That's why I began to look for some kind of external help; and stumbled upon a book by David Allen Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Many view David Allen as one of the most influential productivity guys on the globe, and after reading his outstanding book, I fully subscribe to that view.
His work is based on the idea that the conscious mind - what he coins the personal RAM - is good as a focusing tool and for having ideas, but that it is not a suitable place to store all pending "open loops". That's why he proposes a workflow which starts by emptying all the things that are on one's mind into some kind of trusted external system. His methodology (aka GTD) does not make any distinction between private and business related issues nor does it force one into any kind of technological edge by prescribing a particular system or tool to achieve that kind of "externalism". Essentially, it doesn't matter at all whether that external system is paper or digital based, as long as it fits one's particular needs. Overall, his workflow is divided into five clearly delineated phases, i.e. collecting, processing, organizing, reviewing and doing.
I noticed that, even without having started to implement his system, I did already feel some kind of relief just by reading his book, realizing that there is light at the end of the tunnel. His methodology clearly analyses the core problems which entails all sorts of negative stress, and it is interesting to see that many many people are basically struggling with the same issues.
Now coming back to the title: This is quoted from a compilation of eight podcast episodes with David Allen of Productive Talk which ran on 43folders.com:
If you don't pay appropriate attention to was has your attention, it will take more of your attention then it deserves ... The more is on your mind, the less is happening.This might not make sense to those who haven't read his book yet, but for those who did, it actually represents a much more natural approach of how to deal with priorities as opposed to the well-known ABC-Classification, which works fine in theory but fails to address the different vertical levels which determine our work. Allen uses an aerospace analogy to make these levels more concrete, ranging from the runway level up to an altitude of 50,000 feet dealing with Life in general.
Another quote worth remembering, found on donationcoder.com:
You can only feel good about what your are not doing when you know what you are not doing.So, whoever suffers from procrastination, this book is definitely worth to work through.
