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Podcast 03 – David Allen guides you through a Mind Sweep

 

What if you had an objective list of everything that currently holds your attention? Get out your note-taking devices as David Allen guides us through a sample coaching “Mind Sweep” session (one of the first steps to practicing GTD). We guarantee that you’ll have at least one valuable “Oh, yeah! That reminds me…” thought during this episode!

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GTD Podcast Transcript

ANDREW J. MASON: You’re listening to Getting Things Done, the official podcast of the David Allen Company. Episode 3; A Guided Mindsweep with David Allen.

Welcome everyone to the third episode of Getting Things Done, GTD for shorthand and this podcast is all about helping you on your journey, learning the art of stress-free productivity.

My name’s Andrew J. Mason and this episode, we’re in for something special. This is a guided mindsweep that David Allen’s performed at a previous webinar. Now this podcast episode is going to differ a little bit from the previous two so far, meaning you can listen to it entirely from start to finish and uh, you know, not write anything down, but I’m willing to bet, as David says, that one or two things are going to pop to the front of your consciousness that if you write them down are going to be highly valuable for you later on.

You know, one of the first steps of GTD methodology is capturing anything that has your attention and so this process that we’re going through today is all about externalizing what’s on your mind, taking a step back and then getting to a place where you can make decisions about it.

This segment, as well as literally hundreds of other pieces of awesome content designed to take your GTD game to the next level are available as part of GTD Connect. Now if you’re interested in becoming a part of that community and getting the inspiration you need, head on over to GettingThingsDone.com/podcast and stay tuned to the end of this episode for a coupon that’ll give you a significant discount at checkout.

Now if you haven’t already, get out your note taking devices, whatever you use to externalize thoughts, this is going to be valuable.

Here’s David Allen performing a guided mindsweep.

DAVID ALLEN: For those of you who may not be that familiar with the GTD and you’re a new member here to Connect and you’re not that familiar or haven’t done a whole lot of mindsweeping for yourself personally yet, this is basically – the idea here is simply to empty what we call psychic ram, you know, that short-term memory space that’s hanging on to, “Oh I need to … would … could – oh I got to … Oh that’s right, I need to …” whatevers. And some basic ground rules here or some guidelines to get the most value out of this, what you don’t want to do is stop and think about what you’re thinking about, you just want to write it down. So nobody’s looking, unless somebody’s watching you do this right now, so you know, be totally honest and candid with yourself. You have the total freedom to wad up the piece of paper and throw it away after you finish it, so this is not – this is not to analyze your commitment, this is just to capture the things that you might have attention on.

Another way to think about this is just – what do you have attention on? What has potential meaning for you? I know this morning, actually last night as I was walking back to my cottage at home I just noticed three of my yard lights, my little halogen lights you know, the outside lights were out. And I went, “Oh God!” I mean, that’s one of those things, so easy for me to go, “I’ll remember that.” Right. As soon as I get into the house, I’ve then forgotten it and then the next, you know, ‘til – whatever. But I remember this time and I walked in and I got, you know, a nice little hat sized pad, you know, right by the phone that I can just walk in and write on. Kathryn and I are often – we see each other running over and writing stuff on the pad, much like that, and then tearing the pad off and so I actually replaced the lights this morning. Yeah! Good for me!

Anyway, don’t want to bore you with the details of my life. Let’s get into it.

So the whole idea here: Is anything on your mind? Some of you probably started already. Just write it down – Cat food. Oh yeah, I need to call Aunt Susie. Oh yeah, dah – dah – dah – dah …

Now what I’m going to do is be both helpful and bothersome. I’m going to actually call out in auditory form, I’m going to sort of give you triggers of stuff that might trigger some things, ‘cause sometimes it’s helpful to, you know, kind of stir the dust inside your head and have me or somebody remind you about things. You go, “Oh yeah!” That might help.

The reason it’s bothersome is you get on a roll here and then you hear me jabbering and you still want to keep going with your own roll. So I suggest, just keep going with your own roll and listen to me with half an ear, see if that triggers anything. If you start to slow down a little bit, then come back and listen to whatever I may be mentioning. So that’s the game.

So if you haven’t started already, just grab all the top of mind stuff, anything top of mind. Now, one other – just a little caveat here, if those of you who are old GTD, you know old-timer GTDer’s, if this is already in your system, if whatever it is that’s on your mind or that pops into your head, you absolutely know you have there, then sure, you probably don’t need to write it down, but be cautious about that, because if it pops into your head at all, meaning there’s probably something that might not be on cruise control about it, so when in doubt, write it down. You can always scratch it out later if you realize you over-captured, but much better to over-capture. So this is not to organize, not to analyze, just grab them as fast as you can, ‘cause you see once you pull the plug, these things start to roll and they’ll be associating in your mind, lots of other stuff.

So first of all, top of mind stuff – what’s on your mind? What do you have to do today that may not be captured yet? What’s up for you? Just jot it down. Abbreviate, write fast.

You might want to think about what just happened yesterday or the last couple of days, meetings, conversations, uh stop you in the hall stuff, things that have shown up in the mail, voice mails you’ve gotten, e-mails that you know, yanked your chain and that you haven’t been able to do anything or think through yet, but you know you need to.

While you’re doing this, if any of you have access to your calendars or diaries, it’s not a bad idea to pull that out and glance. You know, part of the weekly review, which is a great thing to do that I – always saves my life is a backward look for a week or two, just quickly stand back and catch all the – oh that reminds me. If you look back, I’ll be willing to bet you that you’ll see something back there in terms of meetings or things you had on your calendar that may, you know, bounce some uh – some stuff out of your head that you need to grab.

Same thing with going forward, especially this next upcoming week or two, events, presentations, family stuff coming up. Speaking of which any summerizing things and that’s with an “e-r”, not an “a-r”, on your mind, unless you’re down-under and it’s winterize. What’s up for this season, could be a lot of you in the Northern hemisphere anyway, this is vacation time.

Anything about vacation, planning, family, social events, nitty-gritty work stuff, projects – projects that have emerged that you haven’t identified as such yet.

Anything on your mind that you call a problem right now that you need to grab to later on make a project?

Real good idea to do a site walk-around in your mind’s eye. So if you are in your office right now, look around. Anything on the tables, on the desk, on the side bar credenzas, your in-baskets, your pending areas? Anything representing new stuff that’s shown up, you’ve haven’t had a chance to identify yet as something you need to do something about.

And in your mind’s eye, you might want to walk around, if you do during the week go to a regular type of office and regular type of office building and have staff around you and other people around you, just go there quickly in your mind’s eye. What about that? Anything that reminds you about meetings, people, projects, problems, situations, opportunities that are up and haven’t been caught yet.

You might do the same around your home/house. If you’re there, you might want to look around just in your mind, even what you can’t see and also what you can, any projects, pipes need fixing, spackle needs spackling. Any new equipment changes, clean up, fix, re-do, projects in the yard, if you have one. And of course, a great trigger is just people. Who are all the people in your life right now? What comes to mind? Anybody you have attention on? Conversations you need to have/want to have.

Okay, this is – particularly for those of you who are familiar with mindsweeps, I’m going to lift up to what I call 20,000 feet, because often times the areas of focus and responsibility that we refer to, sometimes gets into subtler stuff that may be still on your mind, just a little – not quite as easy to grab. So for instance, 20,000 feet, let’s take your job. If you’re doing work, what are the four, five, six, seven things you are supposed to be handling well? First of all, is your job clear itself? Anything unclear about that, you need to grab? Things changed, things have morphed, things have shifted in the company, your responsibilities, all that clear and on cruise control yet? And whatever those areas you’re responsible for, research, PR, business development stuff, sales, marketing, anything about staff, staff development, hiring, performance reviews, etcetera? Assets, quality control, tech stuff? Come performance review time what are you going to be held accountable to have done well over this period of time?

So thinking about all that, does anything pop into your head that you haven’t grabbed yet? Projects, more subtle stuff that’s kind of been hanging out there, possibilities, opportunities, someday/maybe’s.

And sort of moving over to the sort of overall life areas of focus, how about your own just personal and professional development? Anything about classes; anything you’re trying to learn? Anything you’d like to research, get better at; anything on your mind about that? Personal finances, assets, investments, bank stuff?

Fun? I hate to admit it, but sometimes I forget – oh yeah, fun! What are the things you like to do, anything even on your mind, you might want to – you know, concerts, subscription series, plays, you know, fun things, things to do with the family?

Speaking of family, anything about your relationships, if you haven’t caught it yet; personal, direct family relationships, extended family, good friends, your network, pets (don’t forget the pets).

Your creativity, your creative expression – everything okay about that? Any classes you want to take? Things you might want to do? And how about all your gear; all your gear okay; printers, faxes, scanners, blackberries, IPhones? Are you really going to do something about the IPad or not? You know, any of that.

Okay, if there were something that you haven’t captured, what would it be?

Okay. Well, it looks like not many of you have dropped off, so hopefully this wasn’t too intimidating for you. You know, usually people feel a combination of grief and relief when they sit down and do these lists. Uh, but that’s obviously what we work with and for those of you who are not familiar with our work-flow coaching process, that’s the first thing we do, or just about the first thing we do, when I sit down to work with an executor or whoever I’m coaching, is we need to get it all out. So this is stage one of how do you get things under control is first of all, you have to identify what’s not on cruise control. That is the things that we have attention on. Because usually there’s an inverse relationship between these things being on your mind and them actually happening. So the whole idea is to move from identifying to then getting things onto cruise control, which is where we go next about these, which are the next two phases of getting things under control, which are – okay now, now I got these out of my head, that will serve you temporarily and feels good temporarily. A lot of people – that just sort of changes their life actually. When they just get into GTD, they just get this first stage and start writing down a lot more than they ever wrote down before, sleep better, you know, able to focus better, etcetera, but then if you don’t move to the next two phases of – okay, now I got to decide what exactly that means to me that I wrote down. So many times people will write down something like “mom” and uh, we go “Yeah, well you had one, but that’s not just historical data, why did you write it down?”

“Oh yeah.” So now we have to go through the – okay, do you really want to get this onto cruise control? It’ll suck right back up into your mind again and you’ll start to resist looking at your lists simply because there’s more thinking to be done, so the more thinking to be done is phase two and phase three, what we call processing or clarifying what exactly these things mean to you that you got out of your head and then stage three is now organizing the results of that.

So when I think through “mom” what is the outcome that I’m wanting to achieve there? And you’ll see Kelly’s put the – our new work-flow diagram up on the screen so you can see these are the basic questions you just need to ask yourself. So essentially, the reason things have your attention is because you have not put sufficient attention on them. So they’re kind of a paradoxical situation, but it’s because you actually haven’t finished your thinking about them that – that’s why there’s still open loops in your head and why they keep popping in there. But the mind just doesn’t manage those very well, it doesn’t manage them very objectively, they just tend to pop in, oftentimes based upon how much emotional content you had wrapped into it, or how recent the thing go inserted into your head. Those tend to be as they pop out. But all that’s doing is just letting you know, “Hey dude, there’s something that you still haven’t thought about or decided about or really determined about this yet.”

And these are the basic questions: What it is? You know, “mom” why did you write it down?

“Well it’s her birthday’s coming up.”

So great! Is it actionable? See that on the screen. Basic question; two optional answers yes or no. You gonna do something about mom or not? And sometimes that’s where things get hung up right there.

And then once you make that decision, you might say, “Nah, I just wish mom a happy birthday. She doesn’t make a big deal out of it and you know, I send her good thoughts.” So – no.

Maybe I want to put her birthday on a spread sheet where I’m keeping track of birthdays, so it’ll become a piece of reference. Or maybe it’s incubate. Maybe her birthday’s not coming up for another six weeks. You don’t want to decide yet, then you say, “Hmm, you know, let me think that – I’ll just kind of sleep on that for a couple of weeks. That’ll give me still plenty of time to do something about it.” So then you can put a trigger in your calendar or in a tickler file and then come back to it.

So I doubt, you’d want to trash the idea. You might say, “Well just wishing her happy birthday is sufficient” and it’s complete. But those are the – you know, if it’s non-actionable, all those could be perfectly fine answers.

If it is actionable, you go, “Oh yeah, I guess I gotta do something about mom and her birthday.” Then, there’s two questions and you see them almost side bar there, you see that there’s a little dotted line that goes up to the left called “What’s the desired outcome?” That means that there’s more than one step to this. If you say, “Look, all I just want to do is I’m gonna call mom and leave her a message and wish her a happy birthday” and you can do that in two minutes, well that’s just not a multi-step thing, that’s just – okay that’s the next action. It’s called “mom”, you can do it in two minutes, so that would fit in the two-minute rule that you see down there under do it, so you can just do that.

If likely, that kind of scenario, you say, “Nah, we need to give mom a birthday party.” Or perhaps it’s like I need to look into whether my sister and I really want to do this or not for her. Then that might be what I call R&B, that’s my shorthand for look into project. But anyway, that would be a desired outcome, which you’d see if I’d say, “Yes, gonna – either I’m gonna give mom a birthday party or I’m gonna research it.” Now you have a project. You see that arrow going over to the left? And that becomes a project. That’s a stake in the ground you need to park somewhere and then keep reminding yourself that you have that commitment now to get that done. So you know, it gets back to the simplicity of Getting Things Done is defining what “done” means. Well, what does done mean about mom and birthday? Is it just that you researched it to make a go or no-go decision or you’ve actually celebrated her birthday? In either case, that would go on your project list and, of course, tied very directly to that, is “What’s the next action?”

And then the next action might be: “Ah, you know, I guess I got to call my sister and see – let’s chat about what mom might want.”

“Fabulous! Can you call your sister and do that in two minutes?”

“No, probably not, if she answered the phone, we’d probably be on the phone a while.”

“Great! Can you delegate that to somebody?”

“Probably not.” So that means I need to defer it. You see that as the third bubble up to the left there. Okay, now I need to park that. I need to call sis, can’t do it right now or I don’t want to do it right now and I need to park that, in which case, if you say, “Hmm, well if I only can call sis on Saturday or that’s the time I could probably reach her.”, then you might want to put it on Saturday’s calendar, so you don’t need to think about it, but on Saturday, that’s just something to do that day and you’re gonna do that on Saturday, you could park it there. Or if you said, “No, I’m just gonna call my sister as soon as I can, in and around all the other stuff I need to do, that’s where you would defer it to your next action list, where you put it down. You see a little “a” there for the action list, that would go on a calls list or wherever you wanted to keep track of that kind of thing.

Basically if you’ve done all that, you’ve made those decisions, parked them somewhere and then of course, what we can’t handle on the phone here is then making sure you have some regular review you trust then that where you park these things, you’re actually going to engage with appropriately. You’re gonna look at that project list and see mom’s birthday coming toward you frequently enough to make sure it doesn’t slip and you’re gonna see the reminder to make the phone call in some appropriate time and place so you can do that in time.

Now, that’s a lot said, but that’s basically the simplicity of the process. This is not some sort of theoretical, “Gee this might work.” This is literally what we spend thousands of hours with folks doing and it’s what those of you familiar with GTD, you know, that’s how you get your in-basket emptied. You don’t have to finish mom and birthday, but you do need to clarify what exactly it means to you, what does “done” mean and what does doing look like and park those things appropriately.

 

ANDREW J. MASON: So if you played along with us, then hopefully you’ve got some tremendous value out of that conversation. If you’re like me, your in-box is just a tiny bit more full and we just want to remind you that – that, as well as literally hundreds of other pieces of amazing content designed to take your GTD game to the next level are available, ready and waiting for you over at GTD Connect. Now if you’d like a significant discount while signing up, use the code “podcast” when checking out and you can do that all over at GettingThingsDone.com/podcast.

Well hey, we hope you’ve enjoyed these three launch episodes of Getting Things Done. This is a weekly podcast. We’re going to be alongside you for your journey every single week and next week, we are so excited. The CEO of David Allen Company, Mike Williams, is going to be interviewing a GTD champion who’s working in the agricultural space, so maybe not a context that you’ve heard before, but some fantastic stuff there.

And as always, we want to hear from you. What do you like about the podcast, what would you like to see more of? You can send us an e-mail over at podcast@davidco.com and we would absolutely love your ratings and reviews in ITunes.

We’ll see you all next week. Until then, I’m Andrew J. Mason, asking you, now that you’ve listened to this podcast, what’s your next action?

 

Podcast 01 – David Allen talks about the New Edition of Getting Things Done®

 

What’s different now?  Over the 15 years since David Allen first published Getting Things Done, the ability to achieve  “Stress-Free Productivity” grows more important than ever.  David Joins us in an all-new interview where we discuss the changing times, why people get trapped in unproductive thinking, and how to instantly gain more clear space.

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GTD Podcast Transcript

ANDREW MASON: You’re listening to Getting Things Done, the official podcast of the David Allen Company, Episode 1, with our featured conversation with David Allen.

Welcome everyone to the first episode of Getting Things Done, GTD for shorthand, and this podcast is all about helping you along your journey, learning the art of stress-free productivity.

Well my name’s Andrew J. Mason and my goal in this podcast is really to help you first understand that you’re not alone in learning this systematic approach to thinking. My hope is that this podcast will help introduce fellow GTDer’s to each other all around the world and it’ll really help us all think about what we’re thinking about.

So what can you expect from this podcast? Well each episode is designed to bring you up close and personal with somebody that’s in the trenches practicing GTD. You’re going to hear from some maybe well known people and maybe also some people that aren’t quite as well known but are practicing GTD really well and it’s also going to be a place where you can get some question answered for the Q&A segment, as well as find some exclusive previews of what David and the company are up to.

This podcast is also about that extra edge. A lot of people don’t make progress because they aren’t aware of all the different resources that are available to them. For instance: Did you know there’s an online community of like-minded members called GTD Connect? It’s a place where you can help each other on your journey, get exclusive interviews and early access to a host of conversations, including today’s interview with David Allen. If you’d like to check it out, head on over to GettingThingsDone.com/podcast to sign up today and stayed tuned to the end of the podcast to hear about how new members can get a significant discount. It’s just a tool to help you on your path of GTD mastery.

Well speaking of mastery, as I mentioned today’s feature conversation is with David himself and by the time this episode releases, his second edition of the book Getting Things Done will have already been published. And without further ado, I am so excited that we’re talking with David Allen himself today. I figured what better way to launch a podcast than to be talking with the man behind the methodology himself, so thank you David for joining us today.

DAVID ALLEN: Hey Andrew, all good.

ANDREW MASON: People that have been studying GTD for some time may know that it kind of started out as the realm and domain of you know, executive coaching and those that were faced with thousands of decisions every day, but low and behold that’s now happening to everyone, so I know this could very likely be someone’s first exposure to GTD, so I guess, you know, the question, standing in their shoes and someone downloads a podcast called Getting Things Done and you know, I’m busy – that sounds like something I should be doing, you know – what is Getting Things Done and where’s a good first place to start?

DAVID ALLEN: Well it’s a set of best practices that I recognized, uncovered, cobbled together over the last 30 years. Basically about how do you get room in your head and what you do with room in your head? For most people, certainly for executives to begin with, they need the room to be able to think strategically to focus on meaningful stuff, to get rid of distractions that were hanging up their mind and their energy.

So you know, I guess from the early days when I was so attracted myself to clear space, you know – how do you get there and how do you do that, especially when your life gets more complicated and so many things involved in it?

So it was really about how to recognize what are the things that you know are pulling on our energy, how do we essentially get those things under control and get an appropriate focus about all of those? And most people live a much more complex life than they realize. All of their would, coulds, should, need-to’s, ought-to’s, whatever. So this was just a methodology about how do you actually both recognize what those things are get the pressure of those off of your mind without necessarily having to finish everything you’re committed to. But it’s not something – it was a set of best practices that actually are quite easy to do. They’re not like new skills that you need to learn, but people aren’t born doing it and they don’t happen automatically, so you do actually have to put some cognitive focus on it. So it’s really about how do I get things under control and how do I stay appropriately focused? And it’s just a set of practices that actually work, without fail, to make that happen.

ANDREW MASON: You know, I love that – uncovering principles versus you know, creating product. Just to be an advocate for the first-timer, you know they maybe have tried other methodologies or other uh products that are promising to launch their productivity to a new level and you touched on this, but what really does make GTD stand out?

DAVID ALLEN: Well I think it is that case, that what I did was recognize the – what happens when things work, when things are off our mind or what do we – you know, when we’re “on”, what are the behaviors that get us on? Because we’ve all had better days than others and you know, what makes for the better day versus those that aren’t so cool? And it’s really understanding the principles behind that. I mean, everybody listening to this, at some point, has at some point, felt overwhelmed or confused and sat down and made a list and felt at least a little more controlled and a little more focused. And you know, if people really ever reversed engineered – that is figured out: Well how did that happen? I suddenly have improved my situation to feel more in control and more focused and yet nothing in the external world has changed. What did change?

What changed was how I am engaged with my world change because essentially I got it out of my head. So you know, over all these years, it’s come down to something that now cognitive science has validated in spades in the last ten or fifteen years, which is that your head’s for having ideas but not for holding them. It wasn’t designed for that. It didn’t evolve to keep track of more than about four meaningful things at once.

ANDREW MASON: Well you keep mentioning space and how this kind of all happens in an instant and a lot of people say, you know, “Man, if I just had more time.” Do you think that’s the case?

DAVID ALLEN: No. If people had more time, they’d fill it up with as much as angst and frustration as they currently have. So it’s good news people only have 24 hours you know of that. You don’t need more of that.

But I say – as I say, how much time does it take to have a good idea or to be present, or to be loving, or to be innovative or to be creative? Zero. Those don’t take space. They do require – I mean those don’t take time. They do require space. In other words, I have to have room in my head. ‘Cause even if you had a free, you know, “a free hour”, if your head is still clogged up and distracted by all of that stuff of life, that you haven’t yet gotten on top of or managed appropriately, you’ll waste that hour and feel worse, and yet, if you do have your life under control and are on top of it, you know, a free five minutes or two minutes, you know, can allow you room to have a really cool creative idea, or to be able to appropriately focus or direct yourself, you know, in terms of the meeting this afternoon or you know, how you’re planning the week.

ANDREW MASON: I love that just over the last couple of weeks, the next edition of your book has been published and I’ve started working my way through that and when somebody hears that a second edition of a book been’s published, I can almost hear them saying, “Ah ha! Okay, he’s uncovered additional principles.” Are they right about that? Are the principles different or has something else changed?

DAVID ALLEN: No, the principles haven’t changed at all. As I say in 2190, when we land on Jupiter, they still need something that serves the function of an in-basket and they still need to decide what are the next actions on things that show up that are potentially meaningful. So, these principles are timeless. At least once you’ve become a knowledge worker and you’ve moved out of survival mode where you’re just present – you know, just being present to stay alive and to eat and not be eaten, which is how you’re brain evolved on the Savannah was to be able to just do that. And that’s when your brain is okay and does pretty well. What your brain doesn’t do is keep track of much more than that. And so, the principles themselves about how do I stay in control of things is – the simple principle called get it out of your head, build an external brain. Anybody who keeps a calendar is already doing that, is already implementing that principle, said, “Whoa, wow – my head cannot keep track of these 65 things I’ve got on my calendar for the next three weeks.” So what do you do with it? You get it out of your head. You park in some systematic place and you also have a behavior that trusts you’re going to look at that at the right time. Well, those are basic principles. It’s just that most people don’t really apply those principles to achieve that kind of control and focus, which is kind of interesting and somewhat paradoxical that we all do it, we all know it, everybody feels best about their job a week before they go on a big holiday, because all they’re doing is externally all the would, could, should, need-to’s, ought-to’s and they’re getting a handle on them and renegotiating all those commitments with themselves and with other people. I just suggest that people do that daily and weekly, not just yearly to get that level of clarity and focus.

ANDREW MASON: You know it’s so interesting to me about the calendar. People are so okay with – so socially acceptable to be able to keep that part of your brain out of your head and be able to look at it externally. What do you think is some of the angst people feel about doing that with the rest of their life? Where does that come from?

DAVID ALLEN: I don’t know. It’s fascinating to me that I’m still preaching this after 30 years …

ANDREW MASON: Um hm.

DAVID ALLEN: … and that the world still has a huge habit of keeping stuff in their head. My working hypothesis is that it gives people a false sense of control to keep it in your head.

ANDREW MASON: Um hm.

DAVID ALLEN: You know, most people don’t want to look at or acknowledge, you know, all of their own commitments with themselves and with other people, all of their own stuff, if you will. Maybe that’s part of what – you know what it’s about and/or people just are so used to thinking that my head is fine and it’ll remember anything that I need to remember at the right time and they just have bad habits about that.

ANDREW MASON: You know, this uh – some of it’s our society and culture or at least you know I can attest to the American society and culture but you mentioned the phrase “The better you get, the better you had better get” and you know as people become more and more responsible for a larger amount of decisions and ranging through larger amounts of information, you know I’m sure this gap for this style of thinking goes from you know nice to have to like must have and do you think there’s going to be a noticeable performance gap that just continues to widen between those that don’t intentionally think this way and those that really do?

DAVID ALLEN: I think so. It may not be as obvious or evident as most people would like to think out there, either in terms of people making more money or being more “successful” materially. I think it’s certainly true existentially in terms of people’s experience. In other words, how much better do you feel at the end of the day? I mean, how easily do you measure the fact that a whole lot of people who do this process, the GTD process, wind up going, “Oh my God! I got to watch my girls play soccer this afternoon …

ANDREW MASON: Hmm.

DAVID ALLEN: … without being addicted to my Smart Phone!” I mean, how do you measure that? So if you said, anecdotally certain people, anybody who starts to implement this, starts to feel a huge release of their energy and a lot more room and space to do whatever they’re wanting to be doing, for you know somebody, a rock musician like Eben Tobenfelt to – what he uses space for is quite different than a 53 year-old executive and what they use space for, but they both need space and they want it.

ANDREW MASON: Hmm.

DAVID ALLEN: And this delivers it. So it’s an interesting methodology that it – no matter where you are, and what situation you’re in, it improves your condition to apply these principles. I mean none of it hurts.

ANDREW MASON: Ha, ha, ha.

DAVID ALLEN: You know, it’s not like running with scissors. If you just keep a pad by your bed you’ll sleep better. You know so – yeah.

ANDREW MASON: You know I think something that people very often experience is once they have that clarity, they taste that space, they start to ask the question: This has worked so well for me, you know, my boss, my co-workers, my wife or husband, how do I get them to do this as well, because it’s so freeing for me, how do I get somebody else to practice this?

DAVID ALLEN: Boy I don’t know. I don’t that one either. You know, as you can imagine that’s part of our business challenge and model to keep our own business viable because it, in a way, is a very simple IP or concept, but how do we get people to sort of recognize that they need this. We solve a problem a lot of people don’t really recognize they have.

ANDREW MASON: Hmm.

DAVID ALLEN: I think for a lot of reasons; first of all, not many people have ever had the experience of what it’s like to get that pressure off your mind.

ANDREW MASON: That’s right.

DAVID ALLEN: You know and the last thing a fish notices is water and the last thing a lot of people notice is the pressure they’re in, because they’re in it 24/7.

ANDREW MASON: Wow.

DAVID ALLEN: Wait’ll you experience what it’s like to have nothing on your mind. It’s a wonderful state to be in. But to convince people a) that it’s possible and b) you know, how much cooler life is when you do that, I think people catch it cognitively, but then when they start to say, “Oh you mean I actually have to write everything down?”

“Well, no, you just have to write anything down that you can’t finish in the moment you think of it that is potentially something that you need to do or handle or think about or make a decision about. Yes you do need to do that. You know, that is a required behavior.”

But I – so I think it could very well be that a lot of people just feel intimidated by their lack of it. I haven’t met very many people that stand up and say, “I am totally in control of my world.”

ANDREW MASON: Hmm.

DAVID ALLEN: You know, most everybody feels rather embarrassed about you know, being behind the eight-ball and everybody loves to say, “Oh I’m so busy”.

ANDREW MASON: Ha, ha, ha. You know I’ve asked this one before in our last interview, but I absolutely love the answer and you know, you mentioned brainstorming the natural planning method and how important it is that you know, when we’re thinking about the future that we envision, you know, wild success with our outcomes, uh what is your big picture of wild success when it comes to the world’s adoption of GTD?

DAVID ALLEN: Well the wild success is that anybody on the planet who could and would want to use this methodology has access to it.

ANDREW MASON: That’s my hope as well. Are there any common denominators in people? I mean you have such a wide range and sampling of people that practice this methodology now. Do you see anything in common between those that are more willing to accept and practice this way of thinking than others?

DAVID ALLEN: You know Andrew the only single criterion that I have seen that is pretty universal about people that are attracted to this is people who assume that 18 months from now their life is going to be better and more enhanced and fulfilled than it currently is.

ANDREW MASON: Hmm – wow!

DAVID ALLEN: And it’s interesting because one CEO will get it and the CEO right next to him with exactly the same profile doesn’t get it.

ANDREW MASON: Hmm.

DAVID ALLEN: One 12 year-old with the same profile as the next 12 year-old, one gets it – the other one doesn’t, but I guarantee you the common denominator is there’s some version of a life-long learner or some sense of “Gee, I want to get more or better or more enhanced results – there’s more to be had than what I’m currently having” and not necessarily in a negative way, but in an aspirational way.

ANDREW MASON: Hmm.

DAVID ALLEN: And I think that’s – you know, funny over the years I’ve been – you know, interesting to find that the people who essentially need this methodology the least are the most attracted to it.

ANDREW MASON: Hmm.

DAVID ALLEN: And you know I scratched my head for quite a while trying to figure that out. One day I had the big blinding flash of the obvious, you know the big “duh!”, it’s like – oh – what this really does is it relieves drag on the system and who’s most aware of drag on the system? The people who are pulling against their systems the most – the fastest people essentially. So it’s the most productive people, first of all, who are most aware of being held back by stuff uh because they’re pulling up against it. They’re also the people who tend to throw themselves most out of control …

ANDREW MASON: Ha, ha, ha, ha.

DAVID ALLEN: … out of their aspirational – you know, out of their crazy-making and their cool ideas and the next thing they want to be doing. And most people, you know most of those folks, I think have – are a little behind the curve in terms of their own personal systems being set up to support that. So that’s – maybe over time, you know, maybe that will change. We hope you know, our hope is seven generations from now, just the world will grow up thinking this way.

ANDREW MASON: Yes.

DAVID ALLEN: Because we’ve learned that kids can actually think this way. Kids don’t have to necessarily be that aspirational. I think they’re more naturally aspirational to begin with and if you just tell ‘em, “Hey, here’s an in-basket – here’s what outcome and next action thinking looks and sounds like” when you’re five years old or when you’re twelve years old and we’ve got parents teaching their kids to do that and some pilots work in some schools now, you know, attempting to address this. But this doesn’t happen by itself, so this is not an automatic process for kids to necessarily think this way, but they can be trained to do it and can be led down that path very easily.

ANDREW MASON: I love the idea that that is a possibility in our future. If you wouldn’t mind me breaking from the script just a little bit, just for my own selfish curiosity, throw a couple of rapid fire questions your way …

DAVID ALLEN: Oh have at it!

ANDREW MASON: … they might seem disjointed but …

DAVID ALLEN: No go for it, seriously.

ANDREW MASON: Do you have any favorite memories of when somebody actually finally you know, get is. The light bulb comes on. You know, it changes their life maybe is a strong word, but they at least experience some level of relief. Is there any you know, specific anecdote or specific time that really just sticks out in your mind from that?

DAVID ALLEN: You know, I have to say not. It’s almost universal. I mean when I’ve spent thousands of hours desk-side and you know, with some of the best and brightest people on the planet and invariably everyone has the same kind of experience which can look or sound somewhat transformational. I mean I do remember one executive who, you know, I was coaching him one on one and came in the second day to work with him and he walked in a little bit miffed and ticked off. And he said, “David!”

I said, “Oh God, what happened? What’s up?”

He said, “I didn’t sleep a wink last night.”

I went, “Oh my God! What happened?”

He said, “I was so stoked after just the first day of coaching!” He was so inspired, he had visions he’d never had before, he was so – bouncing off the wall, he was so crazy enthused you know with the release that had happened, with just one day of applying this methodology. And you know that was probably one of the more dramatic examples but that’s – some version of that is almost universal with people who’ve done this. I mean, some people have gone public, some fairly well known entertainers in the U.S. anyway, have attributed this to being you know, contributing to a major change you know, creatively in their life.

ANDREW MASON: Hmm.

DAVID ALLEN: And you know, we get that regularly. You know so it’s a – in a way I hate to become blasé about it because it is absolutely – it is wonderful and it is transformational. I just like the – I don’t like to feel like a heavy weight proselytizer about this. I mean, we like to sort of let people know this is a simple methodology. You don’t have to buy into anything. It’s not a belief system. You know, test it out, prove it wrong. You know, get engaged and see just – see for yourself, you know.

ANDREW MASON: David in your book you talk about having a smart part of our brain as well as a not so smart part of our brain and utilizing structures to kind of keep you at a higher productivity level when you’re not feeling so smart. Can you talk about that and some of your structures?

DAVID ALLEN: Yeah, well as I say, you know, I discovered over the years that I’m only randomly inspired and intelligent.

ANDREW MASON: Ha, ha, ha, ha.

DAVID ALLEN: You know, and so, but if you’re – if you’re only randomly inspired and intelligent but you’re lazy like I am and hopefully have a little bit of cleverness to you, you know, when you’re inspired and intelligent you need to capture the results of that, and then you know, park those in appropriate places so that when you’re kind of thick and dumb, you know, you do smart things.

ANDREW MASON: Hmm.

DAVID ALLEN: So you know, if you’re in an inspired moment, say, “Wow!” You know, “Here’s a website I need to surf”, or “Here’s a present I’d love to get for my niece” or “Wow, here’s a cool idea I might want to build into a seminar or speech that I’m giving.” Right? To be able to capture that when you have that idea, park that someplace so that idea’s not lost and you know, before long, you know, you’re going to pick that idea up and say, “Okay, where does that go? Where do I park that appropriately?” So then you’re feeling kind of thick and stupid and you’re trying to wake up in the morning and need to work on a speech, you look at your notes, you go, “Oh, hey! That’s a good idea! Yeah, I had that three days ago and now here it’s available to me in the right place.” So that’s a – that’s a kind of a silly, simple example, but that’s pretty universal. I think it’s the not so smart people that think they’re smart all the time.

ANDREW MASON: Ha, ha, ha. Well said, very well said.

Um, we’ve asked this question kind of in a different way and so you may have already addressed this, but just to attack it from a different angle, you know I’ve heard you mention that our own personal addiction to stress is one of the biggest obstacles for us to learning to think this way. Do you have any reasons as to why you might think that is?

DAVID ALLEN: Well you know, the way – addiction sounds a little – a little tough, but it actually in a sense it is – it’s your willingness to tolerate …

ANDREW MASON: Hmm.

DAVID ALLEN: … not doing this.

ANDREW MASON: Hmm.

DAVID ALLEN: And – and the willingness to put up with that amount of – of stress in your life. I mean everybody at some point, you know – look, when I was – what – this is 1967, so when I was 21 years old, I hitch-hiked across the Middle East, you know, in the back of trucks and truck stops in Turkey and Iran and Afghanistan and Pakistan. Would I do that now? I don’t think so. You know – maybe if I had to, I knew I probably could do it, but – you know, how about uh a four star hotel at least? So standards can change. So there are certain things I’m not willing to tolerate, you know …

ANDREW MASON: Hmm.

DAVID ALLEN: … that I used to be able to tolerate and that you know, let’s take it down to the practical level, like most people will tend to tolerate a certain number of unprocessed e-mails in their e-mail application, in their in-basket, and the reason you tolerate that – and you know, if the good fairy showed up and disappeared everybody’s e-mail so there was no backlog and it was at zero, in about two or three weeks they’d probably have pretty much the same number they currently have.

ANDREW MASON: Hmm.

DAVID ALLEN: Because it’s not about the volume of that input they get, it’s about their tolerance for how much of that input unprocessed they’re willing to tolerate. Mine is zero. I mean it’s never zero, ‘cause there’s always stuff coming and I don’t take a shower 24 hours a day, but at least once a day, right? If I – and sometimes I’ll go two, but you know, that starts to feel a little grody, but the same reason I empty my in-basket is the same reason I – and the same reason I do a weekly review of all of my stuff and catch up on everything is for the same reason I brush my teeth and take showers. You know, if I don’t the scuzz factor gets too high.

ANDREW MASON: Ha, ha, ha.

DAVID ALLEN: You know, it’s just psychic scuzz but it’s still the same thing. So you’re willingness to tolerate how much psychic scuzz is really the biggest barrier to people implementing this.

ANDREW MASON: Hmm. Well the book and the movement are named the same, Getting Things Done and uh, we are so excited to have talked with you David for our first episode, so thank you for spreading the stuff and making this your life’s work. It does matter.

DAVID ALLEN: Thanks Andrew, I appreciate it. It was fun.

ANDREW MASON: Hey and thank all of you for listening to this episode of Getting Things Done. We are so excited about next week’s episode because our feature conversation is with Daniel Pink, the New York Times bestselling author of To Sell is Human and we’re going to be talking about information overload. It’s definitely a huge subject and something that is really pertinent to our world today.

Now we’ll be sharing a 20 minute portion of that conversation but it is a much larger and more in-depth conversation than we could just fit in that podcast and if you’re interested in checking out GTD Connect, head on over to GettingThingsDone.com/podcast and in order to receive a significant discount, use the code podcast at checkout.

We’re also collecting questions to be answered on a future episode so if you have any questions for David Allen himself or for myself or anybody in the David Allen Company, send an e-mail to podcast@davidco.com.

Until then, I’m Andrew J. Mason, asking you, now that you’ve listened to this podcast, what’s your next action?

Free Your Mind with GTD

As David Allen says, “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” Here is a testimonial from a fellow GTD Practitioner on the powerful effects of that GTD premise:

“My mind is now being freed up to drive larger strategic needs rather than holding all the details. I can now sleep more soundly and awake with much more energy.”

-GTD Practitioner

New Getting Things Done Podcast Coming Soon

New Getting Things Done Podcast Coming Soon

Growth Everywhere Interview with David Allen

Eric Siu of Growth Everywhere, a blog on business and personal growth, interviews David Allen.  Find out why applying GTD is so important, what to do about negative self-talk, and how David would advise his 25-year-old self.

 

GTD Beyond Productivity

This fellow GTD Practitioner put it so well!

“Since fully adopting GTD, I’ve cured my insomnia, started Tae Kwon Do after 20 years, lost 20 pounds, and started a blog. It goes way beyond productivity.”

-GTD Practitioner

The Freedom in Naming your “Stuff”

 

I have been reminded over and over again in working with executives over the years why so much of the GTD implementation process is empowering to so many people: when things we have allowed into our inner or outer world are appropriately and accurately identified for what they are and what they mean to us, we feel curiously freed from them. Accurately naming things that are in our world gives us power over them, while leaving them unnamed allows them a certain hold on our minds.

Various primitive people have beliefs that giving someone your name gives them a certain ability to exert influence over you. Whether that has any truth to it, I’m not sure. But from my own experience, when something that has potential meaning to me is named, it is more known; and when it is known, its potential hold on me is released.

For instance, if you’d just label all your crap “Crap,” you’d probably feel a lot better. If someone had to call Organization Paramedics for you because you’re so out of control, they could simply bring in a big box labeled “All the Stuff I Don’t Know What It Is or What to Do with It.” They’d scour your whole environment and throw everything in that box that fits in that category. In an hour you’d be totally organized—if you didn’t know where something was, you’d now know where it was! The best part would be that the totality of the rest of your world would not have any of that “stuff” in it, and a fresh breeze would be blowing through your psyche.

A good example of this is having a binder on a shelf without a label or title on the spine. Most people are not aware of the slight pressure that unnamed thing maintains on your brain. But if you create a very visible label for it, you’ll notice being more relaxed about it whenever you walk past it. The same is true for storage boxes and file drawers.

More subtly, do you have any problems that you haven’t identified as projects yet? Got anything you’ve been thinking about that needs clarification, resolution, or looking into, that you don’t have on a Projects list yet, which you can look at regularly to keep actions moving toward? Do you have piles of things around your office or your house that have unidentified agreements sitting within them—read? toss? file? Are there things that you think you need to be moving on but you haven’t defined what “moving” looks like physically or visibly yet (next action)?

If you do, then there is good news for you—there is potential energy and freedom embedded there that is available to you…if you name them! If you don’t, well, it’s just the opposite. The problem is that most people have never fully gotten to the place where everything was really categorized appropriately, according to all the different types and amounts of agreements with themselves. You won’t know how much restriction you are actually working under, until you get rid of it, and see how different you feel.

Naming anything we’re experiencing lessens its grip on us. If I’m feeling negative, when I realize it and call it “negativity” I instantly have greater freedom of choice about what to do with or about it. When I’m just in it, and haven’t recognized, acknowledged and accepted it for what it is, I am more of its victim than its master.

A big key is to name things as accurately as possible. If we mislabel, we run the risk of locking ourselves into limitation 
and stagnation. To say “I’m a totally disorganized person” is probably not true (you couldn’t get out of bed, if that were true). To say “my thoughts and paperwork about my finances are disorganized” might be much more accurate and would lend direction and energy toward resolution of the situation.

Categorizing is to be used for freedom, not constriction. Many people avoid categorizing because they are avoiding making 
a decision about something. Should I read this article? File it? Throw it away? Pass it on to someone? But in the short-term freedom of not deciding, they then constrict themselves with the pressure that they ought to be deciding. I use my Tickler file as an elegant tool to deal with this. I’ll often get things in my in-tray that I just don’t know what to do with them yet (especially particularly cool things I might want to buy). I just ask myself “when will I be smarter?” and tickle it to show up again then. It’s perfectly fine to decide not to decide. You just need to name those things as such, and park them in a decide-not-to-decide system.

Disorganization is simply a discrepancy between where something is and what it means to you. The freedom comes from ensuring that everything has its proper ID badge, so it can get in the right line.

Brian Carter’s Brain Interview with David Allen

David Allen talks productivity, flow and Twitter as a “cocktail party” with Brian Carter on his new podcast.

Watch the interview here!

A Sense of Relief with GTD

Another GTD Practitioner with decreased stress!

“I find myself thinking differently already! Specifically, I’m trying to apply the two-minute rule all the time and I’m getting my email inbox to empty on a daily basis. Looking ahead at my work schedule, I am setting some dates when I will try to incorporate more GTD principles and I have a weekend in mind when I will revamp my office and get all my ‘stuff’ into files or wherever it belongs. I am even ordering new furniture. The best part is, just knowing there is a process that works, that makes sense to me, has relieved a lot of my stress about work. There IS light at the end of the tunnel, and even though I’m not through the tunnel, I now have faith!”

-GTD Practitioner

 

Healthy Email Habits from Entrepreneur

Using nutrition as a metaphor, this article from Entrepreneur offers some tips and tricks for getting “in” to zero, including some words of wisdom from our own David Allen.

Click here to read the full article “Achieve a Leaner Inbox with these 3 Fit Tips.”