"First of all, if it's on your mind, your mind isn't clear. Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside your mind, or what I call a collection bucket, that you know you'll come back to regularly and sort through.<!--p. 13-->"
"Here's how I define "stuff": anything you have allowed into your psychological or physical world that doesn't belong where it is, but for which you haven't yet determined the desired outcome and the next action step.<!--p. 17-->"
"Before you can achieve... you'll need to get in the habit of keeping nothing on your mind... not by managing time, managing information, or managing priorities. ...Instead, the key ...is managing your actions. ...[T]he real problem is a lack of clarity and definition about what a project really is, and what the associated next-action steps required are.<!--p. 18-19-->"
"The short-term-memory part of your mind—the part that tends to hold all of the incomplete, undecided, and unorganized “stuff”—functions much like RAM on a personal computer. Your conscious mind, like the computer screen, is a focusing tool, not a storage place. You can think about only two or three things at once. But the incomplete items are still being stored in the short-term-memory space. And as with RAM, there’s limited capacity; there’s only so much “stuff” you can store in there and still have that part of your brain function at a high level. Most people walk around with their RAM bursting at the seams. They’re constantly distracted, their focus disturbed by their own internal mental overload.<!--p. 22-->"
"The big problem is that your mind keeps reminding you of things when you can't do anything about them. It has no sense of past or future.<!--p. 22-->"
"If you're waiting to have good ideas before you have any ideas, you won't have many ideas.<!--p. 60-->"
"[I]f it's just you, attempting to come up with a "good idea" before defining your purpose, creating a vision, and collecting lots of bad ideas is likely to give you a case of creative constipation.<!--p. 60-->"
"The goal is to get projects and situations off your mind, but not to lose any potentially useful ideas.<!--p. 54-->"
"[Y]ou must have a clear picture in your mind of what success would look, sound, and feel like.<!--p. 67-->"
"How much of this planning model do you really need..? [A]s much as you need to get the project off your mind.<!--p. 77-->"
"In order to... have nothing on your mind, you've got to know where all your actionable items are located, what they are, and that they will wait. ...[I]n a few seconds, not days.<!--p. 155-->"
"The organizing system merely provides placeholders for all your oprn loops and options so your mind can... make the necessary intuitive, moment-to-moment strategic decisions.<!--p. 156-->"
"It's great to clear your psychic decks so you can go into the weekend ready for refreshment and recreation, with nothing on your mind.<!--p. 188-->"
"Ask any psychologist how much of a sense of past and future that part of your psyche has, the part that was storing the list that you dumped: zero. It's all present tense in there. ...[A]s soon as you tell yourself that you should do something, if you file it... in your short-term memory... part of you... thinks that you should be doing it all the time. ...[Y]ou've created instant and automatic stress and failure ...<!--pp. 230-231-->"
"[A]nything that is held only in "psychic RAM" will take up either more or less attention than it actually deserves. The reason to collect everything is not that everything is equally important, it's that it's not. Incompletions, uncollected, take on a dull sameness in the sense of the pressure they create and the attention they tie up.<!--p. 232-->"
"I suggest that you use your mind to think about things, rather than to think of them. You want to be adding value... not simply reminding yourself they exist.<!--p. 233-->"
"When you "have to get organized," you're probably not appropriately invested yet in what you need to get organized for."
"What people call an "Interruption" is simply new input inappropriately managed."
"Freedom to create a mess is proportional to your ability to know what "no mess" is and how to get there."
"Does something have your attention because you want it to, or because you're avoiding it?"
"Your attention will continue to be grabbed by anything until you give it the appropriate attention."
"A big surprise is coming toward you. How clear do you want to be about all your current commitments, when it hits?"
"Your mind is for having ideas, not for holding them."
"Valuable thought occurred today to share. Obvious in the moment. Can't retrieve now. Didn't capture. I teach this. Damn."
"GTD essence: attention cleared of residue & distraction, pointed at the right thing."