David Allen Quotes

The more confidence you have that you can actually manifest things before you have all the knowledge and resources you might need, the more you can potentially overwhelm yourself with your own possibilities.

the real problem is a lack of clarity and definition about what a project really is,

Making It All Work is about the work you have to do to know the work you have to do when the work you have to do doesn’t tell you the work you have to do.

The traditional approaches to time management and personal organization were useful in their time. They provided helpful reference points for a workforce that was just emerging from an industrial assembly-line modality into a new kind of work that included choices about what to do and discretion about when to do it.

We’re never really taught that we have to think about our work before we can do it; much of 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.

the focus we hold in our minds affects what we perceive and how we perform.

If you limit your choices to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise. — ROBERT FRITZ

I have discovered that one of the major reasons many people haven’t had a lot of success with “getting organized” is simply that they have tried to do all five phases at one time.

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

three different kinds of activities you can be engaged in: Doing predefined work Doing work as it shows up Defining your work Doing

I have found that lack of time is not the major issue for them (though they may think it is); the real problem is a lack of clarity and definition about what a project really is, and what associated next-action steps are required.

A Projects list Project support material Calendar actions and information Next Actions lists A Waiting For list Reference material A Someday/Maybe list

Once you had generated a sufficient number of ideas and details, you couldn’t help but start to organize them. You may have thought or said, “First we need to find out if the restaurant is open,” or “Let’s call the Andersons and see if they’d like to go out with us.” 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.

World-class rower Craig Lambert has described how it feels in Mind Over Water (Houghton Mifflin, 1998): Rowers have a word for this frictionless state: swing. . . . Recall the pure joy of riding on a backyard swing: an easy cycle of motion, the momentum coming from the swing itself. The swing carries us; we do not force it. We pump our legs to drive our arc higher, but gravity does most of the work. We are not so much swinging as being swung. The boat swings you. The shell wants to move fast: Speed sings in its lines and nature. Our job is simply to work with the shell, to stop holding it back with our thrashing struggles to go faster. Trying too hard sabotages boat speed. Trying becomes striving and striving undoes itself. Social climbers strive to be aristocrats but their efforts prove them no such thing. Aristocrats do not strive; they have already arrived. Swing is a state of arrival. The

One insurance executive I worked with described the major benefit he derived from implementation of this system: “Previously I would just tell everyone, ‘Sure, I’ll do it,’ because I didn’t know how much I really had to do. Now that I’ve got the inventory clear and complete, just to maintain my integrity, I have had to say, ‘No, I can’t do that, I’m sorry.’ The amazing thing is that instead of being upset with my refusal, everyone was impressed with my discipline!