Summary
Allen's GTD system gets every commitment out of your head and into a trusted external system — inbox, projects list, contexts, calendar. The five steps (capture, clarify, organize, reflect, engage) turn open loops into next actions you can act on without re-thinking. The promise: a calm, present mind, because nothing's slipping. The system has a learning curve but rewards stickiness.
Key highlights
What we learned from David Allen
Allen's gift is freeing the cortex from the rehearsing of what it has agreed to do. The New York lawyer's eleven pages of unkept agreements end his insomnia not by getting completed but by getting captured, clarified, and renegotiated — because the brain is for having ideas, not holding them. You leave with one trusted external system, the imperative-form next action ('call Sarah for cabin recommendations'), and the weekly review as the calibration ritual that keeps the whole apparatus telling the truth.
