Elle magazine chatted with David Allen. Read some of the timely tips for refreshing your systems.
One item that came up in my sweep was that for weeks I’ve been putting off answering a publicist’s e-mail asking if I’d write about one of his clients—my failure to reply is gnawing at me. My hunch is that the story won’t fly for timing reasons, but somehow I can’t just write back explaining this. Allen gets excited at my predicament: “Is there anything else you need to research or do before you send that e-mail?” Well, I could e-mail my editor to confirm my suspicion about the timing. “Gotcha!” Allen exclaims. “I bet the reason you’ve been avoiding it was that you didn’t fully understand what the next step was—you needed more data. So what do you need to do now?” Write the editor, I say sheepishly. How can something that now seems so obvious have been so weirdly obscure? Read more…