David allen quotes

The better you get, the better you better get.

Focusing on values does not simplify your life. It gives meaning and direction-and a lot more complexity.

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.

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.

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.

You can do anything, but you can't do everything

Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does.

If you don't pay attention to the things that have your attention, you'll give them more attention than they deserve.

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

Anything that does not belong where it is, is an "open loop" pulling on your attention.

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

There are no interruptions, only mismanaged inputs

At at any point in time, knowing what has to get done, and when, creates a terrain for maneuvering.

Procastination is not about not doing is about not doing and feeling crappy.

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.

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.

Why do people complain that there's no time to get their work done? Because there is more work to do than the work they think they have to do.

The sense of anxiety and guilt doesn't come from having too much to do; it's the automatic result of breaking agreements with yourself.

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.

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 pin-pointed.

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.

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."

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.

The ancestor of every action is a thought. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Things rarely get stuck because of lack of time. They get stuck because the doing of them has not been defined.

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

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but the way out is through.

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

It was helpful to be able to call a lawyer...it turns out, that not only did they help me, but they really helped the whole community.

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.

The balance you have between drive and patience may be your master key to success.

When we truly need to do is often what we most feel like avoiding.

You can do anything, not everything

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.

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

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.

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

You can do anything, but not everything.

Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax

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

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

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.

If we didn't have any stress, we'd never grow and you'd probably wouldn't test your mettle and you'd probably wouldn't come up with a lot of creative stuff that people come up with by being somewhat on the edge.

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.

My opinion is that anybody offended by breastfeeding is staring too hard

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.

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.

Distracting reactions about anything undermine a clear mind about anything else.

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

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

Review your list as often as you need to get them off your mind.

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.

'I need milk' and 'I need to decide whether to buy this company' both tie up space in psychic RAM. The solution is simple. Write it down. Look at it. Do it or say to yourself 'not now'.

Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.

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.

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.

If you’re at zero backlog, it’s a whole lot easier to change priorities.

Change - even change meant to improve our lives - creates stress. We can get comfortable with our problems.

The right amount of complexity is what creates the optimal simplicity

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

Mosquitos ruin the safari.

A vision of a desired future allows you to engage and identify immediately in your focus with an improved condition. It changes what you perceive and how you perform NOW. It's not about achieving something in time. It's rather about the quality of choices you are making in this moment - what you choose to perceive, feel, and do. It's about getting the most out of your experience.

The reason that deadline actually can work very well for you is what it forces you to do is make decisions.

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

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.

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

You don't actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it. When enough of the right action steps have been taken, some situation will have been created that matches your initial picture of the outcome closely enough that you can call it "done.

Virtually every problem that would show up in your business can be traced back to communications; somebody didn't talk to somebody about something.

If you don't fall off the wagon regularly, you're not playing a big enough game.

It's easier to change directions if you are in motion.

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.

There is usually an inverse proportion between how much something is on your mind and how much it´s getting done!

Want freedom? Get organized. Want to get organized? Get creative.

Stress such as you experience in exercise is what creates builds focus, strength, and the capability for expanded expression; and the same is true for any kind of performance.

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.

You don't actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it.

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.

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.

Mosquitoes can ruin the hunt for big game.

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.

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

Small things done consistently, in strategic places, create major impact.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, it's hard to eat spaghetti.

Isn't it interesting that people feel best about themselves right before they go on vacation? They've cleared up all of their to-do piles, closed up transactions, renewed old promises with themselves. My most basic suggestion is that people should do that more than just once a year.

There is no reason ever to have the same thought twice, unless you like having that thought.

You don't manage priorities, you have them.

We suffer the stress of infinite opportunity: There are so many things that we could do, and all we see are people who seem to be performing at star quality. It's very hard not to try to be like them. The problem is, if you get wrapped up in that game, you'll get eaten alive. You can do anything-but not everything. The universe is full of creative projects that are waiting to be done. So, if you really care about quality of life, if you want to relax, then ... control your aspirations. That will simplify things. Learning to set boundaries is incredibly difficult for most people.