David Allen is widely recognized as the world’s leading expert on personal and organizational productivity. His thirty-year pioneering research and coaching to corporate managers and CEOs of some of America’s most prestigious corporations and institutions has earned him Forbes’ recognition as one of the top five executive coaches in the U.S. and Business 2.0 magazine’s inclusion in their 2006 list of the “50 Who Matter Now.” Time Magazine called his flagship book, Getting Things Done, “the definitive business self-help book of the decade.” Fast Company Magazine called David “one of the world’s most influential thinkers” in the arena of personal productivity, for his outstanding programs and writing on time and stress management, the power of aligned focus and vision, and his groundbreaking methodologies in management and executive peak performance. David is the international best-selling author of Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress-Free Productivity; Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life; and Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life. May his quotes inspire you to take action so that you may live your dreams.
1. “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” David Allen
2. “Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they’ve started.” David Allen
3. “You can fool everyone else, but you can’t fool your own mind.” David Allen
4. “Your brain has an in-built mechanism for finding patterns you’ve programmed because of where you’ve put your attention. Solutions, innovations, and success come not from greater intelligence or creativity but from what we notice because of where we point those attributes.” David Allen
5. “You can do anything, but not everything.” David Allen
6. “The great secret about goals and visions is not the future they describe but the change in the present they engender.” David Allen
7. “Sometimes the biggest gain in productive energy will come from cleaning the cobwebs, dealing with old business, and clearing the desks – cutting loose debris that’s impeding forward motion.” David Allen
8. “When we truly need to do is often what we most feel like avoiding.” David Allen
9. “Every decision to act is an intuitive one. The challenge is to migrate from hoping it’s the right choice to trusting it’s the right choice.” David Allen
10. “If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.” David Allen
11. “A complete and accurately defined list of projects, kept current and reviewed on at least a weekly basis, is a master key to stress-free productivity.” David Allen
12. “Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does.” David Allen
13. “Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind.” David Allen
14. “Every one of you today are not getting a lot of things done because you are sitting right here.” David Allen
15. “Everything you’ve told yourself you ought to do, your mind thinks you should do right now. Frankly, as soon add you have two things to do stored in your RAM, you’ve generated personal failure, because you can’t do two things at the same time. This produces an all-pervasive stress factor whose source can’t be pinpointed.” David Allen
16. “Appropriate engagement is the key. Are you appropriately engaged with your staff, health, spiritual life, etc?” David Allen
17. “If you had just two more hours what would you fill it with? Probably more stickiness like email.” David Allen
18. “Almost every project could be done better, and an infinite quantity of information is now available that could make that happen.” David Allen
19. “It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do.” David Allen
20. “Every now and then go away and have a little relaxation. To remain constantly at work will diminish your judgment. Go some distance away, because work will be in perspective and a lack of harmony is more readily seen.” David Allen
21. “Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.” David Allen
22. “It seems that there’s a part of our psyche that doesn’t know the difference between an agreement about cleaning the garage and an agreement about buying a company.” David Allen
23. “You can only feel good about what you’re not doing when you know what it is.” David Allen
24. “Use your mind to think about things, rather than think of them. You want to be adding value as you think about projects and people, not simply reminding yourself they exist.” David Allen
25. “How much does it take to have a good idea? Zero. You don’t need time. You need room in your head.” David Allen
26. “Things rarely get stuck because of lack of time. They get stuck because the doing of them has not been defined.” David Allen
27. “You can’t manage time, you actually only manage what you do during time. So the management issue is not so much about time, it’s more about how do you manage your focus, how do you manage your actions and your activities in terms of what you do.” David Allen
28. “If you don’t fall off the wagon regularly, you’re not playing a big enough game.” David Allen
29. “You can claim that God is guiding you and revealing to you the answer or solution to your problem. Accept the truth that the nature of Infinite Intelligence is to respond to you, and you will receive an answer without the aid of any man. You can boldly affirm, “I am whole, perfect, strong, loving, illumined, prosperous and inspired.” As you continue to affirm these truths and feel and believe what you claim, without the help or cooperation of anyone, you will express what you feel to be true. Remember, whatever you attach to I AM, you become.” David Allen
30. “There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but the way out is through.” David Allen
31. “It’s hard to be fully creative without structure and constraint. Try to paint without a canvas. Creativity and freedom are two sides of the same coin. I like the best of both worlds. Want freedom? Get organized. Want to get organized? Get creative.” David Allen
32. “Small things done consistently, in strategic places, create major impact.” David Allen
33. “Most people move actually into high performance in a crisis because that creates the kind of focus that creates high performance.” David Allen
34. “Once a week, do a thorough review of all your projects in as much detail as you need to. If you do, your systems will work. If you don’t, no system will work.” David Allen
35. “Martial arts people fight four people at a time by fighting one at a time.” David Allen
