How To Get Things Done – Interview With David Allen
A wishsummit.com interview
You sit down at the end of a long day and take a deep breath, when the ping of another email in your inbox makes you lift your head. You jump to the gun to see that it’s a message from your mom. She wants you to check out your cousin’s facebook page because he’s just had a baby. Oh and isn’t that cute! While you sit and giggle in a series of photographic distractions and reminisce about grandpa, a pot of soup boils over on the kitchen stove, and it is precisely at that moment that the kids walk in the house, shedding chunks of mud and raving about the victory at their latest soccer match – oh – and what’s for dinner? You start to answer them but then the phone rings and it’s your best friend who’s a bundle tears again because she’s having such a hard time overcoming her recent divorce and you so want to be there for her but then you just remember that you forgot to pick up the dry cleaning. And just when you’re about to blow your fuse the dog looks up at you and pees in a puddle at your feet because you forgot to take her out for a walk again.
Life can get awfully busy sometimes, and if you don’t have a system and some strong habits and efficient practices in place, life will scoop you up and spit you out feeling exhausted, overwhelmed and out of control.
Here are some key points from this interview:
- When things are on, when things really work, when you’re really on your game, anything that is potentially distracting is captured, you’ve clarified what it means, you’ve organized and parked the results in some trusted place so that you or the right person will see it at the right time and be reminded of the right stuff, you step back and get some kind of review so you can see the whole picture of all of your commitments and attachments and things that have your attention so that when you decide to do one thing at a time that is a trusted choice as opposed to driven by latest and loudest – that’s what the game looks like.
- The biggest productivity problem is that people keep stuff in their head (instead of externalizing everything into a productive system)
- As people have gotten more and more into ‘knowledge work’, (constantly having to make decisions throughout the day) – the amount of those things in your life, you better have a system that can then manage those and a systematic system that can manage those and park the results
- Pain and stress usually come from regret about the past or fear about the future
You can listen to this call right here:
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.
He is the engineer of GTD®, the popular Getting Things Done® methodology that has shown millions how to transform a fast-paced, overwhelming, over-committed life into one that is balanced, integrated, relaxed, and has more successful outcomes. GTD’s broad appeal is based on the fact that it is applicable from the boardroom to the living room to the class room. It is hailed as “life changing” by students, busy parents, entrepreneurs and corporate executives. David is the Founder and Chairman of the David Allen Company, whose inspirational seminars, coaching, educational materials and practical products present individuals and organizations with a new model for “Winning at the Game of Work and Business of Life.” He continues to write articles and essays that address today’s ever-changing issues about living and working in a fast-paced world while sustaining balance, control, and meaningful focus.
Our upcoming Spring Cleaning Summit starts June 9th! Don’t miss this series of calls on how to detox your life in so many different ways! These calls are free, and you can sign up right here!