If you don't pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.
Interpretation
Being mindful of where you direct your focus is crucial, or it may consume more of your energy than it should.
This quote by David Allen emphasizes the importance of consciously managing one's attention. In today's world, distractions are plentiful, and if we do not actively choose where to focus our energy, we may find ourselves overwhelmed by things that do not warrant such attention, resulting in wasted time and effort. The message encourages individuals to be proactive in deciding what deserves their focus for a more balanced and productive life.
In practice
In a workshop about productivity, you might say this quote to stress the importance of prioritizing tasks.
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.
Meditation _x000D_ practice begins by sitting down and assuming your seat cross-legged on _x000D_ the ground. You begin to feel that by simply being on the spot, your _x000D_ life can become workable and even wonderful. You realize that you are _x000D_ capable of sitting like a king or queen on a throne. The regalness of _x000D_ that situation shows you the... dignity that comes from being still and _x000D_ simple.
Think of me as a fellow patient in the same hospital who, having been admitted a little earlier could give some advice.
There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.
Learn to get from the day. Not just get through it, get from it. Soak it up. Each day is a piece of the mosaic of your life.
Age only matters when one is aging. Now that I have arrived at a great age, I might as well be twenty.
"He preaches well that lives well," quoth Sancho, "that's all the divinity I can understand."
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