Getting Things Done creator David Allen is a familiar figure on the Lifehacker landscape for his approach to keeping yourself organised. Turns out he’s also something of an enthusiast for cloud computing, another frequent topic round these parts. More »
Productivity guru and Getting Things Done author David Allen discusses what he calls the curse of the eternally urgent, the cycle in which we feel like we’re constantly putting out fires. Ignoring secondarily important actions and projects because you are too busy and concerned with urgent things fosters continual crisis management. It never self-corrects; it self-perpetuates. Where do fires and crises come from? Usually from not-so-urgent things that people ignore because they are distracted by the crises of the moment. Then, ignored, they cause the next fires and crises.
Weblog Web Worker Daily sits down with Getting Things Done author and productivity evangelist David Allen to discuss his upcoming book and how GTD is more than just lists. To Allen, it’s about control: If you walk into anywhere and want to get more control, all you really need to do is a version of collect. That is I need to sit down and just get everything that has my attention or the attention of everybody in the group I’m trying to get [in]control.
The new book, which Allen describes as “GTD on steroids,” provides a higher-level look at implementing GTD in your everyday life, which is what Allen focuses on in this interview. If you’ve given GTD a once-over but have had trouble seeing the forest for the trees (or the project for the lists, as it were), this interview may give you a better idea of how and why you might want to integrate GTD philosophies into more aspects of your life. David Allen Part 3: Really Getting it Done is Not Just Lists [Web Worker Daily]
UPDATE – a couple of people pointed out that the video link wasn’t working anymore, but it seems to have been reposted here.
Back in October, David Allen gave a talk on Getting Things Done at Google, called “GTD and the Two Keys to Sustaining a Healthy Life and Workstyle,” and now the video clip’s available on YouTube. While this is definitely a worthy watch for GTD followers (or those who aspire to be), if you don’t have a spare 45 minutes, the two keys are:
