You can do anything, but not everything.
Interpretation
Focus on what you can achieve instead of trying to do too much at once.
David Allen emphasizes the importance of prioritization and focus in achieving goals. While potential may allow for the ability to accomplish anything, spreading oneself too thin can hinder effectiveness, so one must choose wisely what to pursue.
In practice
In a team meeting to inspire focus on key projects.
Isn't it interesting that people feel best about themselves right before they go on vacation? They've cleared up all of their to-do piles, closed up transactions, renewed old promises with themselves. My most basic suggestion is that people should do that more than just once a year.
It is a tricky business to know when you should set goals and objectives in order to achieve a focus, and when you would be better off dealing with the acceptance and management of your current reality so you can later step into new directions and responsibilities with greater stability and clarity. Only you will know the answer to that, and only in the moment.
Most of the stress people experience comes from inappropriately managed commitments they make or accept.
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.
You don't actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it. When enough of the right action steps have been taken, some situation will have been created that matches your initial picture of the outcome closely enough that you can call it "done.
Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.
When the Iron doesn't want to come off the mat, it's the kindest thing it can do for you. If it flew up and went through the ceiling, it wouldn't teach you anything.
There's absolutely no limit to what plain, ordinary, working people can accomplish if they're given the opportunity and encouragement to do their best.
As we speak cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in tomorrow.
What if you, too, were to greet every interaction in your life with the question 'What's the potential opportunity that this is?'
If you want to have a better performance than the crowd, you must do things differently from the crowd.
There's this really awesome theory of human motivation - that human beings all want three things. One is to be competent, one is to belong, and one is be free, as in to have choice: to not be told what to do but to choose what to do.
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