You won’t be able to be as present with your kids. If you’re trying to keep more than four things in your head, in terms of things to be reminded about, or trying to prioritize or try to manage, you will sub-optimize your cognitive process. You need to clarify exactly what you’re going to do about them, if anything, and then have some sort of external brain or trusted external system that you keep track of all the reminders that you need to be reminded about that you then review and keep current on some kind of consistent basis.Ī lot of the stress comes from people mismanaging their own agreements with themselves. So all the commitments that you make with yourself that you would, could, should, need to resolve, those need to be externalized. Your head’s a really bad office because it doesn’t have a sense of past or future. He spoke with Workflowy about how his method helps manage anxiety and stress.īasically, it keeps stuff out of your head. In a culture that has trouble setting boundaries around work, or where personal life and work increasingly collide, his method has helped thousands of people around the world improve their workflow process. It’s a mindset, he says, and one that has significant implications for reducing stress and anxiety in all areas of life. The Getting Things Done method, described in Allen’s book under the same name, involves five steps: capture what has your attention, clarify your process, organize, reflect, and engage. “Now they call it ‘process improvement,’” he jokes.

His desire to be efficient turned into a productivity consultation business. It all started when he was helping his friends with their small businesses. The following is from a Q&A with the creator of the GTD method on productivity in an anxious age.ĭavid Allen has been thinking creatively––and helping others think creatively––about productivity since the 1980s.

David allen productivity