Quotes from David Allen

Review whatever lists, overviews, and orientation maps you need to, as often as you need to, to get their contents off your mind. After

The quality of our workflow management is only as good as the weakest link in this five-phase chain, so all the links must be integrated and supported with consistent standards.

In karate there is an image that's used to define the position of perfect readiness: "mind like water." Imagine throwing a pebble into a still pond. How does the water respond? The answer is, totally appropriately to the force and mass of the input; then it returns to calm. It doesn't overreact or underreact.

We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem; we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs subordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.—Eric Hoffer

Having an organizational tool that allows you to easily make lists such as these, ad hoc, is quite worthwhile.

It takes more energy than most people realize to unhook out of one set of behaviors and get into another kind of rhythm and tool set.

Plans get you into things but you've got to work your way out. —Will Rogers

The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

Clearing the mind and being flexible are key.

Amira In training and coaching thousands of professionals, I have found that lack of time is not the major issue for them (though they themselves may think it is); the real problem is a lack of clarity and definition about what a project really is, and what the associated next-action steps required are. Clarifying things on the front end, when they first appear on the radar, rather than on the back end, after trouble has developed, allows people to reap the benefits of managing action.

Anxiety is caused by a lack of control, organization, preparation, and action. —David Kekich The methods I present here are all based on two key objectives: (1) capturing all the things that need to get done—now

capturing all the things that might need to get done or have usefulness for you—

Projects, Waiting For, and Someday/Maybe lists need to be reviewed only as often as you think they have to be in order to stop you from wondering about them.

Thought is useful when it motivates action and a hindrance when it substitutes for action.

El pensamiento es la esencia misma de la empresa y la vida, y lo más difícil de lograr en ambas. Los forjadores de imperios dedican horas y horas a la labor intelectual… mientras otros se van de fiesta. Si no te planteas conscientemente el esfuerzo de ejercer el pensamiento creativo autoguiado… entonces estás cayendo en la pereza y ya no controlarás tu vida. —DAVID KEKICH

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them. —George Bernard Shaw

The value of a future goal is the present change it fosters.

So there is an issue—or a dualistic aspect of our desire for human perfection or at least progress—that begs for resolution. But I learned years ago that in this kind of no-win philosophical situation, there is probably a higher perspective that dissolves, rather than resolves, the dissonance. In other words, being versus doing may not be the issue.

It is easier to act yourself into a better way of feeling than to feel yourself into a better way of action.

As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

If you're waiting to have a good idea before you have any ideas, you won't have many. What's

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

How much available data could be relevant to doing those projects "better"? The answer is: an infinite amount, easily accessible, or at least potentially so, through the Internet. On

give all our attention to the opportunity before us.