Getting Things Done with Work-Life Balance by David Allen

David Allen is an experienced trainer, management consultant, and author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. In 1996 he also founded The David Allen Company, a coaching, training and management consulting organization. The company is specialized in products that encourage best work practices, holds seminars and organizes coaching sessions.

The "Getting Things Done With Work Life Balance" series by David Allen is a part of firmwide training programs. In major cities there are public Getting Things Done seminars where anyone can participate who wants to try the program. There are plenty of free materials on their website, and one can choose to subscribe to an e-newsletter named "David Allen's Productive Living."

Overviews and examples from the "Getting Things Done With Work Life Balance" program can be downloaded in MP3 format, and also there is an audio CD version of it. David Allen talks about the importance of changing bad habits, the building of trust in the system, the importance of agendas and lists. The samples available on the website also speak about the definition of "your game". One particularly inspirational quote from this collection is "You have to think to know what to do".

One can find several free Getting Things Done With Work Life Balance PDF files available for download. The most important from these writings is "Getting Email Under Control": in this article, David Allen gives helpful advice for cleaning up your inbox. You can find several of his tips:

Use the delete key - The deleting can be made quicker if you arrange the emails by sender.

File - Don't use your inbox for archiving. Instead you should use separate folders.

Read the two minute ones first - This way you can get the minor tasks out of the way.

Organize emails that need action - It will be easier to stay in control of the situation if you organize your emails and then follow up on them.

The website also has a workflow diagram that shows how the "Getting Things Done With Work Life Balance" program applied in the area of organizing and processing. David Allen has the talent to lead in a precise and flowing manner from one question to another. He always asks the most important question: "Can this be solved?" If not, it gets eliminated, saved for later or referenced.

If the problem can be acted upon, it should be decided what is the next step? One possible decision is to turn it into a project, if it seems that the problem would take some time to solve. If the problem can be solved in 2 minutes, it should be done immediately. It is also possible to schedule the solving of the problem on a specific date, or the problem can be delegated, so we only have to track the progress.

The "Getting Things Done With Work Life Balance" by David Allen is extremely helpful, as it is a good tool in the hands of employers who would like to have more productive employees, and at the same time, it fulfills the employee's dreams about less stressful working environment. The CDs, MP3s, PDFs, or other products are worth to be taken into consideration even if you don't have the possibility to go to one of their seminars.