Top 120 David Allen Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You can do anything, but not everything.”

— David Allen

Featured in: Focus Quotes, Short Motivational Quotes, Famous Quotes, Powerful Quotes, Productivity Quotes

2. “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.”

— David Allen

Featured in: Quotes About Thinking, Tuesday Motivational Quotes, Procrastination Quotes, Quotes About Ideas

3. “If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.”

— David Allen

Featured in: Efficiency Quotes, Encouraging Quotes

4. “Small things done consistently, in strategic places, create major impact.”

— David Allen

Featured in: Efficiency Quotes

5. “Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they’ve started.”

— David Allen

Featured in: Time Management Quotes

6. “There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but the way out is through.”

— David Allen

7. “The hardest thing about being productive is not the work, but the split second it takes to decide to take control.”

— David Allen

8. “You can’t manage time, you actually only manage what you do during time. So the management issue is not so much about time, it’s more about how do you manage your focus, how do you manage your actions and your activities in terms of what you do.”

— David Allen

Featured in: Time Management Quotes

9. “Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.”

— David Allen

10. “If you’re at zero backlog, it’s a whole lot easier to change priorities.”

— David Allen

11. “Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible. – Saint Francis of Assisi.”

— David Allen

12. “Rule your mind or it will rule you. – Horace.”

— David Allen

13. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one. – Mark Twain.”

— David Allen

14. “It’s hard to be fully creative without structure and constraint. Try to paint without a canvas. Creativity and freedom are two sides of the same coin. I like the best of both worlds. Want freedom? Get organized. Want to get organized? Get creative.”

— David Allen

15. “There is no reason ever to have the same thought twice, unless you like having that thought.”

— David Allen

16. “The sense of anxiety and guilt doesn’t come from having too much to do; it’s the automatic result of breaking agreements with yourself.”

— David Allen

17. “You can fool everyone else, but you can’t fool your own mind.”

— David Allen

Featured in: Productivity Quotes

18. “If you don’t fall off the wagon regularly, you’re not playing a big enough game.”

— David Allen

19. “When we truly need to do is often what we most feel like avoiding.”

— David Allen

20. “There are no interruptions, only mismanaged inputs.”

— David Allen

21. “Use your mind to think about things, rather than think of them. You want to be adding value as you think about projects and people, not simply reminding yourself they exist.”

— David Allen

22. “You don’t actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it.”

— David Allen

23. “A vision without a task is but a dream; a task without a vision is but drudgery; a vision and a task is the hope of the world. – From a church in Sussex, England, ca. 1730.”

— David Allen

24. “The great secret about goals and visions is not the future they describe but the change in the present they engender.”

— David Allen

25. “The ancestor of every action is a thought. – Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

— David Allen

26. “The better you get, the better you better get.”

— David Allen

27. “First of all, if it’s on your mind, your mind isn’t clear. Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside your mind, or what I call a collection bucket, that you know you’ll come back to regularly and sort through.”

— David Allen

28. “The balance you have between drive and patience may be your master key to success.”

— David Allen

29. “If the only tool you have is a hammer, it’s hard to eat spaghetti.”

— David Allen

30. “Creativity and freedom are two sides of the same coin. I like the best of both worlds.”

— David Allen

31. “The right amount of complexity is what creates the optimal simplicity.”

— David Allen

32. “The beginning is half of every action.”

— David Allen

33. “Once a week, do a thorough review of all your projects in as much detail as you need to. If you do, your systems will work. If you don’t, no system will work.”

— David Allen

34. “I think positive stress is actually a good thing. It’s sort of the stretch goal “Wow, let me see how much faster I can run” or “Let me see how many more ideas I can generate in five minutes.””

— David Allen

35. “What you’ll tend to avoid doing is probably the most important thing you need to do because it’ll probably be the most daunting and the most potentially successful thing you could be doing and that’s usually out of people’s comfort zone.”

— David Allen

36. “Thought is useful when it motivates action and a hindrance when it substitutes for action. – Bill Raeder.”

— David Allen

37. “Sometimes the biggest gain in productive energy will come from cleaning the cobwebs, dealing with old business, and clearing the desks – cutting loose debris that’s impeding forward motion.”

— David Allen

38. “Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does.”

— David Allen

39. “People allow themselves to get distracted; I think ultimately, probably the biggest thing that gets in the way of people doing what they ought to be doing at any point in time is distraction.”

— David Allen

40. “There are no problems, only projects.”

— David Allen

41. “In Ireland we have a very old saying, When you can see the mountains it’s going to rain and when you can’t see the mountains it’s raining.”

— David Allen

42. “You won’t see how to do it until you see yourself doing it.”

— David Allen

43. “As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble. – Ralph Waldo Emerson Used.”

— David Allen

44. “Decide the outcome and the action step, put reminders of those somewhere your brain trusts youll see them at the right time, and listen to your brain breathe easier.”

— David Allen

45. “Most people move actually into high performance in a crisis because that creates the kind of focus that creates high performance.”

— David Allen

46. “The reason that deadline actually can work very well for you is what it forces you to do is make decisions.”

— David Allen

47. “Trust yourself to do what you really feel like doing, and what you feel like doing will change. Don’t, and it will plague you.”

— David Allen

48. “At at any point in time, knowing what has to get done, and when, creates a terrain for maneuvering.”

— David Allen

49. “Want freedom? Get organized. Want to get organized? Get creative.”

— David Allen

50. “Why do people complain that there’s no time to get their work done? Because there is more work to do than the work they think they have to do.”

— David Allen