The Art Of Stress-Free Productivity | David Allen | Modern Wisdom Podcast 188

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   The biggest issue is…

   1. DADavid Allen0:00

      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.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:33

      That looks like a particularly precarious single stack of books that you've got next to you.

   3. DADavid Allen0:39

      (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.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:14

      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.

   5. DADavid Allen1:24

      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.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:34

      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-

   7. DADavid Allen1:41

      No.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:42

      ... I'm fine, I'm fine.

   9. DADavid Allen1:44

      We're, we're cool.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:45

       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?

   11. DADavid Allen1:58

       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.

   12. CWChris Williamson3:35

       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.

   13. DADavid Allen3:56

       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.

   14. CWChris Williamson5:16

       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?

   15. DADavid Allen5:43

       Right.

   16. CWChris Williamson5:43

       It's the ambient anxiety which has precluded the, the last like-

   17. DADavid Allen5:48

       Right.

   18. CWChris Williamson5:48

       ... six weeks since they were given the assignment, that's what's caused the problem.

   19. DADavid Allen5:52

       Wait till you suggest... What, what

   20. NANarrator5:54

       (clears throat)

   21. DADavid Allen5:54

       ... tell yourself you're gonna write a book, right?

   22. CWChris Williamson5:59

       (laughs)

   23. DADavid Allen6:00

       (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.

   24. CWChris Williamson6:15

       I can just let myself-

   25. DADavid Allen6:16

       You know what it was- (laughs)

   26. CWChris Williamson6:16

       ... bathe in this anxiety for a little bit longer.

   27. DADavid Allen6:20

       Yeah. Well, you get it.

   28. CWChris Williamson6:21

       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?

   29. DADavid Allen6:43

       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.

   30. CWChris Williamson8:23

       (laughs) I'm laughing because-
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. DADavid Allen15:00

      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.

   2. CWChris Williamson15:14

      Mm-hmm.

   3. DADavid Allen15:14

      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?

   4. CWChris Williamson17:03

      (laughs)

   5. DADavid Allen17:03

      (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-

   6. CWChris Williamson17:19

      David is not, David is not referring to me-

   7. DADavid Allen17:22

      (laughs)

   8. CWChris Williamson17:22

      ... to the people who are listening.

   9. DADavid Allen17:23

      Okay.

   10. CWChris Williamson17:23

       That's obviously someone with far lower morals than I do.

   11. DADavid Allen17:26

       (laughs) Yeah. Does that make sense, Chris?

   12. CWChris Williamson17:30

       Yeah.

   13. DADavid Allen17:30

       I mean, kind of-

   14. CWChris Williamson17:30

       Oh, ab- absolutely. There's-

   15. DADavid Allen17:31

       I, you know, there's i- implicit questions people have, you know, like, uh, what's changed? That's what's changed.

   16. CWChris Williamson17:36

       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.

   17. DADavid Allen18:08

       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.

   18. CWChris Williamson19:15

       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.

   19. DADavid Allen19:42

       Sure. Well, come on, uh, hi, Chris, go be innovative. There's-

   20. CWChris Williamson19:48

       I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm, I'm, I'm right now.

   21. DADavid Allen19:51

       Go, go be in- go be innovative.

   22. CWChris Williamson19:51

       I'm trying. (laughs)

   23. DADavid Allen19:52

       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.

   24. CWChris Williamson20:36

       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?

   25. DADavid Allen20:48

       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.

   26. CWChris Williamson21:06

       And that is enabled by getting things out of your head into a system that you trust.

   27. DADavid Allen21:12

       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.

   28. CWChris Williamson21:30

       (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.

   29. DADavid Allen22:29

       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.

   30. CWChris Williamson23:08

       I like it. Okay, so the process, how can we get things done?
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Hey. …

   1. DADavid Allen30:00

      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-

   2. CWChris Williamson30:23

      Hey.

   3. DADavid Allen30:23

      ... 45, 45 times-

   4. CWChris Williamson30:24

      I think, David-

   5. DADavid Allen30:25

      ... and get it. (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson30:25

      ... I think this is one of those-

   7. DADavid Allen30:26

      (laughs)

   8. CWChris Williamson30:26

      ... constant replay. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, there's a little button just to the left of the play button-

   9. DADavid Allen30:32

      (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson30:32

       ... which rewinds by 15 to 30 seconds. And if you just... Or if you're on Siri, you can say-

   11. DADavid Allen30:38

       (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson30:38

       ... "Hey, Siri, please go back by th- by 60 seconds." This is how I skip through Ben Shapiro's ads on his podcast, but for this one-

   13. DADavid Allen30:45

       (laughs)

   14. CWChris Williamson30:45

       ... you may need to go back a couple of times. So, okay, we've, we know that our mind is built for having thoughts, not holding thoughts. We know that we need to-

   15. DADavid Allen30:53

       No, you, you do not know. You know, when you say, "We know that," oh, come on.

   16. CWChris Williamson30:59

       We and the listeners now know-

   17. DADavid Allen31:00

       (laughs)

   18. CWChris Williamson31:00

       ... you are slowly red pilling us all as this podcast goes on, David, okay? Um, uh, this is the, uh... Sorry. The insight that you have given us is that our mind is built for having thoughts, not holding (laughs) thoughts.

   19. DADavid Allen31:13

       (laughs) Okay.

   20. CWChris Williamson31:13

       Um, we need to define what done would look like.

   21. DADavid Allen31:18

       Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson31:18

       Yep. Where are we next?

   23. DADavid Allen31:22

       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?

   24. CWChris Williamson31:33

       The very next thing.

   25. DADavid Allen31:34

       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, 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.

   26. CWChris Williamson34:38

       In the GTD framework from those five steps, where do people tend to find the most challenge?

   27. DADavid Allen34:48

       All the way across.

   28. CWChris Williamson34:50

       Just across the board? There's no-

   29. DADavid Allen34:51

       Across the board.

   30. CWChris Williamson34:51

       ... no peaks, no peaks and troughs?
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   (laughs) …

   1. CWChris Williamson45:00

      is-

   2. DADavid Allen45:00

      (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson45:00

      This is a semi-formal request from the Modern Wisdom Podcast-

   4. DADavid Allen45:04

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson45:04

      ... for you to get this, get this system created. Okay-

   6. DADavid Allen45:07

      But, but do you, do you get that, Chris?

   7. CWChris Williamson45:08

      Yeah.

   8. DADavid Allen45:08

      I mean, I, I say that and I go, and people go... 'Cause people go, "Well, what's the ultimate system?" I say, "That would be the ultimate system." So your mind doesn't have to think about what it needs to think about. You've already programmed what you wanna think about, when you wanna think about it, and have built in a system that then makes you not have to worry about what you need to think about, when you need to think about it. You've already decided that.

   9. CWChris Williamson45:32

      That's-

   10. DADavid Allen45:32

       And you, and you've built that in.

   11. CWChris Williamson45:34

       That's something that I've never thought about before, but genuinely, for knowledge work would be a phase shift. It would be a complete... Because I, I, I don't think that the vast majority of knowledge workers struggle at doing things. They struggle at knowing what they need to do. When there's a task in front of you, we identified it earlier on, that at the, the very peak end of Parkinson's Law, just the night before the, uh-

   12. DADavid Allen46:02

       (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson46:02

       ... the dissertation that's worth 50% of the T- £50,000 degree that you've paid for is due in, you have no problem writing the words. The words are coming easy as hell then. But it's the choosing when to do it, what's exact- what's actually the next action that I need to do. "Do I need, I need, I should speak to them, I got this other thing to do," et cetera, et cetera. Um, that would be...

   14. DADavid Allen46:26

       But the reminder to do that thought process at the right time, that's your meta-

   15. CWChris Williamson46:33

       Mmm.

   16. DADavid Allen46:33

       ... process.

   17. CWChris Williamson46:36

       Yes.

   18. DADavid Allen46:36

       When should I be reminded to do that kind of thinking? Right? And then you control that. As opposed to having it Naziware or whatever that's, forces you to have to-

   19. CWChris Williamson46:49

       (laughs)

   20. DADavid Allen46:49

       ... think about this or, you know, whatever. No.

   21. CWChris Williamson46:52

       Naziware.

   22. DADavid Allen46:52

       No. You design your own program. Believe me, I've worked with some of the smartest and brightest on the planet to try to figure out could we do that software-wise. Not yet.

   23. CWChris Williamson47:02

       Could you? No.

   24. DADavid Allen47:03

       No. Didn't work. There was no veno- minimal viable product we could produce given the market that was going on, the interest of the market, that would make it worthwhile to invest all the resources to actually make something like that happen.

   25. CWChris Williamson47:19

       That's a shame because that would be...

   26. DADavid Allen47:23

       Yeah. Very cool. (laughs)

   27. CWChris Williamson47:25

       Very, very, very cool.

   28. DADavid Allen47:27

       Very, very cool.

   29. CWChris Williamson47:28

       Okay. So we-

   30. DADavid Allen47:29

       What I... Yeah. Yeah.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:11:55

   I don't sit down…

   1. CWChris Williamson1:00:00

      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-"

   2. DADavid Allen1:00:27

      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.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:01:18

      That's cool. Johnny, I hope that, that-

   4. DADavid Allen1:01:21

      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.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:03:08

      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...

   6. DADavid Allen1:03:36

      (laughs) .

   7. CWChris Williamson1:03:36

      ... 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.

   8. DADavid Allen1:03:57

      Sure.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:03:57

      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-

   10. DADavid Allen1:04:13

       (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?

   11. CWChris Williamson1:04:21

       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?

   12. DADavid Allen1:04:31

       (laughs) Good.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:04:32

       Um, I'll try and make it the final q- And if it's not, this isn't... This is my rules.

   14. DADavid Allen1:04:37

       I don't care.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:04:37

       Welcome to my world, David. Yeah, exactly. I do what I want.

   16. DADavid Allen1:04:39

       I don't care. I just keep... I just think it's fun.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:04:41

       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?

   18. DADavid Allen1:05:00

       No.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:05:02

       What are you using?

   20. DADavid Allen1:05:04

       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.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:06:25

       What's that?

   22. DADavid Allen1:06:26

       The Brain.

   23. CWChris Williamson1:06:28

       The Brain.

   24. DADavid Allen1:06:29

       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.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:07:13

       There you go. The internet has its answer.

   26. DADavid Allen1:07:15

       And, and, and, and... I'm sorry. (crinkling) Capture.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:07:21

       Pen and paper.

   28. DADavid Allen1:07:21

       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.

   29. CWChris Williamson1:07:39

       (laughs)

   30. DADavid Allen1:07:39

       It's actually, oh, my God, I can actually externalize this stuff into a physical thing.

Episode duration: 1:11:56