David Allen (born December 28, 1945) is an American

productivity Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...

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best known for the creation of a time management method called " Getting Things Done".

Careers

Allen grew up in

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where he acted and won a state championship in debate. He went to college at New College, now

New College of Florida New College of Florida is a public liberal arts college in Sarasota, Florida. It was founded in 1960 as a private institution known simply as New College, spent several years merged into the University of South Florida, and in 2001 became an aut ...

, in Sarasota, Florida, and completed graduate work in American history at University of California, Berkeley.Keith H. Hammonds, April 30, 2000
"You can do anything – but not everything"
Fast Company, retrieved April 8, 2010 After graduate school, Allen began using heroin and was briefly institutionalized. Wolf, Gary. September 25, 200
Getting Things Done Guru David Allen and His Cult of Hyperefficiency
''Wired'' : 15.10 His career path has included jobs as a

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, waiter,

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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

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. 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, an executive coaching firm using his "Getting Things Done" methodology. David Allen Company presenters, not Allen, regularly give one-day public seminars on the methodology, and Allen himself occasionally gives lectures or sessions. Allen has also licensed GTD to Crucial Learning, a learning company that offers a Getting Things Done course in a variety of formats. Allen was also one of the founders of Actioneer, a company specializing in productivity tools for the PalmPilot.

Publications and habitat

Allen has written three 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. In 2015 he also wrote a new updated version of ''Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress-Free Productivity''. Allen lived in

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with his fourth wife, Kathryn. In 2014, they moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

Bibliography

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References

External links