How to Master Mental Clarity: David Allen's GTD Guide for Stress-Free Leadership

Episode Transcript
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Skippy Mesirow (00:03):
Hello. My name is Skippy Meserew, coach, former
elected official, and lifetimepublic servant. Welcome to
Healing Our Politics, The showthat shows you, the heart
centered public servant andpolitical leader, how to heal
our politics by starting withthe human in the mirror. It is
my job to sit down or stand upwith the best experts in all

(00:25):
areas of human development,thought leaders, coaches,
therapists, authors, scientists,and more, to take the best of
what they have learned andtranslate it specifically for
the public service experience,providing you actionable,
practical, tactical tools thatyou can test out today in your
life and with your teams. I willalso talk to leaders across the

(00:47):
globe with a self care practice,getting to know them at a deeply
human and personal level, sothat you can learn from their
challenges and journey.
Warning, this is a post partisanspace. Yes, I have a bias. You
have a bias. We all have a bias.Everybody gets a bias.
And I will be stripping out allof the unconscious cues of bias

(01:10):
from this space. No politics,partisanship, or policy here
because well-being belongs toall of us. And we will all be
better served if every human inleadership, regardless of party,
ideology, race, or geography,are happier, healthier, and more
connected. This show is aboutresourcing you, the human doing

(01:34):
leadership, and trusting you tomake up your own damn mind about
what to do with it and what'sbest for your community. So as
always, with love, here we go.
In this episode, I sit down withexpert in time management and

(01:55):
productivity, mister DavidAllen. If you have ever
experienced overwhelm or stressin your work, you have, then
this is an episode you simplymust listen to. David is the
creator of GTD, getting thingsdone methodology. He has sold
over 3,000,000 with an m,1,000,000 books worldwide, is

(02:19):
regarded by Forbes as one of thetop 5 executive coaches in the
world and has been crowned oneof the world's top ten business
leaders by American ManagementOrganization. GTD is taught in
over 60 countries.
It has inspired myriad spin offproducts, apps, programs, and

(02:41):
calls amongst its acolytes, CEOsof $1,000,000,000 companies, and
ultra achievers like HowardStern, Will Smith, Robert Downey
junior, people you havedefinitely heard of and it's
working for, and it's evenhelped elected officials like
little old me using the GTDmethodology. I took my days of

(03:02):
experience of stress from over320 per year to under 20. And if
you think I didn't measure, youneed to listen to the show more.
I did. Spoiler alert.
Now it's time for you to get inon this magic. David is
releasing a new book, GTD Team,t e a m, May 21st, to help you

(03:24):
as a leader use this structureto create a more aligned,
harmonious, peaceful,collaborative, successful
workplace for yourself and yourteam and not a minute too soon.
In this episode, we discuss themyth, yeah, myth, that we must
be overworked to be successfuland how to break the chains of

(03:45):
this belief to liberateourselves and those around us.
We break GTD down step by step,walking you through what
implementation looks like. Wediscuss who GTD is for, not for,
and who is resistant at theirown peril.

(04:06):
Is that you? We get into thenitty gritty discussing systems
to manage tasks, reminders,emails, and other incoming. We
talk about tech adoption. Whenis more just too much? We talk
about growing up in East Texasand Louisiana, his journey

(04:27):
through and to Europe, and whathe learned along the way.
How obscure influences likemartial arts have contributed to
the creation of GTD. We alsodiscuss David's hardwiring as,
quote, mister approval, endquote, something that you might
relate to, and how good systemsprovide a rational basis for

(04:50):
boundary setting and techniquesfor delivering compassionate
nose that will be well received.You, like I, may have expected
David to be a rule followinganal retentive man with a pocket
protector having developed asystem like GTD. But,
ultimately, as David says, GTDis about creating space for

(05:14):
creativity, freedom, and innerpeace, creating what he calls a,
quote, mind like water, endquote. And you will find his
demeanor and presentation verymuch matches that laid back
episode.
You'll find this and so muchmore today on this episode. So

(05:35):
with deep admiration andexcitement, I am honored to
share with you this deep,specific penetrating
conversation with David Allen.Yay. David, it is truly an honor

(05:55):
to have you on the Healing OurPolitics podcast. We chatted a
couple days ago in preparation,and I mentioned that you changed
my life.
And I wanted to start by puttinga little bit more color to that.
I've been involved in publicservice really since middle
school in some way or another,but I found myself a handful of

(06:17):
years ago shifting roles from avolunteer, an activist, an
organizer into a role of electedofficial. And I was about 6
months into my first term inoffice, and I was completely
overwhelmed. I've been doing alot previously. I was running a

(06:37):
company in my full time job invacation rental space.
I was chairing our planning andzoning commission here in Aspen.
I was chairing our next gencommission. I was running a
ballot initiative. I was notunfamiliar to doing a lot, but
once I found myself in that newrole, I had most of those
responsibilities. And then, allof a sudden, I had an extra 2 to

(06:59):
300 emails a day.
And I viewed each of those asexceptionally important that I
had to respond with care to eachof them. All of a sudden, when I
went to the grocery store, Iwasn't just going to the grocery
store, I was also having 15conversations in the aisle with
anyone who'd approached me. Ihad 2 council meetings a week,

(07:20):
which didn't sound like a lot,but when you think about the
prep is somewhere between 300 a1000 pages per meeting, and
those meetings sometimes run 5to 6 or 7 hours. And then
committee assignments, servingon other commissions and boards
throughout the community, in mycase, the housing authority,
which was the 2nd biggest in thestate, the Nordic board, a few

(07:43):
regional cohorts, and I justfound myself completely buried
and didn't know what to do. AndI decided that when off season
hit, which here is kind ofOctober, November, I was going
to take my weekends and makethem sacred and focus on
figuring out how the hell I wasgoing to build new structures,

(08:06):
new sets of priorities, newalignments, such that I could
handle this workload.
And for the next 2 months, 2days a week, I put myself into
my into my den and just startedresearching. And I can't
remember who tapped me into GTDor getting things done, but it

(08:26):
was something I found prettyearly and I got right into the
book and it was one of the firstthings that I implemented. And
the implementation of the GTCsystem gave me the space and the
framework to then consider andlay out and understand
everything else in my life. Andfrom that place, begin to

(08:48):
prioritize those things. Andfrom that, to work my way back
into a life's mission, a life'spurpose, a vision, and to create
a framework of what I prioritizewhen, and then to have a system
to make sure I'm doing what Iset out to do and to review it
appropriately.
And the end result of that inthe immediate, and I know

(09:11):
because I'm crazy and I trackeverything, is I went from over
320 days of stress per year tounder 20, which is insane. And
greater than that, and I wouldhave never predicted it, but
years down the line, because Icould remove stress from my day
to day experience, I began to beable to understand the

(09:33):
distinction between stress andother things. So stress and
anxiety, for instance, I alwaysthought those were the same
thing, and they're not. And itreally began what has been, I
would now call a spiritualjourney for me. I would have
never have used those words atthat time.
And my life today, althoughcertainly not perfect and not
without those things, is someaningfully different. And I

(09:57):
really credit and honor you forcreating something that opened
the door for me for that. And Ijust really wanna start with a
genuine thank you. It's such anhonor to have you here.

David Allen (10:07):
Well, you're quite welcome. That's a that's a great
testimonial. I just sort ofrecognize the game. I'm not a
motivational speaker. I'm notyou know, my game is not to get
people to do it.
My game is to give them what thedoing looks like, and then they
can choose to do it. So I neverreally know what sticks out

(10:27):
there. And it's always nice tohear lovely to hear something
like your story where youactually did it. But I didn't do
it. You did it.
You have to engage with as youknow, you have to actually
engage in this game before youcan play it. You can understand
it. Like, you could read thebook getting things done and
understand the logical concept.It makes sense. It's advanced

(10:51):
common sense, but you don'treally get it until you actually
start to do it.

Yeah.

So nice to hear. Yay.

Yeah. Yay. And I like that that's your
exclamation. I think if you werelike a a SoundCloud rapper,
that'd be your little noise. I'mso curious about how you did
come to that because whileyou're downplaying the creation
of this thing, as someone whohas now built a framework for
myself sort of on top of GTDthat I sort of think of as how

(11:23):
to create spiritual compoundinterest.
And I've had some interest insharing it with others, but it's
really, for me, nerve wrackingto think about sharing it with
others. Is this put together inthe right way? Is it gonna work
for others? Is thisuniversalizable? Is this silly?
It's not an insignificant thingto put something out into the

(11:44):
world. And so I really amcurious about that process. I
know it was an iterative one,but what was the first element
of what has become the GTDmethod that you started
implementing in your own life?And when did you start teaching
it to others?

I have to go back a long ways because this is let's
talk about my early daysdropping out of graduate school.
Again, I was in graduate schoolin Berkeley in 1968 and was
studying American intellectualhistory, history of thought,
history of culture or whateverin America, which I loved. I

(12:21):
loved the the subject matter.But at some point, I don't know
why why I got struck by that.But instead of studying people
who were enlightened, I decidedI want my own.
Mhmm. So, you know, that washeady time to be in California
and in Berkeley, particularly interms of personal growth and
self exploration. So I droppedout of graduate school and said,
okay, now what? And then did alot of exploration about

(12:45):
spiritual things, meditativekinds of things, martial arts. I
got a black belt in karate.
That was all self explorationstuff. But again, they don't pay
people to do that, so I had topay the rent. So I looked around
and said, okay. Well, what kindof job can I do? I have no idea
what I wanted to do when I grewup.
I had no I had no particular Ihad no particular drive

(13:07):
economically or orentrepreneurially or any other
way. But I looked around and I Iknew some people in my network
and who had small businesses.And so I became a really good
number 2 guy. I went in andsaid, okay. Can I help you do
whatever you're doing?
And, you know, I just go aheadand look at what they were doing
and say, okay. How much easiercan we do this? Because I'm
mister lazy.

Was that out of, like, you just needed to have a
job an income and that was theeasy thing to do, or was there
something that attracted youabout that role? It was that.

No. Nothing attracted about the role. I just
said, do they have a role for meand why they wanted to pay me?
And so I'm going to look aroundand see what they were doing,
and I'd noticed there were somepretty inefficient things that
they were doing. And, again, asmister Lazy, I said, well, how
much easier can we do this?
How much earlier can we leavework today? You know, if

Can I challenge that story a little bit?

Sure. You

know, you mentioned being lazy, but in my
mind's eye, just from kind ofbackground knowledge and
research, you have a veryexplorer orientation. You're
actually doing quite a bit. Imean, growing up in Louisiana,
but ending up in Switzerland,for instance, like that to me

(14:21):
says someone who doesn't wannasit home on the couch, but is
actually very curious about theworld. You think that's true?

Yeah. That's true. Quite true. Yeah.

Yeah.

I sort of had this, combination of crazy visionary.
Here's a cool thing to do. Howdo I make that happen? And how
much easier can I do that soit's not hard work? And, you
know, it's one of those thingscalled jump off the end of the
pier and hope the water is nottoo deep or too shallow.
You know? And hope you know howto swim. There have been many

(14:53):
times in my life where I sort ofjumped off the end of the pier.
For whatever reason, just theinternal pull or push or somehow
the spiritual part of me justsaid, David, there's more for
you to do. And so follow yourinstincts or your intuition
here.
I couldn't have told you that,you know, back then for a lot of
those decisions. Like, inretrospect, I can now. It was

(15:14):
just my intuitive sense thatthat was the thing to do, and
that's what I wanted to do. So Ihad that the kind of double
edged sword of being a bit crazyand a bit efficient.

So I'm I I I love that. I mean, it's the DNA
is so clearly in the model, andI'm curious what your parents or
primary caregivers were like.And the reason I'm asking that
is even today, when I'm workingas a coach, very often, and this
is something that I I got theprogramming of too, is you have

(15:48):
to work harder, harder, harder,harder, that if you're not
working really hard, you're notdoing anything. My understanding
is that comes from an industrialrevolution mindset where a unit
of time yielded a unit ofoutput, and so the way that you
scaled your impact, as maybewe'd say it today, was to do

(16:10):
more. And, you know, frankly,that's how many of our parents
and grandparents ascended out ofpoverty and were able to send us
to colleges to think aboutthings like this, which is
amazing.
But you didn't seem to get thatprogramming. How did you avoid
that? What were your parentslike, or what what did they
teach you about work, or didthey?

Well, my dad died when I was 9. So

Mhmm.

And my mom didn't remarry until many, many years
later after I was almost grown.So I was pretty much raised by
my mother. And she was, awonderful mother, and I got had
a wonderful childhood becauseshe'd been a teacher. She had
taken some risks. You know,she'd grown up in somewhat rural
Louisiana and had been one ofthe first graduate students to

(16:52):
graduate from Louisiana Tech andwent to graduate school in
Wisconsin.
And when she was, like, 16 or 17years old.

Wow.

And this is in the early 19 thirties. And so she
took some risks then, and thenshe came back and she thought
she was gonna work in medicineand work in research or
whatever. And then she met mydad, fell in love, decided that
they had a family. And then shehad had 2 kids and she so she
became a mom. But then after mydad died, then she figured she

(17:26):
had to support me and mybrother.
So she started out just being akindergarten school teacher, so
that she could be home half aday while I was, you know, very,
very young. And then at acertain point, she decided to
get a better, bigger job. Butback then, she said the only

(17:46):
place that a woman could get afair shake would be work for the
government. So she applied andgot accepted in the Social
Security Administration. So shebecame a Social Security worker
and then supervisor and kind ofgraduated in that in that area.
So she raised me as a workingsocial worker, really, in terms
of, Social SecurityAdministration. So I didn't

(18:09):
really have any models about goblast. Go work harder, harder,
harder. And she was highlysupportive of the things that I
wanted to do because she'd beena school teacher, and I had
aunts and uncles that wereteachers. I discovered making
good grades was actually prettyeasy as long as you work very
hard the 1st 6 weeks, and theteacher thought you were smart.
So you'd have to work hard therest of the year.

Okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you something
that I that's just veryrelatable to me. So I don't know
how I got that memo as well, butin college, I was an athlete. So
I'd go to school in summer,fall, and then take the winter
off to be an athlete, and Iwould do exactly that. So I
would find courses summersemester, which is shorter,

(18:54):
where the syllabus prescribedall of the assignments up ahead.
And so I would only sign up forthose classes. I'd take the
class on the 1st day. I'd lockmyself in a room for, like, 2
weeks. I'd do all theassignments. I'd put them on the
shelf, and then I would just donothing the rest of the time.

Yeah. Well, that's pretty much how I was raised. I
didn't have a lot of models orrole models around me. I just
had teachers. Didn't know manypeople who were either
successful business wise or orotherwise entrepreneurial in
that way.
Yeah. So, you know, I grew up inmy first 6 years were in East
Texas, in Palestine, Texas. Thenat age 6, we moved to

(19:35):
Shreveport. So I could thenspent the rest of my teens years
up until I was 18 or 19 in inShreveport, taking a year off to
be an exchange student inSwitzerland. So, again, it was
one of those things I'd somebodyin my high school who was an
exchange student from Germany,and I thought, well, that's a
cool thing to do.

(19:55):
So that was one of those, okay,let me just go see how cool that

go do this. And what did that experience give
you? What did you come back withthat you didn't have going
there?

A lot of much more global awareness for sure. It
was American Field Service, AFS,which is primarily a cultural
exchange. It wasn't academic. Sobasically, they they had to find
a family that's willing to takean American kid for a year and
support them, whatever. But youwould then go to the schools
that the kids and their familywent to.

(20:27):
You'd have to apply to theschool or whatever. You just
went where they were. And itturned out that, you know, that
that my older Swiss brother, ifyou could call him that

Mhmm.

Was at the Realgendazium Tuticberg, which
is one of the top sort of prepschools for university in
Europe. And so that's where Imet. Although they gave classes
in German, I couldn't speakGerman. I had no German
experience, so I had to quicklylearn as much as I could to try
to grasp as much as I could. Andeven then, the issue the class,

(21:02):
they would speak in high German.
But as soon as the bell rang,they would speak Swiss German.
They're almost 2 differentlanguages, especially if you
don't know either form.

Good luck with that decoder ring.

And so it was like, oh, wow. This is crazy. But the
cool thing about it was theschool was about 2 blocks from
the Kunsthaus in Zurich, wherethey had, like, a whole room of
Monet bottled water deliveries.

Wow.

And it was about 3 blocks from Cafe Odeo where data
ism started, where where Jung,you know, spent a lot of time.
And one of those great oldEuropean cafes where waiters had
bow ties and, you know, andpeople were reading magazines
and and newspapers. So it was agreat introduction to sort of

(21:47):
old and rich European culture.So I came back. And also, again,
you know, growing up inLouisiana, as soon you know,
when I came back, I had a bunchof slides that I've taken
pictures that I've taken thatmade into slides.
And I can't tell you how manypeople I put to sleep with all
the slides of mountains that Ihad. It's like, wow. There's a

(22:10):
mountain snow cap. Wow.

Look at that. Look at that.

And Because, you know, that was that was such a
new thing. Anyway, it was

I mean, it's amazing also. If anyone's been
to Switzerland, if you haven't,go look it up. Like, those
mountains are worth theslideshow. It's remarkable.

Really? Really? Wow. So that I came back with a
a lot of expanded awareness. Andeven though I thought maybe
well, I went over when I was,17, turned 18 while I was there.
By the way, Kennedy was shotwhile I was there. Mhmm. So that
was fascinating to sort of seethat event and see how

(22:47):
emotionally impactful that eventwas for my Swiss family and for
people around me that, you know,he was so loved in Europe that
it was really a traumatic event.Anyway, you know, when I came
back, I came back to rah rah,spoom bah, go get them, you
know, whatever. And that wasn'texactly my taste in terms of

(23:11):
culture.
So that gave me an impetus toessentially see how soon I could
get out of the South. And I wasin a segregated high school.

Yeah.

This is this is 60, 63, 64, 65.

Yeah. The difference between the school in
Switzerland and the school youcame from must have been
jarring.

Well, in a way, the school I came from was all boys.
So they were segregated betweenboys and girls. Essentially, the
the European kids were in a waymuch more emotionally immature
than the Americans were. TheAmericans were much more used to
social interaction and whateverand essentially being cool,

(23:52):
whatever that meant back then.

Mhmm.

And in Europe, they these kids were my age. They
were throwing spitballs at eachother in class. It's like, come
on. So it was strange to see thesort of difference in cultural
differences in kids, certainlyat my age.

Is it fair to say that the kids in Europe were
more childlike? Did you viewthat as a positive or negative
or both?

The positive part of it was well, they spent a lot
of time with their families. Soon vacations, they would go
hiking in the mountains withtheir family. They would do all
kinds of things with theirfamily. So the family was really
more the center of focus

for

the kids, not their social environment.

I see.

Whereas you come back to Freeport, the social
environment was the key thing.

Interesting.

Who's going to the dance? Where's the dance? Who's
my girlfriend? Who are theydoing? What are they doing?
And there was a whole lot moreof the social complexity or
interactions than there was inEurope.

Yeah. So the kids are growing up faster is
kind of what I'm hearing. Sowhat I hear in all of this is
mom's really a trailblazer.Right? To be a woman in college
at all in the thirties, and thento provide for her children.
Like, she provided that exampleof you can do things that other
people haven't done, and it'sgonna be okay. And I've also got

(25:09):
your back, so you can go dothese, and you'll be okay. And I
wonder about the other side ofthe brain, right, the more
structured side of your brain.It's not uncommon when one loses
a parent young. You have to growup fast, and I wonder if that
was kind of part of the formingof that other side of your brain
kind of taking care of thehousehold or anything like that.

I don't know. And I guess it's a good question,
Skippy, but I don't rememberdoing any of that. I just
remember Mhmm. You know, Iwanted to be a good student. My
brother had been a statestraight a student.
He was one of the top of hisclass and so forth. And I I sort
of followed in his footsteps.And again, because I had so many
teachers as parents and auntsand uncles, I said, okay. If I

(25:50):
can do that. So I was a straighta student.
So just making sure that I coulddo that and do that well. And so
I liked making sure that I didmy homework when I needed to do
it. I didn't leave things on theground or whatever. And my mom
actually brought in a littlecarpenter who built me a little
cabinet in my room so that Icould have room to get my books

(26:11):
and to study and whatever. SoI've always had a sense of I
like order and I don't likeextraneous things lying around.
They get in the way. So I guessthat's been true, sort of.

This predisposition was there, and
then the system maybe found itlater in life. Interesting.
That's very cool. I I reallyappreciate that. Okay.
So I don't wanna bury the leadtoo much. I do wanna hear about
how you kind of go through andstart to build the constituent
parts of GTD and then when youput it together. But could you
describe for us what exactly GTDis in your own words? And we'll

(26:49):
run the steps, I think, later,but it can't hurt to tease them.
So can you just kinda give usthe framework?

Well, basically, it's the set of best practices
that an individual can implementthat'll gives them more clarity,
more control, more space intheir head to be able to think
about the stuff they wanna bethinking about. I just figured
out piece by piece things thathelped me do that for myself.
Again, I was a good number 2guy, so I help these folks with

(27:18):
their own businesses. And then Ias soon as we kinda get their
processes fixed or upgraded, Igot bored. Then I leave and go
find another job and do the samething.
And then I discovered they paypeople to do that. They call
them something Consultant.

Oh my god.

Couldn't spell it now. I r one. Right? So 1982
hung up my shingle, AllenAssociates. I said, well, let me
see let me see how long I canexist just doing project by
project for people in differentcompanies in different
situations, and I haven'tstopped.
So I'm 79 this year, so that's40 plus years. So I've kept

(27:55):
doing that. And essentially, Ineeded to find things for myself
as my life got busier and morecomplex. And again, because I've
had experience spirituallymeditation wise, martial arts
wise, the value of clear spacein your head. And I found my
space was getting less clear.
Like you mentioned before, it'slike, well, I suddenly got a new

(28:17):
job and I don't know. It's likethat went buried in my head. And
how do I manage that? How do weget on top of that? How do we
get in the saddle about that asopposed to feel the victim of

that? Mhmm.

And so I found piece by piece, a little string
of epiphanettes. There was nobig epiphany. I woke up one
morning with this wholemethodology. They were just
piece by piece. And I had acouple of mentors that taught me
various pieces of this that Iwas able to kinda cobble
together.
So as I was using them formyself and sort of creating my
own personal system andapplication of these principles

(28:48):
and these practices, I turnedaround and consulted clients. We
didn't call it coaching backthen, but that's kind of what it
was. It was consulting withpeople with their own
businesses. And I started toshare with them these techniques
and have them apply thesetechniques, and it produced the
same results for them. Morecontrol, more focus, more
clarity, more space, you know,to think about strategic things.

What are some of the epiphanettes? What what
would be like a couple of those?

Well, one was a mentor that I had, because I as
I started my consultingpractice, I said, how do you
consult? I don't have anytraditional formal education in
business psychology or timemanagement. So I said, okay.
Who's doing stuff out there thatI can learn from? And I met a
guy, and we became very goodfriends, still are, who he was
had been a executive coach or orconsultant in organizational

(29:38):
change for many years.
And he'd come up with techniquesabout how to assist an
organization in terms of makingforward motion. And so one of
the things he discovered out offrustration with him of trying
to deal with the CEO or the headof a company who couldn't think
past their nose because they hadso much old business sort of
clogging up their psychic space.Mhmm. One day, he just said,

(30:00):
okay. Let's just get everythingthat's on your mind that's
clogging up your head right nowand write them all down.
Mhmm. Everything. Little bigpersonal professional. We'll do
a data dump. Have these folks dothat.
And then he had to make nextaction decisions about each one
of them. Mhmm. Okay. What do youneed to do about that? What is
it?
So the capture and clarify stepsthat became a key part of the

(30:21):
essential part of the gettingthings done methodology I
learned from Dean. Mhmm. So heshared that with me, and then he
he said, David, I think youprobably do more with what I'm
gonna teach you than I everwill. He was interested in
climbing rocks in Colorado morethan, you know, being
particularly entrepreneurial orotherwise. So he let me work
with him to implement thisprocess with 2 or 3 companies.

(30:46):
And so I got to see what it waslike to actually do that. And
first of all, he had me do it.So the first time I sat down and
and said, okay. Well, let mewrite down everything that's on
my mind. Little, big, personal,professional, separate pieces of
paper.
And went, wow. That's cool.Yeah. It wasn't like I was in
super stress or anything. I justwrote them all down.

(31:06):
I was like, wow. And suddenly Ifelt a lot different. And then
going through each one of thosepieces of paper and deciding
what the next action was. And Iwent, wow. So that was a pretty
phenomenal epiphanette.
It was it was a big epiphanette.

What was Dean's last name?

Atchison.

Atchison. Not

the famous one, not the secretary's name.

If you Google it. Yeah.

No. A different dean. Uh-huh. So that was that
started it. Also, you know, I'vebeen doing personal growth
trainings in the seventies andearly eighties.
A key component, a lot of thoseself development trainings was
about agreements. How do youmanage agreements? You know,
agreements with yourself,agreements with other people.

(31:50):
And what happens when you breakthem? Trust goes down.
So if I broke broke an agreementwith you, you wouldn't trust me
to necessarily show up and dowhat we'd agreed to do. Next
time, you might love me, but youwouldn't trust me. So trust
diminishes as an automatic priceof broken agreements. What I

(32:12):
didn't realize at that time,because they were just sort of
shortening spins in thesepersonal growth trainings about
keeping agreements. The goodnews of those bills of
confidence bills, whatever,breaking agreements
disintegrates trust.
What turned into a whole lot ofwhat getting things done is
about is clarifying, codifying,objectifying what your

(32:34):
agreements are Yes. Withyourself and everybody else.

Yes.

So if you don't want to then pay the price of
broken agreements, you eitherdon't make the agreement called.
No. I ain't gonna do that. Keepthe agreement. Okay.
Let me finish that orrenegotiate the agreement. Well,
okay. I'm gonna do that, but notright now. Let me park some
reminder of that somewhere thatI might do that. And a whole lot
of what getting things done isabout is just objectifying what

(33:01):
are all your agreements.
And most people have no clue howmany they've made with
themselves and other people.

I love this trust diminishes as an automatic
price of broken agreements.That's so clear. That's so
accurate in my experience. Andit's interesting because one of
the things that theimplementation of GTD in my life
helped me clarify. So that's theexternal relationship to broken
agreements.

(33:27):
It helped me clarify theinternal relationship to broken
agreements, which is and this isfor me, I realized that stress
is the physical sensation ofbreaking agreements to self or
others. I can have a ton on myplate, but if I'm doing what I
said I do, if I'm in integrityto self and others, I won't be
stressed. But it's when I'mbreaking those agreements that I

(33:48):
have that internal sensation.And so it's interesting to think
of that as a feedback loop.Right?
If I'm internally stressed, I'mmore likely to break external
agreements. If I break externalagreements, then I'm going to
diminish trust, so that's goingto further reinforce stress, and
then we wonder why we burn out.But there's an upstream solution

(34:08):
for that. I that's so good. Ilove that.
Yeah. Thank you for that.

Yeah. And and, you know, I have a famous saying in
mind. You can only feel goodabout what you're not doing when
you know what you're not doing.

You can only feel good about what you're not
doing when you know what you'renot doing. Yeah. When it's
choice. Right? When it's anempowered decision.

Yeah? Okay. When you can't you're never gonna be
done till you're dead. Maybe noteven then. Right?

Yeah.

So you always have to figure out, okay, which thing
as to your point, which thingshall I do? I mean, how many
things are you and I not doingright now, Skippy?

Correct. Yeah. Correct.

So in order to be present here with you in this
conversation and not bedistracted, I have to know what
I'm not doing. And it's a bighabit for people to change, to
track those, and to clarify whatthose are. Yes. But it's not
hard. It's not hard.
It's not rocket science unlessyou're a rocket scientist.

Okay. I wanna ask you one kind of big
question, and then I want to getinto the framework and kind of
outlining and working the stepsso that people understand what
it is. But what I hear is 2points intention. You may
disagree and I'm hoping you do,and you have an explanation. You
may not.
But on one hand, you're talkingabout having these systems to
know what we're doing, to knowwhat we're not doing, to make

(35:31):
determinant choice, putting alot of intention and structure
into one's life. On the otherhand, I've heard you regularly
say that control is the ultimateaddiction and our real job is to
let go and that GTD is toprovide space. So for someone
who sees those two perspectivesas in contrast, can you help me

(35:53):
understand why they're not? Oror are they? And that's okay.

Well, ask any artist. They have to create
limits to create an art.

You need a canvas to make a painting.

Yeah. You need canvas, and you need tools.
Right? And you need some levelof structure. I mean, freedom
comes from appropriatestructure.
Come on. People say, I like tobe free and do it. And so what
do you think about the centerline in the road when you're in
the highway?

I think it's such a bother. You know?

It's a limitation. Right? It's a constraint. But if
you didn't have that, oh my god.Are they gonna hit me?
Am I gonna hit them? So you onlyhave the freedom to think about
other things when you're drivingbecause of the structure on the
highway.

The idealized version of freedom is a myth.
It's a mirage. It's a story. Ifyou were to actually experience
complete freedom, what you wouldhave in a result is chaos. And
in chaos, there's no freedom.

What about you and an athlete? Didn't you have to
have some level of structure tofeel then free when you got on
the field or got on the Mars orwhatever you were doing as an
athlete?

Certainly, if I wasn't showing up to train, I
would have performed verypoorly, and I would have had
less fun doing it.

And if you're a soccer player or a football
player, if you didn't have lineson the field, you didn't have a
goal that's gonna keep youfocused. See, the 2 things in a
soccer player's mind whenthey're on the field are the
most important two things. Well,three things. First of all,
where am I? What's going onright now?
The second thing is where's thegoal? And the third thing is

(37:25):
what's the next play? So outcomeand action as well as current
reality awareness is the essenceof stress free productivity.

Yes. And as a coach, what I'm hearing, if I
have the story, I'm using I tomake it personal, but it may be
you listening as well, have astory of, I can't have all of
these rules or constraints. Theywill constrain my freedom, my
creativity, etcetera. That'sactually the ego telling you a
story, playing a trick on you sothat you have an excuse not to

(37:58):
take personal responsibility.

Yeah. And if you think externalizing your
commitments and keeping somestructure about it is a bad
thing or an overwhelming or toomuch to do. Throw away your
calendar. Don't beintellectually dishonest. Why
does anybody listening orwatching this have a even have a
calendar?
Do it in your head.

Right. Go all in and try it.

Yeah. One of the reasons you got overwhelmed,
Skippy, is because you weretrying to use your head as your
office, and your head is acrappy office. Your brain did
not evolve to remember, remind,prioritize, and manage
relationships between more than4 things. That's it. That's
cognitive science now, by theway.
Don't shoot the messenger. Icame up with that experientially
years ago, but now they know.

Ain't it nice when the science catches up to
your work? That's a yang. Yeah.Yeah. Yeah.

For sure. You bet.

Okay. So you're precisely right, and I want to
walk people through the steps ofhow this works. Just basic.
They'll get the book and do itthemselves if they wanna do it.
But I will affirm what you said,which is even if I was in a
moment of break prior to thiswork and I was out on a hike
when I'm supposed to be enjoyingmyself and in nature, what was

(39:11):
actually happening is I wasrehearsing a speech.
I was thinking about what Ididn't say to this other person.
I was wondering if I had gottenthat stuff for groceries for the
house. I wondered if I hadturned in like, there was 70
open loops going on that wereimpinging on my hike. Now with a

(39:32):
trusted system in place, all ofthat chatter is gone for the
most part. The RAM in mycomputer is fully available for
processing the hike or whateverI'm doing.
It's not running backgroundprograms.

It's also available for new creative ideas you never
had before.

Absolutely true. When one of those thoughts does
come up, it's such an aberrationthat it's become a warning light
on the dash of my car ofsomething that I need to do to
improve myself. So I a 100%right. Okay. GTD framework.
Take us through the steps, and Imay interject, I may not with
just, like, what this could looklike in a experience like mine

(40:11):
of, say, a new elected official.

If you wanted to get control of any situation and
on top of it, the 5 steps areI'll say them real quick, and
then I'll I'll unpack each one.You need to capture what has
your attention. You need toclarify the specific nature of
it. You then need to organizeanything that you need to be
reminded of or do somethingabout that you can't do in the

(40:36):
moment. You then need to buildsome sort of reflection review
process of the inventory.
So then step 5, engage, put yourattention, your activity in an
appropriate trusted place basedupon all of that. So it's
capture, clarify, organize,reflect, engage. So capture just

(40:56):
means what has your attention?My first epiphany was writing
down everything that was on mymind, little, big, personal,
professional, whatever. By theway, for most mid to senior
level professionals and by theway, I have spent literally
thousands of hours with some ofthe best and brightest people on
the planet walking them throughthis process.

Can we give a little shout out to some of
those shinier names? I knowyou're not a big braggadocious
guy. Can I give you the floor tojust share some of the people
you've worked with?

You know, probably the one of the more famous one
who's been quite public. A lotof them I can't say because it's
just confidential stuff. HowardStern is one of my biggest
champions. It changed his life,changed his company. I didn't
coach him personally, but one ofmy coaches did.
And she's now his COO. He hiredher.

Wow.

There have been big champions who've got names, Will
Smith, Robert Downey Junior.They're all they give my book to
their friends, and there aresome day you know, Arianna
Huffington's been a long timefriend and a great champion of
my stuff. So quite a number.Rick Berg, by the way. I don't
know if you know Rick.
He was a congressman. He's oneof the congressmen that we
actually coached and workedwith. So we haven't worked with

(42:04):
a lot of politicians. We'veworked with a lot of support
staff

Yes.

You know, in that world. Jim Fallows, James
Fallows, reporter or writer forThe Atlantic, big champion
Charles Dewey, who wrote ThePower of Habit, huge champion.
And what's fascinating, Skippy,and to all of you listening to
this is the people mostattracted to what I'm talking
about are the people who need itthe least. They're already the
most successful, aspirational,positively focused people who

(42:28):
already know the value ofsystem. They already know that
they can produce value if theyhad more space.
So it's the lack of room thatthese people are after. Somebody
who's just unconscious aboutwhat they're doing in life,
they're they're not gonna beattracted to this.

Right. Well and all the people you mentioned are
extremely creative and extremelyproductive. So I see that nexus.
That's cool. Thank you forsharing that.
Okay. So we capture we captureall the things, and then we
clarify.

As I sat down with people to capture, the typical
amount of time it takes forsomebody truly to empty their
head of the everything they havetheir attention. I need cat
food. I need a vice president.We need to restructure our
thing. I need to research a newwrite all the down.
That usually takes from 3 to 6hours. So it's not a small
process for most people to dothat, to catch up, to get that

(43:19):
stuff out of their head. I guessthey had it for people to just
file stuff in their head withoutwriting it down. So that's step
1 is get all that stuff out ofyour head in some sort of
objective place. Step 2, that bythe way, if that's all you did,
then you become a compulsivelist maker.
I got list and posted stuck allover God and creation, which is

(43:40):
not gonna get rid of the anxietyor the stress.

Imagining that scene in that movie with Jim
Carrey where he comes out withthe pen all over his face
because he's run out of space.

Yeah. And so step 2 is then to take any of those
things that you wrote down,objectified, and decide what
exactly does that mean. What isit? Is it something that I need
to move on or not? If not, thenit could be either trash,
reference material, or incubate.
I need to store this and laterbe later reminded about it. If

(44:12):
it is something you need to acton, you need to decide what's
the very next action I need totake. If I have had nothing to
do but move on that right now toclose that loop, is that an
email to send? Is that a websiteto serve? Is that a conversation
to have with my assistant or mypartner?
What's the next step? And ifthat one step won't finish it,
what's the project? What's theoutcome that that step is moving

(44:34):
toward to complete? And sooutcome and action become the 2
key components of clarify,especially for things that have
your attention. If it's nottrash or reference material,
that a lot of times a lot ofpeople listening to this have a
lot of stuff in their email theycould just file or dump.
So that's the Clarify processspeed. Okay. Take all that input

(44:54):
that you've got. Now let'sdistribute it in the appropriate
places and make the decisionsabout it that we need to make
outcome and action aboutactionable stuff. Step 3 is then
organize.
Okay. What are you gonna do ifyou can't finish that action
right now? By the way, if youcan finish that action in 2
minutes, you should just do itright then. It'll take you
longer to organize it than to doit. And most people have an
incredible amount of 2 minuteactions they could take on

(45:16):
emails that are sitting in theirinbox right now.
Instead of reviewing andrenewing and rethinking, just do
it. Just get it down there.Anybody listening to this right
now walk around your apartmentor your house and see all the
things that it would only takeyou 2 minutes to fix or finish.
Replace that light bulb. Movethat thing over there.

You had to say the light bulb thing. Now I'm
feeling guilty looking up overthe screen.

Anyway, if it will take longer than 2 minutes and
you can't do it, then then youneed to put some reminder
somewhere, and that's whereorganized comes in. Okay. How
are you gonna put a reminderabout the the cap food you need
to buy? Because you can't go buyit right now. We're gonna
organize that.
And this is basically listcreation. What are the lists
that you need to make andcreate? Here are the errands I
need to run. Here's the stuff Ineed to surf the web about. Here

(46:05):
are the things I need to talk tomy wife or my husband about or
here are the things that I needto bring up at the next staff
meeting.
Here are the things I need towhatever. And so once you decide
those actions, where do you parkreminders of those that you see
in the right place? Now whensomebody actually fully
implements this methodology,they're gonna have between a
122100 next actions right now.Not making them up, just

(46:28):
identifying them. What are allthose things?
So that would be a littleoverwhelming when you go to the
store to buy cat food and see200 things on the list. So it'd
be nice to then sort them basedupon when you could do them,
where they happen, and so forth.So I've got about 6 or 7 of
those. Here's my errands I needto run. Here's the things that I
need to talk to my wife,Catherine, about.

(46:49):
Here's the things that I need toto do on the computer. Then the
things I'm waiting for isanother great category on the
car. What are all the thingsthat you've ordered hasn't come
yet? Are the things you'vetasked people to do or delegated
that haven't come back yet? Alot of executives, by the way,
keeping an agenda list andkeeping a waiting for list are
transformative for them becausethey haven't done either one.

(47:13):
Here are all the things I needto talk to my staff person about
next time he or she is in frontof me. That's an agenda list.
The next action of things totalk to this person about when I
have them on the phone or theZoom or face to face. And then
if you hand them off and theysay, yeah, I'll do that. And you
care that then you track that ona waiting for this.
Those are huge. And very fewexecutives do that. They'll do

(47:37):
it last minute stuff. Oh, yeah.I need to talk to them.
Then they go interrupt people asopposed to save it for an agenda
when you have face to face. Andthen when things blow up, they
blow up because they haven'ttracked what the status of it
was or checked with people whothey've tasked it to.

And the organize is different person to person.
People will use different tools,different processes.

I know a lot of high-tech people that are back
to paper now because especiallyif they're sort of ADD or ADHD
prone, computer just takes toomany clicks to get all that in
and out, Whereas paper is likeright in your face. Right right
there. I mean, they both havetheir downside and upside. And
the list managers out there,there are 100 100 of list and

(48:20):
basically a lot of the stuffthat people that have sort of
copied the GPD idea with theirsoftware basically just created
list managers. Different bellsand whistles, but they're all
pretty much ways to keep lists.
We migrated to Office 365 lastyear or whatever. So I just use
the task inside of the Outlook.That's fine.

Yes. I actually wanna know I'm gonna as soon as
we get through review andengage, I'm gonna come back to
that. I wanna know what toolsyou use, and then I'll share
what I do. And the idea behindthat is just to give people the
perspective of you can make thisfit, what works for you, because
I imagine we use differentthings, maybe we don't. But tell
us about review and engage.

Well, review means you could put things on the
list. But if you don't look atthe list when you go to the
store, you're gonna forget stuffthat's on the list. If you're
not looking at your camera,girl, on some regular basis and
say where you need to be, when,tomorrow or the next week, are
you gonna then run into, oh mygod. I should have. I forgot.
So review simply means reviewingand reflecting on all the

(49:19):
commitments that you've got thatare not complete yet. Mhmm. And
that could also be all the wayup to every 2 or 3 years, you
and your life partner need tofigure out where you're going in
your life or your life purpose.What are you about? All the way
down to what's our vision ofsuccess 12 months from now or
your strategic plan 12 monthsfrom now or it could be
quarterly.

(49:40):
We need to look at where we arewith x, y, and z. And review
could be anything from a standup meeting daily in software
companies or manufacturingcompanies all the way to any of
those longer term kind of reviewwhere are we. It's like lifting
yourself up, getting up into thefire towers and see the smoke.
If you don't get up in the firetower, the fire is gonna land in

(50:01):
your tree and you go, oh my god.Get up in the fire tower and
look and see where it's coming.
That's the review piece. So andthen the 5th stage is engaged.
There's nothing to say aboutthat. If you've done the first
four, you've captured,clarified, organized, and
reviewed all of your stuff, thenyou're making trusted choices
about what you do. It may not bethe right choice, but you'll
live and learn.
And it'll you'll be making thatout of some level of confidence

(50:23):
as opposed to I hope this istrue and and driven by latest
and loudness, which most peopleare.

And now a quick break from our sponsors, and
we'll be right back to the show.This show is supported by
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(50:49):
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Okay. Love it. So, capture,clarify, organize, review, and
engage. I'm gonna just give,like, a very brief thumbnail for

(51:10):
each one of how this might haveworked for me as a council
member, maybe making it a littlebit more relatable to the
audience. And then I want tocome back and talk about the
flexibility within the systembecause I think that's actually
important and might diffuse somefears people have about the
overrigidity of a structure.
So CAPTURE literally looked likeI went down on my dining room

(51:31):
table and wrote down everypossible thing I could think of
to do. That would include, Ineed to read my packet for my
next council meeting. It wouldinclude, I need to buy flowers
for Valentine's Day for mygirlfriend. It would include, I
want to get out on a run today.It would include, I need to do
laundry.

(51:52):
So, everything personal,professional, and otherwise. And
as a means of making sure I'mnot missing anything, at least
for the first go around, I wastaking out all of my documents,
all of my files, all of myemails, and reviewing them
because I'm not going toactively remember everything.
So, I'm bringing everything intomy consciousness, then I'm

(52:13):
putting it down on paper so it'scomprehensive. Clarify, then I'm
basically, making sure that Iknow what to do with those
things. And correct me if I'mwrong here, David, but I have a
couple options, right?
I can take action on them, I canthrow them away, or I can
delegate them. And so, some ofthese things are things that I

(52:35):
want to do. Some of these thingsmight be I need actually my city
attorney to do this. My actionbecomes sending them an email,
making an ask, but then I'mdelegating and taking it off my
plate. Something else I may havedetermined wasn't that
important.
I don't actually need to replacethe ceramic bowl on my
countertop. That's not importantright now. I'm gonna get that

(52:57):
off. Right? So I'm going throughand clarifying what all these
things are, and then I'morganizing them.
So I'm putting them into bucketsif there are more than one
action. So, I might have aproject that is city council. I
might have a project that is,Sky Run Vacation Rentals. I
might have a project that isrelationship with my life

(53:19):
partner. I might have a projectthat is physical fitness and
health.

Skippy, I'll stop you right there. K. You're
actually up to a higher horizonthan projects. What you just
mentioned are areas of interestthat you just need to maintain
at a at a certain level ofstandard, but you may have a
project about each one of thoseor something to do about each
one of those. And that's a goodthing.
That's a good exercise to do.Because, like, okay. What are

(53:45):
all the areas of focus andresponsibility? Health, family,
relationships, this business,that business, whatever. But you
don't finish those.
Mhmm. You just need to look atthose and go, how am I doing
about those? And then there areprobably some things to do,
either action to take andprobably projects that you need
to do about any of those.

So to make it specific then, if we were
looking into the council bucket,council never ends. I mean, we
hope. But I may have aaffordable housing strategic
plan that is a 2 year project,but will get completed. That
would be an example of aproject. Is that correct?

It would. 2 years is kind of a long range for a
project, but I'd say within thenext 12 months, what do you need
to do? Now within the 12 months,what needs to occur so that
that's gonna happen? And 2 yearsis okay as long as that's on a
project list that you look atweekly. Say, how am I doing?
2 years, you could you couldlook it out and say long range.

(54:45):
Therefore, I don't need to doanything. Wrong answer.

Got it. Okay. So the project are the finite
engagements underneath aninterest area that would be
completed within a year. And sothen you would be bucketing
those out and placing thevarious things that you've put
out in the capture step underthose projects.

Well, if there is a project, if it's a if you can't
finish whatever your attentionis with one action, you might
have captured the action. But ifthat one action won't complete
whatever this thing is, then youhave a project. So you get a
project called celebrateValentine's Day. Right? That's a
project.
Next action, order flowers orbuy flowers or whatever. And by

(55:32):
the way, that is one of the mostmissing horizons for almost
anybody we work with isprojects. They don't get it. I
think, well, here's the nextthing I need to do is next thing
I need to do. Here's the bigthing that I'm doing, but they
haven't defined wait a minute.
What's the end game right now ofthat next step? You get to kind
of mark that off or that thingfinished is gonna move me toward

(55:53):
whatever my vision is orwhatever the bigger game is.

Yeah. So the benefit is both organization of
tasks, but it's also alignmentof task towards purpose.

Yeah. And the outcome. I'd say outcome more
than purpose. Yeah. Purposeinterchange those words.
But, you know, if you wanna hey.I should be healthy. Great. What
do you need to do about that? Iguess I need to maybe join the
health club.
Great. What's your project?Research health clubs. What's
your next step? Oh, I need tosurf the web and see about
whatever.

Finite time, end game, outcome, goal. Check.
Okay. So, we organize into thoseprojectsor non projects, if it's
a single taskand then we havesome form of review. So, in my
case, that looks like a verybrief morning review of all the
things that I know are my nextactions for that day and then a

(56:44):
weekly review.
So, I'm looking at not just mynext actions, but I'm looking at
everything I'm not doingimmediately. I'm looking at my
someday maybes, and I'm makingsure that things are where they
should be, or, to your point,I'm renegotiating. I'm moving
those timeframes, thoseexpectations. That happens on a
weekly basis. That takes meprobably 20 to 30 minutes,

(57:07):
something like that.
I'm also looking at my calendar,front and back, a week. I'm
doing a a few other thingsduring that review that are not
necessarily, I don't think, GTDspec, but they fall into that
framework. And then for myself,and I know this is different for
everyone, I have a quarterly andan annual review. So the
quarterly review takes a couplehours, and then I have an annual

(57:29):
review where I'm looking atreally 3 5 year goals. And then,
of course, the engage.
So now we get out, and we dothose things. Okay. We've got
the framework. It can sound atleast it has sounded to me at
times to be rigid, but what Ithink I really like about it or
one of the things one of thecharacteristics I really like
about it is it's not. Itactually allows you to make

(57:52):
those things work for you.
And so I thought, as an exampleof that, we could talk, we could
kind of trade tools that we usefor different things, you and I.
You started this process decadesbefore me, so there's new tech
out there. Like you said, somepeople are going back. So I
thought it might be fun to justkind of share some different
ways this could work. So whatare some of the tools that you

(58:13):
use in your steps, and how doyou use them?

Well, CAPTURE. When I'm at my desk, no better tool.

Podcast listeners holding writing pad
and pen. Little mini journal,foldable, leather, pen inserted,
also serves as wallet. If youfind his journal, make sure you
return that. He's gonna need it.

Capture for the most part for me is low tech.
It's faster. It's easier.There's no clicks you have to
do. There's nothing you have todo to get it.
I do have a capture tool on myiPhone, but I barely use it
because it's just easier towrite on these things because
capture is not organized. Yes.CAPTCHA just says, here's an
idea I need to decide later on.So I did take whatever I've

(58:55):
written in the low tech side,throw them into my physical
entry when I get back to myworkspace, and then I'll deal
with those in terms ofclarifying and organizing if
there's anything to do aboutthem. So that's basically my
capture system.

That's great. So my capture system depends on
where I am like yours. There's amobile and a non mobile version
effectively. The non mobile isjust to use an Excel paper
leather backed journal. That'swhere I take notes for meetings
or Zooms or I journal.
It's what I have in front of mebecause I don't want to have a

(59:29):
digital device of distractionwhen I should be focused on a
person. And, I don't necessarilytreat all of that as capture. I
might just be takingextemporaneous notes, but
anything that needs to becaptured for a future action, I
circle on the page. And so thatis my primary form of capture.
At the end of the day, in mydaily review, I go back through

(59:53):
that journal and that's when Iconvert it into electronic in
one of 2 ways.
So, I capture every page intoEvernote with a photo, which
then allows me to tag that in asimple way, and it becomes
automatically text searchable.So, anything that I wrote in
that meeting, if I want to findit later, I can just search in

(01:00:14):
there and it will pull up. So itgives me the benefit of
something written with thebenefit of searchability and the
electronic. And then I willorganize all of the circled
things into an app calledTodoist, which is just a to do
list app, but it's pre built outwith all of my projects. So
things go in immediately thereif they don't get acted on at

(01:00:37):
that time.
Sometimes I do them immediately.Right. Email Johnny. Okay.
That's my 2 minute action.
I'll do that at night. But theygo directly into the Todoist
under the correct project with atimestamp and then with a flag
that is either must do, shoulddo, or could do. Must do is,
like, has to be done that day.Should do is should be done that

(01:00:58):
day, and I'll normally put aparenthetical like buy x. And
then the should do is, like,this is something that I'd like
to get done, but it's notmission critical.
So if it happens, that's great.Sometimes, if I'm out, say I'm
on a run, and something popsinto my head, it will go
straight to Todoist because I'mjust carrying the digital device
on me. But most of the time, itgoes to paper. What do you use,

(01:01:22):
if anything, for your organizeand review steps?

David Allen (01:01:26):
Well, organize, as I mentioned before, I just use
task in Microsoft.

Skippy Mesirow (01:01:30):
And for someone, I'm raising my hand, who doesn't
use that, what is that is thatjust a to do app, or what does
that mean?

It's just a list. It's just like like to do list
or anything else. It's just alist manager. We can create a
list, and you can thencategorize them, which I do in
my Outlook tasks. I havecomputer stuff to do, errands to
run, agendas to go over withpeople, whatever.
So it's very easy. Most of thoseto do list apps have some way to

(01:01:59):
to contextualize the things youput on the list. Yeah. So that's
what I do. It's very simple.
By the way, I was an early userof the Palm Pilot before you
were born, probably.

No. I remember the Palm Pilots. Get out of
here.

There was no better list manager on the Earth. And
even now, they had such a simplelittle PC app you put on your
computer that would then sync toyour device, and it was so easy.
And you could use the scriptthing that was brilliant that
they came up with.Unfortunately, it kinda died.
There are things that are stillnot as easy as that these days,

(01:02:38):
because a lot of them are a lotmore work than they should be to
try to figure them out.

Overcomplicated.

Even Evernote. It took me 6 months when I got when
I installed Evernote to evenfigure out the the how to
organize it and what way andwhere do I put stuff. I finally
with Microsoft OneNote, Ifinally dumped all of my
Evernote into OneNote. Mhmm.Because I can share that with my
wife and with my small team, andthey have access to things I
give them access to in there.

(01:03:03):
I just ordered dog treats. Iwent to OneNote and did a search
for my dog treats, and I'dalready put in there the link
and then go to their their storeand order the dog treats.

That's awesome.

I was one of the first Lotus Notes users years
ago in terms of Lotus Notes, andthen it became IBM Notes that
became, you know, somebody else.And there's been nothing really
that good that's really showedup that that you could manage
that way. One note's comingclose and that Microsoft's
getting better. I mean, thereare a lot of GTPers inside of

(01:03:38):
Microsoft, so I think it'shelping to improve a lot of the
coordination of what they'redoing. Unfortunately, a lot of
what something like Microsoft isand Outlook and 365 are doing,
they bought so many componentsinto this to try to make sense
out of the different components.
And how do you coordinate themis still a work in progress, for

(01:03:59):
sure.

What's your review process like personally?
How do you do that?

I just sit down and look at my calendar, last 2
weeks, look at the next 2 or 3months, then go to my lists. I
go to my action list and seewhat I've done and haven't had
time to mark off as complete.Then I go to my project list and
look at, okay, which one ofthose does not have an active
project right now? Because Imarked it off and I still need
to come up with something. Andthat's pretty much it.

(01:04:25):
I used to have to do, again 79this year, and my life is a lot
simpler than it used to be whenI was 60. I maybe 79 is the new
60. I don't know.

So my camera

However they say that, I don't know. But now my
life is not so complex, butthere were times when I had to
do almost like a weekly reviewalmost every day because things
were happening so fast at somany different levels. And as
you talked about your life andand public service, that could
show up that fast. So it mightbe that you need to do some
level of review on a daily or bydaily, weekly frequency simply

(01:05:01):
because things are happening sofast. You got a whole lot of new
stuff has to be integrated.
You have to then make sureyou're not missing something
that just showed up.

Mhmm.

See, most everybody listening this or watching this
probably has had things show upin the last 7 days that they
need to do something about. Theyhaven't figured out yet exactly
what they need to do. They justneed to know they need to do
something about it, but they sowhen are they gonna decide that?
And that's the review processthat needs to be set up. So they
do that whether you do that withcoffee at Starbucks in the
morning or had a had a goodfriend in his weekly review on

(01:05:33):
Sunday nights because hisdaughter was in the choir.
They would go to choir practiceon Sunday nights, and he'd sit
in the back pew and do hisweekly review. Who knows? Sorry
to out

that to the daughter. So when you're sitting
down with a client and you'reworking them through their
process, how do you guide themto figuring out what review
structure is right for them?Because it strikes me that
there's probably more diversityin reproach to review than most
of the other steps.

I have two answers to that. They need to get all
that stuff together, and thenthey'll tell themselves, how
often should I look at this? Onthe other hand, sit down and do
a review about anything you'vegot. Whatever. Reviewing and
reflecting is one of the biggestlacks out there in terms of
management and executivethinking.
It is trying to sit back and gopull up the rear guard. Where

(01:06:25):
are you? What's happened? What'snew? What do I need to now
integrate and recalibrate interms of my focus and my
priorities?
And that better happened weeklyin the world that you're talking
to, I would imagine. Yeah. Ifnot, boom.

Yeah. K. Beautiful. Do you still have I
mean, yes. You are 79 years agechronologically.
If anyone was with me looking atyou, they wouldn't assume that.
If they were looking at yourproductivity, they wouldn't
assume that. Do you still dolong term planning? Are you
still having, like, a 5 or 3year horizon review at this

(01:06:59):
point in your life? I know youhad a new book coming out soon,
so you're doing big stuff still.

Oh, the new book. Well, that was a big thing. So
there's a new book that'sfilling a big gap in that in our
training and this methodologyover the years called team
getting things done with others.So that's been on my radar for a
long time to see if we couldfind some way to get that
message out and create a manualabout how to do that. Mhmm.

(01:07:24):
So that's been a big thing. It'slaunching in May 2024. I don't
know when anybody's hearingthis, but that's the official
launch is May 21, I think. Afterthat, I get better at my flute,
get better at painting. Theseare things that I've just had
been let lie for the last 2 or 3years simply because I've been
so busy with other stuff.
And otherwise, no big thing.Well, my wife and we just took a

(01:07:49):
5 week road trip to Spain, whichwas really kind of fulfilling
her vision of finding a place togo in the wintertime when it's
rainy and cold and gray. She's65, I'm 79. So we figured, I
don't know how many more ofthese we're gonna be able to do,
but setting those up. So, youknow, it's been on Sunday, maybe
less time and seen Iceland yet.
I haven't seen New Zealand yet.I haven't seen there's a few

(01:08:11):
other places that would probablylike to go. So it's more like in
the more leisure part of ourlife. I don't know that I'll
have it leisure in my lifebecause I can't stop doing this.
I can't stop doing what I'mdoing.
But building in some time anddoing that and enjoying that
kind of stuff, that's just partof the icing on my cake in terms

(01:08:31):
of my life and my career.

That's beautiful. I'm definitely coming
back to team. I mean, look inour world, the more team focused
we can get the better and it'schallenging right now. So I
think that's gonna be a hugebenefit to people. Before we get
there, I just wanna kinda get alittle bit more background on
the creation of this.
And the reason is a, it's apersonal interest, but B we're

(01:08:55):
sort of in the business oftaking ideas in our head out
into frameworks and rules forthe world. And so it is not
dissimilar, although it's, youknow, it's not passed in statute
in many ways, you are creating aframework as many of us are
creating a framework. And I'minterested to hear how you've

(01:09:15):
thought about that through theprocess, because it's been
wildly successful, both inadoption and public acclaim and
impact and effect. And so Ithink it's, it's super relevant.
I wonder if there are othermodels or frameworks that you
have been inspired by or drawnon or incorporated through this

(01:09:40):
process.
One that came up just because ofthe political world angle is
sort of the the famousEisenhower model. Right? The
urgent and the important and thefour boxes and which one of
those you do, what you delegate,which you trash. There's some
basic similarities there. Somaybe with that as a starting
point, are there any othermodels that you've thought of,

(01:10:03):
been inspired by, incorporated,or really love and admire, but
they're just separate anddifferent?

Not really. I mean, they're all quite useful.
Everything from, especially, wehave a whole chapter in the new
book called about the new work.Everything from Deming's work
back in Japan, and Kanban andScrum and Agile and 6 Sigma and
and all that are models that arehighly useful. They're all about
external workflow.

Mhmm.

And they're usually useful in a manufacturing or a
software environment whereyou've got somewhat rigorous
steps that need to be managedand no waste in that step
process. And a friend of minewho runs an institute in
California about lean said,David, GTD is lean for the
brain. How do you make sure youhave no waste in your thinking?

(01:10:53):
Well, I haven't thought twiceunless you like the thought. So
there are models out there likethat.
In the Eisenhower, we get thatwe even mentioned that in the
book and Harvey Volz and otherkinds of things people have used
to set priorities. But we'rejust sitting in front of the TV
at night to relax. Whichquadrant does that sit in? Mhmm.
Right?
It doesn't. Which quadrant doesit sit in to research whether

(01:11:15):
you wanna give karate lessons toyour little girl? Where does
that sit? Right. So there's awhole lot of life that does not
fit into those kind ofcategories, into those things.
They're useful way to thinkabout it. Oh, okay. What thing
is worth me doing now? And sothose give some models about how
to think about some things inthat way, but they don't include

(01:11:38):
all the stuff in life that youhave to deal with.

Yeah. It's interesting you say lean for the
brain because one of theanalogies I've used with people,
I hope this lands for youbecause I've been using it, but
I'm a big fan of Marie Kondo'swork, the art of tidying up. I
do that once every 6 months atmy home.

Yeah. She has kids now. And so she's loosened her
lease.

Well, good luck. Yeah. That's yeah. I mean, I
don't have kids yet, but I haveenough friends with them to see
that, you know, a lot of thatgoes out of the window.
Sometimes literally.

No. She's great. I mean, you should get rid of, you
know, every year, every sooften. Catherine and I only buy
new clothes if we can give awayas many.

Right. The analogy Davos uses, like, what
Marie Kondo does for yourphysical space is what GTD does
for my brain. It makes sure thateverything there is there for a
reason that it has a purpose,that it has a place, that I can
see it and appreciate it. Itdoesn't get lost in the

(01:12:44):
background and is fullypresented for me to do the best
of it I can with what I have.And that's just always an
analogy that sort of landed tome.
I don't know if you ever heardanyone say that. But

No. No. That makes sense, for sure.

Yeah. That's cool. Okay. So some background
stuff. I am curious what yourrecommendation would be around
tools, knowing that the GTDintentionally doesn't specify.
However, there are innumerablenew tools that come out every
day. Some of them may purport toadd benefit, some may not, but

(01:13:20):
it can be overwhelming. It'slike you go to the grocery store
and now there's 45 100 cerealsand you're like, oh, I just, I
just want some great nuts. Likeit's enough. What's your
recommendation on staying up todate with the tech, with the new
stuff?
What is the appropriate balanceand when does it become too much
of a job in and of itself?

Well, it depends if you're into productivity porn
where you just like that and youlike to explore all those. Like,
fine. That's a nice hobby aswell as anything else. Why not?
Wouldn't wouldn't hurt.
But otherwise, forget it. Relax.Mhmm. Decide what you need by
implementing the GPD process.And then say, okay.

(01:14:04):
Probably the best thing to do isuse whatever tools you currently
have to do that. Mhmm. And thenyou might wanna explore. I mean,
there are 100, if not thousandsof forums out there of people
talking about all the GTD toolsthat that people could use and
pick and choose. Decide what youwanna do.
So there have been twice in mycareer where we tried to build

(01:14:27):
software around the GTD modeland neither of them worked. They
worked in a way, but they didn'twork in the market. So I just
gave that up. People asked mefor recommendations. They want
me to come on their board.
They want me to look at theirwhat they've come up with and
give me an endorsement orwhatever. How I just go, not my
world.

Yeah. When you say it worked in a way, you
mean, like, the software itselffunctioned. You were happy with
it, but it just wasn't adoptedbroadly. Is that what you mean?
Yeah.
Any idea why?

The market was already. Why does anybody out
there think they need to emptytheir head?

And yet they're buying books by the truckload.

Sure. Well, you know, we tried to build those
things, and then, you know,Microsoft sort of won the the
desktop. And there just wasn't amarket out there, really.

Mhmm. Yeah. Interesting.

So there is many different implementations and
tools as there are GTD championsand friends out there, for sure.

Totally. Who have you found if you were to
build sort of the archetypalcharacter, who's the human who
GTD seems to be most attractiveto, and who is most resistant to
it?

Well, as I mentioned before, the people
most attractive to it are thepeople who need it the least.
Big champion that I coached fora year, a guy named Brad
Keywell, the CEO founder and CEOof a company called Uptake out
of Chicago. He built Groupon.That's why he has his own jet.
He's on 5 boards.
His uptake in its 1st year or 2as a start up got a

(01:16:04):
$2,000,000,000 cap. What theydid was develop the software
that allowed you to put a littledevice inside of a little
caterpillar, big engine thing.And it would tell you when it's
oil data changed, when, youknow, something going up with
his tires or whatever. So wegive you a readout essentially
of the of the condition of avehicle. He created the big

(01:16:26):
ideas thing in Chicago.
He and he's 40, 45. I don'tknow. You couldn't find a more
productive person that you wouldidentify in the world. And he
called me, and I said, Brad, whyare you talking to me? He said,
I'm up to here.
I wake up with $1,000,000 ideas.I don't know where to put them
or who to give them

Yeah. In other words, like, I'm doing a lot,
but I'm stressed out as fuck.I'd like to do all this and feel
good about my life. I can relateto that.

Yeah.

Yeah. So that's who's most attracted to it.
Who's most averse to it? I wouldimagine there's a distinction
between people who, like yousaid, they would describe their
life as fine and it's not forthem and that's okay. And people
who, from the outside lookingin, clearly could use this, who
are in meaningful roles, who arestruggling with organization

(01:17:19):
overwhelm, over commitment, whowould genuinely benefit and the
people they work with and forwould benefit, but for whatever
reason, have like, an adversereaction to this system.
Have you encountered that, or isthat a thing I'm making up?

All the time.

Okay. Talk to me a little bit about that
situation. Like, what are thecommon things that you notice?
And then how do you respond tothat?

They say it's too much work. I say, well, would
you like to have a clear head?It's not free. You know? Here's
how you would get that clear ifyou like that.
That's up to you. But, again,I'm not a motivational speaker.
I didn't build a business tryingto convince people that they
needed to do this.

Right.

As I said earlier, I just define the game, how you
wanna play it, whether you wannaplay it, to what degree you
wanna play it. Your choice. NowI still do it because I care,
because people who actually dothis, it does it can totally
improve their conditions in lifeand work without exception.
There's no exception for that.Anybody implements any part of

(01:18:25):
this, you don't have toimplement the whole thing.
Just the 2 minute rule willchange your life. Just figure
out next actions on things thathave your attention before they
blow up. It'd be a hugeimprovement. So this is as we
say, it's not like running withscissors. There's nothing
dangerous about thismethodology.

(01:18:45):
It hasn't been my job to figureout how to motivate people to do
this.

Right.

Well, in a way, it has. Because the one of the ways
that I can motivate people, andand I've done so many speeches
and keynotes and been out therefor years doing this. It's just
model what it's like. Peoplemeet me and they go, god. You're
nothing like I thought you'd be.
They thought I was gonna bebuttoned down, anal retentive.

I mean, that's what I would have thought
reading the book. Yeah. That'stotally what I I didn't think
you're gonna be like a karatedoing meditating dude.

You're nothing like that. I'm nothing like that.

Right. And the

reason I'm nothing like that is I have the freedom
to be nothing like that becauseI came up with all this.

And the truth is you're both. Right? Like, there
is part of you that is superorganized and doesn't wanna do
the extra work, and then there'sa part of you that wants to go
explore and learn and trysomething new and do karate.
And, you know, that's it's allpart of you. And I think it
shows up in this.

Well, it it has been. My new project that I've
been resisting like crazy is tolearn to cook risotto, and my
wife has been on me forever.David, come on. You need to stay
engaged, and one of the ways tostay engaged is learn to cook
better. And how about learningto cook risotto?
Oh, that'd be such a cool thing,and I've been resisting that

(01:20:02):
project for months.

What are you trying to avoid feeling by not
cooking risotto?

I just don't think about it that much. Next action,
actually, Catherine says she'sgonna cook risotto, and let me
watch exactly how she does that.So I go, okay. I'm okay with
that.

Would a lot a little accountability be
helpful? You want me to reachout once a week on a text or
something?

No. Thank you. Get out of my get out of my face.

Just trying to help out the wife. Happy wife,
happy life. Right?

Mhmm.

Okay. So I wanna come back to team as a place to
stop, but there's one morequestion that I have for you
that I think will resonate witha lot of the audience. And as
background, I've heard youdescribe yourself as mister
approval, which is a commonthing. Like we all want the
approval of others. We are highsocial primates.

(01:20:55):
This shows up a lot in thepublic service space. We have a
lot of type 2 helper archetypes.One of the biggest reasons that
we fall into, and I say we, I'mspeaking with clients that I've
worked with myself in manycases, we fall into overwhelm.
It's not just the lack ofsystems, but it is the belief

(01:21:17):
that if I don't do everythingfor everyone, I will be
rejected. I won't winreelection.
I won't have inherent worth.Like, I am my actions. And it
seems though you refer toyourself as mister approval,
that in some way, the GTD systemhas helped you navigate that

(01:21:38):
predisposition. And I wonder ifyou could talk about the link
between those things.

Well, a big key is the word it's a two letter word
called n o.

It's hard for people.

Of course. Yeah. But there are lots of ways to
say no. Say, Skippy, that's acool, cool idea. Right now, I
just don't have the bandwidth togive that the attention that
that idea probably deserves.
Let me give you somesuggestions, some other people
who might do better at this andquicker than I could. So you

(01:22:12):
could be much more politicalabout how you say no than just
no. I don't have time to dothat. Go away. You know?
That's not exactly what you'dlike if your approval suck like
I am. So it could just be, god,what a cool idea. But, you know,
it's I I don't have thebandwidth right now to handle

(01:22:33):
that in the way you'd like ithandled. How else might we do
this? So there are a lot of goodinteractive techniques
communication wise about how youget past the commit to
everything game.

Yeah. What I'm hearing is that in the GTD
process, by getting clear onwhat's important to you, having
it all out there and being ableto make intentional choices,
then you can give a no from aclearer place that is in
integrity that is more likely toreceive a positive response than

(01:23:12):
a blanket unjustified no.

Yeah. If you just say yes, then you don't deliver
in time or on purpose. You'rescrewed.

Because trust diminishes at an automatic price
of broken agreements.

Indeed.

I'm circling that one. I just adore that.
I'll give you examples of thisthat came through my GTD
process. I was doing the thingof saying yes to everything and
everyone. I got clear on whatprojects I'm gonna use it
properly within the city councilbucket mattered to me most where
I wanted to invest my time as aconsequence of not wanting to

(01:23:49):
let people down or drop otherimportant balls, but that were
just less personally importantto me, I made a point to figure
out who really cared about thoseother things.
So, as an example, I had afellow city council member named
John, who was the biggestenvironmental advocate. I care
about the environment, but itwas not in my top two things
that I wanted to work on. And sowhen an email or a comment came

(01:24:12):
in about the environment, Ididn't say, fuck the
environment. We're done here. Isaid, wow.
Yeah. I totally hear that. It'ssuper important. John actually
would be the best person to talkabout. He's really passionate
and tuned in on this, and Ithink he'd be able to help move
your issue forward, like withthe most intensity and focus and
attention.
And they loved that because theywere getting to the best source.

(01:24:33):
He loved that because he wasbeing acclaimed for the thing
that he care about, and I lovedit because it cleared time on my
calendar. And I don't think Iever got a negative response
from that. Another example, Igot some negative response. I'm
getting thumbs up from Dave.
I love that. All right. Another,example, and this will be the
last one, is email. I used to bethe person who, you know, nearly

(01:24:53):
encountered every car becauseI'd cross the street answering
my emails and then walk into ameeting answering my emails,
just, you know, head down allthe time, like some deformed
version of a human.

IPhone zombie.

IPhone zombie. Yes. I was an iPhone zombie. And
I decided it didn't want to bean iPhone zombie. I wanted to be
with people across from me, andso I set a rule that I was not
going to check email more thantwice a day.
Now, to shift from iPhone zombieto a twice a day email checker
without any context could beviewed as an f u from the people
not getting an immediateresponse. Understood. So I

(01:25:27):
crafted a simple automatedresponse that said something
like, hey. To offer the mostattention and acuity and care
for the person sitting acrossfrom me, which might be you one
day, I'm only checking emailtwice a day, so I will get back
to you within 24 hours because Ido an end of day clear inbox.

(01:25:50):
And if you need me immediately,you can call.
Right? And, yes, there were somepeople that were upset by that,
but 95% of people went, oh myGod, I want to do that. Right?
But I had a reason. So I soappreciate you sharing that, and
I hope that that people can hearthat by using a system like this
and getting clear, the come fromwith integrity, even when it's a

(01:26:16):
no, can be met with realappreciation.
That can be such a key tofreedom. So thank you for that,
David.

Well, Skippy, you you touched on something that we
talked about in the book. Andone of the biggest issues these
days is channel

creep. Yes.

How many channels have you allowed into your
ecosystem that have input thatyou need to make decisions
about? And decide what it is,where it goes, whatever.
Technology hasn't changed muchexcept speed and volume. And so
all teams and Asana and Slackand all those things have done

(01:26:52):
just add more in baskets to you.So we talk about the fact that
you personally, it becomes thatmuch more challenging that you
personally manage as you'vedemonstrated what you've
managed.
What do I do with that input?How do I manage that? We
actually have a company that,you know, we work with up in
Norway that has taken all thosedifferent channels and they have

(01:27:13):
produced a policy about here'show you handle SMS. You use SMS
for this reason. You use ourinternal communication system
for this reason.
You use telephone for thisreason. Use face to face for
this reason. And they actuallycreated a policy around that. It
looks like a huge constrainingstructure, but the company is

(01:27:33):
like, wow. Thank you very much.
It has released a lot of stressand pressure to then agree. So
the problem is agreeing in yourprotocols about all the channels
that you've got. How often areare you committed to return
emails or return to a responseon Slack or return to a team?
That hasn't simplified theworld. It's complicated it.

Yeah. And to your point, you can renegotiate
those agreements. You're notlocked in forever. You can
change and shift. And, gosh, Ican't remember the name, but I
wish I did.
There was a woman who was on theArmchair Expert podcast
recently, and she was talkingabout her working with me
letter, which is basically a howto guide to work with her, like

(01:28:15):
what communications, what toexpect. Very, very precise. She
managed large teams. I can'tremember her name, but it sounds
like you're talking aboutsomething like that at an
organizational level. And Ithink it's important to
remember, we do train people howto treat us.
Right? Each time we have aninteraction with someone, we're
giving them feedback on whatworks and what doesn't, what we
like and we don't. And it's alsoour responsibility to cultivate

(01:28:40):
the conditions for success thatwe claim we want. That's that's
part of leadership. So I yeah.
Really great thought. Okay.Let's shift to team. It's coming
out May 21. It may be out by thetime you hear this.
We shall see. I'm very curiousabout this. So maybe just kinda
give the broad overview of howthe integration of this works.

(01:29:02):
And one of the things I wasactually curious about because
you have a coauthor, what's yourcoauthor's

name on this?

Ed Lamont Ed Lamont. Presumably you have
others, whether from thepublishing team or the members
of your staff, copywriters,etcetera, but you have a team
that's writing the book. So I'malso curious how you use GTD
with that team along the way.

Well, we used the planning process, the natural
planning model. Ed and I, for 2years, have used that. What's
the purpose of the book? Evenevery chapter, what's the
purpose of this chapter? Andthen brainstorm and then
whatever.
So we've used our own process totalk about it.

Can you describe that for folks who've never
heard of the natural planningprocess?

Sure. We just say, look. What do we try to do here?
What's our purpose? What wouldwild success look like?
And what are all the things weneed to consider about making
that wild success happen?

Mhmm.

So it's purpose, vision, brainstorm. And then out
of all that stuff that you comeup with to say, okay. How do we
organize these? What are themost important pieces? What are
the components?
What are the sequences orwhatever that we might might
need to handle? That's theorganized piece. And then you
go, okay. What's the next stepon any moving part here? Mhmm.
So purpose, vision, brainstorm,organize, next action. That's

(01:30:16):
how you got dressed today,Skippy. I need to be dressed.
Great. What would dress looklike?
And what do you need to considerin terms of getting dressed?
Fabulous. Okay. So which thingdo you put on first and how do
you organize that? Great.
What's your next step? So that'swhy it's called the natural
planning model because we allnaturally plan all the time.

Mhmm.

It's just that when it gets more complex, most
people don't follow that model.They don't know what the purpose
is of what they're doing. Theyhave no vision of wild success.
They don't brainstorm all thepotential relevant stuff that
needs to be considered, and theydon't have a sufficient
organization system that theytrust. And, you know, they don't
decide next actions on movingparts.

(01:30:57):
Could have fooled me, But 40years ago, people say, how do
you plan a project? And I go, Idon't know. I have no idea. Let
me go see. And I tried and Ichecked because I was already
involved in the training andthen corporate training world.
I said, do you have any goodproject planning, seminars or
models or whatever they say? No.We don't.

How old were you when the first version of GTD
came out?

2001. I was born in 1945, so I don't know. Do the
math.

Yeah. So you were, 56.

Yeah. 51 or 52 or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. Got it. And how long had you been
teaching the complete model as aconsultant prior to that?

I don't complete model. I don't know. We still
are complete. I still have

Fair enough.

That that keeps adding this. But for the most
part, the basics of this, youknow, I've been doing for 20
years anyway before I wrote thebook. Skippy, I I didn't know
what I'd figured out. It took methat long to figure out that
what I'd figured out was uniqueand nobody else has done it, and
that it was unique and that itwas bulletproof. Wow.
And so I had some good advice.People said, David, you should

(01:32:01):
write the manual. Write thebook. Well, okay. So I had no
expectation.
I was excited to think it mightbe useful for a lot of people
out there, but I had noexpectation. I just need to get
out of my head and to write itdown and to get it out. It took
4 years once I pulled thetrigger of writing the book from
97 to 2001. And I had no ideahow much uptake there would be.

(01:32:23):
So it kinda surprised me.
3,000,000 copies, 30 languagesout there. You know, it's like,
wow. Who'd have thought?

Okay. Back to team. So tell us about how how
this works.

Well, team is just the application of the basic GTD
principles to a team context. Soif I walk there and say, well,
what's got the team's attention?Called CAPTCHA. Because if the
team has attention on something,that means it's not on cruise
control yet. There's somethingbad about that.
It just means that's just datathat there's things you still
need to decide about it. So thecapture process is critical for

(01:32:59):
a team. And then what are yougonna do about what you got your
attention as a team? Somethingto move on, something to do. Is
this references?
What what is this? So it's aclarify process. And if you
decide there's something to do,who's doing it? And where do we
park that reminder in some way?We need to organize that data in
some way, whether that's aKanban board or whether that's

(01:33:19):
Asana or whether that's somedigital tool or whatever, where
you park.
Okay. Here's what we need to doabout that.

Let's say I'm a city manager at a midsize city,
just so that there's like, somerelatability to people in the
larger and smaller side of this.And, you know, I've got call it
350 employees. I've got 25different departments. If I want
to go implement this system, howmany people are involved in the

(01:33:48):
capture? Is it just me and myimmediate staff?
Is it all 25 direct reports? Isit everyone down to the street
sweeper operator? Who who'sinvolved in that and who's not?

No. It would be if I if I were coaching, I'd be the
senior team.

So department heads, basically?

And they would they might have attention on things
that people downstream for themhave either brought up for them
or that they're aware of. Thenthey would need to bring that to
the table if that was somethingthat that team needed to address
or might need to address. K. Sono. It shouldn't you shouldn't
probably have a meeting any withany more 20 people is is is even
more than you need.

(01:34:28):
Probably 6 to 12 is is best.

How would you determine which 6 to 12 that you
chose?

Whoever your direct reports are.

Mhmm. In many cases, it'll be more.

You're not gonna have more than 12 you have more
than 12 direct reports. You gota screwed up organization.

You'd be surprised. You'd be surprised.
There's a lot of that going on.

Well, you might have a lot of people that are
that are heads of things thatneed to be part of some sort of
a larger group context, butthey're gonna be highly
functional. If you have anythingmore than 20, it would be
absolutely a max having a room.Let's say what's, you know,
what's got our attention. Butactually, you could you could
grab attention. You could have agroom of a 1000 people and say

(01:35:12):
what's got all of yourattentions and somebody capture
them on a big whiteboardsomewhere.
Nothing wrong with that becauseall you're doing is capturing
stuff. But then the next step iswho needs to then decide what to
do about whatever it is thatshowed up out there. You may
have a a a community meetingwhere you're saying, okay. What
has all of your attention, youknow, about, you know, as you

(01:35:34):
can imagine, how many differentissues that they have community
wise, and then somebody captureall that. And then somebody's
gotta do something with those.
The capture process could be asbig as it needs to be. Where do
you need to get input in termsof what's not our cruise control
out there? Ideal scene would bethat your directs have been
doing some version of thatthemselves. This is okay. In my

(01:35:57):
community or in my purview or inmy whatever, here are all the
things that have our attention.

And then are you going through you're going
through the steps in the sameway? So with that senior team,
you're doing the clarificationorganization, or how does that
then filter down?

Well, it doesn't. You just do that. Because if you
do that, the clarification sayswhat's actionable. What do we do
something about? What does thismean?
Is this just trash? Is this abad idea? Is this something we
park put on a parking lot? Andif it's something we need to do
something about, who's doing it?And what is doing look like?
This is done when what's true.Now in a team meeting, you don't
necessarily need to go to nextactions because if you can trust

(01:36:34):
that whoever is takingaccountability for whatever this
thing is, and they'll make thosedecisions themselves about how
to move this thing forward andmove the needle on it. Mhmm. But
you better decide who's got itand whether you need some sort
of a time frame about when thisneeds to be done by it, if
that's true.

Right. So just as an example, we're putting
everything out. There are gonnabe some things that come out
that are administrativefunctions, which means that the
body itself can go ahead andtake those through and into the
engaged step. There will beother things that there will be
a legal requirement to have signoff by the elected body. And so
at that point, the next actionsteps become around the creation

(01:37:15):
scheduling of a presentation togo back to them and you'd give
them a champion so that you'dknow who was doing those things,
but those steps would just bethat.
In other instances, there mightbe a statute requirement that
you need public engagement,right, before you can take
action on any things. And so,then, your next actions would be
around who owns that, What arethe things that have to be done

(01:37:38):
to get out into those places,whether it's, you know, book a
room at the library or build aproposal or get out an
advertisement and you'd be kindof putting those off into their
individual places for execution.Is that more or less correct?

Correct. But you don't need to decide necessarily
what those actions are unlessthat person you don't trust to
know what those actions are.

Got it. Yeah. So you can just give them the sort
of project and then let them gofrom there.

But then that's critical that you can move to
step 4. How often do we need andwho needs to look at the status
of what's going on about that?

What have you seen be most successful in
organizations from theperspective of review and shared
information, which is to say, dothe direct reports have eyes on
other direct reports? Does onlythe c suite or the manager in
this case have eyes oneverything? Do you want someone

(01:38:38):
to have eyes on everything, ordo you want them to just have
like, what what has worked andwhat has not worked? Have you
seen?

Beats me.

Got it.

No. The criteria is, what do you need to do to
get this off your mind? What doyou need to do to assume that
this is on cruise control? Ifit's not, what do you need to do
about that?

It's such a good reframe. Right? Because the
tendency is to fall into makingsure everything this, that, and
the other. But, actually, thegoal of the program is to create
that space in the mind.

And what do you need to do to be able to go to
sleep at night and not have tobe, oh, wonder about a bath?
What should we do? Have they?That's not lean in the brain.

And what are the experiential or life outcomes of
teams that you've directlyobserved who have been
successful in implementing this?What do you see happen in at the
individual level and at the teamlevel?

Release of stress. Big issue these days is burnout.
One of the things we we talkabout in the book is a German
company. Germany does not takeburnout lightly because they
have to pay people who take offbecause of burnout. And the
relief of pressure when peoplecome into our seminars that we

(01:39:50):
were doing.
You know, they've come ininitially with 2,000 emails in
their email. And then a year or2 later, they come in with only
25 or a 100. So we didn't haveto teach them anything. We just
had to model what this is likewhen you actually deal with
these basic principles. Andquality of life, quality of

(01:40:10):
surveys about employeeengagement, and satisfaction
weigh up.

Yeah. I think we could all use some of that. So
that feels like a very, verytimely and I hope well received
message. This has been superfun, and it's been really
beautiful for me to get to knowyou a bit, to meet the man
behind the work. That has meantso much to me, and I love your

(01:40:36):
both jovial and matter of factspirit.
I I see both of those. Really, Ireally, really

enjoy that. Let me turn this let me turn the table
a little bit. I'm on Skippy atin our initial conversation.
How'd you get the name Skippy?Is it because you skipped to
school or you skipped school?

Interesting. I'm so glad you asked this. This is
a story that I really didn'ttell for a very long time, but,
yeah, it's interesting. So mygrandfather on my mother's side
nicknamed everyone in thefamily. I got my nickname before
birth, so Skippy was assigned tome prior to birth.
I wish he was still with us.He's not. But, we think it came

(01:41:19):
from, like, a 19 fifties comicbook of some kind. Little dude
getting in trouble a lot kind oftracks. So when I was born, my
given name was Matthew.
My Hebrew name is, but all of myblankets, my pillows, my welcome
to this world cards all saidSkippy already. And it was the

(01:41:41):
name that I knew that I grew upwith. There was only one person
in the world who called me by mygiven name. And that was my
dad's mom, which I never liked.Cause it just never, I didn't
really know who that person was.
It just didn't fit, but it wasmy grandma. And so she did that
and I'd ask her and when shedidn't it's okay. Right. But

(01:42:03):
then when my father gotremarried later in life, my
stepmother and I did not have agood relationship. I wasn't
treated well by her.
And you know, she'd been throughher own journey, so I have no
blame for her. You know, I, Iunderstand looking back, where
that came from, but she took tocalling me by my given name,

(01:42:26):
seeming to me as a way of kindof needling at me, and it sure
worked. And I really grew toresent it and really dislike it
as a result of that. And so whenI was 15 and getting ready to
get my driver's license, I hadthe realization of, oh shit,
they're going to put this namethat I, like, I could walk down
the street, you could yellMatthew, and I would not turn my

(01:42:47):
head. I wouldn't even think onmy driver's license, and that
just doesn't feel right.
So I went to, you know, thelocal courthouse and got my name
legally changed. And so every IDgovernment thing I've ever had
has always been Skippy. And sothank you for thank you for
letting me share that

public story.

I appreciate that. Yeah. It's a good one. It
seems to fit. You know, it's oneof those names that could have
gone really wrong or or right,and it just, seems to have found
its audience.
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for askingthat. Yeah. Yay.
Definitely, yay. Is thereanything else that we haven't
touched on that you would liketo share, talk about, offer at

(01:43:29):
all?

Well, one of the basic things of my methodology
and that I've come up with isyour heads for having ideas, not
for holding them. Just stopusing your head as your office.
It's a crappy office. It did notevolve to remember, mind, or
prioritize, or manage more thanabout 4 things. That's it.
As soon as you give it more thanthat, you won't take a test as

(01:43:52):
well. You won't be as presentwhen you're trying to engage
with a customer client or yourkids. So stop. But that's a big
change of behavior because youweren't born doing this. You
didn't hop out of your mom andgo, gee, mom.
What are we trying toaccomplish? What's the next
step? Is that yours or mine?This these are learned
behaviors. Like, you weren'tborn with knowing how to cook

(01:44:13):
spaghetti or to raise kids or tospeak Dutch.
Trust me. These are all theseare all things you actually have
to get. Here's the model. Here'swhat I need to do so I can do
this better. And so GED isnothing but a way to do that
about how to be clear about yourlife.

Yeah. And I know that overwhelm is the number one
thing I hear from publicservants. Burnout is the number
one downstream system and theyare avoidable and a little bit
of upstream effort can yield alifetime of downstream results.
And so I hope people take thatfully.

Well said. Yeah.

Thank you. Lived well lived, actually. How can
people find you, look you up,follow you, buy existing books,
soon to come books?

I'll just go to getting things done.com. And if
you like video snippets, youwanna snack on video stuff, you
know, go to getting things donedot com slash youtube, and
you'll see a lot of too manythings I've done. My 3 TEDx's,
you get you have a a lot ofaccess to sort of hearing
different spins on all of thisthat have come out of me over

(01:45:27):
the last few years. So that'd bea way to that'd be a way to
connect.

Yeah. It's an amazing library. Yeah. And we
will, in the leaders handbooknewsletter that pairs with this,
we'll give people a direct howto on some GTD stuff. And we'll
make sure to link to that wholelibrary because you've put in a
ton of work there and it'sreally beautiful way to get
people in.
So we will do that Finalquestion of the day, same

(01:45:53):
question goes to every guest,and you may have already
answered it. So you can saysecond if you like, but our
audience are not passiveobservers. These are the humans
in the arena doing the hard workto make change on our behalf.
And if you could leave them withjust one thought, one quote, one
practice, one anything thatwould best resource them to be a

(01:46:16):
vector for healing our politicspersonally, what would that be?

Relax.

Relax.

Give yourself some reflection time at least once a
week, if not nightly. Put thekids to bed, put the dogs to
bed, put your life partner tobed, and sit back and not have
to think about anything and seewhat shows up.

Yes. I couldn't agree more, David. Thank you for
that. And I'm gonna take us outon and if you're driving, don't
follow along. But if you're athome, let's, join David and I
for 3 relaxing breaths together,closing the eyes, sitting back
in the chair, 3 rounds of breathin the nose, holding at the top

(01:47:02):
and out the mouth.
In the nose, hold, and out themouth. And in the nose,

hold

and out the mouth and in the nose, Hold and
out the mouth. Opening the eyes,thanking David, and it is that

(01:47:40):
easy.

Yay.

Have a beautiful day, everybody. Yay. Thank you
so much for joining us today. Ifyou wanna put what you've heard
here today into practice, signup for our newsletter, the
leader's handbook, where eachmonth you'll receive just one
email with a curated selectionof the most useful tools and
practices discussed on thispodcast today and over the

(01:48:04):
course of the last month.Delivered in simple how to
worksheets, videos, and audioguides, so you and your teams
can try and test these out inyour own life and see what best
serves you.
And lastly, if you wanna be avector for healing our politics,
if you wanna do your part, takeout your phone right now and
share this podcast with 5colleagues you care about. Send

(01:48:28):
a simple text, drop a line, andleave the ball in their court
because the truth is the morethose around you do their work,
the better it will show up inyour life, in your community,
and in your world. Have abeautiful day.

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