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

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.

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

(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.

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.

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.

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-

No.

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

We're, we're cool.

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?

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.