David Allen Stress Quotations

Change - even change meant to improve our lives - creates stress. We can get comfortable with our problems.

Everything you’ve told yourself you ought to do, your mind thinks you should do right now. Frankly, as soon add you have two things to do stored in your RAM, you’ve generated personal failure, because you can’t do two things at the same time. This produces an all-pervasive stress factor whose source can’t be pin-pointed.

A complete and accurately defined list of projects, kept current and reviewed on at least a weekly basis, is a master key to stress-free productivity.

We suffer the stress of infinite opportunity: There are so many things that we could do, and all we see are people who seem to be performing at star quality. It's very hard not to try to be like them. The problem is, if you get wrapped up in that game, you'll get eaten alive. You can do anything-but not everything. The universe is full of creative projects that are waiting to be done. So, if you really care about quality of life, if you want to relax, then ... control your aspirations. That will simplify things. Learning to set boundaries is incredibly difficult for most people.

Most of the stress people experience comes from inappropriately managed commitments they make or accept.

Stress such as you experience in exercise is what creates builds focus, strength, and the capability for expanded expression; and the same is true for any kind of performance.

If we didn't have any stress, we'd never grow and you'd probably wouldn't test your mettle and you'd probably wouldn't come up with a lot of creative stuff that people come up with by being somewhat on the edge.

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."