David Allen (author)

David Allen
File:TNW Con EU15-David Allen - 4.jpg
Born	(1945-12-28) December 28, 1945
Occupation	Author, consultant, management
Spouse(s)	Kathryn

David Allen (born December 28, 1945) is a productivity consultant who is best known as the creator of the time management method known as "Getting Things Done".

Careers

He grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana where he acted and won a state championship in debate. He went to college at New College, now New College of Florida, in Sarasota, Florida, and did graduate work in American history at University of California, Berkeley. After graduate school, he began using heroin and was briefly institutionalized. His career path has included jobs as a magician, waiter, karate teacher, landscaper, vitamin distributor, glass-blowing lathe operator, travel agent, gas station manager, U-Haul dealer, moped salesman, restaurant cook, personal growth trainer, manager of a lawn service company, and manager of a travel agency. He is an ordained minister with the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. He claims to have had 35 professions before age 35. He began applying his perspective on productivity with businesses in the 1980s when he was awarded a contract to design a program for executives and managers at Lockheed.

Companies founded

He is the founder of the David Allen Company, which is focused on productivity, action management and executive coaching. His "Getting Things Done" method is part of his coaching efforts. He was also one of the founders of Actioneer, Inc., a company specializing in productivity tools for the Palm Pilot.

David Allen Company presenters, not Allen, regularly give one-day public seminars on Allen's Getting Things Done methodology, which cost approximately $595. Allen himself gives public seminars only occasionally, which cost approximately $995. In 2007, such a seminar from Allen himself went for $595 per person or $20,000 per corporate training session.

Publications and habitat

Allen has written four books, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, which describes his productivity program, Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life, a collection of newsletter articles he has written, Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and Business of Life, a follow-up to his first book and in 2015 a completely rewritten version of his first book Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress-Free Productivity was published. He lived in Ojai, California with his fourth wife, Kathryn, whom he describes as his "extraordinary partner in work and life" in the dedication of Getting Things Done. In May 2014 they moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Europe.

Further reading

• Beardsley, David. (April 1998) "Don't Manage Time, Manage Yourself." Fast Company. Issue 14, p. 64.
• Fallows, James. (July/August 2004) "Organize Your Life!." Atlantic Monthly. Vol. 294, No. 1, pp. 171–2.
• Wolf, Gary. September 25, 2007 Getting Things Done Guru David Allen and His Cult of Hyperefficiency Wired : 15.10
• Mitchell, James. On Time Management and David Allen

External links

• The David Allen Company website
• David Allen's Blog in the "Living Now" section of The Huffington Post
• David Allen's the Do Lectures talk (2011) "The mind is for having ideas not holding them"
• "Relaxed Focus" Interview on Humankind public radio
• David Allen speaks for Google Talk on GTD and the two keys to sustaining a healthy life and work style.