Author
David Allen
The consultant whose method for a clear head gave the world the next action, the two-minute rule and the weekly review.
1 book on BookYol
The story and the impact
David Allen worked as a management consultant and productivity coach through the 1980s and 1990s, developing with clients the method he would later name Getting Things Done.
The book, published in 2001 and revised in 2015, set out the five steps, capture, clarify, organise, reflect, engage, and the ideas that became common vocabulary: the next action, the two-minute rule, inbox zero, the weekly review. It built a large community of practitioners and a company, the David Allen Company, that trains and certifies them.
He has since written Ready for Anything and Making It All Work, and continues to teach the method internationally.
The signature
Allen writes as an engineer of attention: the premise that the mind is for having ideas rather than holding them, and then a complete system with parts that fit. His signature is the next action, the insistence that nothing on a list may be a thing that cannot be started.