David Allen - Getting Things Done | Page 6

work
5
Time is the
quality of nature
that keeps events
from happening all
at once. Lately it
doesn't seem to be
working.
—A n on y mo us
Almost every
project could be
done better, and an
infinite quantity of
information is now
available that could
make that happen.

THE ART OF GETTING THINGS DONE I PART ONE
for everyone. Many of today's organizational outcom es require
cross-divisional communication, cooperation, and engagement.
Our individual office silos are crumbling, and with them is going
the luxury of not having to read cc'd e-mails from the marketing
department, or from human resources, or from some a d hoc, deal-
with-a-certain-issue committee.
Our Jobs Keep Changing
The disintegrating edges of our projects and our work in general
would be challenging enough for anyone. But now we must add
to that equation the constantly shifting definition of our jobs. I
often ask in my seminars, "Which of you are doing o nly what you
were hired to do?" Seldom do I get a raised hand. A s amorphous
as edgeless work may be, if you had the chance to stick with some
specifically described job long enough, you'd proba bly figure out
what you needed to do—how much, at what level—to st ay
sane.
But few have that luxury anymore, for two reasons:
We can never
really be prepared
for that which is
wholly new. We
have to adjust , •
ourselves, and
every radical
adjustment is a
crisis in self-
esteem: we undergo
a test, we have to
prove ourselves. It
needs subordinate
self-confidence to
face drastic change
without inner
trembling.
—Eric
Hoffer
1 | The organizations we're involved with seem to
be in constant morph mode, with ever-changing
goals, products, partners, customers, markets,
technologies, and owners. These all, by neces-
sity, shake up structures, forms, roles, and
responsibilities.
2 | The average professional is more of a free agen t
these days than ever before, changing careers as
often as his or her parents once changed jobs.
Even fortysomethings and fiftysomethings hold
to standards of continual growth. Their aims are
just more integrated into the mainstream now,
covered by the catchall "professional, manage-
ment, and executive development"—which sim-
ply means they won't keep doing what they're
doing for any extended period of time.
6

CHAPTER 1 I A NEW PRACTICE FOR A NEW REALITY
Little seems clear for very long anymore, as far as what our
work is and what or how much input may be relevant
to doing it well. We're allowing in huge amounts of
information and communication from the outer
world and generating an equally large volume of
ideas and agreements with ourselves and others from
our inner world. And we haven't been well equipped to deal with
this huge number of internal and external commitmen ts.
The Old Models and Habits Are Insufficient
Neither our standard education, nor traditional time-management
models, nor the plethora of organizing tools availa ble, such as
personal notebook planners, Microsoft Outlook, or P alm per-
sonal digital assistants (PDAs), has given us a viable means of
meeting the new demands placed on us. If you've tri ed to use any
of these processes or tools, you've probably found
them unable to accommodate the speed, complexity,
and changing priority factors inherent in what you
are doing. The ability to be successful, relaxed, and in
control during these fertile but turbulent times
demands new ways of thinking and working. There
is a great need for new methods, technologies, and
work habits to help us get on top of our world.
The traditional approaches to time management and p er-
sonal organization were useful in their time. They provided help-
ful reference points for a workforce that was just emerging from
an industrial assembly-line modality into a new kin d of work that
included choices about what to do and discretion ab out when to
do it. When "time" itself turned into a work factor, personal