Who are the Biggest Procrastinators?

davidallenIn his latest blog post, David Allen suggests the following:

“The biggest procrastinators are usually the most sophisticated, sensitive, creative, and intelligent people.  Nailed you, did I?  Well, I assume you’re in the sophisticated, creative, and intelligent category. That probably means you have large numbers of things stuck in your mind, in your briefcase, and on your desk about which things are not moving forward quite as consistently as they could be.”

Read the rest of his blog entry at: http://gettingthingsdone.com/2016/06/who-are-the-biggest-procrastinators

What Gets in the Way?

Below is a great little Q&A dialogue from www.gettingthingsdone.com:

Q: What’s the one thing that we do that gets in the way of us being productive?

davidallenDavid Allen: It’s not one thing, but five, all wrapped together: People keep stuff in their head. They don’t decide what they need to do about stuff they know they need to do something about. They don’t organize action reminders and support materials in functional categories. They don’t maintain and review a complete and objective inventory of their commitments. Then they waste energy and burn out, allowing their busy-ness to be driven by what’s latest and loudest, hoping it’s the right thing to do but never feeling the relief that it is.

Time for a Good Sweep

When was the last time you did a good sweep?  No, not of your house or apartment floors, but of your mind!  The Mind Sweep is a fundamental productivity technique designed to get ideas out of your head and into your system.  If you want to achieve a state of “Mind Like Water” where the only thing on your mind is the present moment, keeping your mental space clean is a must.  The Mind Sweep is a valuable tool to accomplish this goal.

The rules are simple.  Start by grabbing a stack of sticky notes or small note paper pads along with a good pen or pencil.  As items come to mind, write them down on paper, following the rule of one thought per page.  Put every thought down in writing no matter how big or small it seems.  Work on it for enough time to clear your mind, whether that is ten minutes or an hour.  Finally, put all those notes into your inbox to process and organize.

David Allen often says that the only way you can feel good about what you are not doing is to know what you are not doing.  So shake off those mental cobwebs and do a good mind sweep this week.  It is worth the effort.