Getting Things Done Quotes

If you don't pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.

You don't actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it. When enough of the right action steps have been taken, some situation will have been created that matches your initial picture of the outcome closely enough that you can call it "done.

Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.

Most people feel best about their work the week before their vacation, but it's not because of the vacation itself. What do you do the last week before you leave on a big trip? You clean up, close up, clarify, and renegotiate all your agreements with yourself and others. I just suggest that you do this weekly instead of yearly.

You can fool everyone else, but you can't fool your own mind.

Everything you’ve told yourself you ought to do, your mind thinks you should do right now. Frankly, as soon add you have two things to do stored in your RAM, you’ve generated personal failure, because you can’t do two things at the same time. This produces an all-pervasive stress factor whose source can’t be pin-pointed.

Use your mind to think about things, rather than think of them. You want to be adding value as you think about projects and people, not simply reminding yourself they exist.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one. —Mark Twain.

Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does.

It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do. —Elbert Hubbard.

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. —Henri Bergson.

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. —Jonathan Kozol.

The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is more important than the eye. . . . The hand is the cutting edge of the mind. —J. Bronowski.

You’ve got to think about the big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction. —Alvin Toffler.

You must use your mind to get things off your mind.

There is no reason to ever have the same thought twice, unless you like having that thought. I.

Every now and then go away and have a little relaxation. To remain constantly at work will diminish your judgment. Go some distance away, because work will be in perspective and a lack of harmony is more readily seen. —Leonardo da Vinci.

Suffice it to say that something automatic and extraordinary happens in your mind when you create and focus on a clear picture of what you want.

Things rarely get stuck because of lack of time. They get stuck because the doing of them has not been defined.

I am rather like a mosquito in a nudist camp; I know what I want to do, but I don’t know where to begin.