Getting Things Done: The Art Of Stress-Free Productivity Quotes
"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."
"Anxiety is caused by a lack of control, organization, preparation, and action."
"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."
"It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head."
"The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators."
"Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought."
"Time is the quality of nature that keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn’t seem to be working."
"Vision is not enough; it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps; we must step up the stairs."
"You can feel good about what you’re not doing, only when you know what you’re not doing."
"It’s easy to envision something happening if it has happened before or you have had experience with similar successes."
"The greatest need I’ve seen in project thinking in the professional world is not for more formal models; usually the people who need those models already have them."
"The goal is to get projects and situations off your mind, but not to lose any potentially useful ideas."
"You’re planning when you get dressed, eat lunch, go to the store, or simply talk."
"People love to win. If you’re not totally clear about the purpose of what you’re doing, you have no chance of winning."
"The best way to get a good idea is to get lots of ideas."
"Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior."
"If you’re waiting to have a good idea before you have any ideas, you won’t have many."
"When people do more planning, more informally and naturally, they relieve a great deal of stress and obtain better results."
"Be careful to check with yourself, though, about whether there is some potential action tied to the material before you put it away."
"Consider whether your collectible and nostalgia items are still meaningful to you."
"The first time you pick something up from your in-basket, decide what to do about it and where it goes."
"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."
"Don't let the 'not so important' trap gnaw away your energy at home."
"It will probably take you between twenty minutes and an hour to clear your head onto separate notes."
"It's much better to overdo this process than to risk missing something."
"The calendar should show only the 'hard landscape' around which you do the rest of your actions."
"Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness."
"What lies in our power to do, lies in our power not to do."
"In any case, this is another great reason to have an organizing system that makes it easy to capture things that may add value and variety and interest to your life—without clogging your mind and workspace with undecided, unfinished business."
"The value of 'someday/maybe' disappears if you don’t put your conscious awareness back on it with some consistency."
"Your calendar can be a very handy place to park reminders of things you might want to consider doing in the future."
"It’s OK to decide not to decide—as long as you have a decide-not-to-decide system."
"The tickler file demands only a one-second-per-day new behavior to make it work, and it has a payoff value exponentially greater than the personal investment."
"Checklists can be highly useful to let you know what you don’t need to be concerned about."
"The degree to which any of us needs to maintain checklists and external controls is directly related to our unfamiliarity with the area of responsibility."
"Be open to creating any kind of checklist as the urge strikes you."
"If your system is out of date, your brain will be forced to fully engage again at the lower level of remembering."
"A real review process will lead to enhanced and proactive new thinking in key areas of your life and work."
"The Weekly Review is whatever you need to do to get your head empty again."
"To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree."
"You’d feel so good about finishing all your stuff you’d likely take on bigger, more ambitious things to do."
"It’s a lot easier to complete agreements when you know what they are."
"The better you get, the better you’d better get."
"A renegotiated agreement is not a broken one."
"It is the act of forgiveness that opens up the only possible way to think creatively about the future at all."
"It’s impossible to renegotiate agreements with yourself that you can’t remember you made!"
"As soon as you tell yourself that you should do something, if you file it only in your short-term memory, there’s a part of you that thinks you should be doing it all the time."
"In there, they’re both just agreements—kept or broken."
"Anything that is held only in 'psychic RAM' will take up either more or less attention than it deserves."
"You’ll feel better collecting anything that you haven’t collected yet."
"When nothing else shows up as a reminder in your mind."
"If you’re conscious, your mind will always be focusing on something."
"I suggest that you use your mind to think about things, rather than think of them."
"The same is true in families that have instituted in-baskets."
"You can’t renegotiate an agreement with yourself that you can’t remember you made."
"Imagine the freedom that would allow to focus attention on bigger issues and opportunities."
"It clarifies things so quickly that dealing with people and environments that don’t use it can seem nightmarish."
"We are all accountable to define what, if anything, we are committed to make happen as we engage with ourselves and others."
"There’s a great difference, however, between making that decision when things show up and doing it when they blow up."
"Defining what real doing looks like, on the most basic level, and organizing placeholder reminders that we can trust, are master keys to productivity enhancement."
"Often even the simplest things are stuck because we haven’t made a final decision yet about the next action."
"Without a next action, there remains a potentially infinite gap between current reality and what you need to do."
"It’s really the smartest people who have the highest number of undecided things in their lives and on their lists."
"I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened."
"Ceasing negative imaging will always cause your energy to increase."
"You’ll invariably feel a relieving of pressure about anything you have a commitment to change or do, when you decide on the very next physical action required to move it forward."
"No matter how big and tough a problem may be, get rid of confusion by taking one little step toward solution. Do something."
"You are either attracted or repelled by the things on your lists; there isn’t any neutral territory."
"You can only cure retail but you can prevent wholesale."
"When change is required, there must be trust that the initiatives for that change will be dealt with appropriately."
"This doesn’t mean that everyone has to do everything."
"The critical issue will be to facilitate a constant renegotiation process with all involved, so they feel OK about what they’re not doing."
"I have a personal mission to make 'What’s the next action?' part of the global thought process."
"It’s hardly even a conscious concern, and everyone’s attention is more focused."
"People often grimace when I tell them that my wife, Kathryn, and I put things in each other’s in-baskets, even when we’re sitting within a few feet of each other."
"Unfortunately, you can’t legislate personal systems."
"Organizations must create a culture in which it is acceptable that everyone has more to do than he or she can do."
"When Relationships and Organizations Have the Collection Habit."
"The Radical Departure from Traditional Time Management."
"I need to trust that any request or relevant information I put on a voice-mail, in an e-mail, in a conversation, or in a written note will get into the other person’s system."
"Bailing water in a leaky boat diverts energy from rowing the boat."
"Shifting to a Positive Organizational Culture."