Stress-free productivity does exist

Inevitably, every organization reflects somehow the weakest link of the chain that makes up its structure. Even if you are a freelance, you need to interact with more people to get your work done (partners, customers, suppliers). If there is someone in your work chain who does not respond to email for two weeks, your efficiency—or your organization’s—will be penalized. Dullness in a team member is contagious and begets dullness in the system.

In GTD it is not necessary to explicitly define the priority of every action, because priorities sit in a hierarchy of different levels of perspective. This is what David Allen calls the Six-Level Model for reviewing your own work:

Humor is a tangible demonstration of the most important attributes of the right side of the brain: the ability to place situations in context, to see the big picture, to combine different elements to create new things, and so on. According to various investigations, humor reduces hostility, relieves stress, allows a better criticism and helps to communicate difficult messages. It turns out that, used skillfully, it can be a great stimulus for creativity, a trait increasingly necessary for success.

According to The Threefold Model for Evaluating Daily Work defined by David Allen, a person may be held in one of these three types of activities at any time during a normal workday (1):

You may want to reform your home, develop an iPhone application or write a good article to post in your blog. The fact is that you have decided to start a new project and you really want to get down to work on it, but it is still somewhat fuzzy in your mind. You don’t know exactly how to do it or even where to start.