What I Learned From David Allen, the World’s Most Influential Thinker on Productivity

Five universal productivity principles to get stuff done

Photo by Savannah Wakefield on Unsplash

David Allen is the best-selling author of Getting Things Done, which provides a system for stress-free productivity. Whether you subscribe to the GTD (Get Things Done) system or not (and I’m trying the system myself to see if it works for me), I think there are certain principles you can use for any productivity system. So even if the GTD system doesn’t work for me, I’ll still keep the following principles in mind:

1. Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them
2. Finish something simple
3. If it takes 2 minutes or less, do it now
4. Identify the next action
5. Review, clean, organize and manage

Principle #1: Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them

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. — David Allen

One of the more interesting principles is that your brain is a great place for thinking of ideas but not a great place for storing ideas. I…