You can do anything - but not everything.

David Allen, one of the world's most influential thinkers on personal productivity, offers his unique advice on how to keep up the pace -- without wearing yourself down.

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According to David Allen, 54, one of the world's most influential thinkers on personal productivity, this is the "silent trauma" of knowledge workers everywhere. We inhabit a world, he says, in which there are "no edges to our jobs" and "no limit to the potential information that can help us do our jobs better." What's more, in a competitive environment that's continually being reshaped by the Web, we're tempted to rebalance our work on a monthly, weekly, even hourly basis. Unchecked, warns Allen, this frantic approach is a recipe for dissatisfaction and despair -- all-too-common emotions these days for far too many of us. ... Allen has spent the past 17 years helping busy people deal with all of the "stuff" in their lives. At seminars around the world -- at corporate functions and in corner offices -- he has preached his gospel of personal productivity. His online newsletter, "David Allen's Productivity Principles," has more than 7,000 subscribers. ... There is always more to do than there is time to do it, especially in an environment of so much possibility. We all want to be acknowledged; we all want our work to be meaningful. And in an attempt to achieve that goal, we all keep letting stuff enter our lives. The problem, of course, is that we also want to finish what we start. Much of the stress that people feel doesn't come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they've started. That's why a lot of my work has to do with how people deal with their input -- email, phone messages, reports, conversations. Everything that isn't where it should be is an open loop, an incomplete, a distraction that slows you down. Your brain says, "Hey, that doesn't belong there," and you have to deal with that impulse. If you allow too much dross to accumulate in your "10 acres" -- in other words, if you allow too many things that represent undecided, untracked, unmanaged agreements with yourself and with others to gather in your personal space -- th

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According to David Allen, 54, one of the world's most influential thinkers on personal productivity, this is the "silent trauma" of knowledge workers everywhere. We inhabit a world, he says, in which there are "no edges to our jobs" and "no limit to the potential information that can help us do our jobs better." What's more, in a competitive environment that's continually being reshaped by the Web, we're tempted to rebalance our work on a monthly, weekly, even hourly basis. Unchecked, warns Allen, this frantic approach is a recipe for dissatisfaction and despair -- all-too-common emotions these days for far too many of us. ... Allen has spent the past 17 years helping busy people deal with all of the "stuff" in their lives. At seminars around the world -- at corporate functions and in corner offices -- he has preached his gospel of personal productivity. His online newsletter, "David Allen's Productivity Principles," has more than 7,000 subscribers. ... There is always more to do than there is time to do it, especially in an environment of so much possibility. We all want to be acknowledged; we all want our work to be meaningful. And in an attempt to achieve that goal, we all keep letting stuff enter our lives. The problem, of course, is that we also want to finish what we start. Much of the stress that people feel doesn't come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they've started. That's why a lot of my work has to do with how people deal with their input -- email, phone messages, reports, conversations. Everything that isn't where it should be is an open loop, an incomplete, a distraction that slows you down. Your brain says, "Hey, that doesn't belong there," and you have to deal with that impulse. If you allow too much dross to accumulate in your "10 acres" -- in other words, if you allow too many things that represent undecided, untracked, unmanaged agreements with yourself and with others to gather in your personal space -- th

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