Most intellectual tasks are very difficult to accomplish without strong focus and concentration. On the other hand, many people are unable stay focused and work without interruptions for a prolonged periods of time like whole day or even a couple of hours.

Results of scientific research show that even in perfect conditions where sources of external distractions are limited, people are able to stay focused and concentrated at one particular task for no longer than a period of 30-60 minutes. Studies performed in real office conditions shows even more pessimistic results. For example, Gloria Mark, associate professor at the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, discloses results of her study which has been conducted on 36 managers, financial analysts, software developers, engineers and project leaders for three days. Gloria and her colleagues found out that uninterrupted continuous periods of work were no longer than about 3 minutes in average. Moreover, people interrupted themselves almost as much as they were interrupted by external sources.More...

David Allen's approach "Getting Things Done" (GTD) is very popular now, though is relatively young. Although in official definition of GTD it's author avoids using term "Time Management", we could consider GTD as one of the Time Management variations. Readers who are not new to Time Management, know that like Allen today, there were other famous names referred to Time Management in past, for example, Alan Lakein and Stephen Covey.

I made some research using Google Trends to determine how changes popularity of GTD with time and compared it with Time Management itself.More...