1: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

“Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.” —David Allen, Getting Things Done

If your daily life is out of control, it’s almost impossible to think or plan effectively.

When you’re feeling overwhelmed about how much you have to do (and who isn’t, really?), it’s difficult to focus on ensuring your life and work are moving in the direction you want to go.

That’s why it’s important to get control of your daily tasks before working on your big-picture life planning.

Here’s a high-level overview of GTD in a nutshell:

1. Collect things that command our attention;
2. process what they mean and what to do about them; and
3. organize the results, which we
4. review as options for what we choose to
5. do.

GTD is a “bottom-up” approach to productivity…

The goal is to establish a sense of comfort and control over the work that’s on your plate right now, so you can free up some mental energy and space to think about the big stuff.

Speaking of big stuff, in our next lesson, we’ll talk about why it’s important to define what your big goals look like when they’re done.

See you then.

—Dean