Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

The goal is to get projects and situations sufficiently clear and under control to get them off your mind, and not to lose any potentially useful ideas.

Purpose It never hurts to ask the why question. Almost anything you’re currently doing can be enhanced and even galvanized by more scrutiny at this top level of focus.

most stress they experience comes from inappropriately managed commitments they make or accept.

All of your Projects, active project plans, and Next Actions, Agendas, Waiting For, and even Someday/Maybe lists should be reviewed once a week. This also gives you an opportunity to ensure that your brain is clear and that all the loose strands of the past few days have been captured, clarified, and organized.

An ambient angst pervades our society—there’s a sense that somehow there’s probably something we should be doing that we’re not, which creates a tension for which there is no resolution and from which there is no rest.

Calendar Reminders of actions you need to take fall into two categories: those about things that have to happen on a specific day or time, and those about things that just need to get done as soon as possible. Your calendar handles the first type of reminder. Three things go on your calendar: time-specific actions; day-specific actions; and day-spe

It is better to be wrong than to be vague. —Freeman Dyson

Although the process may seem somewhat random, a quite complex series of steps has to occur before your brain can make anything happen physically. Your mind goes through five steps to accomplish virtually any task: 1 | Defining purpose and principles 2 | Outcome visioning 3 | Brainstorming 4 | Organizing 5 | Identifying next actions

In that case it makes sense to subdivide your Next Actions list into categories, such as Calls to make when you have a window of time and your phone, or Computer action items to see as options when you’re at that device.