Quotes from David Allen

The most experienced planner in the world is your brain.

strength; just the ability to generate a focused thrust with speed. But a tense muscle is a slow one. So the high levels of training in the martial arts teach and demand balance and relaxation as much as anything else. Clearing the mind to being open and appropriately responsive is the key.

In general, the reason things are on your mind is that the outcome and the action step(s) have not been appropriately defined, and/or reminders of them have not been put in places where you can be trusted to look for them appropriately.

The Zeigarnik Effect, as it has come to be known today, states simply that the brain naturally remembers and holds on to anything that is interrupted or incomplete. These interruptions and incompletions are called open loops.

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning. —Winston Churchill

We (1) capture what has our attention; (2) clarify what each item means and what to do about it; (3) organize the results, which presents the options we (4) reflect on, which we then choose to (5) engage with. This constitutes the management of the horizontal aspect of our lives, incorporating everything that we need to consider at any time, as we move forward moment to moment.

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

Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece. —Nadia Boulanger

It's a waste of time and energy to keep thinking about something that you make no progress on. And it only adds to your anxiety about what you should be doing and aren't. Most

Here's how I define "stuff": anything you have allowed into your psychological or physical world that doesn't belong where it is, but for which you haven't yet determined what, exactly, it means to you, with the desired outcome and the next action step.

1  |  Every open loop must be in your capture system and out of your head. 2  |  You must have as few capturing buckets as you can get by with. 3  |  You must empty them regularly.

something is "on your mind" is that you want it to be different than it currently is, and yet: • you haven't clarified exactly what the intended outcome is; • you haven't decided what the very next physical action step is; and/or • you haven't put reminders of the outcome and the action required in a system you trust.

Organizations are now almost universally in morph mode, with ever-changing goals, products, partners, customers, markets, technologies, and owners. These all, by necessity, shake up structures, forms, roles, and accountabilities.

Vision is not enough; it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps; we must step up the stairs. —Václav Havel

We need to transform all the "stuff" we've attracted and accumulated into a clear inventory of meaningful actions, projects, and usable information. Almost

Let our advance worrying become our advance thinking and planning. —Winston Churchill Focus

The reason most organizing systems haven't worked for most people is that they haven't yet transformed all the stuff they're trying to organize. As long as it's still stuff, it's not controllable.

Whereas purpose provides the juice and the direction, principles define the parameters of action and the criteria for excellence of behavior.

You increase your productivity and creativity exponentially when you think about the right things at the right time and have the tools to capture your value-added thinking.

People think a lot, but most of that thinking is of a problem, project, or situation—not about it. If you actually did this suggested exercise, you were required to structure your thinking toward an outcome and an action, and that does not usually happen without a consciously focused effort. Reacting is automatic, but thinking is not.

The greater the volume of thoughts you have to work with, the better the context you can create for developing options and trusting your choices.

You often need to make it up in your mind before you can make it happen in your life.

When is a problem a project? Always. When you assess something as a problem instead of as something to simply be accepted as the way things are, you are assuming there is a potential resolution.

The Value of Thinking About Why Here are just some of the benefits of asking why: It defines success. It creates decision-making criteria. It aligns resources. It motivates. It clarifies focus. It expands options.