Episode 11: Meet my favorite life hack coach

I first learned about the author and executive life coach David Allen in the early aughts while visiting the campus bookstore at my alma mater, the University of Missouri.I’m a nerd and like to see what the kids are learning about. That’s when I came across Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity on the shelf for a journalism undergraduate class that I’d taken just a few years earlier.On a whim, I bought a paperback copy. I was struggling at the time to stay afloat with constant deadlines while covering energy and environmental policy in the early George W. Bush eraAllen’s book taught me tons, including the importance of getting all of the ideas floating around in my head into my notebooks and journals. I learned how to prioritize and what it takes to get moving one step at a time to accomplish the things I wanted to accomplish.As a journalist, Allen’s book delivered some much needed manna in the form of how much easier it got to juggle reporting and writing assignments of the short, medium and long-term variety.I started building spreadsheets. I even got a little bit better on getting where I needed to be on time.Allen has been one of my go-to guides ever since.He was also immediately atop my list of potential guests for The love, journalism Show when we launched a few months ago.Introducing David Allen. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe