Top 100 David Allen Quotes
#1. [T]he last thing a fish notices is water.
David Allen
#2. One missed e-mail, untracked commitment, or decision avoided can have hugely magnified consequences.
David Allen
#3. 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
#4. Klara Sztucinski, and Elliott Kellman. The administrative
David Allen
#5. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but the way out is through.
David Allen
#6. Decide the outcome and the action step, put reminders of those somewhere your brain trusts youll see them at the right time, and listen to your brain breathe easier.
David Allen
#7. Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein
David Allen
#8. It's easier to change directions if you are in motion.
David Allen
#9. People allow themselves to get distracted; I think ultimately, probably the biggest thing that gets in the way of people doing what they ought to be doing at any point in time is distraction.
David Allen
#10. Suffice it to say that something automatic and extraordinary happens in your mind when you create and focus on a clear picture of what you want.
David Allen
#11. A successful executive is one that solves bigger problems than he/she creates.
David Allen
#12. The right amount of complexity is what creates the optimal simplicity
David Allen
#13. Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside your mind, or what I call a collection tool, that you know you'll come back to regularly and sort through. Second,
David Allen
#14. Review your list as often as you need to get them off your mind.
David Allen
#15. 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
#16. Taking the inventory of your current work at all levels will automatically produce greater focus, alignment, and sense of priorities.
David Allen
#17. An idealist believes that the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run. - Sydney J. Harris
David Allen
#18. 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.
David Allen
#19. Minute-to-minute and day-to-day you don't have time to think. You need to have already thought.
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. Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. - Henri Bergson
David Allen
#22. 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
David Allen
#23. Thinking in a concentrated manner to define desired outcomes is something few people feel they have to do. But in truth, outcome thinking is one of the most effective means available for making wishes reality.
David Allen
#24. You need no new skills to increase your productivity - just a new set of behaviors about when and where to apply them.
David Allen
#25. 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
#26. The trick is to ensure not so much that what you are doing is, for you, the right thing, all the time (how, ultimately, could you know that for sure?) but that you are firmly in the driver's seat with a functioning process for discovering and engaging with your best choice.
David Allen
#27. Creating "ABC" priority codes and daily "to-do" lists were key techniques developed to help people sort through their choices in some meaningful way.
David Allen
#28. 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
#29. Decision-making when things show up instead of when they blow up is actually a habit that can be developed and enhanced. The trick is to get used the clean feeling of having decided, instead of sitting on a fence.
David Allen
#30. A Keyring? Achievements? These are not WoW-specific things. They are common sense. They exist in the real world.
David Allen
#31. The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.
David Allen
#32. 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.
David Allen
#33. You don't manage priorities, you have them.
David Allen
#34. An infinite number of things in the universe are held back from you only by your altitude and attitude.
David Allen
#35. If not controlled, work will flow to the competent man until he submerges. - CHARLES BOYLE
David Allen
#36. Reacting is automatic, but thinking is not.
David Allen
#37. There is usually an inverse relationship between how much something is on your mind and how much it's getting done.
David Allen
#38. 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
#39. Let our advance worrying become our advance thinking and planning. - Winston Churchill
David Allen
#40. The number of coulds, shoulds, might-want-tos, and ought-tos they generate in their minds are way out beyond what they have recorded anywhere else. Many
David Allen
#41. The value of goals is not in the future they describe, but the change in perception of reality they foster.
David Allen
#42. It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do. - Elbert Hubbard
David Allen
#43. If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. - WILL ROGERS
David Allen
#44. Your Brain is for having ideas not storing them.
David Allen
#45. The problem is, is when your focus is created by a crisis, then the frontal lobe shuts down essentially, the frontal cortex which is your intuitive intelligence. So you get very clever and very stupid in a crisis. Also, you pump adrenalin into your body from what you - physiologically you'll crash.
David Allen
#46. Even if you've already decided on the next step you'll take to resolve a problem, your mind can't let go until and unless you park a reminder in a place it knows you will, without fail, look.
David Allen
#47. Most stress they experience comes from inappropriately managed commitments they make or accept.
David Allen
#48. Horizontal" control maintains coherence across all the activities in which you are involved.
"Vertical" control, in contrast, manages thinking up and down the track of individual topics and projects.
David Allen
#49. Focusing on your values may provide you with meaning, but it won't simplify things.
David Allen
#50. Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does.
David Allen
#51. Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.
David Allen
#52. Most people move actually into high performance in a crisis because that creates the kind of focus that creates high performance.
David Allen
#53. The better you get, the better you better get.
David Allen
#54. Creativity and freedom are two sides of the same coin. I like the best of both worlds.
David Allen
#55. Most of us have, in the past seventy-two hours, received more change-producing, project-creating, and priority-shifting inputs than our parents did in a month, maybe even in a year. I
David Allen
#56. People think a lot, but most of that thinking is of a problem, project or situation - not about it
David Allen
#57. Frankly, I'm more of a researcher, teacher,motivat or, and coach than I am an entrepreneur.
David Allen
#59. Nothing is really new in this high-tech, globally wired world, except how frequently it is.
David Allen
#60. 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
#61. Anyone with the need to be accountable to deal with more than what he or she can complete in the moment has the opportunity to do so more easily and elegantly than in the mind.
David Allen
#62. Rule your mind or it will rule you. - Horace Between
David Allen
#63. Don't just do something. Stand there. - Rochelle Myer
David Allen
#64. Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece. - Nadia Boulanger
David Allen
#65. Some people have to move, physically, to "get" something. But if you're stuck in a chair, that's not your limitation - it's simply not an optimal condition for you.
David Allen
#66. It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head. - Sally Kempton
David Allen
#67. If you're at zero backlog, it's a whole lot easier to change priorities.
David Allen
#68. What you'll tend to avoid doing is probably the most important thing you need to do because it'll probably be the most daunting and the most potentially successful thing you could be doing and that's usually out of people's comfort zone.
David Allen
#70. 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.
David Allen
#71. We need to transform all the "stuff" we've attracted and accumulated into a clear inventory of meaningful actions, projects, and usable information. Almost
David Allen
#72. If you're not sure why you're doing something, you can never do enough of it.
David Allen
#73. Mosquitoes can ruin the hunt for big game.
David Allen
#74. You can do anything, but you can't do everything
David Allen
#75. A great hammer doesn't make a great carpenter; but a great carpenter will always want to have a great hammer.
David Allen
#76. 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.
David Allen
#77. Distracting reactions about anything undermine a clear mind about anything else.
David Allen
#78. The hurrier I go, the behinder I get. - Anonymous
David Allen
#79. 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
David Allen
#80. If the only tool you have is a hammer, it's hard to eat spaghetti.
David Allen
#81. You are the captain of your own ship; the more you act from that perspective, the better things will go for you.
David Allen
#82. 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. Getting
David Allen
#83. you have to think about your stuff more than you realize but not as much as you're afraid you might.
David Allen
#84. The hardest thing about being productive is not the work, but the split second it takes to decide to take control.
David Allen
#85. Change - even change meant to improve our lives - creates stress. We can get comfortable with our problems.
David Allen
#86. 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.
David Allen
#87. We're never really taught that we have to think about our work before we can do it; much of our daily activity is already defined for us by the undone and unmoved things staring at us when we come to work, or by the family to be fed, the laundry to be done, or the children to be dressed at home.
David Allen
#88. When time itself turned into a work factor, personal calendars became a key work tool.
David Allen
#89. Water is what it is, and does what it does. It can overwhelm, but it's not overwhelmed. It can be still, but it is not impatient. It can be forced to change course, but it is not frustrated.
David Allen
#90. 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.
David Allen
#91. The more confidence you have that you can actually manifest things before you have all the knowledge and resources you might need, the more you can potentially overwhelm yourself with your own possibilities.
David Allen
#92. The focus we hold in our minds affects what we perceive and how we perform.
David Allen
#93. The real issue is how to make appropriate choices about what to do at any point in time. The real issue is how we manage actions.
David Allen
#94. You must use your mind to get things off your mind.
David Allen
#95. Things rarely get stuck because of lack of time. They get stuck because what "doing" would look like, and where it happens, hasn't been decided. In
David Allen
#96. 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
#97. Focusing on values does not simplify your life. It gives meaning and direction-and a lot more complexity.
David Allen
#98. Trusting yourself and the source of your intelligence is the most elegant lesson of experiencing freedom and manifesting personal productivity.
David Allen
#99. Anxiety is caused by a lack of control, organization, preparation, and action. - David Kekich
David Allen
#100. Getting things done, and feeling good about it, means being willing to recognize, acknowledge, and appropriately manage all the things that have your consciousness engaged. Mastering the art of stress-free productivity requires it.
David Allen
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