Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

by David Allen

ISBN 978-0-698-16186-3

This is the new David Allen book

Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does. Responding inappropriately to your e-mail, your thoughts about what you need to do, your children, or your boss will lead to less effective results than you’d like. Most people give either more or less attention to things than they deserve, simply because they don’t operate with a mind like water.

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

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.

Now, describe, in a single written sentence, your intended successful outcome for this problem or situation.

Now write down the very next physical action required to move the situation forward.

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!” That’s the best description I have ever heard about what passes for organizing lists in most systems.

the real problem is a lack of clarity and definition about what a project really is, and what associated next-action steps are required.

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

Vertical control, in contrast, manages thinking, development, and coordination of individual topics and projects.

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