Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

by David Allen

Defining Your Work Defining your work entails clearing up your in-tray, your digital messages, and your meeting notes, and breaking down new projects into actionable steps.

In order to know what your priorities are, you have to know what your work is. And there are at least six different perspectives from which to define that.

Ground: Current Actions This is the accumulated list of all the actions you need to

Horizon 1: Current Projects Generating most of the actions that you currently have in front of you are the thirty to one hundred projects on your plate.

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.

Horizon 2: Areas of Focus and Accountabilities You create or accept your projects and actions because of the roles, interests, and accountabilities you have.

Listing and reviewing these responsibilities gives a more comprehensive framework for evaluating your inventory of projects.

Horizon 3: Goals What you want to be experiencing in various areas of your life and work one to two years from now will add another dimension to defining your work.

Horizon 4: Vision Projecting three to five years into the future generates thinking about bigger categories: organization strategies, environmental

trends, career and lifestyle transition circumstances.

Horizon 5: Purpose and Principles This is the big-picture view. Why does your company exist? Why do you exist? What really matters to you, no matter what?

Mastering the flow of your work at all the levels you experience that work provides a much more holistic way to get things done and feel good about it.

THE KEY INGREDIENTS of relaxed control are (1) clearly defined outcomes (projects) and the next actions required to move them toward closure, and (2) reminders placed in a trusted system that is reviewed regularly.

horizontal focus.

vertical focus

The goal is to get projects and situations sufficiently clear and under control to get them off your mind, and not to lose any potentially useful ideas.

Your mind goes through five steps to accomplish virtually any task: 1 | Defining purpose and principles 2 | Outcome visioning 3 | Brainstorming 4 | Organizing 5 | Identifying next actions

Your intention was your purpose, and it automatically triggered your internal planning process. Your principles created the boundaries of your plan.

You probably also imagined some positive picture of what you might experience or how the evening would turn out—maybe the people involved, the atmosphere, and/or the outcome. That was your outcome visioning.

That was brainstorming. Those questions were part of the naturally creative process that happens once you commit to some outcome that hasn’t happened yet. Your brain noticed a gap between what you were looking toward and where you actually were at the time, and it began to resolve that cognitive dissonance by trying to fill in the blanks. This is the beginning of the how phase of natural planning. But it did the thinking in a somewhat random and ad hoc fashion.

Once you had generated a sufficient number of ideas and details, you couldn’t help but start to organize them.

Once you’ve generated various thoughts relevant to the outcome, your mind will automatically begin to sort them by components (subprojects), priorities, and/or sequences of events.

Components

Prior...

Sequences

challenge, comparisons, and evaluation,

you focus on the next action that you need to take to make the first component actually happen. “Call Café Rouge to see if it’s open, and make the reservation.”

Think of your purpose. Think of what a successful outcome would look like: where would you be physically, financially, in terms of reputation, or whatever? Brainstorm potential steps. Organize your ideas. Decide on the next actions. Are you any clearer about where you want to go and how to get there?

It never hurts to ask the why question.

I admit it: this is nothing but advanced common sense. To know and to be clear about the purpose of any activity are prime directives for appropriate focus, creative development, and cooperation.

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.

It Defines Success People are starved for “wins” these days.

Often the only way to make a hard decision is to come back to the purpose of what you’re doing.

If you’re not sure why you’re doing something, you can never do enough of it. It Motivates Let’s face it: if there’s no good reason to be doing something, it’s not worth doing.

It Clarifies Focus When you land on the real purpose for anything you’re doing, it makes things clearer.

It Expands Options Paradoxically, even as purpose brings things into pinpoint focus, it opens up creative thinking about wider possibilities.

The question, “How will I know when this is off purpose?” must have a clear answer.

Of equal value as prime criteria for driving and directing a project are the standards and values you hold.

You may want to begin by asking yourself, “What behavior might undermine what I’m doing, and how can I prevent it?” That will give you a good starting point for defining your standards.

Another great reason for focusing on principles is the clarity and reference point they provide for positive conduct.

vision provides the actual blueprint of the final result. This is the what instead of the why. What will this project or situation really be like when it successfully appears in the world?

Suffice it to say that something automatic and extraordinary happens in your mind when you create and focus on a clear picture of what you want.

You often need to make it up in your mind

before you can make it happen in your life.

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.

When you identify with some picture in your mind that is different from your current reality, you automatically start filling in the gaps, or brainstorming.

give yourself permission to capture and express any idea, and then later on figure out how it fits in and what to

do with it. If nothing else (and there is plenty of “else”),

But my English teacher in high school didn’t have to know about the theory to give me the key: “David,” he said, “you’re going to college, and you’re going to be writing papers. Write all your notes and quotes on separate three-by-five-inch cards. Then, when you get ready to organize your thinking, just spread them all out on the floor, see the natural structure that emerges, and figure out what’s missing. Mr. Edmundson was teaching me a major piece of the natural planning model!