Allen grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana where he acted and won a state championship in debate. He attended New College (now New College of Florida) in Sarasota, Florida, and completed graduate work in American history at the University of California, Berkeley.^[2]

After graduate school, Allen began using heroin and was briefly institutionalized.^[3] He is an ordained minister with the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness.^[4][5] He claims to have had 35 professions before age 35.^[6] 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.^{[citation needed]}

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. ^{[7][better source needed]}

Allen has written three books: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity,^[8] which describes his productivity program; Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life,^[9] 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.^{[citation needed]}

Allen lived in Ojai, California with his fourth wife, Kathryn.^[1] In 2014, they moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands.^{[citation needed]}

• Allen, David (2001). Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. New York: Penguin Putnam. ISBN 978-0-14-200028-1.^{[citation needed]}
• Allen, David (2003). Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life. New York: Viking Books. ISBN 978-0-14-303454-4.^{[citation needed]}
• Allen, David (2008). Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and Business of Life. New York: Viking Adult. ISBN 978-0-67-001995-3.^{[citation needed]}
• Allen, David (2015). Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (revised ed.). New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-312656-0.^{[citation needed]}

• Beardsley, David. (April 1998) "Don't Manage Time, Manage Yourself." Fast Company. Issue 14, p. 64.
• Fallows, James. (July/August 2004) "Organize Your Life!." Atlantic Monthly. Vol. 294, No. 1, pp. 171–2.
• Wolf, Gary. September 25, 2007 Getting Things Done Guru David Allen and His Cult of Hyperefficiency Wired : 15.10

• The David Allen Company website
• Crucial Learning's Getting Things Done course