Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity pdfdrive com

part 1
The Art of Getting Things Done

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1
A New Practice for a New Reality
IT’S POSSIBLE FOR
a person to have an overwhelming number of things to
do and still function productively with a clear head and a positive sense of
relaxed control. That’s a great way to live and work, at elevated levels of
effectiveness and efficiency. It’s also becoming a critical operational style
required of successful and high-performing professionals. You already know
how to do everything necessary to achieve this high-performance state. If you’re
like most people, however, you need to apply these skills in a more timely,
complete, and systematic way so you can get on top of it all instead of feeling
buried. And though the method and the techniques I describe in this book are
immensely practical and based on common sense, most people will have some
major work habits that must be modified before they can implement this system.
The small changes required—changes in the way you clarify and organize all the
things that command your attention—could represent a significant shift in how
you approach some key aspects of your day-to-day work. Many of my clients
have referred to this as a significant paradigm shift.
Anxiety is caused by a lack of control,
organization, preparation, and action.
—David Kekich
The methods I present here are all based on two key objectives: (1) capturing
all
the things that need to get done—now, later, someday, big, little, or in
between—into a logical and trusted system outside of your head and off your
mind; and (2) disciplining yourself to make front-end decisions about all of the
“inputs” you let into your life so that you will always have a plan for “next
actions” that you can implement or renegotiate at any moment.
This book offers a proven method for this kind of high-performance workflow
management. It provides good tools, tips, techniques, and tricks for

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implementation. As you’ll discover, the principles and methods are instantly
usable and applicable to everything you have to do in your personal as well as
your professional life.
1
You can incorporate, as many others have before you,
what I describe as an ongoing dynamic style of operating in your work and in
your world. Or, like still others, you can simply use this as a guide to getting
back into better control when you feel you need to.

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