David Allen Quotes

At at any point in time, knowing what has to get done, and when, creates a terrain for maneuvering.

If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. — WILL ROGERS

The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.

The big problem is that your mind keeps
reminding you of things when you can't do
anything about them. It has no sense of past or future. That means that as soon as you tell yourself that you need to do something, and store it in your RAM, there's a part of you that thinks you should be doing that something all the time.

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

Your Brain is for having ideas not storing them.

Interestingly, one of the biggest problems with most people’s personal management systems is that they blend a few actionable things with a large amount of data and material that has value but no action attached.

When people know they have a process in place to handle any situation, they are more relaxed. When they’re relaxed, everything improves. More gets done, with less effort, and a host of other wonderful side effects emerge that add to the outcomes of their efforts and the quality of their life.

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

Reacting is automatic, but thinking is not.

Almost every project could be done better, and an infinite quantity of information is now available that could make that happen.

Welcome to the real-life experience of “knowledge work,” and a profound operational principle: you have to think about your stuff more than you realize but not as much as you’re afraid you might. As Peter Drucker wrote: “In knowledge work . . . the task is not given; it has to be determined. ‘What are the expected results from this work?’ is . . . the key question in making knowledge workers productive. And it is a question that demands risky decisions. There is usually no right answer; there are choices instead. And results have to be clearly specified, if productivity is to be achieved.”*

But if you don’t decide what needs to be done about your secretary’s birthday, because it’s “not that important” right now, that open loop will take up energy and prevent you from having a totally effective, clear focus on what is important.

There is usually an inverse relationship between how much something is on your mind and how much it’s getting done.

Your life and work are made up of outcomes and actions. When your operational behavior is grooved to organize everything that comes your way, at all levels, based upon those dynamics, a deep alignment occurs, and wondrous things emerge. You become highly productive. You make things up, and you make them happen.