Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

by David Allen

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.

It’s important that you record the date on everything that you hand off to others.

there are two basic kinds of actions: those that must be done on a certain day and/or at a particular time, and those that just need to be done as soon as you can get to them,

the next step is to talk about something face-to-face with your partner, Emily, putting it into an “Emily” folder or list makes the most sense.

Calls At Computer Errands At Office (miscellaneous) At Home Anywhere Agendas (for people and meetings) Read/Review

placed the order March twentieth” or “You’ve had the proposal now for three weeks.” In my experience, just this one tactical detail is worth its weight in gold.

get clear, get current, and get creative.

very little mental or creative horsepower. When you’re in one of those low-energy states,

Casual reading (magazines, articles, catalogs, Web surfing), contact data that needs to be inputted, file purging, backing up your computer,

The constant sacrifices of not doing the work you have defined on your lists can be tolerated only if you know what you’re not doing.

If you know what you’re doing and what you’re not doing, surprises are just another opportunity to be flexible and creative, and to excel.

There are no interruptions, really—there are simply mismanaged occurrences.

If you have established practices for parking still-incomplete items midstream, however, your focus can shift cleanly from one to the next and back again, with the precision of a martial artist who appears to fight four people at once, but who in reality is simply rapidly shifting attention.

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

If your boat is sinking, you really don’t care in which direction it’s pointed!

If you’re not totally sure what your job is, it will always feel overwhelming.

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.