Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. —Henri Bergson

The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is more important than the eye. . . . The hand is the cutting edge of the mind. —J. Bronowski

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

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

You’ve got to think about the big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction. —Alvin Toffler

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 more readily seen. —Leonardo da Vinci

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

Suffice it to say that something automatic and extraordinary happens in your mind when you create and focus on a clear picture of what you want.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one. —Mark Twain

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

Interestingly, one of the biggest problems with most people’s personal management systems is that they blend a few actionable things with a large amount of data and material that has value but no action attached.

You must use your mind to get things off your mind.

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

Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior. —Dee Hock

Almost every project could be done better, and an infinite quantity of information is now available that could make that happen.

Reacting is automatic, but thinking is not.

The beginning is half of every action.

The big problem is that your mind keeps reminding you of things when you can't do anything about them. It has no sense of past or future. That means that as soon as you tell yourself that you need to do something, and store it in your RAM, there's a part of you that thinks you should be doing that something all the time.

But if you don’t decide what needs to be done about your secretary’s birthday, because it’s “not that important” right now, that open loop will take up energy and prevent you from having a totally effective, clear focus on what is important.

I am rather like a mosquito in a nudist camp; I know what I want to do, but I don’t know where to begin.

Welcome to the real-life experience of “knowledge work,” and a profound operational principle: you have to think about your stuff more than you realize but not as much as you’re afraid you might. As Peter Drucker wrote: “In knowledge work . . . the task is not given; it has to be determined. ‘What are the expected results from this work?’ is . . . the key question in making knowledge workers productive. And it is a question that demands risky decisions. There is usually no right answer; there are choices instead. And results have to be clearly specified, if productivity is to be achieved.”*

Get a purge for your brain. It will do better than for your stomach. —Michel Eyquem de Montaigne