh, and creative in that arena.

Many people try to get organized but make the mistake of doing it with incomplete batches of stuff. 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. The whole deal—both the capturing and organizing phases—is represented in the center “trunk” of the decision-tree model shown here.

It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do. —Elbert Hubbard

You have to use your mind to get things off your mind.

Every decision to act is an intuitive one. The challenge is to migrate from hoping it’s the right choice to trusting it’s the right choice.

Complete the projects you begin, fulfill the commitments you have made, live up to your promises—then both your subconscious and conscious selves can have success, which leads to a feeling of fulfillment, worthiness and oneness. —John-Roger

When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. —Will Rogers

What’s the first level of focus when the stuff hits the fan? Action! Work harder! Overtime! More people! Get busier! And a lot of stressed-out people are thrown at the situation. Then, when having a lot of busy people banging into each other doesn’t resolve the situation, someone gets more sophisticated and says, “We need to get organized!” (Catching on now?) Then people draw boxes around the problem and label them. Or redraw the boxes and relabel them. Don’t just do something. Stand there. —Rochelle Myer At some point they realize that just redrawing boxes isn’t really doing much to solve the problem. Now someone (much more sophisticated) suggests that more creativity is needed. “Let’s brainstorm!” With everyone in the room, the boss asks, “So, who’s got a good idea here?” When not much happens, the boss may surmise that his staff has used up most of its internal creativity. Time to hire a consultant! Of course, if the consultant is worth his salt, at some point he is probably going to ask the big question: “So, what are you really trying to do here, anyway?” (vision, purpose).

Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim. —George Santayana

If you’re not sure why you’re doing something, you can never do enough of it.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. —Albert Einstein

Many of us hold ourselves back from imagining a desired outcome unless someone can show us how to get there. Unfortunately, that’s backward in terms of how our minds work to generate and recognize solutions and methods. I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific. —Lily Tomlin One of the most powerful life skills, and one of the most important to hone and develop for both professional and personal success, is creating clear outcomes. This is not as self-evident as it may sound. We need to constantly define (and redefine) what we’re trying to accomplish on many different levels, and consistently reallocate resources toward getting these tasks complete as effectively and efficiently as possible.

The best way to get a good idea is to get lots of ideas. —Linus Pauling

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have. —Emile Chartier

The big secret to efficient creative and productive thinking and action is to put the right things in your focus at the right time.

Clarifying requires a very different mind-set than capturing; it’s best to do them separately.

I am rather like a mosquito in a nudist camp; I know what I want to do, but I don’t know where to begin. —Stephen Bayne

Remember that these are physical, visible activities. Many people think they’ve determined the next action when they get it down to “set meeting.” But that’s not the next action, because it’s not descriptive of physical behavior. How do you set a meeting? Well, it could be with a phone call or an e-mail, but to whom? Decide. If you don’t decide now, you’ll still have to decide at some other point, and what this process is designed to do is actually get you to finish the thinking exercise about this item. If you haven’t identified the next physical action required to kick-start it, there will be a psychological gap every time you think about it even vaguely. You’ll tend to resist noticing it, which leads to procrastination.

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness. —Jean de La Bruyère

In order to hang out with friends or take a long, aimless walk and truly have nothing on your mind, you’ve got to know where all your actionable items are located, what they are, and that they will wait.

Remember, you can’t do a project; you can only do the action steps it requires.

As I have indicated in other places, the Weekly Review is the critical success factor for marrying your larger commitments to your day-to-day activities. And a complete Projects list remains the linchpin for that orientation.

The key will be some regular overviewing and reassessment of your system, and dynamically course-correcting as needed.

#agile

What lies in our power to do, lies in our power not to do. —Aristotle

Be open to creating any kind of checklist as the urge strikes you. The possibilities are endless—from “Core Life Values” to “Things to Take Camping” to “Potential Holiday Gifts.” Making lists, ad hoc, as they occur to you, is one of the most powerful yet subtlest and simplest procedures that you can install in your life.

Capability and willingness to instantly make a checklist, accessible and used when needed, is a core component of high-performance self-management.

Interesting. This is quite a strong statement.

The maintenance of life and the pursuit of happiness are not two separate issues. —Ayn Rand

To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect. —Peter F. Drucker

You can only do one of these work activities at a time. If you stop to talk to someone in his or her office, you’re not working off your lists or processing incoming stuff. The challenge is to feel confident about what you have decided to do.

The six levels of work as we saw in chapter 2 (pages 54–56) may be thought of in terms of altitude, as in the floors of a building: Horizon 5: Life Horizon 4: Long-term visions Horizon 3: One- to two-year goals Horizon 2: Areas of focus and accountability Horizon 1: Current projects Ground: Current actions

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it. —Buddha

The best place to succeed is where you are with what you have. —Charles Schwab

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. —Jonathan Kozol

If you’re involved in anything that has a future of longer than a year (marriage, kids, career, a company, an art form, a lifelong passion), you would do well to think about what you might need to be doing to manage things along that vector.

One of the great secrets to getting ideas and increasing your productivity is utilizing the function-follows-form phenomenon—great tools can trigger good thinking.

I have done some great thinking and planning at times just because I wanted to use my great-feeling, smooth-writing fountain or gel pen! You may not be inspired by cool gear like I am, but if you are, do yourself a favor and invest in quality writing tools.