David Allen Quotes

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

Merely having thoughts is one thing. Consciously feeding them is quite another. You are powerful all the time, by way of your attention and intention. The question is, Toward what are you pointing tha...

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

Reacting is automatic, but thinking is not.

There are no interruptions, really—there are simply mismanaged occurrences.

Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible. —Saint Francis of Assisi

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,...

The cognitive scientists have now proven the reality of decision fatigue—that every decision you make, little or big, diminishes a limited amount of your brain power.

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

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. —Jonathan Kozol

Most often, the reason something is on your mind is that you want it to be different than it currently is,

It’s the nature of human experience, which is always in some form of motion, to veer off course—sometimes in major, but consistently in minor, ways.

It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do. —Elbert Hubbard

There is usually an inverse relationship between how much something is on your mind and how much it’s getting done.

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

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

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 m...

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

We need to transform all the stuff we’ve attracted and accumulated into a clear inventory of meaningful actions, projects, and usable information.

Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does. Responding inappropriately to your e-mail, your thoughts about what you need to do, your children, or your boss wil...