Yes, David Allen wrote about it, and yes, I’m still reading his book. After all, I don’t have time…. enter the famous cartoon where a couple of people push a cart with square ‘wheels’ hard, not getting anywhere, saying they don’t have time to look at this new invention called the round wheel.
No, the book has some usefull insights, which I highly recommend. But as with all (american) business books, the book is an endless rehash of the same idea. Still, read it, if you want to run your own company.
In addition to the book, I saw yesterday a short video, in which somebody was interviewed whom apparently worked with Steve Jobs. He said, the main thing about Jobs was that he spend his time effectively. He concentrated on the things that needed to be done within the first, say, 18 hours. The rest was noise he pushed back on. He was, in other words, very effective. And yes, that’s also what Allen writes about. The interviewed person then claimed the only person he knew spend NO time on noise is Elon Musk. That is, probably, before he got into politics.
And no, I’m not willing to sacrifice everything like he does. I want a life as well. Butnow I’m noticing when I’m getting stuck in social media, or scrolling through the news about things that never interested me in the first place.
Doing business is, in other words, organising yourself.