“Productivity Guru” Rather Aptly Named

Just last week, I mentioned that David Allen was blogging for the Huffington Post. Yesterday, as I came home from jury duty, I discovered a Wired profile of Allen that debuted on the magazine’s site last week, exploring how Allen’s books, most notably Getting Things Done, have become “the touchstone of the life-hacking movement, a loosely knit network of psychological self-experimenters who share tips about how small changes in human behavior can bring big rewards in happiness.” The story behind Allen’s success is a lot more complicated than I’d ever imagined, including ties to an alternative religion based in California called the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness—although Gary Wolf makes it clear “Allen is not running a cult-recruitment program, nor is he merely putting a secular gloss on New Age tradition… [but] reworking this tradition, increasing its utility as he narrows its scope.” Which is fine; I’ve long maintained that the best magickal thinking is little more than glosses on discplined psychological self-interrogation, anyway (the keyword being disciplined).