Getting Things DoneGetting Things Done

David Allen's starting point is that your head is a bad place to keep a to do list. Every unfinished thing you're trying to remember, he calls it an open loop, sits there and pulls at your attention, even when you're doing something else. His line is that your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.

So the method is to get everything out. Capture every task and idea somewhere outside your head. Then go through the pile and decide what each thing is and what the very next physical action is. "Plan the project" isn't an action. "Email the person about the date" is. If something takes less than two minutes, you do it right there instead of filing it. Once a week, you go through the whole system so you keep trusting it.

It's an old book and it reads like one. There are folders and paper trays and a lot of talk about filing cabinets. You have to translate most of it into apps. But the core never went out of date, which is that you can only relax about your work if you trust you haven't forgotten any of it.

The habit I kept is writing the next action down before I stop for the night. It means I don't lie in bed rerunning what's left, and I don't waste the first half hour of tomorrow working out where I was.