Famous Quotes & Sayings

David Allen Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by David Allen.

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Famous Quotes By David Allen

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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

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Most of the stress people experience comes from inappropriately managed commitments they make or accept. Even — David Allen

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Many of us hold ourselves back from imagining a desired outcome unless someone can show us how to get there. Unfortunately, that's backward in terms of how our minds work to generate and recognize solutions and methods. — David Allen

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If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. - WILL ROGERS — David Allen

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(1) collect things that command our attention; (2) process what they mean and what to do about them; and (3) organize the results, which we (4) review as options for what we choose to (5) do. — David Allen

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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

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The value of goals is not in the future they describe, but the change in perception of reality they foster. — David Allen

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Get a purge for your brain. It will do better than for your stomach. - Michel Eyquem de Montaigne — David Allen

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You don't manage priorities, you have them. — David Allen

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you have to think about your stuff more than you realize but not as much as you're afraid you might. — David Allen

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Others need more physical horsepower. Some need very little of either. — David Allen

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If you're at zero backlog, it's a whole lot easier to change priorities. — David Allen

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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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Interestingly, one of the biggest problems with most people's personal management systems is that they blend a few actionable things with a large amount of data and material that has value but no action attached. — David Allen

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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

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art of resting the mind and the power of dismissing from it all care and worry is probably one of the secrets of our great men. - Capt. J. A. Hatfield — David Allen

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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

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why has almost everyone done the calendar thing, but almost no one has moved everything else in their life into a similar zone, by capturing it all and creating the habit of assessing it all appropriately? Three reasons: First, the data that is entered onto a calendar has already been thought through and determined; it's been translated down to the physical action level. You agreed to call Jim at noon on Monday: there is no more thinking required about what the appropriate action is, or where and when you're going to do it. Second, you know where those kinds of actions need to be parked (calendar), and it's a familiar and available tool. — David Allen

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Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax. — David Allen

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

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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. — David Allen

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One insurance executive I worked with described the major benefit he derived from implementation of this system: "Previously I would just tell everyone, 'Sure, I'll do it,' because I didn't know how much I really had to do. Now that I've got the inventory clear and complete, just to maintain my integrity, I have had to say, 'No, I can't do that, I'm sorry.' The amazing thing is that instead of being upset with my refusal, everyone was impressed with my discipline! — David Allen

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The hurrier I go, the behinder I get. - Anonymous — David Allen

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A Keyring? Achievements? These are not WoW-specific things. They are common sense. They exist in the real world. — David Allen

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It's fine to decide not to decide about something. You just need a decide-not-to-decide system to get it off your mind — David Allen

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Your Brain is for having ideas not storing them. — David Allen

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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

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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

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You can try it for yourself right now, if you like. Choose one project that is new or stuck or that could simply use some improvement. Think of your purpose. Think of what a successful outcome would look like: where would you be physically, financially, in terms of reputation, or whatever? Brainstorm potential steps. Organize your ideas. Decide on the next actions. Are you any clearer about where you want to go and how to get there? — David Allen

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My opinion is that anybody offended by breastfeeding is staring too hard — David Allen

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

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In Ireland we have a very old saying, When you can see the mountains it's going to rain and when you can't see the mountains it's raining. — David Allen

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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

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When you start to make things happen, you really begin to believe that you can make things happen. And that makes things happen. — David Allen

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Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. — David Allen

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A successful executive is one that solves bigger problems than he/she creates. — David Allen

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Almost every project could be done better, and an infinite quantity of information is now available that could make that happen. — David Allen

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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. — David Allen

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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

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You won't see how to do it until you see yourself doing it. — David Allen

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Klara Sztucinski, and Elliott Kellman. The administrative — David Allen

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The better you get, the better you better get. — David Allen

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At any point in time, the first thing to consider is, what could you possibly do, where you are, with the tools you have? — David Allen

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Nothing is really new in this high-tech, globally wired world, except how frequently it is. — David Allen

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A renegotiated agreement is not a broken one. — David Allen

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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

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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

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Write all your notes and quotes on separate three-by-five-inch cards. Then, when you get ready to organize your thinking, just spread them all out on the floor, see the natural structure that emerges, and figure out what's missing. — David Allen

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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

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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

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There are no interruptions, only mismanaged inputs — David Allen

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Without a gut-level sense that you are ultimately in control of what's happening to you, you won't even consider the option that you could manage it better. — David Allen

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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

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The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war. — David Allen

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Mosquitoes can ruin the hunt for big game. — David Allen

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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

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Anything that does not belong where it is, the way it is, is an "open loop," which will be pulling on your attention if it's not appropriately managed. In — David Allen

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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

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The focus we hold in our minds affects what we perceive and how we perform. — David Allen

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Your life and work are made up of outcomes and actions. When your operational behavior is grooved to organize everything that comes your way, at all levels, based upon those dynamics, a deep alignment occurs, and wondrous things emerge. You become highly productive. You make things up, and you make them happen. — David Allen

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There's a lot of reasons why deadline-driven may actually - it's not necessarily a bad thing, it just all it does is it speeds up and makes you a little proactive about decision making. — David Allen

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The great secret about goals and visions is not the future they describe but the change in the present they engender. — David Allen

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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

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I think positive stress is actually a good thing. It's sort of the stretch goal "Wow, let me see how much faster I can run" or "Let me see how many more ideas I can generate in five minutes." — David Allen

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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

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Capturing ideas and input will become more and more critical as your life and work become more sophisticated. As you proceed in your career, for instance, you'll probably notice that your best ideas about work will not come to you at work. — David Allen

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Most people move actually into high performance in a crisis because that creates the kind of focus that creates high performance. — David Allen

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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

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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

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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

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The substantive issue is how to make appropriate choices about what to do at any point in time. The real work is to manage our actions. That — David Allen

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It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head. - Sally Kempton — David Allen

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A lot of people have nothing very well organized, and a lot of people have nothing, very well organized. — David Allen

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A great hammer doesn't make a great carpenter; but a great carpenter will always want to have a great hammer. — David Allen

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It is a tricky business to know when you should set goals and objectives in order to achieve a focus, and when you would be better off dealing with the acceptance and management of your current reality so you can later step into new directions and responsibilities with greater stability and clarity. Only you will know the answer to that, and only in the moment. — David Allen

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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

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Reacting is automatic, but thinking is not. — David Allen

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Organizations must create a culture in which it is acceptable that everyone has more to do than he or she can do, and in which it is sage to renegotiate agreements about what everyone is not doing. — David Allen

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Most people feel best about their work the week before their vacation, but it's not because of the vacation itself. What do you do the last week before you leave on a big trip? You clean up, close up, clarify, and renegotiate all your agreements with yourself and others. I just suggest that you do this weekly instead of yearly. — David Allen

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If not controlled, work will flow to the competent man until he submerges. - CHARLES BOYLE — David Allen

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Focusing on your values may provide you with meaning, but it won't simplify things. — David Allen

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There is usually an inverse relationship between how much something is on your mind and how much it's getting done. — David Allen

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The hardest thing about being productive is not the work, but the split second it takes to decide to take control. — David Allen

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THE PURPOSE OF this whole method of workflow management is not to let your brain become lax, but rather to enable it to move toward more elegant and productive activity. In order to earn that freedom, however, your brain must engage on some consistent basis with all your commitments and activities. You must be assured that you're doing what you need to be doing, and that it's OK to be not doing what you're not doing. — David Allen

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You are the captain of your own ship; the more you act from that perspective, the better things will go for you. — David Allen

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You can fool everyone else, but you can't fool your own mind. — David Allen

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Before you can achieve any of that, though, you'll need to get in the habit of keeping nothing on your mind. And the way to do that, as we've seen, is not by managing time, managing information, or managing priorities. After all: you don't manage five minutes and wind up with six; you don't manage information overload - otherwise you'd walk into a library and die, or the first time you connected to the Web, you'd blow up; and you don't manage priorities - you have them. Instead, the key to managing all of your stuff is managing your actions. — David Allen

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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

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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

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Frankly, I'm more of a researcher, teacher,motivat or, and coach than I am an entrepreneur. — David Allen

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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

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The vast majority of people have been trying to get organized by rearranging incomplete lists of unclear things; they haven't yet realized how much and what they need to organize in order to get the real payoff. They need to gather everything that requires thinking about and then do that thinking if their organizational efforts are to be successful. The — David Allen

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Mosquitos ruin the safari. — David Allen

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Most stress they experience comes from inappropriately managed commitments they make or accept. — David Allen

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

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The most experienced planner in the world is your brain. — David Allen

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Creativity and freedom are two sides of the same coin. I like the best of both worlds. — David Allen

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Trust yourself to do what you really feel like doing, and what you feel like doing will change. Don't, and it will plague you. — David Allen

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If you don't pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves. — David Allen

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Healthy skepticism is often the best way to glean the value of what's being presented - challenge it; prove it wrong, if you can. That creates engagement, which is the key to understanding. — David Allen