Modern WisdomThe Art Of Stress-Free Productivity | David Allen | Modern Wisdom Podcast 188
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
125 min read · 25,368 words- 0:00 – 1:45
Ambient anxiety: the hidden productivity killer
- DADavid Allen
The biggest issue is ambient anxiety. "Oh, we need cat food. Should I hire a vice president of finance? Should we get divorced? Oh, God." You know, it's that, it's all that stuff, and most people are willing to tolerate that. So, it's the, the biggest issue out there is people's comfort and familiarity with the ambient anxiety that they live in.
- CWChris Williamson
That looks like a particularly precarious single stack of books that you've got next to you.
- DADavid Allen
(laughs) Okay, I always have to explain that. It, uh, i- it happens to be a, um, a bookshelf you can get in the US from a company called Design Within Reach that's a very well-designed bookshelf that you can just sh- stack books up and it doesn't fall over. But these are, I'm not gonna read these. These, these are, it's an archive of all the books in all the different translated languages. Catherine... We were gonna throw them away when we moved from Santa Barbara to Amsterdam six years ago, and Catherine says, "Oh, come on. We should keep at least one copy of each." So, that's that archive and it's, you know, provides podcast, you know, background, backdrop, content.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Well, it's a problem with having, having a book translated into like 30 languages, that you've got just in terms of size, you know, just sheer floor space it's gonna take up a lot.
- DADavid Allen
I know, and we live in an apartment in Amsterdam, so like smaller space best. So, anyway, and it, and it does create a topic for podcasts, so here we are.
- CWChris Williamson
It looks like... I, I'm not gonna like, does look a little bit like a health hazard, but now that you've reassured me that it's not gonna fall over and kill somebody then-
- DADavid Allen
No.
- CWChris Williamson
... I'm fine, I'm fine.
- DADavid Allen
We're, we're cool.
- 1:45 – 6:21
Why productivity is hard: not doing tasks, but choosing and clarifying them
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, exactly. Um, so you're a man who's been thinking about the problem of productivity for 40 years. Have you worked out why it's so hard to get things done?
- DADavid Allen
Well, most people are okay. It's not hard to get things done. People wouldn't be listening to this if they can get things done. They're already getting things done. If you couldn't get anything done, you wouldn't get out of bed. So, everybody's already getting things done. So, I, you know, what you're, you know, what you're alluding to is people going, "How do I get more done with less effort? How do I leave work earlier? How do I not have quite so much stress? How do I..." You know. So, and you know, productivity has got a lot of baggage, Chris, as a, as a concept. Everybody thinks that's work harder, but you're already being productive. You're already producing exactly what you're getting. When people say, "Be more productive," what they mean is, "I wanna be able to somehow get done what I get, what I'm getting done right now with less effort, leave work earlier, have more time with my kids," you know, whatever. Or, "Given the energy that I put in, I, I, I wanna be able to produce more results, more money, more relaxation, more fun, more..." you know, God knows, whatever people want. So, yeah, so I understand the issue. You know, if you know what you're doing, efficiency and doing it more effectively is the only improvement opportunity. If you don't know what you're doing, figuring out what you wanna do is another (laughs) is a big improvement opportunity. So, either people know what they want, they just wanna do it easier, better, or they're not sure what they want, and so clarifying that will, you know, be a, a, an increase in how they feel they're, they're more productive or appropriately productive.
- CWChris Williamson
Absolutely, yeah. It's a, um, it's a two-step process. A lot of people don't know what they want to want, and then upon deciding what they want to want, they then need to work out how to wa- how to get the thing that they've now decided that they want. It doesn't surprise me that people kind of get lost and, and can sometimes struggle.
- DADavid Allen
Well, you know, here's a... In the last couple of years, Chris, you know, I've been doing this for 35 years, but in the last couple of years, I've really sort of understood. I, I used to say the biggest problem was people feeling overwhelmed and not knowing or, or being able to do or, or being aware of what they need to do to get out from under the o- overwhelm. But I don't think that's the issue. The issue is not overwhelmed. If you were actually overwhelmed, you'd figure it out. You'd be overwhelmed, Chris, if your building caught on fire right now, you know? But you would then handle that because you say, "I'm gonna survive, so I am gonna get rid of the overwhelm feeling," because overwhelm is not something that you can just embrace sustainable, you know, psychological event. The biggest issue is ambient anxiety, "Oh, we need cat food. Should I hire a vice president of finance? Should we get divorced? Oh, God." You know, it's that, it's all that stuff, and most people are willing to tolerate that. So, it's the, the biggest issue out there is people's comfort and familiarity with the ambient anxiety that they live in. It's like the last thing a fish notices is water, and so the last thing a lot of people notice is the ambient anxiety that they've been in for years.
- CWChris Williamson
Perhaps today we are going to open some people's eyes to the ambience- ambient anxiety that they're swimming through. I, I have to say as well, I, I do agree. Anyone that knows what real high-pressure stress, acute stress feels like, knows that it usually results in stuff being done. The student that stays up to do the all-nighter just before they hand the assignment in hands the assignment in, you know?
- DADavid Allen
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
It's the ambient anxiety which has precluded the, the last like-
- DADavid Allen
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... six weeks since they were given the assignment, that's what's caused the problem.
- DADavid Allen
Wait till you suggest... What, what
- NANarrator
(clears throat)
- DADavid Allen
... tell yourself you're gonna write a book, right?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DADavid Allen
(laughs) All you need is a deadline that will create the overwhelm that you're gonna then handle.... but it's like, oh my God, the book is not... the, the draft is not due for three months. Ugh, oh my God, I should be writing.
- CWChris Williamson
I can just let myself-
- DADavid Allen
You know what it was- (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... bathe in this anxiety for a little bit longer.
- DADavid Allen
Yeah. Well, you get it.
- 6:21 – 9:33
Why GTD still matters 20+ years later
- CWChris Williamson
I do indeed. So, you mentioned it earlier on, the, the first edition of your book, Getting Things Done, came out 2001. So, nearly 20 years ago. So, why are we still here talking about it today? What makes GTD so special that it's continually getting, as I can see it, more popular even 20 years later?
- DADavid Allen
Well, it works. But it only works if you wanna change your world. So, that's why we're back to people's addiction to ambient anxiety. They... It's not like, "Oh God, I need more ambient anxiety. Let me go shoot it up." No. It's just you're used to it. So, you don't think there's a better game and you're okay with what it is. You bitch and moan about it, but you're okay with it. You're very familiar with it. "I'm so busy. Oh, I'm so..." Yeah. Well, that gives you, you know, a merit badge called, wow, I'm such a successful person that I'm so busy that I can complain about it and feel good. And that's, you know, I'm sorry, most people just live in a life that's okay with them. Okay enough and but in a strange way. So, once you're ad- you know, again, addiction just means you're used to something. So, you're not aware that there's another game, there's another world you could live in. Once you taste that or taste that enough, some part of you will go, "Oh my God," you know, uh, s- "There's something on my mind right now. I've gotta do something about it. I gotta write it down. I've gotta decide the next action. I have to organize it appropriately so that my brain is back to present and clear again." So, you know, what I discovered was how do you get present and clear in a very, very busy world? And that's my marketing issue. You know, I, I try and... I'm trying to sell people something they don't even know they need.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) I'm laughing because-
- DADavid Allen
Well, come on, Steve Jobs sold you something you didn't know you needed until you caught it.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm. There's something with a product rather than a system. There's something a lot more tacit about that, right? There's something that's quite visceral about it-
- DADavid Allen
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
... being there. You see it.
- DADavid Allen
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
These are the objective changes you can make. You see the person who has the iPod or who has-
- DADavid Allen
Well, once you got it in your... once you've got it in your hands and you go, "Oh my God, look, I could do this."
- CWChris Williamson
"The things I can do." Exactly.
- DADavid Allen
Yeah. No, of course.
- CWChris Williamson
You don't see the GTD master walking down the street and have this externalized sort of (laughs) socialized, um, benefit with... there's no equivalent of the white AirPods for, um, for GTD, right? Which would be cool. You should issue black belts.
- DADavid Allen
(laughs) Well, we, we actually, over the years, we've sort of d- designed, okay, you wanna call yourself a white belt, yellow belt, green belt, brown belt, black belt. Here's... if it it... relative to GTD, here's where you are and what you're doing if you're at that level of game. So, we've defined it, but it's not obvious-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I get it.
- DADavid Allen
... you know, to your, to your point, yeah.
- 9:33 – 11:51
Flexibility vs. dogma: implementation debates and ‘inviolate’ principles
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, for sure. Um, have you seen how heated some of the debates on the GTD Reddit get?
- DADavid Allen
No.
- CWChris Williamson
You really-
- DADavid Allen
I, I'm not... I, I'm not... I, I, I'm not particularly interested. Anybody who says this doesn't work is just they're just not aware of it or they're just not old enough.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, no. No, no. This is less to do with GTD doesn't work. Everyone on the GTD Reddit agrees that GTD works, or at least almost everybody does. What they argue over are the finest, most fine points-
- DADavid Allen
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... about whether or not you can schedule a next action for tomorrow. Can I actually add it to my calendar? No, that should be nested within your projects and OmniFocus is better than Things 3 and blah, blah, blah. It's a-
- DADavid Allen
Yay. (laughs) I have no clue.
- CWChris Williamson
... it's a war zone in there. It's a war zone. (laughs)
- DADavid Allen
Oh, what a great, what a great audience argument to have. Yay. I'm just... I, I, I, I, I don't need to be bothered by it. It's called, we, we laid out the game, how people play the game, whether they wanna play on third base or first base and w- whether they like to throw p- you know, come on. How you play the game is very much up to you. So, it's fascinating, Chris, to, to come up with a model that gave you the total freedom for how you implement it, but, but without violating what the basic principles are. You can get stuff out of your head however you want. Write it on your butt, you know? Uh, have... hire 12 people to follow you around and give it to them to make sure that they trust... they, they feed it back to you when you need to see it, you know? So, the, the model doesn't care how you capture or how you review what it is or what you put the results of your thinking about what you need to do about it. That's all up to you. But the principles are inviolate.
- CWChris Williamson
I think that the freedom within the system is precisely where these debates can come in because-
- DADavid Allen
Oh, sure.
- CWChris Williamson
... be- because it's not... it's just, it's just not quite prescriptive enough for someone to be able to say, "No, you're wrong and you're right." There's like a... almost like a biblical interpretation that needs to be done. You need to get a pastor in, right? Can we get the pastor in, please?
- DADavid Allen
Well said. Well said, yeah. Indeed.
- 11:51 – 14:21
The core insight: your head is a terrible office
- CWChris Williamson
Um, okay. So, what's the... what is the principal insight of GTD?
- DADavid Allen
Uh, your head's a crappy office. So, you need to get it out of your head. You need to, you know, clarify what it means, you know, put the results in some trusted system externally so that your brain is freed up to make, you know, uh, strategic and intuitive and intelligent decisions about what to do.... but your head can't do that. You know, your brain, your ev- your brain did not evolve to remember, remind, prioritize, or manage relationships with more than four things now. That's the new data.
- CWChris Williamson
Really?
- DADavid Allen
Since you ha- s- since you have more than four things in your head that you're trying to ... And that's the only place you're trying to manage 'em, you're gonna be driven by latest and loudest, not strategic intuitive intelligence. But that's just data. Don't shoot the messenger. I'm just letting you know. Now, I discovered that 35 years ago on the street. I couldn't have told you that exactly, but the last 10 years the cognitive scientists have basically validated and proved that. So, that's a lot of what it is, is called don't use your head as your office, guys. It's a shitty office. So, you know, you get the stuff out of your head. So, that's a lot of what the basics of this is. There's a lot more to it than that in terms of how do you truly ... Once you get it out of your head, a lot of people make lists, but they still don't manage the list appropriately. So, there's several steps to being able to truly externalize your own commitments. So, this is a lot about clarifying your agreements with yourself, and that's a big game, you know? Chris, very few people have truly identified th- all their agreements with themselves. "Oh, should I give my kids karate lessons or not? Oh, should I hire a vice president of, of research? Should I get divorced? Should I, should I ma- manage the ... " Oh, God. You know, most people just got a w- awful lot going around, banging around in their head. They have not, uh, identified, clarified, objectified, and organized the results of their thinking about that and their decision-making about that. And that's what creating the ambient anxiety, which once it mounts up, starts to become this sort of source of just, um, basic stress that's killing people.
- CWChris Williamson
It makes for an arduous life to have to assess each decision individually each time it occurs and comes up, right? And also have to be able to remember it, recall it, remember how it relates to all of the other interlocking things that you need to do.
- 14:21 – 20:36
Connectivity, volume, and the ‘stress of opportunity’
- DADavid Allen
Well, once knowledge work showed up. You know, the great late Peter Drucker had identified knowledge work, where you actually have to think to figure out what to do, as opposed to having it self-evident when it shows up in terms of what your work is. But I don't know, Chris, last time you went to your physical mailbox, did the mail d- identify itself as junk mail or not? No. You had to figure that out, right? Uh, but the last time you opened your email and looked at it, did any of those say, "This is junk mail, read it if you dare or care"? No. (laughs) It forced you, you had to actually think about things you've, you've have, you know, implicitly allowed into your ecosystem. Like, I don't, I don't care about what y- is in your email, Chris, right? And you don't care what's in mine.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DADavid Allen
You care what's in yours, because you've now allowed that into your world. So, now that you've allowed input into your world that is potentially meaningful to you, but you don't know yet what exactly it does mean to you, that's where this methodology that I uncovered, discovered, codified comes into play. You wanna get that off your mind? Then you can go back to survival mode. You c- if you're in a crisis, you actually relax 'cause it gets rid of all those decisions, right? If you're not in a physical crisis, your, your, your, your building is not on fire, then there's a bigger crisis. All the demons at the gate are allowed to rush through. "Chris, y- what could you be doing instead of talking to David right now? You could be doing this, but oh, my God. And what are you do- uh, c- come on." The stress of opportunity is what's killing a lot of people these days. That's where the technology and the change in the technology has made a difference. N- nothing really, technology hasn't really made a huge difference in productivity after, um, word processes and spreadsheets. They changed the world. But since then, primarily, the only big change has been connectivity, volume, and speed of input, right? That's what your n- that, that's what your tech- technology has allowed. So, now you got a whole lot more stuff coming at you that you have to decide about, that you have to d- make a decision about how valuable is it and how do I engage with it, what do I do with that? But come on, when I was 14, 60 years ago, I spent two hours on the phone with my girlfriend, right? What's the difference between that and, and lugging some dork around with Facebook or, or Insta- Instagram?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DADavid Allen
(laughs) Or whatever. That's, that's, that's a human experience, (laughs) right? So, the, the, the, the, the issue is that you may have 16 girlfriends now and have 16 different channels that you could use to interact with them and-
- CWChris Williamson
David is not, David is not referring to me-
- DADavid Allen
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... to the people who are listening.
- DADavid Allen
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
That's obviously someone with far lower morals than I do.
- DADavid Allen
(laughs) Yeah. Does that make sense, Chris?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- DADavid Allen
I mean, kind of-
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, ab- absolutely. There's-
- DADavid Allen
I, you know, there's i- implicit questions people have, you know, like, uh, what's changed? That's what's changed.
- CWChris Williamson
Hey, it's further down. What, what has changed, uh, since you first wrote GTD? You're, you're reading my notes here. But I totally get it. The, I think this answers the question of why are pil- people still talking about GTD, why is it a system that people are still interested in, which is that the principles scale. They scale across technology, they scale across volume, across intensity, um, and what we've seen, if there was going to be a stress test for your system, it would be the smartphone with social media and always-on communication.
- DADavid Allen
Sure. Yeah, no, no, I, and I still have to grapple with that. How much do, time do I w- want to spend on Instagram? And, you know, I wake up in the morning, you know, along with my, you know, French press coffee and-... you know, I... And the New York Times front page, I see on my iPad. I play a few games of Inst- uh, you know, of, of Words With Friends across the planet. And, um, still check in on Instagram to see what, you know, a few friends of mine are saying, you know, looking around in their world and see what they're doing. You know, why not? I mean, come on. It's like a, it's like... But to me, social media is like a cocktail party. You don't wanna spend your life in a cocktail party, you know, unless, of course, you can afford to do that and like to do that, that's fine. Or just to what degree is that fun to keep you inspired, keep you engaged, keep you in, connected to the world? To what degree is that a distraction from where, what you need to be doing in your life? But that's, that's not designed, that's not decided by the technology. That's produced as a challenge and a choice you have to make given, given the opportunities you have.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. I really like the idea of the fact that the number of opportunities we have has up-regulated this ambient anxiety. I recently had Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism on, and he says something very similar, that success breeds options and opportunities, and those options and opportunities undermine the things which often led to success in the first place.
- DADavid Allen
Sure. Well, come on, uh, hi, Chris, go be innovative. There's-
- CWChris Williamson
I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm, I'm, I'm right now.
- DADavid Allen
Go, go be in- go be innovative.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm trying. (laughs)
- DADavid Allen
I go, I go, uh, inno... Innovation doesn't happen by people who went out to be innovative. It, it happened because of people figured out how to get that, what you're drinking in that kinda can. It came, it came about by people trying to figure out, okay, here's this, here's, here's an issue, here's an opportunity, here's something that we, we need to have and we don't have those things to do that. So it then challenges and then triggers the creative thinking, you know, in your brain, to produce some sort of a new result or some sort of a new f- different way to do that. So, yeah, the whole idea of innovation and change shows up because of needs, not because of somebody wants to just be different.
- 20:36 – 23:08
Mind like water: what clarity feels like
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. I get that. So I want to get into the process of how we can get things done. But first, can you explain to us what is mind like water?
- DADavid Allen
Your psyche is not over- or under-reacting to anything. It's totally present, with no distractions, with full capability to be aware and engage all of your resources for whatever's present that has your attention at the moment.
- CWChris Williamson
And that is enabled by getting things out of your head into a system that you trust.
- DADavid Allen
Well, uh, yeah, e- enabled by getting rid of anything that's, that's distract- potentially distracting to you or sucking wind out of your sails, psychologically. So, you know, yes, you know, if four people jump you in a dark alley, you do not wanna have 2,000 unprocessed emails hanging around your head.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) No, you don't. I had, uh, Paul Bloom, psychologist at Yale, on, and he's writing a new book about, uh, why people enjoy pain. And he interviewed a dominatrix who said, "Nothing captures attention like a whip." And he relates it to the same reason that people do BASE jumping and, um, why people, uh, uh, like doing things with such scaled-up, highly regulated, highly up-regulated, uh, levels of sensory input, because it forces them into the present. The 2,000 unread emails, they gotta go, because you've just been hit in the face with a whip, you know? And that reminds me right back to the first thing you said at the very beginning, which is this change from overwhelmed to ambient anxiety. And I really, considering I've never heard it before, I think, I think you might be onto something there.
- DADavid Allen
Well, just talk to my dermatologist. The reason you like to scratch an itch is because itches come from a different part of your brain than pain does. And when you scratch it, it creates more pain than the itch created and it allows you to get temporary relief from the itch, because then your brain gets to engage with, "How do I deal with pain?" But then when you stop scratching, at a certain point in time, the itch comes back, 'cause the, that didn't handle it. So r- if you want a micro-example, just physiologically, of what, what you just said, there it is.
- 23:08 – 31:22
Define ‘done’: outcomes, cruise control, and repeated thoughts
- CWChris Williamson
I like it. Okay, so the process, how can we get things done?
- DADavid Allen
Well, first of all, you have to define what does, what done means. It's a silly question to ask if you don't know what done means. How do we get what done? If you're thinking about a divorce, potentially, right? What does done mean?
- CWChris Williamson
Divorced.
- DADavid Allen
Not necessarily. It may mean clarification or resolution of this issue between me and my life partner. Right? So there's a, there's a challenge to define what done means. What does done mean if you're thinking, "Oh, God," any kinda issues relative to your profession, your business, or whatever? And many times done means just getting resolution about whether or not this is something to do. So done oftentimes is just a, a, a research project. "I need to figure out whether we should hire a consultant to lead us through this whole organizational change." "I need to look into whether or not, you know, I should merge with this business that's o- made, made us an offer that I don't think is quite, you know, uh, rich enough."... right? And most people don't really identify those kind of things as projects. So, what does done mean? And most people are banging ar- you know, have got all kinds of stuff banging around in their head. "I ... You know, Johnny, my kid, wants to take karate lessons. I don't know. Should I give him ... He's only eight years old. Should I give him a karate..." You know, what, uh, what does done mean? Resolve that question, right? And so-
- CWChris Williamson
Is there a process for resolving the question?
- DADavid Allen
Absolutely. What's the next action? What would you need to do? First of all, you need to define, "Okay, I need to get clear about whether to give Johnny karate lessons or not. That's my outcome," right? And y- you could decide not to give Johnny karate lessons and check that off as done.
- CWChris Williamson
The resul- so the equivalent for the divorce would be spend sufficient time with my wife that we no longer need to get divorced resolution.
- DADavid Allen
Well, well, that would be the action step you might wanna take or the things you might need to do to get to that resolution.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. I'm just getting ahead of myself. I'm sorry.
- DADavid Allen
But, but the resolution would be, you know, cruise control in my relationship with Susan, with Johnny, with whatever, right? So I wanna put this under cruise control. So, you know, if, if you and your listeners or people who are watching this, if you understand what cruise control means, I mean this thing is on automatic. I don't need to have my attention on this anymore because I'm trusting what's going on in the process going on out there right now. You know, you're pumping your blood, Chris, and your breathing is on cruise control. You're not, you're not worried about whether you're gonna breathe or not. I mean, you could be if you have other stuff going on, but right now that's all fine. So what's not on cruise control? Well, you don't have to go very far called what's popped into your head while we've been talking that has nothing to do with what we've been talking about. So anybody listening to this, wherever your head's gone, "Oh, you know, they mentioned this, but I didn't do that. I didn't do that. Ah." It's not yet on cruise control. As soon as you think, "I need cat food" twice, you're not appropriately engaged with your cat. You and cat are not on cruise control yet, right? As soon as anything pops into your head, unless you just like the thought, and many times I'm just thinking about stuff 'cause I like thinking about. I'm just kind of grazing and just looking around my life. But anything that keeps popping in my head, "I should, I need to. That light bulb needs changing. That thing needs to be doing. Oh my God, you know, what am I gonna do about the X, Y, Z?" Those are the things that are not on cruise control yet and that's what you need to identify if you wanted to, uh, start to get really clear. 'Cause what's in the way of clear are those things for which the right decisions have not been made and the right, um, content has not been parked in the appropriate places-
- CWChris Williamson
I think-
- DADavid Allen
... so your brain, your brain can let it, so your brain can let it go.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm just gonna let the listeners pause on that for a second, because the first time that I heard the concept that the only thoughts that you should ever have more than once are thoughts that you choose to think, that you want to think-
- DADavid Allen
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
... that, that in itself is a ground-shaking insight.
- DADavid Allen
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
It may not be for, it may not be-
- DADavid Allen
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... for, for you as the, uh, 12th dan black belt Brazilian jujitsu GTD master David Allen, but for sort of 24-year-old me swimming in the advent of, of a fresh Instagram launch and 140-character Twitter and all this sort of stuff-
- DADavid Allen
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... I was like, "Hang on a second. I think things multiple times per second that I don't want to think." But I'll get a thought, get rid of it, and get it again within the space of minutes. And to hear that that's not just par for the course, that's not just standard operating procedure was a very, very big insight. And to everyone that's listening, think about how many of the thoughts you have per day that you don't want to have that you have multiple times. It's a lot.
- DADavid Allen
And it's okay as long as you get into the zen of, okay, uh, that's okay that I don't do anything about that. I'll let that keep popping in and just kind of enjoy the process and then see whether it actually emerges into something real or not. You will speed up the process if you, you know, sort of apply this principle of externalizing that so there's some part of you trusts, "Oh, I'll, I'll be reminded of that cool joke I might wanna use somewhere else," or, "I'll be reminded of that thing I might wanna do at some point, but I've parked it in an appropriate place so that my brain goes, 'Ah, okay.'" I know when I walk through the door in the morning, it's in the front of the door, the thing I need to take to my office tomorrow. So, when you're smart and have creative thinking and creative thoughts that might be appropriate and productive for your life, you know, if you're s- if you're really cool, you park those in some appropriate place so that one p- so, so that when you're not so du- not so smart, you're kinda dumb and thick, you actually do smart things. So that was another thing I discovered over all these years is like you're not ... The really smart and sophisticated people just realize they're not smart and sophisticated all the time. Actually, at very rare moments. But when you're smart and sophisticated, you capture the results of that thinking and then park the results some place so that when you're kinda thick and dumb, which we are most of the time, you actually do smart stuff, right? Now, (laughs) I-... I hope you people can play that back and listen to that about-
- CWChris Williamson
Hey.
- DADavid Allen
... 45, 45 times-
- CWChris Williamson
I think, David-
- DADavid Allen
... and get it. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... I think this is one of those-
- DADavid Allen
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... constant replay. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, there's a little button just to the left of the play button-
- DADavid Allen
(laughs)
- 31:22 – 33:05
The GTD algorithm: outcomes and next actions
- DADavid Allen
Well, if you had nothing else to do but move toward that done, where would you go right now and what would you do physically, visibly?
- CWChris Williamson
The very next thing.
- DADavid Allen
Wow. Wow, I think we might need to get divorced. (sighs) Okay, uh, desired outcome, clarify relationship with life partner. Okay. What's the very next thing you would need to do if you had nothing else to do? I'm not gonna, I'm gonna pay you a million pounds or a million dollars or a million euros or whatever to just start moving on that right now, nothing else. What would you do? Would you go to him or her and have a conversation? Would you call your attorney? Would you surf the web and see, "Gee, what am I gonna do about this?" Would you say, "I need to give myself two hours of a blocked out time to just meditate about this issue, about what I'm gonna do"? So you need to decide what's the very next thing you would need to do to move the needle toward that outcome. What's the next action? So Chris and listeners, come on guys, the zeros and ones of productivity, outcome and action. What do you want as a final outcome, as e- an either material outcome or an experience that you want, and what's the very next physical visible action or activity or focus you need to have in order to move the needle toward that? And those two things are the things most sophisticated people listening to this are avoiding like the plague, about all kinds of stuff in their head. I just discovered the algorithm, outcome and action. So,
- 33:05 – 34:38
The five steps: Capture, Clarify, Organize, Reflect, Engage
- DADavid Allen
what's the outcome of potential divorce? What's the action step you need to take? What's the outcome of cat needs food? What's the action somebody needs to take? And, you know, and so the clarification step... So as you know, Chris, you know that I, I just identified, I didn't make it up, I just identified the five steps we need to do to get anything under control. You need to capture what's got your attention, what's not on cr- cruise control, identify what that is, and then clarify, step two. What do I need to do about it? Is it actionable and, and is there some outcome or action I need to identify about that? Step three is organize reminders with that if you can't finish them in the moment. Step four is to make sure you've got that some, in some sort of trusted external system that you can reflect on and review when it's time to run errands, when it's time to just sit down and talk to whoever you need to talk to about... Or sit down on your computer, "What are all the things that I might, should, would, ought to do?" Step five is then, you know, make choices about all that, given that you've done steps one through four. So, you know, (laughs) th- that was, that was a longer answer than what you asked about, but that was it. That's basically the Getting Things Done process. Capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage. 'Cause that's how you get your kitchen under control, it's how you get your consciousness under control. But most people will do that with their kitchen, but they haven't done it with their consciousness yet.
- 34:38 – 51:13
Where people fail: partial capture, unclear lists, weak organization, no review
- CWChris Williamson
In the GTD framework from those five steps, where do people tend to find the most challenge?
- DADavid Allen
All the way across.
- CWChris Williamson
Just across the board? There's no-
- DADavid Allen
Across the board.
- CWChris Williamson
... no peaks, no peaks and troughs?
- DADavid Allen
Across the board. The first challenge is people don't get stuff all... Get everything out of their head, so they don't trust anything, their ex- they don't trust their external brain. They don't trust their list because they know there's still stuff other than that. So first step-
- CWChris Williamson
It's a part, it's a parts list.
- DADavid Allen
Yeah, it's a... Most people have some stuff out of their head, they've been some sort of a to-do list, but they got a whole lot of other stuff they haven't written down, so they don't trust either place. You don't trust your head or your list, right? So then you grapple around and just fumble around and deal with latest and loudest, you know? So that's step... You know, that's the first place people fall off. Second place is even people make lists, everybody listening to this has some sort of version of a to-do list, but they haven't decided what to do about the stuff on the to-do list. They've got mom or bank or VP of vie- finance or whatever. You know, if they've written, if they've captured all the stuff to begin with, good for them, but they haven't decided, "Okay, so now what?" You know? (laughs) What's the outcome and what's the action step you need to take about that, if any? So the second thing people fall off is they haven't determined what to do about their to-do l- m- most people's to-do lists create as much stress as they relieve. Because when they look at it they goes, "Oh God," there's thinking and decisions about Mom's birthday or the bank in- inventory or, you know, or, you know, whatever, and they haven't decided about it, and so they, they, "I don't want," they don't want to look at it, it just reminds them they're overwhelmed.... third step is people have made dec-, "Oh, I need to call my sister about Mom's birthday," but they didn't park that somewhere they'll trust they'll see at the right time. So now it's parked back up in their head, which has no sense of past or future, thus creating the ambient anxiety of, "Oh my God, there's stuff I need to do about Mom's birthday. I think I decided to call my sister, but..." Wakes them up at three o'clock in the morning. "Oh, I really need to call my sister, oh my God." So, you know, the, they could fall off there too.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- DADavid Allen
And then they could fall off, even if they've done all that, and you, you find few people that done it, but even people who've captured everything, clarified everything, organized everything, then they don't look at their external brain system, wherever that is, some sort of a list manager, whatever they're managing all that, and they're still driven off latest and loudest. You know? So they're not actually engaging with their thing. I- i- it's, it's a strange paradox, you actually have to use your mind to empty your mind. So in order to be present, you need to look at everything you've thought about, everything you've decided about, and see that as, as an external inventory and just go, "No, I'm gonna have a beer." And, "No, I'm gonna take a nap." Or, "No, I'm not gonna do any of that, I need to sit down and design a new business plan." So, (laughs) you know, then people fall off there. They don't actually use their system as an external brain. Your external brain only works if it actually is an external brain, not just some externalized dump thing that you've stuck stuff in that you're not engaging with appropriately. I guess I could go on and on, but those are the main reasons that people may not stick with this as a, as a black belt.
- CWChris Williamson
So they find particular obstacles at each stage along the way. I really (laughs) find it so hilarious and very true that a unclarified, unreviewed, unorganized to-do list just becomes kind of like a monument to all of the ambient anxiety.
- DADavid Allen
(laughs) Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
You've created this sculpture out of all of the things that were causing you anxiety in your head, and now look at them. They're-
- DADavid Allen
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DADavid Allen
Well said.
- CWChris Williamson
They're all there.
- DADavid Allen
(laughs) Well said. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DADavid Allen
Indeed.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. So I think hopefully the audience will be getting it into their heads that it is better for us to have the things we need to do out of our heads and down somewhere, that something needs to be clarified. That clarification then needs to be organized. The organizing step, from clarifying something to organizing, how can someone go about that? Don't think, unless you have a systems mentality, I don't think that's a, a, a supernatural way to, to put things together.
- DADavid Allen
Well, anybody who's ever made a list of stuff to buy at the store is already doing this. Anybody who has a calendar is already doing this. So people complain about all the lists I suggest, they go, "Well, then throw away your calendar or your diary." I mean, don't be intellectually dishonest. If you think your head can do it all, let your head do it all. Oh, you're maintaining a diary or a calendar? Oh, why? "Well, because I don't wanna miss that appointment." No kidding.
- CWChris Williamson
I understand. So the, the specifics of categorizing anything, you don't put the plans for your divorce on the shopping list to go to the shop?
- DADavid Allen
Of course not. You just need to decide what the next action is to make a decision about whether to get divorced or not, and some place you'll see it at the right time and place.
- CWChris Williamson
What about if I've got tons of next actions, I got million different projects going on, what-
- DADavid Allen
You don't have a million. You could have 30 to 100.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, okay. What if I've got 30 next actions and I'm looking at them all and I think, "Well, I need to sort this divorce out, but the cat, the cat's starving, but, oh, I haven't done this, I haven't done this"? How do I prioritize?
- DADavid Allen
Uh, pray. Trust your inner voice that says, "You know, I'm not sure what to do. Let me pick an easy one to do so I still stay in the saddle of my life as opposed to being the victim of it." Or, "Let me choose the tough one to deal with, that ugly email that I've been avoiding trying to respond to, so that I can then snack on email the rest of the day as a reward."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DADavid Allen
Either one. Take your pick. I do either or I do both of those. So you have to then trust your intuition about which thing would be, would potentially create the most value or the, create, you know, get me back onto my appropriate, you know, in the saddle of my life again most appropriately? And it could be the hardest, it could be the easiest. Many times I flip between both of those. So I have no formula for that.
- 51:13 – 59:55
Review cadence: weekly review, horizons of focus, and checklists
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. Um, so how often should we review? How often should we reflect on the, the organized, clarified list?
- DADavid Allen
As often as you need to, to make sure you're present with whatever you're doing.
- CWChris Williamson
Is there a typical cadence to that?
- DADavid Allen
(mouths explosion) Yeah, typical cadence, we talk about the weekly review. Once a week, you need to kind of bring up the rear guard and circle the wagons and say, "Okay, what's happened? Are my list current? Is my external brain, you know, current enough so I can trust it?" And so yeah, there is a kind of a seven-day cycle about sort of regrouping things we've just seen. Anecdotally, but I read several years ago that after about seven to eight days, your brain dumps a lot of context. So if you tried to recreate what happened in a meeting five days ago, you can probably pretty much do that pretty well. You know, 15 days ago, (mouths explosion) you're dead. Can't do it.
- CWChris Williamson
Which actually means that you then need to create more thorough ... You need to add context into the things that you're taking out of your brain if your review process is more than seven days.
- DADavid Allen
Yeah. For sure.
- CWChris Williamson
Be- because your ability to understand what you're talking about has gone.
- DADavid Allen
Right. Well, my Someday/Maybe list, I probably don't need to see every seven days. Probably every, you know, two or three or four weeks, I need to review the stuff I think I might wanna do but not now. So whatever the, whatever your commitment is about whatever the content is, that, that's gonna define your recursion of review. How often do you need to review what you're doing with your life, with you and any life partner you have, if you have one? How often do you need to review the purpose of your company and what you're doing? How often do you need to rev- So all these reviews, as you probably know, I identified the six horizons we have commitments. There's purpose, there's vision, there's goals and objectives, there's areas of accountability, there's projects, there's actions. So those are different context, they're different horizons that you actually need to identify what's the, what are the ingredients of all those different levels we have commitments with ourselves, and then review those as often as you need to. How often do you need to look at your calendar? Or probably every, depends on how, you know, how intricate your calendar is or how many content, how much content you have in it. Sometimes I need to look at it several times a day, sometimes once every two days. Depends. You know, now with the v- you know, pandemic going on, I'm only needing to look at my calendar, you know, once a day and kind of see, "Hey, oh, yeah, I got this one, I got this podcast with Chris coming up. Yay, okay." You know, that's cool.
- CWChris Williamson
Highlight of the day, obviously.
- DADavid Allen
Uh, of, of course. Couldn't wait.
- CWChris Williamson
Thank you, David.
- DADavid Allen
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Thank you. Um, okay. So we've realized that we need to review. A typical cadence of being around about once a week appears to tally up with a little bit of neuroscience and is probably a good way, it's certainly something I've leveraged with this show. When I first started it, I wanted to always release at the same day at the same time. I wanted it to be ready for people to wake up on a Monday morning so that it would become a part of their week, so that I could automate their habit of listening to this show as much as I could. And potentially, if a Monday morning or if a Sunday evening or a b- wherever it is, um, I would caveat that actually, and I would say that Friday afternoon tends to be a bad time.... to try and do a review. I don't think that that would be a particularly effective time to do.
- DADavid Allen
It's actually probably a, a good effective time for a lot of people early Friday afternoon, not late.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- DADavid Allen
Right? So you get to kind of debrief your week, you know, and get ready for the weekend and not have anything sort of hanging, you know, so you can enjoy some relaxed time. But I've had people do weekly reviews Sunday night. Some of them, some people do Monday morning, some people do Thursday night, so that they sort of clean everything up so that the Friday and the weekend are highly effective and, you know. And so it doesn't matter.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DADavid Allen
But you have to decide what, what do you need to do and how often do you need to see what? In terms of content, how often? It's that simple. How often do you need to see your calendar? How often do you need to, should you look at your goals for your company? How often should you look at, you know, what you're doing in your life in terms of your... how's your health? How's your vital- vitality? How's your relationships? How's your fun factor? How's your dog? You know, how's your relation... you know. You know. You... Mm-hmm. As soon as those things start to pop into your head sort of regularly, "Oh, gee, I out- I should be doing something about that," you might want to have some sort of a checklist. Checklists are the key to life, you know, in a way. One of the things that I'm smart enough to figure out, one of the things I need to think about when I go do a heart surgery or, you know, when we're going on a vacation, that I need to look at so I don't have to keep rethinking about that. So a lot of it is just building in the, in the external brain. And the external brain just needs to be built in with enough content and then the external brain will only bring the value of the external brain if you engage with the external brain appropriately.
- CWChris Williamson
I like the, uh, the analogy between control and spontaneity that is given by having things out of your brain. Because to someone who maybe hasn't fully swallowed the GTD red pill yet, the idea of having a checklist for everything, you saying the words, like, "Checklists are life," might sound, well, that doesn't sound very fun or creative or spontaneous. That just sounds like a life where I've got to write lists all the time.
- DADavid Allen
Right. So anybody listening to this who's ever looked at a recipe and said, "Oh, I'm glad I had that recipe. But here's what I want, I want to add a little extra pepper to that. All right, I'm gonna add... I think we should add a little more soy to that re- recipe." That's what we're talking about. But if you didn't have the recipe, you wouldn't do that.
- CWChris Williamson
You've just got pepper or soy in a pan.
- DADavid Allen
Yeah (laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) And who wants to eat that? No one wants to eat that, David.
- DADavid Allen
(laughs) That's right.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, okay, so the, the final, number five, how can we then move ourselves past just reviewing?
- DADavid Allen
Trust your gut or your spirit. Or the still small voice inside of you, or your liver, or whatever you trust when you look at it, go, "I'm gonna do that and not that."
- CWChris Williamson
I do think-
- DADavid Allen
I, I'll, I'll use intuition as probably the most generically consumable, digestible term about what I just said.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. I do think that there is a lot of modern hyper-rationalization about things that can be fixed with gut instinct. Tim Ferriss has this concept that he talks about for a note-taking, um, process that he used to be very, very into.
- DADavid Allen
(laughs)
- 59:55 – 1:10:08
Daily startup and tools: night-before planning, software stack, and paper capture
- CWChris Williamson
I try to say things well as much as I can. Okay, um, so you've, you've taken us through it. Obviously, there is so much to go through and we couldn't have gone through a, a full thing in just a, an hour-long podcast. But I've got a couple, a couple more questions, uh, to, to wrap up. Um, this is from Johnny, who's one of the co-hosts of the show and is transitioning into full GTD mode. And he says, "What is your morning startup process? You sit down to work. How do you decide what you're working-"
- DADavid Allen
I don't sit down to work. I sit down to drink my lemon water to begin with to cleanse the system, and my French press coffee to just sort of kickstart my brain a little bit. I play a little bit of Words with Friends around the world, you know, to sort of kickstart my brain. I read the front page of New York Times on my iPad. And take the dog out for what she needs to do. Uh, and then I sit down and go, "Hmm."What is the best thing to do right now? And then I just, you know, engage in a reflection of all the stuff that's out there in terms of my commitments and all the, you know, multiple commitments I have and interests that I have. And then I make a spontaneous decision about what to do.
- CWChris Williamson
That's cool. Johnny, I hope that, that-
- DADavid Allen
Actually, actually, actually, let, let me answer that. My day starts the night before. The night before I look at my calendar and say, "Okay, what are the, what's the hard landscape?" Mainly because I like to sleep as long as I can. Uh, I'm a big sleep fan. And so the night before, I look at the next day or two to get a sense of what are my external commitments that I actually need to keep up with to make sure that that's true. Then that gives me the relaxation then that night to be able to say, "How long can I sleep?" Or whatever. And it also lets me kind of, especially if it's a busy week, these days with the pandemic, I don't have that much going on, you know, two or three or four things a day that are committed already in terms of time. But I need to look at that and then relax that, okay, that's cool. Understand what the hard landscape is. So then in the morning when I go through my little rituals with all, what I, that I just mentioned, there's part of me that says, "Okay, so here's where I need to be now and here's how I manage that." So I'm usually kind of a 24 hour ahead looking at just describing the landscape to myself so I think internally, you know, my hypothesis and a lot of good data showing up lately with the cognitive scientists is sleeping on things is a really good idea. You know, so if you are able to look ahead th- to the next one, two, three, four days or week ahead in your mind before you go to sleep, there's a part of you that doesn't feel surprised by those things as they're showing up and has already sort of accumulated whatever unconscious stuff we accumulate, you know, in the sleep state, uh, which they've discovered is a lot. Uh, that, that helps a lot.
- CWChris Williamson
I really like the idea of liberating yourself from the surprise of things happening. That you've planned, even, even stuff that you've planned. Um, especially as a good example with this podcast, it involves a lot of scheduling. I've got, I've got, uh, Julia Cameron, the lady that wrote The Artist's Way. I've got her on the show and that's been booked in for two and a half months. Like two and a half months for something. And you think like if I hadn't checked the calendar, I would have just woken up on Friday...
- DADavid Allen
(laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
... and been like "Oh shit. Speaking to a lady that's sold like four million books on Friday. Like I got to do a thing. I got to try and think of a thing for her." Um, so yeah, that, that is, that is liberating to, to have that. And the day, the night before thing I think is, is a good way to do it. It reminds you, it gives you context, right? More acute context.
- DADavid Allen
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
How is my day going to fit together? Can I actually train first thing in the morning or would it be a little bit of a better idea for me to duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh? You know, when you wake up in that, uh, in that way. So, um, final question. I'm g- I'm gonna guess that you get asked this all the time. Are you rolling-
- DADavid Allen
(laughs) Wait a minute. I've never had anybody ask a final question that was their final question. So I'm curious. Do you think this really is?
- CWChris Williamson
Final question is probably going to be where can people follow you online. Um, but that's a footnote. That's in the appendix. So this is the final question of the chapter, okay?
- DADavid Allen
(laughs) Good.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, I'll try and make it the final q- And if it's not, this isn't... This is my rules.
- DADavid Allen
I don't care.
- CWChris Williamson
Welcome to my world, David. Yeah, exactly. I do what I want.
- DADavid Allen
I don't care. I just keep... I just think it's fun.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, are you, are you rolling with some custom coded crazy David Allen made by Silicon Valley direct, uh, app across all of your devices for you to have your productivity system embedded to manage all of your tasks?
- DADavid Allen
No.
- CWChris Williamson
What are you using?
- DADavid Allen
I use... We still use what was the old Lotus Notes that became IBM Notes that's now HCM Notes. I still use a, you know, a group app that we use in our small little company. And a friend of mine who was my CTO for 10 years built an overlay of that called eProductivity that, you know, makes my task management within that system, you know, more sort of GTD-esque. So that's what I use for my reminder system. Uh, it's just a, it's, it's a, a sophisticated version of what if you were using Outlook or anything that had just a task management, you know, a function. So I use that and, and then I use all the standard stuff. I use Snagit to grab screenshots. I used Evernote for a lot of just random, uh, email stuff. I use, I use Word, I use Excel for, you know, all kinds of stuff. I even, I use the, just my inv- you know, my organized, um, you know, computerized inventory of those things, how those, those are structured within the, within the, within that context. And what else? I use The B- The Brain, which is a fascinating thing. It's more of an informal thing that I use for making random connections with things.
- CWChris Williamson
What's that?
- DADavid Allen
The Brain.
- CWChris Williamson
The Brain.
- DADavid Allen
Yeah. Just look at The Brain, T-H-E B-R-A-I-N.com. You know, Harlan's a friend of mine and, and knows my stuff. It, it's a great way to sort of build a software that sort of connected, "Oh, eggs, what does it remind me of? Oh, that reminds me of Susan who cooks eggs. That reminds me, by the way, of a source for eggs." And you're able to connect all those things and see them however you want to see them.... so, you know, it's, it's just, it's a sort of a connectivity tool. If you're... And there, there are several out there that you could, they could, you could probably use in that, in that regard. Uh, what else do I use? Um, those are them... I think those, those are the main tools that I use.
- CWChris Williamson
There you go. The internet has its answer.
- DADavid Allen
And, and, and, and... I'm sorry. (crinkling) Capture.
- CWChris Williamson
Pen and paper.
- DADavid Allen
It's called... Eh, these are new things nobody's ever heard about, but there's a pen that actually holds, you know, information, it holds, you know, data that you can then actually put onto this thing called paper. Most of you have never seen this before.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DADavid Allen
It's actually, oh, my God, I can actually externalize this stuff into a physical thing.
- 1:10:08 – 1:11:55
Where to learn more: GTD resources and follow links
- DADavid Allen
Well, www.gettingthingsdone.com. You'll see an overview of what we've created as a company right now after all these years. We're mostly supporting our partners around the world that are delivering, um, you know, public seminars as well as, you know, a lot of, uh, um, business to business, you know, uh, seminars inside of businesses, where they're, you know, teaching and training and coaching this methodology. So, you'll see that on our website. You can, you can, you know, surf around that. We've got a free newsletter you can sign up for. Um, and of course, you know, you can always go get the book, Getting Things Done. We just produced the Getting Things Done workbook. That's also available in bookstores around the world and in the UK as well. Um, that's kind of the easy way to get involved with this methodology if you're not already there. So, just go take a look. (clears throat)
- CWChris Williamson
Link will be in the show notes below, the updated version of Getting Things Done, which was done 2015 I think, and then Getting Things Done workbook, plus gettingthingsdone.com and @gtdguy on Twitter?
- DADavid Allen
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
Gtdguy on Twitter.
- DADavid Allen
And dalan45 on Instagram if you wanna-
- CWChris Williamson
Uh.
- DADavid Allen
... see more of my personal life-
- CWChris Williamson
I love it. I love it.
- DADavid Allen
... picture, pictures.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, everything will be linked in the show notes below. David, man, it's been, this has been wonderful. Thank you for your time.
- DADavid Allen
Hey, Chris, this was really fun. Yeah, thanks. Outlines. Ah, yeah. Oh, ah, yeah. Outlines.
Episode duration: 1:11:56
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Transcript of episode 0K6G7bL0a3U
