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David Allen: The Master of Getting Things Done is the title of a new article at CNNMoney.com. The author describes GTD as:

…a thought process designed to help people keep track of the endless tasks of modern life — whether buying birdseed or closing a billion-dollar merger. People who commit to his step-by-step program, Allen claims, will not only gain control of their frenetic lives but waltz through their days stress-free.It’s an audacious promise that not even Stephen Covey, who has sold 15 million copies of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, ever dared to make. But while Covey’s book is thick with high-blown principles and paradigms, Allen has found God in the details, creating a systematic manual covering everything from how to organize your file cabinet (no hanging folders) to how often you should review the list of everything you want to accomplish in life (weekly). Never mind the theory — here’s what you do.

Which is, of course, almost exactly on the money. There is both more and less to Getting Things Done than organizing your file cabinet. It is a state of mind. The exciting part is in the middle of the article where Allen starts talking about the future:

Fortunately, the best demonstration of GTD anywhere can be found at Allen’s headquarters in Ojai, where about two dozen employees labor quietly at their desks.Visitors are always surprised that the place looks more like a funky design studio than the sterile office staffed by automatons they imagined. Employees are unfailingly pleasant and relaxed, and if they say they will e-mail or call you, it happens, without fail, on time. They start work at 8 in the morning, and by 4 or so, everybody has gone home.

But Allen’s attempts to realize the company’s potential — to make an exponential leap in revenue to $100 million over the next decade — may be his biggest challenge yet. And he hasn’t made things easier by heading off in so many directions at once.

About half the company’s $6 million in revenue comes from one-on-one executive coaching and in-house seminars handled by Allen and eight other coaches. The rest comes from Allen’s public seminars, a subscription website called GTD Connect, and a growing line of products from software plug-ins to file folders.

And that doesn’t count the new book he’s writing. Or the collection of eight audio CDs and 10 DVDs of his public seminar coming this summer. Or his recent partnership with a company called Linkage that will train corporate trainers in GTD so they can teach his process throughout their companies.

This last is a developement that I posted on earlier, but it is not nearly as interesting as some of the innovations that Allen sees just a bit further down the road:

One of Allen’s grandest dreams is to create a nonprofit institute to bring GTD to small towns, schools, and government offices. Then there’s the home-schooling market that he says could be huge. He’s been in discussions with an upscale home-office retailer about a line of David Allen-branded products. And he’s talked with Linden Labs CEO Philip Rosedale about adding a GTD island in Second Life [emphasis added, Ed.] where an Allen avatar could reach millions with virtual seminars.

Clearly, GTD has become more of a calling than a business. “I’m not going to give this stuff away,” he says, “but money is not the prime driver.”

Like a monk who found God by doing his menial chores with painstaking care, Allen has found meaning in the dullest tasks of our busy lives.

The Getting Things Done Roadmap seminars in cyberspace. Now that is Web 2.0.