Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

It is possible to be effectively doing while you are delightfully being, in your ordinary workaday world.

The art of resting the mind and the power of dismissing from it all care and worry is probably one of the secrets of our great men. —Captain J. A. Hatfield

people have enhanced quality of life, but at the same time they are adding to their stress levels by taking on more than they have resources to handle.

The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.

“mind like water.”

Clearing the mind and being flexible are key.

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

Most people give either more or less attention to things than they deserve, simply because they don’t operate with a “mind like water.”

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

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

Rule your mind or it will rule you. —Horace

We need to transform all the “stuff” we’re trying to organize into actionable stuff we need to do.

once “stuff” comes into our lives and work, we have an inherent commitment to ourselves to define and clarify its meaning.

The vast majority of people have been trying to get organized by rearranging incomplete lists of unclear things; they haven’t yet realized how much and what they need to organize in order to get the real payoff. They need to gather everything that requires thinking about and then do that thinking if their organizational efforts are to be successful.

The beginning is half of every action. —Greek proverb

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

In order for your mind to let go of the lower-level task of trying to hang on to everything, you have to know that you have truly captured everything that might represent something you have to do, and that at some point in the near future you will process and review all of it.

Decisions you still need to make about whether or not you are going to do something, for example, are already incompletes.

Every open loop must be in your collection system and out of your head.

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are the most active. —Leonardo da Vinci

You can’t organize what’s incoming—you can only collect it and process it. Instead, you organize the actions you’ll need to take based on the decisions you’ve made about what needs to be done.

Do It, Delegate It, or Defer It

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.”

Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape. —Michael McGriffy, M.D.

The way I look at it, the calendar should be sacred territory. If you write something there, it must get done that day or not at all. The only rewriting should be for changed appointments.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. —Albert Einstein

lists should be reviewed once a week.

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

If you’re waiting to have a good idea before you have any ideas, you won’t have many ideas.

When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. —Will Rogers

Don’t just do something. Stand there. —Rochelle Myer

To know and to be clear about the purpose of any activity are prime directives for clarity, creative development, and cooperation.

Celebrate any progress. Don’t wait to get perfect. —Ann McGee Cooper

Often the only way to make a hard decision is to come back to the purpose.

If you’re not sure why you’re doing something, you can never do enough of it.

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

“What behavior might undermine what I’m doing, and how can I prevent it?” That will give you a good starting point for defining your standards.

purpose provides the juice and the direction, principles define the parameters of action and the criteria for excellence of behavior.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. —Albert Einstein

The reticular formation is basically the gateway to your conscious awareness; it’s the switch that turns on your perception of ideas and data, the thing that keeps you asleep even when music’s playing but wakes you if a special little baby cries in another room.

I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific. —Lily Tomlin

The best way to get a good idea is to get lots of ideas. —Linus Pauling

“distributed cognition.” It’s getting things out of your head and into objective, reviewable formats.

Only he who handles his ideas lightly is master of his ideas, and only he who is master of his ideas is not enslaved by them. —Lin Yutang Few people can hold their focus on a topic for more than a couple of minutes, without some objective structure and tool or trigger to help them.

If you care even slightly about what a critic thinks, you’ll censure your expressive process as you look for the “right” thing to say.

The primary criterion must be expansion, not contraction.

once you get all the ideas out of your head and in front of your eyes, you’ll automatically notice natural relationships and structure.

Identify the significant pieces. • Sort by (one or more): • components • sequences • priorities • Detail to the required degree.

The habit of clarifying the next action on projects, no matter what the situation, is fundamental to you staying in relaxed control.

Plans get you into things but you’ve got to work your way out. —Will Rogers

Put It in Front of the Door. For our purposes the “door” is going to be the door of your mind, not your house. But it’s the same idea. If you were to take out your calendar right now and look closely at every single item for the next fourteen days, you’d probably come up with at least one “Ohthat-reminds-me-I-need-to ____.” If you then captured that value-added thought into some place that would trigger you to act, you’d feel better already, have a clearer head, and get more positive things done.

Many people lose opportunities to be productive because they’re not equipped to take advantage of the odd moments and windows of time that open up as they move from one place to another, or when they’re in off-site environments.

It is critical that you have your own work space. You want to use your systems, not just think about them.

You’ll use plain paper for the initial collection process. Believe it or not, putting one thought on one full-size sheet of paper can have enormous value.

You’ve got to be able to create a list on the run and review it easily and as regularly as you need to. Once you know what to put on the lists, and how to use them, the medium really doesn’t matter.

you can feel good about what you’re not doing, only when you know what you’re not doing.

Train yourself to notice and collect anything that doesn’t belong where it is forever.

The first activity is to search your physical environment for anything that doesn’t belong where it is, the way it is, permanently, and put it into your in-basket. You’ll be gathering things that are incomplete, things that have some decision about potential action tied to them. They all go into “in,” so they’ll be available for later processing.

It’s also just a great habit to date everything you hand-write, from Post-it notes to your assistant, to voice-mails you download onto a pad, to notes you take on a phone call with a client.

Consider whether your collectible and nostalgia items are still meaningful to you.

get into the habit of starting at one end and just cranking through items one at a time, in order. As soon as you break that rule, and process only what you feel like processing, and in whatever order, you’ll invariably begin to leave things unprocessed

never avoid any decision for longer than a minute or two.

“The first time you pick something up from your in-basket, decide what to do about it and where it goes. Never put it back in “in.”

You’re going to deal with one item at a time. And you’re going to make a firm next-action decision about each one.

We must strive to reach that simplicity that lies beyond sophistication. —John Gardner

People who don’t have their “Read/Review” material organized can waste a lot of time, since life is full of weird little windows when it could be processed.

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness. —Jean de La Bruysre

often some of the greatest pressures on professionals stem from the personal aspects of their lives that they are letting slip.

The More Novel the Situation, the More Control Is Required

block out two hours early every Friday afternoon for the review.

Whatever your life-style, you need a weekly regrouping ritual.

Your best thoughts about work won’t happen while you’re at work.

The middle of every successful project looks like a disaster. —Rosabeth Moss Cantor

A renegotiated agreement is not a broken one.

Talk does not cook rice. —Chinese proverb

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them. —George Bernard Shaw

Mastering the Mundane

An idealist believes that the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run. —Sidney J. Harris