Best 78 quotes of David Allen on MyQuotes

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

'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'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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