"I thought I was going to be an academician and historian and a leisurely college professor with a dog and a fire and a pipe—that all changed," he said.
Once he decided to change paths, Allen really did not know what he wanted to do next. "I didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up until long after I grew up," he said. While doing odd jobs to make ends meet, he began assisting some of his friends as they started various businesses, serving as a makeshift consultant, if you will.
"I tend to have a knack for laziness, meaning 'how do we fix a process so we don't have to work so hard?'" he said.
Pretty soon, after aiding in the launches of a number of his friends' companies, Allen accepted that he was, in fact, a consultant and began to sell his services project by project. Beginning with his friends' companies and other small businesses, Allen was able to build his company with the terrific referrals he collected along the way.
"I began to combine those two things—my interest in process and organizational systems and structures and human-behavior stuff that enhances your ability to relax and stay focused. I also had a background in martial arts that tied in with that," he said.
In 1996, Allen made his business official when he started The David Allen Company. Most of Allen's teachings are based on his hit book, which he released in 2001, called Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. His book Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life is a collection of essays he compiled throughout the years and was released in 2003.
One of the basic principles that Allen advises his clients to make a habit of is keeping track of agreements and appointments. If they do this, they will be able to renegotiate them, if need be. Allen compares these "agreements" to emails in one's inbox.
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Capturing everything that has your attention, writing it down, and getting it out of your head is the main component of Getting Things Done and Allen's teachings. Making life lists of things to do can help people manage their priorities.
"If you don't give these dumb little things the attention that they deserve, they'll take more attention than they ought to," he said. "If you don't handle tires on your car, cat food, and the washing machine, you're in deep trouble."
Allen credits his friend Dean Atchison with his discovery of the technique of collecting life's tasks and getting them out of one's head. Atchison was an executive consultant who handed off many of his experiences and lessons to Allen, who then breathed new life into the principles. Allen also drew many ideas from the works of Peter Drucker, which frequently refer to "knowledge work"—thinking and making decisions specifically to make results happen.
Based on Allen's organizational-based background, it is no surprise that his advice to salespeople is to create a vision of what they want to achieve and where they want to go.
"You don't have to set goals, but if you want something you don't have yet, you better," he said.
Allen also thinks that having a running list of all the things that must be done in one's life is necessary. This can help people understand that they have options and that they can relax and trust their intuitions.
