This link has been bookmarked by 164 people . It was first bookmarked on 27 Sep 2007, by Chris Z.
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Allen's approach is not inspirational. Instead, it is detailed and dry. But within his advice about how to label a file folder or how many minutes to allot to an incoming email there is a spiritual promise. He says there is a state of blessed calm available to those who have taken careful measure of their habits and made all the changes suggested by reason. Nirvana comes by routine steps, as an algorithm drives a machine.
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Where earlier gurus tried to help their followers make their deep personal commitments explicit and easily accessible to memory, Allen is selling a kind of technology-enabled forgetting. The life-hackers like it because it stimulates their ingenuity. They have optimized versions for the iPhone, for Entourage, and for sets of manila folders. Once self-management has been broken down into a set of routines, it can be implemented in any number of high tech or low tech systems.
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Allen says his goal is to be free from worrying about anything he has to do. His techniques allow him the pleasure of having, much of the time, nothing on his mind. "People are afraid of the void, afraid of negative space," he says. "But having nothing on your mind is one of the most awesome experiences."
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These were dangerous years for young men unsure of their authenticity, and one day at a party Allen sat down next to a charismatic liar named Michael Bookbinder. He'd been a Formula One racer and also a paratrooper. He played flamenco guitar and knew karate. His costume included silk shirts with huge collars and puffy sleeves "in the manner of a gay buccaneer," as an acquaintance later recalled. He wore pancake makeup. He was a heroin user.
Bookbinder and Allen became close. Bookbinder taught him karate, and soon Allen was using heroin, too. He left his marriage, abandoned his academic training, and eventually found himself out on the street, practically penniless, "crucified psychically," as he would later put it, "absolutely at the bottom physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually." Worried about the radical change in his behavior, some of Allen's friends had him committed in 1971. At the mental hospital, Allen received stark lessons in simulated obedience. He learned to hide his psychiatric medication under his tongue instead of refusing it or spitting it out, and he studied what the medical staff seemed to want of him, so that they would pronounce him cured. "I made a decision to institute a high state of cooperation with the world again," he says.
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One day, a student told him of receiving assistance from a spiritual master who balanced her aura. Allen sought him out. "In 10 seconds I knew he had something to teach," Allen says. "And in 35 years I haven't yet gotten to the end of it."
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Roger Hinkins was born during the Depression in a poor mining town in central Utah. By the early '70s he had been introduced to Eckankar by its founder, Paul Twitchell, learned esoteric philosophy from a correspondence course, changed his name to Sri John-Roger, started a series of spiritual seminars, and given up his work as a high school teacher to found a church called the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. The movement's theology holds that John-Roger is the Mystical Traveler, a benevolent consciousness guiding mankind, who in the past has appeared as Jesus, St. Francis of Assisi, and Abraham Lincoln, among others. Some of the devotees lived in a Los Angeles mansion called the Purple Rose Ashram of the New Age. Allen was, and still is, a minister in the church.
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Soul Awareness Discourses
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Insight Seminars
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By the mid-'80s many corporate employees were being sent to classes and seminars taught by quasi-religious self-improvement groups like Lifespring, Transformational Technologies, and other branches of what was known, collectively, as the human potential movement.
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David Allen became an Insight trainer, and by 1983 he was consulting at Lockheed, where he began to filter the powerful techniques of the personal-growth movement through the pragmatic grid of corporate human resources.
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an installed thought process, which is the way Allen describes GTD.
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But in truth, Allen is not running a cult-recruitment program, nor is he merely putting a secular gloss on New Age tradition. He is reworking this tradition, increasing its utility as he narrows its scope. In Getting Things Done, the overreaching claims of cultlike programs disappear, leaving mainly the ingenious mental tricks.
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In many branches of the New Age and human potential movements, for instance, students are taught to relieve themselves of unwelcome thoughts. In Werner Erhard's est and in its descendant, Landmark Forum, mental noise is "a racket." Scientology says that the static in our heads is caused by "engrams." In GTD the problem is stuff.
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The project list is not a reminder of values or deeply held beliefs. Rather, it is an exhaustive external repository meant to capture every single thing that you may want to do.
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The project list must contain everything, otherwise unlisted items will return to our minds at unwelcome moments and cause suffering.
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In GTD, karma makes the last stage of its journey from a Hindu theory of cosmic justice to a rational tool in the American self-help kit. Karma is now just an open loop.
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Allen's practical suggestions on how to turn thoughts into reality sharply distinguish him from his predecessors. His advice is so simple as to appear simpleminded. He insists that nothing should ever appear on a to-do list that is not a specific, concrete action expressed at the most practical level of detail.
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The book is for people who are striving hard.
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The people who take to GTD are the most organized people," Allen says, "but they self-assess as the least organized, because they are well-enough organized to know that they are fucking up."
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Here, the hourglass is a symbol of virtue. It regulates our attention. It guards our self-esteem. The guru of Getting Things Done is living by the standards of the future, and his hourglass is an icon of an emerging civilization whose exacting demands we may all someday be expected to meet.
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Roxanne PersaudGetting Things Done Guru David Allen and His Cult of Hyperefficiency http://ow.ly/3BD6P < @liaonet some background to #gtd
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Johan LarssonThe invention of the minute hand is often attributed to the great Swiss clock maker Joost Bürgi, whose work in the late 16th century coincided with a burst of technical innovation in clock making that would eventually bring whole new opportunities for gui
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"People are afraid of the void, afraid of negative space," he says. "But having nothing on your mind is one of the most awesome experiences."
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"But having nothing on your mind is one of the most awesome experiences."
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14 Jan 09
Laura Lee DooleyAllen's work has become the touchstone of the life-hacking movement, a loosely knit network of psychological self-experimenters who share tips about how small changes in human behavior can bring big rewards in happiness. Allen's book Getting Things Done:
imported-from-delicious lifehacker productivity inspiration organization davidallen efficiency tools howto psychology wired people
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technical innovation in clock making that would eventually bring whole new opportunities for guilt and shame. Along with all your other problems, you could now be late
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Humans have a problem with stuff. Allen defines stuff as anything we want or need to do. A tax form has the same status as a marriage proposal; a book to write is no different than a grocery list. It's all stuff.
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Allen says his goal is to be free from worrying about anything he has to do. His techniques allow him the pleasure of having, much of the time, nothing on his mind. "People are afraid of the void, afraid of negative space," he says. "But having nothing on your mind is one of the most awesome experiences.
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At his seminar, Allen asks the audience to try to capture all their stuff by writing a list, and at the end of a few minutes he tells us to look at the list and think about the way it makes us feel. He guesses that our feelings include a mixture of grief and relief. The relief, he suggests, comes from the simple fact of making the list. But where does the grief come from? "These items represent agreements you haven't kept with yourself," Allen says. "What happens when you break an agreement with yourself is that your self-esteem plummets."
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New Age movement's most dubious ideas: the theory we can control destiny with our mind
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One way to understand Getting Things Done is to see it as Taylorism for knowledge workers, those poor — or privileged — souls who must handle both sides of this equation in the same consciousness. The boss is nowhere in sight, and yet the demands never cease. As ever-more complicated communication networks both extend our reach and hem us in, Allen's strict routines supply exact instructions on how to manage ourselves.
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"The people who take to GTD are the most organized people," Allen says, "but they self-assess as the least organized, because they are well-enough organized to know that they are fucking up." Allen would no more crowd his mental environment with unprocessed email in his inbox than he would go to bed in filthy clothes, or stop brushing his teeth. "The scuzz factor gets too high," he says.
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They suggest an increase in the demands of civilization, a change in what sociologist Norbert Elias called our habitus, by which he meant our normal psychological organization, our comportment. As these changes become the norm, they turn invisible.
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Everything must be inventoried without distinction or prejudice. Errands, emails, a problem with a friend: It all must be noted for processing.
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llen offers dozens of clever tricks for classifying, labeling, and retrieving stuff.
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Emails to be answered are in a separate folder from emails that merely have to be read;
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The life-hackers like it because it stimulates their ingenuity. They have optimized versions for the iPhone, for Entourage, and for sets of manila folders.
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nothing on his mind
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Do not write "set up a meeting," for instance. Instead, write "call to set up a meeting.
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open loops
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ny open loop requiring more than one action is a project
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Some of the devotees lived in a Los Angeles mansion called the Purple Rose Ashram of the New Age. Allen was, and still is, a minister in the church.
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21 Dec 07
Adam Crowe"I made a decision to institute a high state of cooperation with the world again."
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Arvind s grovergreat article on David Allen (of Getting Things Done) on his system and how he got where he is
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taylor banksAllen's approach is not inspirational... But within his advice about how to label a file folder... there is a spiritual promise. He says there is a state of blessed calm available... Nirvana comes by routine steps, as an algorithm drives a machine.
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27 Sep 07
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