David Allen

Quotes

1. [Y]ou must have a clear picture in your mind of what success would look, sound, and feel like.

2. 

   It's great to clear your psychic decks so you can go into the weekend ready for refreshment and recreation, with nothing on your mind.

3. 

   The organizing system merely provides placeholders for all your oprn loops and options so your mind can... make the necessary intuitive, moment-to-moment strategic decisions.

4. 

   First of all, if it's on your mind, your mind isn't clear. Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside your mind, or what I call a collection bucket, that you know you'll come back to regularly and sort through.

5. 

   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 the desired outcome and the next action step.

6. 

   Most often, the reason 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 outcomes 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.

   That's why it's on your mind.

7. 

   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.

8. 

   When you "have to get organized," you're probably not appropriately invested yet in what you need to get organized for.

9. 

   How much of this planning model do you really need..? [A]s much as you need to get the project off your mind.

10. 

    I suggest that you use your mind to think about things, rather than to think of them. You want to be adding value... not simply reminding yourself they exist.

11. 

    [A]nything that is held only in "psychic RAM" will take up either more or less attention than it actually deserves. The reason to collect everything is not that everything is equally important, it's that it's not. Incompletions, uncollected, take on a dull sameness in the sense of the pressure they create and the attention they tie up.

12. 

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