Getting Things Done by David Allen: Everything Needs to be Collected Somewhere Other than in Your Head!

"The key to managing all your "stuff" is managing you actions."

"What you do with your time, what you do with information, and what you do with your body and your focus relative to your priorities---those are the real options to which you must allocate your limited resources.  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."


A project looks "overwhelming because you can't do a project at all!  You can only do an action related to it.  Many actions require only a minute or two, in the appropriate context, to move a project forward."

David says we need to get things out of our heads and into some type of management system.  He advocates making this a characteristic of your on-going life- and work style and maintaining it across all areas of your life (not just the most "urgent).

Every to do you have on your mind is taking up short term memory space and causes stress until you get it done.  You need to have a way to get it out of your mind and into a "storage bucket" that you will review as needed.

Everything needs to be collected somewhere other than in your head!