MR. DAVID ALLEN, founder and president of the David Allen Company, has spent over twenty-five years researching and implementing high performance methods in personal and organizational productivity. He has been labeled by Fast Company magazine as "one of the world's leading thinkers" in this arena, and listed by Forbes magazine as one of the top five executives coaches in the U.S. A consultant, executive coach, educator, and motivational speaker, Mr. Allen has conducted workshops in performance enhancement for more than 400,000 professionals, delivering management and productivity programs for such diverse organizations as Microsoft, Merck, Stanford University, Lockheed, L.L. Bean, New York Life, QVC, the World Bank, and the U.S. Navy. He has spent thousands of hours coaching managers, executives, and entrepreneurs, implementing customized personal systems within the context of company strategies. He is a popular keynote speaker on the topics of productivity, time and stress management, and the power of aligned focus and vision. He is the author of two books - the international best-selling Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, and Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles of Work and Life, and has published numerous essays and articles on the topic of personal effectiveness. He produces the electronic newsletter, "David Allen's Productivity Principles," with more than 45,000 subscribers worldwide.