David Allen - Getting Things Done | Page 9

"mind like water."
Can You Get into Your "Productive State"
When Required?
Think about the last time you felt highly productiv e.
You probably had a sense of being in control; you
were not stressed out; you were highly focused on
what you were doing; time tended to disappear
(lunchtime already?); and you felt you were making
noticeable progress toward a meaningful outcome.
Would you like to have more such experiences?
A n d i f y o u g e t s e r i o u s l y f a r o u t o f t h a t
state—and start to feel out of control, stressed
out, unfocused, bored, and stuck—do you have the
ability to get yourself back into it? That's where the
11
If your mind is
empty, it is always
ready for anything;
it is open to
everything.
—Sbunryu Suzuki
Anything that
causes you to
overreact or
underreact can
control you, and
often does.
There is one thing
we can do, and the
happiest people are
those who can do
it to the limit of
their ability. We
can be completely
present. We can
be all here. We
can . . . give all
our attention to
the opportunity
before us.
—
M a r k

THE ART OF GETTING THINGS DONE I PART ONE
methodology of Getting Things Done will have the greatest impact
on your life, by showing you how to get back to "mi nd like water,"
with all your resources and faculties functioning at a maximum level.
The Principle: Dealing Effectively
with Internal Commitments
A basic truism I have discovered over twenty years of coaching
and training is that most of the stress people experience comes
from inappropriately managed commitments they make or
accept. Even those who are not consciously "stressed out" will
invariably experience greater relaxation, better fo cus, and
increased productive energy when they learn more effectively to
control the "open loops" of their lives.
You've probably made many more agreements with your self
than you realize, and every single one of them-big or little—is
being tracked by a less-than-conscious part of you. These are the
"incompletes," or "open loops," which I define as anything pulling
at your attention that doesn't belong where it is, the way it is.
Open loops can include everything from really big t o-do items
like "End world hunger" to the more modest "Hire new assistant"
to the tiniest task such as "Replace electric pencil sharpener."
It's likely that you also have more internal commit ments cur-
rently in play than you're aware of. Consider how m any things you
feel even the smallest amount of responsibility to
change, finish, handle, or do something about. You
have a commitment, for instance, to deal in some
way with every new communication landing in your
e-mail, on your voice-mail, and in your in-basket.
And surely there are numerous projects that you
sense need to be defined in your areas of responsi-
bility, as well as goals and directions to be clarified, a
career to be managed, and life in general to be kep t in balance.
You have accepted some level of internal responsibility for every-
12
Anything that does
not belong where it
is, the way it is, is
an "open loop"
pulling on your
attention.

CHAPTER 1 | A NEW PRACTICE FOR A NEW REALITY
thing in your life and work that represents an open loop of any
sort.
In order to deal effectively with all of that, you must first
identify and collect all those things that are "ringing your bell"
in some way, and then plan how to handle them. That may seem
like a simple thing to do, but in practice most people don't know
how to do it in a consistent way.
The Basic Requirements for Managing Commitments
Managing commitments well requires the implementati on of
some basic activities and behaviors:
• First of all, if it's on your mind, your mind isn't clear. Anything
you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted
system outside your mind, or what I call a collection bucket, that
you know you'll come back to regularly and sort thr ough.
• Second, you must