March 10, 2021 • 52 mins
We tend to think about personal productivity as doing more things more effectively – being able to optimize work processes, time schedules and to-do-lists. That is often not the case. In fact, personal productivity is about doing the right things rather than to do more things. It’s about having a clear mind, when you run a busy life – and most importantly: How to get things done.
David Allen is wildly recognized as the world's leading authority on personal and organizational productivity. During the past 30 years, he has conducted pioneering research, coached and educated some of the world's highest performing professionals. He is here to help us get [the right] things done.
DAVID TALKS ABOUT
- What is productivity, actually? It’s not time management, for sure.
- Why the daily to do lists don't work. Your life is too much of a surprise.
- Why the next step is the most important one.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Morten Andersen (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to What Monkeys Do. My
name is Morten Kamp Andersen.
And this is a podcast about whatit takes to make a change and
make it stick.
In this episode of What MonkeysDo, I speak with David Allen,
who is the world's leadingexpert on personal productivity,
(00:29):
why productivity and a podcastabout change? Well, there are
two things which prevents usfrom making a change. The first
is not prioritizing what is mostimportant to us. And the second
is not having a clear mind. Thatis we have too many thoughts in
our head. David Allen has made asystem called Getting Things
(00:50):
Done. It involves five steps,one, capture all of your tasks.
Two clarify what kind of task itis. Three, organize your tasks
in projects, calendar and nextitems. Four, reflect through
regular reviews, and five engagein your tasks. Why this is the
(01:11):
world's most used system why canit help us focus on what is most
important to us? and why thiscan help us change? Well, let's
find out in this episode of WhatMonkeys Do. My guest today is
wildly recognized as the world'sleading authority on personal
and organizational productivityis 30 years of pioneering
(01:32):
research coaching, educatingsome of the world's highest
performing professionals, hasearned him Forbe's recognition
as one of the top five executivecoaches in the United States
Fast Company has called him oneof the world's most influential
thinkers in the area of personalproductivity, and Time Magazine
label his first book GettingThings Done as the defining self
(01:56):
help business book of thedecade. He's the author of three
books, the phenomenon andinternational bestseller Getting
Things Done. But he's alsowritten Ready for Anything, and
Making It All Work. He is alsoby the way, one of the few non
celebrities with over a millionfollowers on Twitter. Welcome to
you, David Allen.
David Allen (02:16):
Thank you, Morten.
Thanks for the invitation. Glad.
Morten Andersen (02:19):
Yeah, I really look forward to this. So What
Monkeys Do is a podcast aboutchange. And change is often
about focusing your time andyour energy on something new.
And you have invented the mostwidely used personal
productivity methodology thereis, but there will be some of
our listeners who don't knowwhat getting things done is
(02:40):
about. So can you tell us alittle bit about yourself and
about what getting things doneis about?
David Allen (02:46):
Sure. Let me start with the second part, what
getting things done as about isjust the best practices that
I've discovered, over the lastreally 40 years now, about how
do you stay clear when you'vegot a busy life, full of volume
and velocity of things coming atyou decisions you have to make.
And being able to serve on topof that, instead of feeling
overwhelmed by it or having thatcreate what I now refer to as
(03:08):
the ambient anxiety of so muchto do not sure you're doing the
right thing. And being able tostay clear, really more about
than anything else. And so Ijust discovered, I didn't really
make them up more than Irecognize the best practices we
do, that actually gets our headclear, without having to
complete all the things youthink you want to do without
(03:28):
having to finish your to dolist. But it's really about
being appropriately engaged withwhatever all your commitments
are. So I just discovered thevery specific, both principles,
and then practices about how doI recognize my commitments? How
do I clarify them? How do I makesure I create a trusted external
brain so I don't have to trustmy mind to remember remind,
(03:49):
prioritize or managerelationships because it's, it
didn't evolve to do that doesn'tdo it very well. But external
brains do if you do them, right.
And so I just discovered how todo that. And I got there because
I kind of discovered the valueand practical value of
clearspace early on, or gettinga black belt in karate. You have
to learn how to get clear fast.
(04:12):
If you don't want 2000unprocessed emails hanging
around your psyche if you'rejumped by four people at once at
once. So you know staying clearand the all the mindfulness
people focus on your breathing.
I learned that 40 years ago inthe martial arts, so I had an
attraction to clear space alsoon the freedom kind of guy. I
love to be spontaneous follow myintuitive hunches, etc. But it's
my life as I started to take allmy different careers and
(04:35):
professions and jobs I'd had andmeld it in the tip just like a
consulting practice back in1982. I discovered my life got
more complex and complicated.
And I said wait a minute, how doI stay clear because I love
clear amidst all that. And so Istarted uncovering these
techniques for myself first, andthen it turned out it they work
(04:57):
so well to create more clarity,more focus more space to focus
on meaningful things, turnaround and use those with my
clients produce the sameresults, those same practices
produced exactly the same thing,more stability, more control,
more of a sense of now, it'seasier to know what my
priorities are, easier to leavework earlier, you know, it's
easy to spend more time to bemore present in my life, and all
(05:20):
the good value that that canbring. And then that got
discovered by somebody in thebig corporate world. They said,
Wow, we need that in our wholeCorporation does Can you design
a training around that, so I didit work successfully. And so
from 1983, on, I spent literally1000s of hours training hundreds
of 1000s of people coaching,hundreds and hundreds and
(05:41):
spending 1000s of hours desk,cyber, some of the busiest and
brightest folks you'd ever meeton the planet, actually
implementing and refining thismethodology, I didn't really
realize what I realized until Ifinally, you know, 25 years
later, it took me that long tofigure out that what I'd figured
out was unique, and nobody elseseemed to have done it. And that
I better write the manual. Sothat's what I wrote, Getting
Things Done.
Morten Andersen (06:02):
So one of the key fundamentals of this
methodology is that you need toget everything out of your head,
because that's a bad place tostore it, I think you have a
saying something like, yourbrain is for making ideas, not
for keeping them. So it is toget everything out of your head,
David Allen (06:18):
and you have 50,000 thoughts a day, I defy anybody
to write down 50,000 things aday, you're not doing that. But
anything that's potentiallymeaningful, that you think you
might still need to decide or dosomething about that you can't
finish in the moment it happens.
That's what you need to capture.
So all of that needs to be outof your head. If you don't, it
(06:38):
spins around in your head. Soyou have a, you know, concept of
monkeys who believe me talkingabout monkey in your head, I
need capital that I did hirevice president should we adopt?
Should we get divorced, shouldwe, you know, yadda yadda, and
those things will spin likecrazy and create that ambient
anxiety that is that you can't,you can't find one single source
for it. But you started to useyour head as a really bad
(07:00):
office, you know, to try tomanage all that. It's a terrible
executive.
Morten Andersen (07:04):
I mean, one of the things that I discovered
when I lay in bed, and I have tosay, Oh, I have to remember that
tomorrow, I have to write anemail to him. And so if you
actually have written that downsomewhere, your mind will not be
frantically trying to, toremember that all the time.
David Allen (07:18):
As long as you trust, you'll see where you
wrote it down at the appropriatetime. So that's why there are
several steps to making sure youget clear you have to capture
it, clarify what specificallyyou need to do about it, and
then park it in some trustedsystem. And the trusted system
means I've got to put it in aplace, I'll trust I'd see it
like I trust, I see my calendarto see that I need to be talking
(07:39):
to David Allen today. And thenyou need to step back and make
sure you're looking at all thatcontext and content, you know,
appropriately, so that you'refeeling a lot more comfortable
about what you're doing.
Morten Andersen (07:50):
So without going into all of the nitty
gritty is essentially amethodology, there are five
steps and one of them is tocapture everything. So it is to
get things out of your head andcapture it. And then it is to
decide is this something I cantake action on? Is that a
project with multiple steps andessentially creating a
methodology around all of thestuff that you that you need to
(08:11):
do? And you say that you came upwith it? Or you're you
discovered this over a longtime? And there's obviously been
time management systems beforethat? Why does this have the
impact that it did?
David Allen (08:22):
Probably because I never had any formal or
traditional education inbusiness psychology or time
management. Absolutely nopreconditions myself about what
you need to do to stay clear,while you're, you know, in a
busy life. And so I kind of cameto this from the street, you
know, and just my own experiencewith it. And then to find out
that, but a lot of the timemanagement stuff says, Well, you
(08:44):
need to set your priorities, youneed to have ABC, you need to
create a daily to do list and alot of other things like that,
that just frankly didn't work.
You know, they they work if youhad nothing else to do but
organize your life that way.
Most people are a lot busierthan that. And quite frankly,
you know, you have as manypriorities as you have different
things you do today. Yes, whatthis methodology does is it
(09:05):
starts with where you are notwith where you should be. And
most of the time managementstuff starts with where you
should be. But if your day today, ordinary life is feeling
out of control, and unfocused,trying to focus on the future
and something, you're just goingto create more guilt and
frustration. It doesn't mean youshouldn't focus on that. No,
those are great things to focuson. But just if your attention
(09:25):
is being grabbed by stuff thatyou're not managing
appropriately, in your day today, then Good luck, you know,
trying to do the other thing,the higher horizon stuff as I've
identified them, you know, whyare you on the planet? You know,
what's your ideal scenario inlife and work and five years
from now? And what are your youknow, what do you need to
accomplish over the next two tothree years? And what are all
(09:46):
the things you need to maintainin your life, like your health
and your finances and yourrelationships? Were all the
projects you have about allthat? And then what are all the
things you need to do about anyof that stuff? Well, you got six
horizons of commitments thateverybody has, whether you're
conscious Have them or not. Andall of those are creating this
incredibly complex variety andmultiple, multiple levels of
(10:07):
stuff that most people don'trealize how complex their life
is, they've allowed themselvesto create in terms of what
they've done. So what thismethodology does just say, look,
let's turn to get all of thatunder control, not control, like
control the weather, or yourkids or your boss, we could love
talking about having somethingunder control, like your car, or
a meeting, or your desk, or yourhead or your kitchen and have it
(10:28):
under control enough so that youfeel like I'm in a stable
situation where it gives me thefreedom to then focus
appropriately as I need tofocus. So as I say, a lot of
people shouldn't be settinggoals, they need to clean their
bathroom, it doesn't mean agoal, not a good thing. It just
means if your bathroom isfeeling out of control, or your
kitchen, you know, you're gonnahave a tough time focusing
appropriately on the goals youneed to set.
Morten Andersen (10:51):
So many people, they would probably have an an
email, you know, where they'veput some flags or some
priorities there, then they willhave a to do list. And that's
for many people, actually, thestuff of how they organize their
lives, as things come in,they'll put something on their
to do list and and maybe that'sit, but Well, actually, you're
suggesting that you should sitdown and take a couple of days
(11:12):
off, maybe even or a day off andjust write everything,
everything that is on your plateto get it out. So all of the
projects, you may have all ofthe things that needs to be done
in the in the house, all of thepeople, you need to call all of
the things that you need to doall of that needs to come out
once and for all. What's thepurpose of that process?
David Allen (11:32):
Empty your head, if it's still banging around in
there, it's because you're notappropriately engaged with it.
So what you need to do isidentify the content that you
need to start to appropriatelyengage with why's mom's birthday
on your mind. Well, no, no,we're gonna do great. What's
your outcome? What are you? Whatare you trying to accomplish?
Well, we need to celebrate mom'sbirthday. Fabulous. Now you got
a project? What's your nextstep? "Oh i don't know", yeah,
(11:55):
that's right. So the problem is,is most people's to do lists
create as much stress as theyrelieved, because they're still
there reminding them, it's stillan incomplete list of the stuff
that has their attention. Andnot only that, whatever they
captured is still unclear interms of what we're going to do
about it. So just remind you,you have decisions to make, you
haven't you haven't made yet yougot more thinking you need to
do, you haven't finished yourthinking. So it's still spinning
(12:16):
in there. So now you got to somesomething out of your head, but
it's still banging around inyour head, because it's still
more reminding you there's moreto think about and more to
decide.
Morten Andersen (12:25):
Because the funny thing is because I went
through that process, and Iprobably came up with about, I
can't remember 70 or 80projects. And a project in this
terminology is essentially athing you need to do where there
are multiple steps for it to becompleted. So if it's my mom's
birthday, I needed to talk to mysisters about maybe buying a
(12:45):
present together, then we needto find out what she wants than
it is to buy it than it is toarrange a time to go and meet
her and give her the present.
And I had probably about closeto hundreds of those projects
David Allen (12:56):
most people have between 30 and 100.
Morten Andersen (12:58):
Wow, it's amazing. And you would think
that that would create even morestress, complexity or
uncertainty, can I even do allof that, but it had the reverse
effect. That was the funniestthing was that it actually gave
a sense of are that's what Ineed to do. Now I just need to
look at it and decide what to doand what not to do when in what
(13:19):
order. And then that actuallytook away stress. That was an
amazing experience. By the way,
David Allen (13:24):
everybody listening or watching this, at some point
has felt overwhelmed or confusedand sat down and made a list and
felt better. Yes. And nothingchanged in their world.
Morten Andersen (13:32):
Yes,
David Allen (13:32):
what changed was the most important thing, which
is how they are engaged withtheir world changed, which is
what you did described in alittle more detail. But even in
a very basic, mundane level,making list about anything,
whether that's stuff you need tobuy at the store, or whether
it's stuff to deal with, withyour mom, or all the stuff you
got to do in terms of the newjob that you've got, or now
you've got to work from homebecause of the pandemic and what
(13:55):
are all the things I need todeal with any and all that, you
know, if you leave it in yourhead, you'll take as much
cognitive real estate thinkingabout Je', I need to buy a desk
as Je' How am I going to get mykids into the right education
for the next two years? Yes, andthey'll take up the same space
if it's just in your head,because your head does not know
how to calibrate all that stuffappropriately. your conscious
(14:15):
mind does. That's why you needto make it conscious and
objective. And then you justdescribe that process that you
went through. And believe me, Ispent many 1000s of hours with
some of the best, brightestbusiest people you'd ever meet,
having them go through exactlywhat you just described. And it
usually takes somewhere betweenand for most people, it takes
one to six hours just toidentify all the stuff that had
(14:36):
to have attention on and thenthe rest of at least a couple of
days usually to go through eachone of those and make the
appropriate decisions. So theydon't have any more thinking
they need to do about them. Andthen organize some sort of
appropriate list manager, youknow that that they can keep the
list of reminders about peopleto call errands to run things to
bring up to the board meetingprojects they need to keep track
(14:58):
of until they're done, etcThat's what the process is. And
what's strange Morten is, as youknow, it's not rocket science
unless you're in a rocket. Theseare not behaviors that people
don't already know how to do.
This is not a foreign languageor some new technology.
Everybody knows how to writestuff down. Everybody knows how
to recognize, wait a minute,I've got my attention on that.
(15:18):
What's that? mom's birthdaygift, should we adopt, hire the
Vice President of getting newmobile phone, grabbing those,
that's not hard to do it what's,what's difficult is most people
don't realize they should. Andthey just let them keep banging
around in there. And there's nosense of past or future in that
thing, talking about a journalor a monkey running around in
(15:38):
your head because they don'tstop. And they when they show up
consciously, they go subliminal,but then they show up
consciously, at veryinappropriate times, you like at
three o'clock in the morningabout something, you can't do
anything about it three o'clockin the morning, lying in bed,
your brain that doesn't haveone. It's not very smart.
Morten Andersen (15:56):
And one thing is sort of creating an overview
of what you need to do,obviously, it's also a system
that you need to maintain. Andthere are different processes
once a week you sit down and doyour weekly review, so to speak,
you look at your calendar,what's coming, what have you
just been through what's youknow, and so on. And you also
have a monthly and quarterlyreview. How closely would you
(16:19):
suggest that people shouldfollow this exact process? Or
how much should they add theirown flavor to it. So when I read
blocks, for instance, and howpeople are using this, many are
adapting it to their ownpreferences, how much from what
you have seen, have peoplebenefited from following it
strictly, or adapting itthemselves
David Allen (16:37):
depends on what you mean by it. And you say follow
it, specifically, if they keepit out of your head, absolutely.
But out of here, how you dothat, rather than your arm, you
know, hire 12 people to followyou around and talk to them and
have them keep track of it andremind you at the right times. I
mean, frankly, I don't care howyou do any of that. But the
principle is absolutelyinviolent. If it's in your head,
(16:58):
it's in the wrong place. So howyou customize, keeping it out of
your head? That's up to you. Allthose things that you just
mentioned, were over all theyears, I just tried to curate
basically, what are the some ofthe typical best practices that
allow the typical kind of, youknow, mid to senior level
professional, actually, anybodywith a busy life? How do they
keep their head clear? You know,there's only one criterion, do
(17:20):
you have any attention onanything you can't finish right
now that's distracting you fromwhat you've ever you're trying
to be present about? If youdon't, you've done it, I don't
care how you get there. I justdiscovered the best way to get
there. And don't kid yourself.
If you think you've got a clearhead simply by doing mindfulness
openings around your breathing.
You know, that's good stuff todo. I do that. But you know,
(17:40):
that's, that's there's nothingwrong with that. But if you
don't handle the things thatyou've got commitments about,
that's why you have to keepworking on focusing on your
breathing, because you keepthinking about capitalism and
the vice president need to hireand should you adopt, you know,
why don't you get that stuff offyour mind. So it gives you more
space to do what yourconsciousness is better to do,
which is to take advantage ofmeditative space, a reflective
(18:01):
space, be able to then becreative, or be strategic, or
just be present, with whateveryou're doing. Those are the
golden goodies.
Morten Andersen (18:08):
I think it is about finding you know how this
works for you. And also exactlywhat you know, whether you write
it on a piece of paper that youcarry in your pocket all the
time or on your iPhone, orwhatever you do, that really
doesn't matter. Just as long asit works for you, I suppose. I
think what helped me a lot,obviously, was to get out of my
head, but also to break thingsdown into actionable steps.
(18:29):
Because sometimes we have a bigpiece like hiring a new vice
president, you know, is a bigchunk of of steps, actually. And
it can be confusing anddifficult to actually take
action on it unless you canbreak it down. And I think that
was probably the most valuable.
I don't know if it camespecifically from this. But
generally, when I, when I taughtmyself to break things down, I
learned a lot from that.
David Allen (18:52):
And you don't actually need to break
everything down to all thedifferent pieces, some things
you might want to do. But themain thing is, what's the next
thing I need to do? The verynext piece, and that's where
people get hung up is becausethey think they have to think
through the whole thing beforethey decide the next thing to
do. Well, what do you need to doto figure out all this stuff?
Oh, maybe I should set a meetingwith Bill. Yeah, great. How you
(19:13):
gonna do that? I should sendthem a meeting invite. Fabulous,
how long would that take? Don'tyou just do that in a second? Do
it. And suddenly you have thisbig project in motion. Because
you stop freaking yourself outabout everything that has to be
done. You just figured out youjust brought it down to what do
I need to do to start to movethe needle on this. And that's
the critical breakdown that youneed to finish you're thinking,
(19:34):
indeed, you might want to spendfour days with 16 people in a
big room and whiteboards toflesh out a major project. Sure.
But you better have veryspecific next actions you need
to do to set up that meeting.
And very specific next actionsonce you walk out of that
meeting about what needs tohappen by the moving parts. So
what's the next action thingthat is so magical? So those are
two of the key components. Iknow you're probably going to
(19:56):
ask will it look if somebody'sjust getting started or what are
the key elements This stuff,basically get the stuff out and
get as much as you can out ofyour head and decide the next
actions on any of those youintend to actually do something
about. And then step three wouldbe make sure you park reminders,
if you can't finish the actionin the moment, you you decided
to have some sort of listmanager, and review and reflect
on all of that stuff as best youcan, on some consistent basis,
(20:18):
you're gonna be way ahead of theplanet if you do any version of
that.
Morten Andersen (20:23):
Okay, I like the fact that you are so open
about this is a methodology.
I've seen that work for manypeople. But if you have another
way of doing it, go about doingthat. I mean, that's, that's
really cool. There might be somepeople who say, Well, I'm not a
structured type of person. Sothis sounds like it's very
structured. Sounds like, youneed to get things out of your
head as soon as you have itthere. But I don't have that
(20:43):
sense of structure around me.
What would you say to them?
David Allen (20:48):
Well, they wouldn't even ask that question. If they
were unstructured. They couldeven get out of bed. If they
were unstructured. Just ask themwhat they really like to do. I
like to fish I like to paint, Ilike to play the flute, it will
show me what you use when youfish. They open their tackle
box. And it's neat as a pin. Ilike to play the flute, show me
your music, and where do youplay? And it's all structured. I
(21:10):
like to paint Show me yourpaintbrushes and show me where
are you? Oh my god. See, usuallyyou don't think about structure,
when it's something you have todo to do something you love to
do. If you love to cook, are youhighly structured in your
kitchen knowledge love to cook,let me go see your kitchen, the
spices are here, butters here,you know the the pans are down
(21:30):
here. It's not all over theplace. Unless you're just a
young guy in college, in whichcase, if you could just know
where the salt is, everythingelse is mess. But you'll be as
structured as you need to be toget what you want to be doing.
So you know, as people say, Idon't like structure. So what do
you think about the center linein the road out there? I think
that's a good thing. Is that aconstraint that if you Oh, my
(21:51):
God, I'm in jail, I have to stayon this side of the road. No.
Structures is simply creatingthe limitations that are
required to achieve result, youonly need to be as organized as
you need to be. I don't likehaving to be organized, I just
get as organized as I need tobe. So I don't have to rethink
anything. And so I can findstuff when I need it. You know,
(22:12):
that's coming. I understand whatpeople because they look at
this, and they see the result of25 or 30 years of my work all
put into one manual and said,Look, if you really wanted to do
this, here's the here's the bestpractices, you know, from 1000s
of hours and 1000s of people,you know, actually applying this
process. And so it can seem alittle overwhelming or daunting.
(22:33):
I think it may look like it's alittle over. But however
structured is it to recognizestuff that has your attention?
How over structured is it tomake a decision about what I
need to do about it? What I needto keep track of those done? How
over structured is it to say,Well, I need to keep track of
this somewhere. So my braindoesn't have to keep reminding
myself, I can trust my system toremind me how over structured is
it to step back and say, gee, bythe way, where do you need to be
(22:55):
for the next couple of weeks?
What's up, when people say thisis too much structure I go, I
understand what you're saying.
Because most of the structuresand the old time management
trainings and all that stuffwere way over structured and
unrealistic. And they didn'thave anything to do with the
flexibility we all need. That'swhy my radical thing back in the
early 1980s was the daily to dolists don't work. They just
(23:18):
don't work. Your life is toomuch of a surprise. You need to
be a lot more flexible. But youneed to total life to do lists
all the time so that you canmake good choices about it and
not feel guilty. They didn't dothe 25 things you thought were
gonna do on Monday.
Morten Andersen (23:31):
Yes. And I guess what was also back in the
old days when it was pen andpaper was that you had to carry
it over to another day or youhad to there was a lot of you
spend a lot of time writingthings down now it's much easier
with different apps or you know,different reminders that you
have, I think I think technologyis actually helped a lot in that
way.
David Allen (23:51):
Well, it's helped and hurt. It's helped probably
more than it's hurt. But there'sstill the downside the black the
black hole of the technology isthe new new will give me a new
app that'll fix this give me allthe way that didn't quite Why
didn't work that one. But thatdidn't work. I'm gonna give me
the new new and the new newdidn't work. So give me the new
new new and you think that'sgonna work. If you get this
(24:12):
methodology, you can makeanything work, you know, as you
and I said before we startedthis recording, I use the time
design or the time system systemon a Copenhagen. Only bear is a
friend of mine. I'm the guy whodesigned that thing. And he was
one of the most coolest guyshe's still around by the way.
Yes, yes, yes. Yeah,
Morten Andersen (24:30):
I used it as well. I really liked it. And my
life was a lot less complicatedthat time by the way, but then
it became very complicated tomaintain.
David Allen (24:39):
Well, that's why we say the paper based system to me
is the is the bestorganizational tool for your
life simply because it's all inyour face. You can see the whole
Gestalt in us in a few minutesor seconds. You can flip to
wherever you want to go see itsrelationship to everything else
very well and it's almostimpossible to do that on the
computer. It's a very hard todo. You don't have the same you
(25:00):
You can do discrete things in avery cool way. But you can't see
the whole game very easily.
That's why that's why By theway, there's we've made two
major attempts with some of thebrightest, brightest people on
the planet to do GTD apps. Andin that neither one none of them
work. You needed much more ofthe technology to really make it
work the way it really needed towork. It wasn't there, still not
there.
Morten Andersen (25:21):
I need to ask you about that. Because that was
one of my things. Why is therenot an app? I mean, because
it's, on one hand, it seems verylogical that there would be an
app because there is amethodology. And there should be
a way to put that into an app.
And I, I have no doubt thatthere'll be a huge demand for
such an app.
David Allen (25:37):
No, there's no demand. There's no demand.
Everybody who kind of got GTDand the whole life hack movement
was created there. Probably lastcount. You know, years ago,
there were over 300 apps builton the GTD model. They're all
just list managers Tell me Oh,this manager, when you write
down something, it automaticallysays, gee, is there a project
about this? And by the way,what's the next action? And if
there's a project on it, youthen you click on that it
(25:58):
automatically pulls up whateveryou use for project thinking,
and you've defaulted already,that you can spend two minutes
brainstorming a new project, andyou put that in there. And then
before it turns off, so you willspend more time thinking about
this, do you want what's yournext action, right? And then it
parks it automatically and whereyou need to keep track of that,
who even thinks they need that?
Morten Andersen (26:25):
In a previous episode, I spoke with Jim Loehr,
and he talks a lot aboutmanaging energy rather than
managing time. And as anexample, you know, also in some
of his writing, he says, Well,you can spend two hours with
your family. But if you'rementally somewhere else, then
what quality of time is stackedwith your family. So instead of
focusing on the time focusing onyour energy, and your mental
(26:50):
focus, etc, he had a thoughtabout spending a little bit too
much focus on time, that was maynot be always the best way of
finding out how you shouldallocate your energy on a day,
what are you thinking aboutthat?
David Allen (27:04):
Well turns a critical component like spaces,
you can't manage time you don'tmiss manage five minutes and
come up with six or four and ahalf. Time just is. So it's
true. I don't think about time,I just think about where's my
attention? I think about timecalled, How much time are you
going to spend? And then youknow what I do when I finished
that? And what do I need to do?
It's going to take a certainamount of time for me to do that
I have a commitment aboutsometimes a critical component
(27:25):
with like money or spaces, andall those are just resources
that you utilize. So you don'tignore that idea. Why would you
even think about time, unlessyou're some sort of philosopher
like the German philosophers,Heidegger and people like that,
you know, thought about stufflike that. And I'm kind of too
lazy to go down that track.
Don't even worry about thatstuff. times really an
(27:47):
experience. And it really isquality more than quantity. I
mean, that part I wouldcertainly agree with. And when
people say you should allocate acertain amount of time for
certain kinds of things. Yes,that's true, but to a liminative
effect, because quite frankly,you know, I think your success
comes from following yourintuitive hunches about what to
do at any point in time. It'shard to listen to those
(28:10):
intuitive hunches or recognizeswhich ones are the ones to
follow, unless you're clearenough in your head that you're
not distracted by all the otherstuff that gets in the way takes
up cognitive real estate. And sothat's why implementing, you
know, the GTD or my methodology,it just helps you get a lot more
clear space, to thinkstrategically to work to think
about where I need to spend mytime. And to, I plan as little
(28:32):
as I can get by with the onlytime blocks on my calendar or
when I've made externalcommitments with other people to
keep that agreement. Otherwise,I leave my space totally open.
Now there are times if you're ina very, very busy life,
especially when other peoplehave access to your calendar.
And you know, you need two goodhours to finish that business
plan. By Friday, when you haveto turn it in, and you look down
(28:54):
your calendar, you go God, if Idon't block that in, it ain't
gonna get done. And so you needto you then need to make an
appointment with yourself. Icouldn't agree more. So in that
regard, you need to take youneed to be aware of time and
time blocks. And there are timeswhen time blocking is a good
idea. But don't overdo it. Assoon as you block one of those
you'll you'll undo your ownagreement with stuff faster than
(29:15):
anything. And then you know,then you don't trust yourself.
And then you don't trust yourcalendar, you don't trust what's
a real thing versus what's aGee, I'd like to thing. You
know, I don't know if you knowit, but one of the first time
management systems that showedup physically in the US was the
day timer. And the day timershowed up in 15 minutes segments
why the guy who invented it wasa lawyer, and he had to charge
(29:37):
by 15 minute increments. Sothat's, you know, that certainly
became Of course, I need to keeptrack of the time I spend
because that's money every 15minutes gets charged that kind
of money.
Morten Andersen (29:47):
I know that your methodology is labeled as a
productivity tool, but I thinkwhat can be misunderstood by
that is that then you just needto produce more than you just
need to be more effective thenyou just need to run faster you
take more in so to speak, but Idon't think that's the benefit
of this program at all. I thinkit is actually, you know,
sitting down thinking, what aremy long term, big goals? What,
(30:08):
what do I want to achieve,really, and then link that to
and creating space to do that.
So it's actually making yourmost important projects, your
most important projects, so tospeak, and having a system
around that. So I think there isa lot of focus on time and a lot
of focus on productivity. Butfor me, it is actually doing the
right things rather than do morethings.
David Allen (30:31):
Productivity just got a lot of baggage as a word,
everybody's being productive,right now you're being
productive, doing what you'redoing, everybody's producing
whatever they've got, when wesay more productive, that just
means I want to get more out ofthe time and energy I'm putting
into it. Or I want to get thesame thing with less time and
energy put into it, that's beingmore productive. But productive
(30:54):
just means, you know, achievingsome sort of desired result or
experience. If you go on avacation to relax, and you don't
relax. That's an unproductivevacation. Yes, if you try to
meditate, but don't meditate,that's unproductive. So people
again, think about I understandthat the people think about
productivity means busy workingharder, working longer, you
know, and for some people, itmight, I don't know, that's up
to them in terms of what they'retrying to produce. Are you're
(31:16):
trying to produce relaxation,happiness, quality of life,
quite frankly, you know, workand I don't know where you are
in this game. But many peoplewho get enthralled by GTD and
really start to practice it gettotally overwhelmed themselves,
because they get so inspired, Ithought how many things they now
can produce. They start throwingmore in and taking on more and
more. And if someone wouldthink, oh, wait a minute, I'm
(31:37):
burning out does that GTD not ifI was burning out was your goal.
Morten Andersen (31:41):
And I've actually been through that
process myself, too. In thebeginning, I was like, Whoa, I
can really do a lot. And I cando a lot by doing this. But I
actually got trapped into likingdoing more and more, and then
finding out that that was notwhat it was about. And it's
interesting what you say aboutproductivity, because most
people would not say, I want tohave a productive holiday, they
would use some kind of otherword. And I know exactly what
(32:03):
you mean. And and that's why Ithink the productivity label can
sometimes be a misconception forwhat they say,
David Allen (32:09):
if we could have found a different word, we would
have used it, but there justisn't one. No language hasn't
that most languages even havetrouble, You know, translating,
getting things done, ortranslating mind like water or
translating next action.
Strangely, you know, that stuffthat became sort of common sense
to be in many of the differentlanguages in the books and 30
(32:30):
languages out there havetrouble, you know, translating
some of this stuff.
Morten Andersen (32:36):
And I think your background in martial arts,
but also your concept of MindLike Water is actually a really
important component of this. Canyou explain what Mind Like Water
means and and,
David Allen (32:49):
you know, I stole that from the martial arts,
Bruce Lee's sensei that trainedhim to talk Bruce about be like
water be as flexible, but aspowerful as water is. And water
is totally appropriate to itsenvironment. It doesn't
overreact doesn't under react.
And it's quite fluid and quiteflexible. So the whole idea of
having mind like water is havinga mind that doesn't over or
(33:09):
under react to anything. You'redealing with stuff in present
tense. But if you're distractedby a meeting that went south
this morning, is hard to bepresent with your kids, it's
hard to be present cookingspaghetti, you know, it's not
mine, like there's not a mindlike water state. So like water
simply says are you present? Areyou present with whatever you're
doing. And you decide what youwant to do by being present. And
(33:32):
you decide how you want to usethe space that creates for you.
People use it to be morecreative. Some people use it to
be more strategic, a lot ofpeople use it just to be more
present, and coach to seniorexecutive and actually head of a
large, global organization. Andhe said, David, my presenting
issue is when I go home with myyoung kids on the weekend, I do
not want to bring thisorganization with me to be able
(33:54):
to watch your girl play socceror football without being on
your iPhone. Those are a lot ofthe AHA is that people start to
implement this, they start toexperience to go wow, this is
really more about quality oflife than just being busier.
Morten Andersen (34:09):
Exactly. So the connection you also made to
mindfulness before was that inorder to have a good mindfulness
experience, it's literally aboutobviously focusing on your
breathing. But the more the moreyou get disturbed by your own
thoughts, or you know, yourattention gets carried away,
then the harder that is, and oneof the key ways actually to
(34:31):
support your mind of not beingdistracted too much is to get
everything out of your head andnot be worried about am I
forgetting this? Or I need toremember this and so on. And I
think getting things done as amethodology actually supports
that mindful experience. You canhave them
David Allen (34:51):
Yeah, well, so
Morten Andersen (34:53):
a lot of people are attracted to productivity
tools, and there are certaintypes of people and I might
actually be Even though one ofthose types, what do you think
attracts people to productivitytools in general?
David Allen (35:06):
I don't know, if you like to cook, aren't you
attracted to cool kitchen gear?
Morten Andersen (35:10):
Yes, I am.
David Allen (35:12):
One of my many jobs back in those days was working
in a construction with, youknow, for for a construction
company doing all kinds ofstuff. And man, just don't let
me into a hardware store becauseI would come out with bags of
coups, too. So I think, youknow, cool tools, depending on,
you know, if you're, if you'reinto, you know, sort of, as
(35:34):
somebody described GTD is asknowledge work athletics, it's
right here, the moves you needto take to be able to then make
sure you're managing yourthinking process, you know,
optimally. And so any tools thatfacilitate managing the thinking
process, you know, and in justin the last 10 days, you know,
here's a new tool, remarkablepad that I'm just experimenting
(35:57):
with, to see, you know, becauseit gives you really the touch
and feel of paper, but at thesame time, it's digital. And so
you can send this PDF, this youcan do whatever. And I still
don't know, jury's out withthat. Right? before I've talked
to you. There's a company that'snow designing training programs,
(36:17):
using these virtual realityglasses. Yes. So there's another
tool, I'm always fascinated by,you know, if what you want is to
be able to be more creative, orbe clearer, any kind of tool
that helps you do that I'm, I'm,I'm for that, of course, my buy
to use ratio is about 10. toone.
(36:39):
Yes. Cuz, you know, a lot ofthis stuff is, it's kind of a
cool idea in concept. But, youknow, the trick is, are you
still using it two months fromnow, if not, it probably didn't
quite match to your what youreally needed and how you really
move and work
Morten Andersen (36:55):
for Getting Things Done. As a methodology, I
use OneNote as my preferredtool. It's very simple.
Actually, I know there are appsthat can be used, and you can
optimize and you can do a lot ofthings. But it actually really
works for me. And whether it'son my iPhone, or on my desktop,
or whether I write things downon a piece of paper, and then
put it into OneNote, Later. itactually really works for me.
(37:17):
And I think, whatever works, Idiscovered that on, on, somebody
had had used it on on OneNote,and wrote a blog about it. And I
just copied that and it workedwell, for me, I like
experimenting with new things.
But I always return back to theOneNote. Because it, it works
well. For me.
David Allen (37:34):
Anything that's a list manager will basically
manages all of not all managers,you know, a huge amount of this,
you can do it all on Evernote, Iknow people that are huge
Evernote fans and saying verysimilar to OneNote, how you
could use that. It's so openended and you create your own
heuristic about how it'sorganized and so forth. And
that's great. That's kind of, Idon't know how long it took me
(37:55):
about six months to feelcomfortable with how to organize
all my Evernote notes. And we'rejust migrating into office into
into 365 right now. So I'm goingto be experimenting with OneNote
myself, because we've beenmoving from IBM notes there,
I've been keeping my listbefore. So I still have that
exploration to do as well. Andso a lot of these things take a
(38:15):
little while to get comfortablewith the the formula that I've
got that works for me. So I haveto keep thinking about the
system, I'm just using thesystem. So all these things have
a little bit of investment time,some of them a lot to try to
figure that out.
Morten Andersen (38:38):
So What Monkeys Do is a podcast about change.
And many of our listeners wouldlike to implement a change in
their life. And I guess itrequires sometimes two things.
One, it requires more time. AndI guess getting things done can
help getting an overview ofwhat's actually what are you
spending your time on andeliminate some things or you say
(38:58):
that's not important, or this ismore important than others. And
then it is a system to keepfocusing on what is important.
And I guess Getting Things Donecan also do that. If we take an
A person who is just using alittle bit of of notes for
buying groceries, and maybe a todo list and maybe having an
email list and so on. If aperson wants to use Getting
(39:22):
Things Done, what should be thefirst step do you think?
David Allen (39:25):
Well, as I mentioned before, the first step
is to have just a good capturetool, so that you wherever you
are, no matter where you are, orwherever you are, you've got a
place you can capture stuff andmost of my capture is low tech.
Morten Andersen (39:36):
Yes. So it's a it's a notepad.
David Allen (39:39):
There's my notepad today, you know, I've got two
things. Those were handled thatone new thing on here. I haven't
transferred that into my systemyet but i was i was doing other
things, but I needed to be ableto grab this when it happened.
So I have this on my desk, andthis in my pocket. And little
paper. God knows when lightningsgonna strike and I occurs an
(40:00):
input comes in that I need tothink I might want to do
something about. So having agood ubiquitous meaning always
with you are always somewherethat you can write stuff down.
I've, I've coached, you know,couples, I've coached, you know,
homemakers, you know that theyneed to make sure that they've
got a notepad in the kitchen,because they're trying to keep
track of two young kids in theliving room playing on the
(40:22):
floor, and they suddenlyrealized, I don't think they
need to have a place they can goget that out of their head, you
know. And so, capture tool, andmost of mine is low tech, you
could capture high tech, if youwant, you know, there, I have a
capture tool on my iPhone. Butagain, you got this, you have to
click it, you have to, there aretoo many clicks I have to do,
and then I have to then makesure I get it out of there
again. So that's actually, youknow, a lot more work than just
(40:45):
low tech capture and capture isnot organized. Capture is just
to get the stuff out. And that'sthe first thing that people need
to have some capture tool andthen an entry, you know,
physical in basket. Here's mine,right here.
Morten Andersen (41:00):
Yeah, that's a that's a physical things in
David Allen (41:03):
it. Because, yeah, I mean, we're still getting
paper, guys, don't kid yourself,they're still you're still
getting physical mail, you'restill getting things you need to
print out and to decide what todo with.
Morten Andersen (41:13):
So the first the first step is to find a
place where you can capturethings, when you get an idea or
an action you need to remindyourself to do or you need to
Oh, by the way, I need to callPeter to do this, or I need to
do that, or whatever. So that'sthe first step is to find a tool
that works that you have withyou all the time.
David Allen (41:33):
Yeah. And if you really wanted to implement the
process, then use that tool, orfrankly, if I were coaching
somebody, I'd give them to get abig stack of paper, make sure
they have a physical in basket,a big stack of printer paper and
get them to empty their head oneidea per page, and throw that
into their in tray. And that'sdifferent than what you would
have once you get the systemstarted. And then the like, yes,
(41:55):
you need it, like I have justthese ubiquitous tools that are
available all the time. But justto if you're implementing the
process to begin with, youprobably need some place more
than just these little notepadsto dump everything out of your
head. as best you can. Yeah,that'll anywhere will work as
long as you're working. So youknow, some sort of a notepad. So
that'd be the first thing to do.
So you just want to keep goingas long as it goes. And that
(42:18):
could be, you know, as long aslong as it takes, I've had to
take up two or three days withsome executives that I've worked
with just to empty it all andget it all out. But even if just
take 10 minutes to do that,it'll help. So you don't have to
do some major project. But justto whatever degree you do that
as just start to externalizethose things, then step two is
train yourself to think what'sthe next action about any of
(42:39):
those that you actually need todo something about, and then
make those decisions about thosethings, and then have a list
manager. So where that you cankeep track of what do I need to
be reminded of is nothing else,it's a simple next action list.
Morten Andersen (42:54):
But that will probably still give you a list
of 200 potential to do's and howdo you then go from there to put
should I do now?
David Allen (43:03):
Well, come on, anybody keeps a grocery list,
they're already doing that,like, Oh, that's something you
need to buy at the store thatgoes over here in that list.
Here's an errand I need to runhere, it goes over that my list,
here's a call I need to makegoes over here. And that calls
list. So just organize thosethings. Based upon the context
that makes sense to you. Theseare things to do when I'm wired
(43:25):
or into when I have a digitalaccess would you could do it off
your iPhone, or your laptop, oryour iPad or whatever, you might
have all of those on one list.
If you have a whole lot, thensometimes it makes more sense to
sort those into into ways itmakes it a little easier to
manage them because a lot ofthem we couldn't do right now
anyway, because you're not whereyou could do them. You know,
going off for errands you don'tneed to look at your errands
list, you don't need to havethat disturb you.
Morten Andersen (43:47):
Yes. So it's actually breaking down that long
list into other lists. Somewhere you do it. When you have a
you need to phone some you needto do errands, some you need to
do on your computer, some youneed to do when you're out
buying groceries or something.
So you have different lists.
David Allen (44:04):
And you need some sort of some sort of tool and
they need to make sure you needto look at the tool and key and
review it and keep it current sothat then your brain doesn't
have to keep reminding you aboutanything.
Morten Andersen (44:14):
So you've obviously implemented this with
hundreds, maybe even 1000s ofpeople over the years and you
have coached them. So you'veliterally sat next to them as
they've been implementing this.
If you look back and think ofsome of the most let's use the
word successful in using thistool, what have they they've
been successful with? There mustbe a hump at some point where
(44:34):
some people they look at and saywell, it's too much bother for
me and others have havecontinued and really been
successful with it. What hasbeen the difference Do you think
between those who who reallyused it? Well,
David Allen (44:50):
well, just legions of testimonials we've gotten
over the last 35 years. Theyrange from a guy who's
attributes this to curinghimself of cancer all the way
Howard Stern is bigentertainment guy in the US,
etc, changed his life givingroom to learn how to paint, as
well as keep all of hisentertainment businesses going.
So, you know, it just rated ithowever people have decided to
(45:14):
do that. But for most peoplethat would say it totally
changed the quality of theirlife.
Morten Andersen (45:18):
And and did they do something? I mean, I
guess what I'm trying to ask is,did they do something in
particular that made it work?
Well, for them? I mean, did theyuse a particular system? Or did
they look at it every day? Ordid they? Or was it literally
just, you know, that theydecided to use it, and then they
made it work for them?
David Allen (45:38):
I don't know. And arranged all over, you don't
have to do you can do any littlepart of this. I had a major
Hollywood producer, probably oneof the most successful you'd
ever know, who just read my bookand said, I just got the next
action concept. And it allowedhim to create movies a whole lot
faster and a lot moresuccessfully than we did. It's
just that one thing. I roll withthat, you know, and that really
(45:59):
works. So whatever it did, itcreated more space and more of a
sense of focus and control. Andthen people have used that. And
for whatever way they've donethat to do whatever they were
doing themselves.
Morten Andersen (46:10):
I guess what I just took from that was because
I've probably seen it as amethodology that here are five
steps. And here are the steps inthe steps. And this is how you
do it. And what I guess whatyou're saying is, if you just do
any of it, that that might evenhelp you. And if that works for
you. Good luck with that. Imean, that works well for you.
So if emptying your head, youknow, somewhere and that works.
(46:31):
Well done. And it's the wholemethodology. Well, that works
for you. So it's really bits andpieces or all of it.
David Allen (46:38):
Yes, it's not running with scissors?
Morten Andersen (46:40):
No. Okay.
David Allen (46:43):
It's all good stuff. That said, if you really
want to taste, how cool is tohave nothing on your mind, other
than whatever you're focusingon, you really do need to
implement the whole methodology.
Morten Andersen (46:57):
Because that's what I did, I took the whole
thing and probably was good thatI didn't know that I could just
take parts of it. But I took thewhole thing. And I think it was
the whole thing that worked wellfor me, because it was also
having, you know, a quarterlyreview and think about, am I
heading right in terms of myfive year plan, or connecting
that to the day to day, and thatworked really well, for me to
(47:18):
have the whole plan implemented?
I guess the thing is that onceyou start on it, you need to
continue to do it every day.
Because otherwise you get abacklog of things that maybe
sounds a little bit too regular,but it is something that you
need to keep maintaining?
David Allen (47:32):
Yeah, well, you need to keep maintaining it if
what you want to do is get ridof your addiction to NBN
anxiety. So that's the biggestproblem most people have is they
start, they get sort of excitedwith this, but then they fall
off because it moves them into amore relaxed state than they're
used to. And if you're talkingabout how to change their
biggest limiter to habit changesyour comfort zone is what are
(47:56):
you familiar with? Right? And sothe comfort zone can keep you
coming back to the ambientanxiety unless you change that
unless you raise the barinternally about what you're
willing to tolerate. Do youwilling to tolerate waking up at
three o'clock in the morningabout something? Are you willing
to tolerate? Having your ideasabout stuff keep banging around
in your head without making anyprogress on them? Are you
willing to tolerate the subtlestress that that starts to build
(48:19):
in people where they're feelingoverwhelmed in any one thing in
your life? Especially if it's astrategic thing? Should we get
divorce? Should we adopt? ShouldI you know, how do I handle
bankruptcy? How do I dowhatever, any one of those
things that you haven't appliedthis methodology with will call
your whole life, that dark grey,it'll make everything feel
overwhelming, everything thatmakes so that's why I say, you
(48:42):
know, just getting thismethodology down as a way to
approach whatever then takes upspace in your life, and
understanding how to engage withthat appropriately. And that's
not something that's not a onetime event. Actually, you know,
I just turned 75 I've been doingthis for 40-35 years anyway, to
some degree. And I'm not goingto stop Why should I? I like
(49:04):
being present. makes life a lotbetter.
Morten Andersen (49:08):
I think that's a fantastic note. To end this, I
want to say thank you very much,David for taking the time to, to
speak about getting things done,I have to admit that I am a
converted person already. Inthat sense. I've also adapted
this quite a lot to my ownneeds. But I think it works well
for me. And I just want to sayto everyone listening that you
(49:29):
should you should have a look atit and see what it can do to
you. Because getting things outof your head and not being
stressed with that. It'sactually it's actually a total
relief. So thanks a lot for yourtime and thanks a lot for your
for your input on this.
David Allen (49:42):
My pleasure Morten.
Thanks for the invitation.
Morten Andersen (49:51):
What a great interview. I took three things
away from my talk with David.
One. productivity is really justabout doing what is most
effective. To you, I thinkpersonal productivity has got a
bad name. To many, it eithermeans to be more efficient at
work, or measuring everything ortrying to achieve. And that's
not what it's about at all. It'sreally just making sure that
(50:14):
you're prioritizing what youthink are the most important
stuff in your life. And that hasrarely, anything to do with
being more productive at work.
Two (50:26):
get stuff out of your head, David Allen has a saying that
your mind is for having ideas,not holding them. He believes
that we should empty our mindscapture it all, and then start
doing the tasks that mattersmost to us, instead of just
thinking. In fact, a lot of whatkeeps us awake at night, or what
(50:48):
gets us all stressed out, isthat we desperately are trying
to keep stuff in our heads. Wecan't and we shouldn't. And
that's why David's mostimportant advice in this
interview was to get all yourstuff out of your head. And
three, find out what works foryou. David has designed this
whole system, and thisidentifies how to capture stuff
(51:11):
and how to sort it and how tomanage tasks, etc, etc. But that
system may not work for all. Infact, he suggests that you find
a system that works for you, andthen follow that. And that's a
great advice. And this is comingfrom a person who actually lives
of selling a particular system.
But one thing he does suggestfor all of us to do is to get
(51:31):
stuff out of our head. GettingThings Done is a world
bestseller and with good reason.
If you're interested in personalproductivity, you really should
read it. If you prefer to watchvideos, then he has made a
number of TED Talks which areworth watching. The one I would
recommend is called the Art ofStress Free Productivity. Until
(51:55):
next time, take care
Hello, and welcome to What Monkeys Do. My
name is Morten Kamp Andersen.
And this is a podcast about whatit takes to make a change and
make it stick.
In this episode of What MonkeysDo, I speak with David Allen,
who is the world's leadingexpert on personal productivity,
(00:29):
why productivity and a podcastabout change? Well, there are
two things which prevents usfrom making a change. The first
is not prioritizing what is mostimportant to us. And the second
is not having a clear mind. Thatis we have too many thoughts in
our head. David Allen has made asystem called Getting Things
(00:50):
Done. It involves five steps,one, capture all of your tasks.
Two clarify what kind of task itis. Three, organize your tasks
in projects, calendar and nextitems. Four, reflect through
regular reviews, and five engagein your tasks. Why this is the
(01:11):
world's most used system why canit help us focus on what is most
important to us? and why thiscan help us change? Well, let's
find out in this episode of WhatMonkeys Do. My guest today is
wildly recognized as the world'sleading authority on personal
and organizational productivityis 30 years of pioneering
(01:32):
research coaching, educatingsome of the world's highest
performing professionals, hasearned him Forbe's recognition
as one of the top five executivecoaches in the United States
Fast Company has called him oneof the world's most influential
thinkers in the area of personalproductivity, and Time Magazine
label his first book GettingThings Done as the defining self
(01:56):
help business book of thedecade. He's the author of three
books, the phenomenon andinternational bestseller Getting
Things Done. But he's alsowritten Ready for Anything, and
Making It All Work. He is alsoby the way, one of the few non
celebrities with over a millionfollowers on Twitter. Welcome to
you, David Allen.
David Allen (02:16):
Thank you, Morten.
Thanks for the invitation. Glad.
Morten Andersen (02:19):
Yeah, I really look forward to this. So What
Monkeys Do is a podcast aboutchange. And change is often
about focusing your time andyour energy on something new.
And you have invented the mostwidely used personal
productivity methodology thereis, but there will be some of
our listeners who don't knowwhat getting things done is
(02:40):
about. So can you tell us alittle bit about yourself and
about what getting things doneis about?
David Allen (02:46):
Sure. Let me start with the second part, what
getting things done as about isjust the best practices that
I've discovered, over the lastreally 40 years now, about how
do you stay clear when you'vegot a busy life, full of volume
and velocity of things coming atyou decisions you have to make.
And being able to serve on topof that, instead of feeling
overwhelmed by it or having thatcreate what I now refer to as
(03:08):
the ambient anxiety of so muchto do not sure you're doing the
right thing. And being able tostay clear, really more about
than anything else. And so Ijust discovered, I didn't really
make them up more than Irecognize the best practices we
do, that actually gets our headclear, without having to
complete all the things youthink you want to do without
(03:28):
having to finish your to dolist. But it's really about
being appropriately engaged withwhatever all your commitments
are. So I just discovered thevery specific, both principles,
and then practices about how doI recognize my commitments? How
do I clarify them? How do I makesure I create a trusted external
brain so I don't have to trustmy mind to remember remind,
(03:49):
prioritize or managerelationships because it's, it
didn't evolve to do that doesn'tdo it very well. But external
brains do if you do them, right.
And so I just discovered how todo that. And I got there because
I kind of discovered the valueand practical value of
clearspace early on, or gettinga black belt in karate. You have
to learn how to get clear fast.
(04:12):
If you don't want 2000unprocessed emails hanging
around your psyche if you'rejumped by four people at once at
once. So you know staying clearand the all the mindfulness
people focus on your breathing.
I learned that 40 years ago inthe martial arts, so I had an
attraction to clear space alsoon the freedom kind of guy. I
love to be spontaneous follow myintuitive hunches, etc. But it's
my life as I started to take allmy different careers and
(04:35):
professions and jobs I'd had andmeld it in the tip just like a
consulting practice back in1982. I discovered my life got
more complex and complicated.
And I said wait a minute, how doI stay clear because I love
clear amidst all that. And so Istarted uncovering these
techniques for myself first, andthen it turned out it they work
(04:57):
so well to create more clarity,more focus more space to focus
on meaningful things, turnaround and use those with my
clients produce the sameresults, those same practices
produced exactly the same thing,more stability, more control,
more of a sense of now, it'seasier to know what my
priorities are, easier to leavework earlier, you know, it's
easy to spend more time to bemore present in my life, and all
(05:20):
the good value that that canbring. And then that got
discovered by somebody in thebig corporate world. They said,
Wow, we need that in our wholeCorporation does Can you design
a training around that, so I didit work successfully. And so
from 1983, on, I spent literally1000s of hours training hundreds
of 1000s of people coaching,hundreds and hundreds and
(05:41):
spending 1000s of hours desk,cyber, some of the busiest and
brightest folks you'd ever meeton the planet, actually
implementing and refining thismethodology, I didn't really
realize what I realized until Ifinally, you know, 25 years
later, it took me that long tofigure out that what I'd figured
out was unique, and nobody elseseemed to have done it. And that
I better write the manual. Sothat's what I wrote, Getting
Things Done.
Morten Andersen (06:02):
So one of the key fundamentals of this
methodology is that you need toget everything out of your head,
because that's a bad place tostore it, I think you have a
saying something like, yourbrain is for making ideas, not
for keeping them. So it is toget everything out of your head,
David Allen (06:18):
and you have 50,000 thoughts a day, I defy anybody
to write down 50,000 things aday, you're not doing that. But
anything that's potentiallymeaningful, that you think you
might still need to decide or dosomething about that you can't
finish in the moment it happens.
That's what you need to capture.
So all of that needs to be outof your head. If you don't, it
(06:38):
spins around in your head. Soyou have a, you know, concept of
monkeys who believe me talkingabout monkey in your head, I
need capital that I did hirevice president should we adopt?
Should we get divorced, shouldwe, you know, yadda yadda, and
those things will spin likecrazy and create that ambient
anxiety that is that you can't,you can't find one single source
for it. But you started to useyour head as a really bad
(07:00):
office, you know, to try tomanage all that. It's a terrible
executive.
Morten Andersen (07:04):
I mean, one of the things that I discovered
when I lay in bed, and I have tosay, Oh, I have to remember that
tomorrow, I have to write anemail to him. And so if you
actually have written that downsomewhere, your mind will not be
frantically trying to, toremember that all the time.
David Allen (07:18):
As long as you trust, you'll see where you
wrote it down at the appropriatetime. So that's why there are
several steps to making sure youget clear you have to capture
it, clarify what specificallyyou need to do about it, and
then park it in some trustedsystem. And the trusted system
means I've got to put it in aplace, I'll trust I'd see it
like I trust, I see my calendarto see that I need to be talking
(07:39):
to David Allen today. And thenyou need to step back and make
sure you're looking at all thatcontext and content, you know,
appropriately, so that you'refeeling a lot more comfortable
about what you're doing.
Morten Andersen (07:50):
So without going into all of the nitty
gritty is essentially amethodology, there are five
steps and one of them is tocapture everything. So it is to
get things out of your head andcapture it. And then it is to
decide is this something I cantake action on? Is that a
project with multiple steps andessentially creating a
methodology around all of thestuff that you that you need to
(08:11):
do? And you say that you came upwith it? Or you're you
discovered this over a longtime? And there's obviously been
time management systems beforethat? Why does this have the
impact that it did?
David Allen (08:22):
Probably because I never had any formal or
traditional education inbusiness psychology or time
management. Absolutely nopreconditions myself about what
you need to do to stay clear,while you're, you know, in a
busy life. And so I kind of cameto this from the street, you
know, and just my own experiencewith it. And then to find out
that, but a lot of the timemanagement stuff says, Well, you
(08:44):
need to set your priorities, youneed to have ABC, you need to
create a daily to do list and alot of other things like that,
that just frankly didn't work.
You know, they they work if youhad nothing else to do but
organize your life that way.
Most people are a lot busierthan that. And quite frankly,
you know, you have as manypriorities as you have different
things you do today. Yes, whatthis methodology does is it
(09:05):
starts with where you are notwith where you should be. And
most of the time managementstuff starts with where you
should be. But if your day today, ordinary life is feeling
out of control, and unfocused,trying to focus on the future
and something, you're just goingto create more guilt and
frustration. It doesn't mean youshouldn't focus on that. No,
those are great things to focuson. But just if your attention
(09:25):
is being grabbed by stuff thatyou're not managing
appropriately, in your day today, then Good luck, you know,
trying to do the other thing,the higher horizon stuff as I've
identified them, you know, whyare you on the planet? You know,
what's your ideal scenario inlife and work and five years
from now? And what are your youknow, what do you need to
accomplish over the next two tothree years? And what are all
(09:46):
the things you need to maintainin your life, like your health
and your finances and yourrelationships? Were all the
projects you have about allthat? And then what are all the
things you need to do about anyof that stuff? Well, you got six
horizons of commitments thateverybody has, whether you're
conscious Have them or not. Andall of those are creating this
incredibly complex variety andmultiple, multiple levels of
(10:07):
stuff that most people don'trealize how complex their life
is, they've allowed themselvesto create in terms of what
they've done. So what thismethodology does just say, look,
let's turn to get all of thatunder control, not control, like
control the weather, or yourkids or your boss, we could love
talking about having somethingunder control, like your car, or
a meeting, or your desk, or yourhead or your kitchen and have it
(10:28):
under control enough so that youfeel like I'm in a stable
situation where it gives me thefreedom to then focus
appropriately as I need tofocus. So as I say, a lot of
people shouldn't be settinggoals, they need to clean their
bathroom, it doesn't mean agoal, not a good thing. It just
means if your bathroom isfeeling out of control, or your
kitchen, you know, you're gonnahave a tough time focusing
appropriately on the goals youneed to set.
Morten Andersen (10:51):
So many people, they would probably have an an
email, you know, where they'veput some flags or some
priorities there, then they willhave a to do list. And that's
for many people, actually, thestuff of how they organize their
lives, as things come in,they'll put something on their
to do list and and maybe that'sit, but Well, actually, you're
suggesting that you should sitdown and take a couple of days
(11:12):
off, maybe even or a day off andjust write everything,
everything that is on your plateto get it out. So all of the
projects, you may have all ofthe things that needs to be done
in the in the house, all of thepeople, you need to call all of
the things that you need to doall of that needs to come out
once and for all. What's thepurpose of that process?
David Allen (11:32):
Empty your head, if it's still banging around in
there, it's because you're notappropriately engaged with it.
So what you need to do isidentify the content that you
need to start to appropriatelyengage with why's mom's birthday
on your mind. Well, no, no,we're gonna do great. What's
your outcome? What are you? Whatare you trying to accomplish?
Well, we need to celebrate mom'sbirthday. Fabulous. Now you got
a project? What's your nextstep? "Oh i don't know", yeah,
(11:55):
that's right. So the problem is,is most people's to do lists
create as much stress as theyrelieved, because they're still
there reminding them, it's stillan incomplete list of the stuff
that has their attention. Andnot only that, whatever they
captured is still unclear interms of what we're going to do
about it. So just remind you,you have decisions to make, you
haven't you haven't made yet yougot more thinking you need to
do, you haven't finished yourthinking. So it's still spinning
(12:16):
in there. So now you got to somesomething out of your head, but
it's still banging around inyour head, because it's still
more reminding you there's moreto think about and more to
decide.
Morten Andersen (12:25):
Because the funny thing is because I went
through that process, and Iprobably came up with about, I
can't remember 70 or 80projects. And a project in this
terminology is essentially athing you need to do where there
are multiple steps for it to becompleted. So if it's my mom's
birthday, I needed to talk to mysisters about maybe buying a
(12:45):
present together, then we needto find out what she wants than
it is to buy it than it is toarrange a time to go and meet
her and give her the present.
And I had probably about closeto hundreds of those projects
David Allen (12:56):
most people have between 30 and 100.
Morten Andersen (12:58):
Wow, it's amazing. And you would think
that that would create even morestress, complexity or
uncertainty, can I even do allof that, but it had the reverse
effect. That was the funniestthing was that it actually gave
a sense of are that's what Ineed to do. Now I just need to
look at it and decide what to doand what not to do when in what
(13:19):
order. And then that actuallytook away stress. That was an
amazing experience. By the way,
David Allen (13:24):
everybody listening or watching this, at some point
has felt overwhelmed or confusedand sat down and made a list and
felt better. Yes. And nothingchanged in their world.
Morten Andersen (13:32):
Yes,
David Allen (13:32):
what changed was the most important thing, which
is how they are engaged withtheir world changed, which is
what you did described in alittle more detail. But even in
a very basic, mundane level,making list about anything,
whether that's stuff you need tobuy at the store, or whether
it's stuff to deal with, withyour mom, or all the stuff you
got to do in terms of the newjob that you've got, or now
you've got to work from homebecause of the pandemic and what
(13:55):
are all the things I need todeal with any and all that, you
know, if you leave it in yourhead, you'll take as much
cognitive real estate thinkingabout Je', I need to buy a desk
as Je' How am I going to get mykids into the right education
for the next two years? Yes, andthey'll take up the same space
if it's just in your head,because your head does not know
how to calibrate all that stuffappropriately. your conscious
(14:15):
mind does. That's why you needto make it conscious and
objective. And then you justdescribe that process that you
went through. And believe me, Ispent many 1000s of hours with
some of the best, brightestbusiest people you'd ever meet,
having them go through exactlywhat you just described. And it
usually takes somewhere betweenand for most people, it takes
one to six hours just toidentify all the stuff that had
(14:36):
to have attention on and thenthe rest of at least a couple of
days usually to go through eachone of those and make the
appropriate decisions. So theydon't have any more thinking
they need to do about them. Andthen organize some sort of
appropriate list manager, youknow that that they can keep the
list of reminders about peopleto call errands to run things to
bring up to the board meetingprojects they need to keep track
(14:58):
of until they're done, etcThat's what the process is. And
what's strange Morten is, as youknow, it's not rocket science
unless you're in a rocket. Theseare not behaviors that people
don't already know how to do.
This is not a foreign languageor some new technology.
Everybody knows how to writestuff down. Everybody knows how
to recognize, wait a minute,I've got my attention on that.
(15:18):
What's that? mom's birthdaygift, should we adopt, hire the
Vice President of getting newmobile phone, grabbing those,
that's not hard to do it what's,what's difficult is most people
don't realize they should. Andthey just let them keep banging
around in there. And there's nosense of past or future in that
thing, talking about a journalor a monkey running around in
(15:38):
your head because they don'tstop. And they when they show up
consciously, they go subliminal,but then they show up
consciously, at veryinappropriate times, you like at
three o'clock in the morningabout something, you can't do
anything about it three o'clockin the morning, lying in bed,
your brain that doesn't haveone. It's not very smart.
Morten Andersen (15:56):
And one thing is sort of creating an overview
of what you need to do,obviously, it's also a system
that you need to maintain. Andthere are different processes
once a week you sit down and doyour weekly review, so to speak,
you look at your calendar,what's coming, what have you
just been through what's youknow, and so on. And you also
have a monthly and quarterlyreview. How closely would you
(16:19):
suggest that people shouldfollow this exact process? Or
how much should they add theirown flavor to it. So when I read
blocks, for instance, and howpeople are using this, many are
adapting it to their ownpreferences, how much from what
you have seen, have peoplebenefited from following it
strictly, or adapting itthemselves
David Allen (16:37):
depends on what you mean by it. And you say follow
it, specifically, if they keepit out of your head, absolutely.
But out of here, how you dothat, rather than your arm, you
know, hire 12 people to followyou around and talk to them and
have them keep track of it andremind you at the right times. I
mean, frankly, I don't care howyou do any of that. But the
principle is absolutelyinviolent. If it's in your head,
(16:58):
it's in the wrong place. So howyou customize, keeping it out of
your head? That's up to you. Allthose things that you just
mentioned, were over all theyears, I just tried to curate
basically, what are the some ofthe typical best practices that
allow the typical kind of, youknow, mid to senior level
professional, actually, anybodywith a busy life? How do they
keep their head clear? You know,there's only one criterion, do
(17:20):
you have any attention onanything you can't finish right
now that's distracting you fromwhat you've ever you're trying
to be present about? If youdon't, you've done it, I don't
care how you get there. I justdiscovered the best way to get
there. And don't kid yourself.
If you think you've got a clearhead simply by doing mindfulness
openings around your breathing.
You know, that's good stuff todo. I do that. But you know,
(17:40):
that's, that's there's nothingwrong with that. But if you
don't handle the things thatyou've got commitments about,
that's why you have to keepworking on focusing on your
breathing, because you keepthinking about capitalism and
the vice president need to hireand should you adopt, you know,
why don't you get that stuff offyour mind. So it gives you more
space to do what yourconsciousness is better to do,
which is to take advantage ofmeditative space, a reflective
(18:01):
space, be able to then becreative, or be strategic, or
just be present, with whateveryou're doing. Those are the
golden goodies.
Morten Andersen (18:08):
I think it is about finding you know how this
works for you. And also exactlywhat you know, whether you write
it on a piece of paper that youcarry in your pocket all the
time or on your iPhone, orwhatever you do, that really
doesn't matter. Just as long asit works for you, I suppose. I
think what helped me a lot,obviously, was to get out of my
head, but also to break thingsdown into actionable steps.
(18:29):
Because sometimes we have a bigpiece like hiring a new vice
president, you know, is a bigchunk of of steps, actually. And
it can be confusing anddifficult to actually take
action on it unless you canbreak it down. And I think that
was probably the most valuable.
I don't know if it camespecifically from this. But
generally, when I, when I taughtmyself to break things down, I
learned a lot from that.
David Allen (18:52):
And you don't actually need to break
everything down to all thedifferent pieces, some things
you might want to do. But themain thing is, what's the next
thing I need to do? The verynext piece, and that's where
people get hung up is becausethey think they have to think
through the whole thing beforethey decide the next thing to
do. Well, what do you need to doto figure out all this stuff?
Oh, maybe I should set a meetingwith Bill. Yeah, great. How you
(19:13):
gonna do that? I should sendthem a meeting invite. Fabulous,
how long would that take? Don'tyou just do that in a second? Do
it. And suddenly you have thisbig project in motion. Because
you stop freaking yourself outabout everything that has to be
done. You just figured out youjust brought it down to what do
I need to do to start to movethe needle on this. And that's
the critical breakdown that youneed to finish you're thinking,
(19:34):
indeed, you might want to spendfour days with 16 people in a
big room and whiteboards toflesh out a major project. Sure.
But you better have veryspecific next actions you need
to do to set up that meeting.
And very specific next actionsonce you walk out of that
meeting about what needs tohappen by the moving parts. So
what's the next action thingthat is so magical? So those are
two of the key components. Iknow you're probably going to
(19:56):
ask will it look if somebody'sjust getting started or what are
the key elements This stuff,basically get the stuff out and
get as much as you can out ofyour head and decide the next
actions on any of those youintend to actually do something
about. And then step three wouldbe make sure you park reminders,
if you can't finish the actionin the moment, you you decided
to have some sort of listmanager, and review and reflect
on all of that stuff as best youcan, on some consistent basis,
(20:18):
you're gonna be way ahead of theplanet if you do any version of
that.
Morten Andersen (20:23):
Okay, I like the fact that you are so open
about this is a methodology.
I've seen that work for manypeople. But if you have another
way of doing it, go about doingthat. I mean, that's, that's
really cool. There might be somepeople who say, Well, I'm not a
structured type of person. Sothis sounds like it's very
structured. Sounds like, youneed to get things out of your
head as soon as you have itthere. But I don't have that
(20:43):
sense of structure around me.
What would you say to them?
David Allen (20:48):
Well, they wouldn't even ask that question. If they
were unstructured. They couldeven get out of bed. If they
were unstructured. Just ask themwhat they really like to do. I
like to fish I like to paint, Ilike to play the flute, it will
show me what you use when youfish. They open their tackle
box. And it's neat as a pin. Ilike to play the flute, show me
your music, and where do youplay? And it's all structured. I
(21:10):
like to paint Show me yourpaintbrushes and show me where
are you? Oh my god. See, usuallyyou don't think about structure,
when it's something you have todo to do something you love to
do. If you love to cook, are youhighly structured in your
kitchen knowledge love to cook,let me go see your kitchen, the
spices are here, butters here,you know the the pans are down
(21:30):
here. It's not all over theplace. Unless you're just a
young guy in college, in whichcase, if you could just know
where the salt is, everythingelse is mess. But you'll be as
structured as you need to be toget what you want to be doing.
So you know, as people say, Idon't like structure. So what do
you think about the center linein the road out there? I think
that's a good thing. Is that aconstraint that if you Oh, my
(21:51):
God, I'm in jail, I have to stayon this side of the road. No.
Structures is simply creatingthe limitations that are
required to achieve result, youonly need to be as organized as
you need to be. I don't likehaving to be organized, I just
get as organized as I need tobe. So I don't have to rethink
anything. And so I can findstuff when I need it. You know,
(22:12):
that's coming. I understand whatpeople because they look at
this, and they see the result of25 or 30 years of my work all
put into one manual and said,Look, if you really wanted to do
this, here's the here's the bestpractices, you know, from 1000s
of hours and 1000s of people,you know, actually applying this
process. And so it can seem alittle overwhelming or daunting.
(22:33):
I think it may look like it's alittle over. But however
structured is it to recognizestuff that has your attention?
How over structured is it tomake a decision about what I
need to do about it? What I needto keep track of those done? How
over structured is it to say,Well, I need to keep track of
this somewhere. So my braindoesn't have to keep reminding
myself, I can trust my system toremind me how over structured is
it to step back and say, gee, bythe way, where do you need to be
(22:55):
for the next couple of weeks?
What's up, when people say thisis too much structure I go, I
understand what you're saying.
Because most of the structuresand the old time management
trainings and all that stuffwere way over structured and
unrealistic. And they didn'thave anything to do with the
flexibility we all need. That'swhy my radical thing back in the
early 1980s was the daily to dolists don't work. They just
(23:18):
don't work. Your life is toomuch of a surprise. You need to
be a lot more flexible. But youneed to total life to do lists
all the time so that you canmake good choices about it and
not feel guilty. They didn't dothe 25 things you thought were
gonna do on Monday.
Morten Andersen (23:31):
Yes. And I guess what was also back in the
old days when it was pen andpaper was that you had to carry
it over to another day or youhad to there was a lot of you
spend a lot of time writingthings down now it's much easier
with different apps or you know,different reminders that you
have, I think I think technologyis actually helped a lot in that
way.
David Allen (23:51):
Well, it's helped and hurt. It's helped probably
more than it's hurt. But there'sstill the downside the black the
black hole of the technology isthe new new will give me a new
app that'll fix this give me allthe way that didn't quite Why
didn't work that one. But thatdidn't work. I'm gonna give me
the new new and the new newdidn't work. So give me the new
new new and you think that'sgonna work. If you get this
(24:12):
methodology, you can makeanything work, you know, as you
and I said before we startedthis recording, I use the time
design or the time system systemon a Copenhagen. Only bear is a
friend of mine. I'm the guy whodesigned that thing. And he was
one of the most coolest guyshe's still around by the way.
Yes, yes, yes. Yeah,
Morten Andersen (24:30):
I used it as well. I really liked it. And my
life was a lot less complicatedthat time by the way, but then
it became very complicated tomaintain.
David Allen (24:39):
Well, that's why we say the paper based system to me
is the is the bestorganizational tool for your
life simply because it's all inyour face. You can see the whole
Gestalt in us in a few minutesor seconds. You can flip to
wherever you want to go see itsrelationship to everything else
very well and it's almostimpossible to do that on the
computer. It's a very hard todo. You don't have the same you
(25:00):
You can do discrete things in avery cool way. But you can't see
the whole game very easily.
That's why that's why By theway, there's we've made two
major attempts with some of thebrightest, brightest people on
the planet to do GTD apps. Andin that neither one none of them
work. You needed much more ofthe technology to really make it
work the way it really needed towork. It wasn't there, still not
there.
Morten Andersen (25:21):
I need to ask you about that. Because that was
one of my things. Why is therenot an app? I mean, because
it's, on one hand, it seems verylogical that there would be an
app because there is amethodology. And there should be
a way to put that into an app.
And I, I have no doubt thatthere'll be a huge demand for
such an app.
David Allen (25:37):
No, there's no demand. There's no demand.
Everybody who kind of got GTDand the whole life hack movement
was created there. Probably lastcount. You know, years ago,
there were over 300 apps builton the GTD model. They're all
just list managers Tell me Oh,this manager, when you write
down something, it automaticallysays, gee, is there a project
about this? And by the way,what's the next action? And if
there's a project on it, youthen you click on that it
(25:58):
automatically pulls up whateveryou use for project thinking,
and you've defaulted already,that you can spend two minutes
brainstorming a new project, andyou put that in there. And then
before it turns off, so you willspend more time thinking about
this, do you want what's yournext action, right? And then it
parks it automatically and whereyou need to keep track of that,
who even thinks they need that?
Morten Andersen (26:25):
In a previous episode, I spoke with Jim Loehr,
and he talks a lot aboutmanaging energy rather than
managing time. And as anexample, you know, also in some
of his writing, he says, Well,you can spend two hours with
your family. But if you'rementally somewhere else, then
what quality of time is stackedwith your family. So instead of
focusing on the time focusing onyour energy, and your mental
(26:50):
focus, etc, he had a thoughtabout spending a little bit too
much focus on time, that was maynot be always the best way of
finding out how you shouldallocate your energy on a day,
what are you thinking aboutthat?
David Allen (27:04):
Well turns a critical component like spaces,
you can't manage time you don'tmiss manage five minutes and
come up with six or four and ahalf. Time just is. So it's
true. I don't think about time,I just think about where's my
attention? I think about timecalled, How much time are you
going to spend? And then youknow what I do when I finished
that? And what do I need to do?
It's going to take a certainamount of time for me to do that
I have a commitment aboutsometimes a critical component
(27:25):
with like money or spaces, andall those are just resources
that you utilize. So you don'tignore that idea. Why would you
even think about time, unlessyou're some sort of philosopher
like the German philosophers,Heidegger and people like that,
you know, thought about stufflike that. And I'm kind of too
lazy to go down that track.
Don't even worry about thatstuff. times really an
(27:47):
experience. And it really isquality more than quantity. I
mean, that part I wouldcertainly agree with. And when
people say you should allocate acertain amount of time for
certain kinds of things. Yes,that's true, but to a liminative
effect, because quite frankly,you know, I think your success
comes from following yourintuitive hunches about what to
do at any point in time. It'shard to listen to those
(28:10):
intuitive hunches or recognizeswhich ones are the ones to
follow, unless you're clearenough in your head that you're
not distracted by all the otherstuff that gets in the way takes
up cognitive real estate. And sothat's why implementing, you
know, the GTD or my methodology,it just helps you get a lot more
clear space, to thinkstrategically to work to think
about where I need to spend mytime. And to, I plan as little
(28:32):
as I can get by with the onlytime blocks on my calendar or
when I've made externalcommitments with other people to
keep that agreement. Otherwise,I leave my space totally open.
Now there are times if you're ina very, very busy life,
especially when other peoplehave access to your calendar.
And you know, you need two goodhours to finish that business
plan. By Friday, when you haveto turn it in, and you look down
(28:54):
your calendar, you go God, if Idon't block that in, it ain't
gonna get done. And so you needto you then need to make an
appointment with yourself. Icouldn't agree more. So in that
regard, you need to take youneed to be aware of time and
time blocks. And there are timeswhen time blocking is a good
idea. But don't overdo it. Assoon as you block one of those
you'll you'll undo your ownagreement with stuff faster than
(29:15):
anything. And then you know,then you don't trust yourself.
And then you don't trust yourcalendar, you don't trust what's
a real thing versus what's aGee, I'd like to thing. You
know, I don't know if you knowit, but one of the first time
management systems that showedup physically in the US was the
day timer. And the day timershowed up in 15 minutes segments
why the guy who invented it wasa lawyer, and he had to charge
(29:37):
by 15 minute increments. Sothat's, you know, that certainly
became Of course, I need to keeptrack of the time I spend
because that's money every 15minutes gets charged that kind
of money.
Morten Andersen (29:47):
I know that your methodology is labeled as a
productivity tool, but I thinkwhat can be misunderstood by
that is that then you just needto produce more than you just
need to be more effective thenyou just need to run faster you
take more in so to speak, but Idon't think that's the benefit
of this program at all. I thinkit is actually, you know,
sitting down thinking, what aremy long term, big goals? What,
(30:08):
what do I want to achieve,really, and then link that to
and creating space to do that.
So it's actually making yourmost important projects, your
most important projects, so tospeak, and having a system
around that. So I think there isa lot of focus on time and a lot
of focus on productivity. Butfor me, it is actually doing the
right things rather than do morethings.
David Allen (30:31):
Productivity just got a lot of baggage as a word,
everybody's being productive,right now you're being
productive, doing what you'redoing, everybody's producing
whatever they've got, when wesay more productive, that just
means I want to get more out ofthe time and energy I'm putting
into it. Or I want to get thesame thing with less time and
energy put into it, that's beingmore productive. But productive
(30:54):
just means, you know, achievingsome sort of desired result or
experience. If you go on avacation to relax, and you don't
relax. That's an unproductivevacation. Yes, if you try to
meditate, but don't meditate,that's unproductive. So people
again, think about I understandthat the people think about
productivity means busy workingharder, working longer, you
know, and for some people, itmight, I don't know, that's up
to them in terms of what they'retrying to produce. Are you're
(31:16):
trying to produce relaxation,happiness, quality of life,
quite frankly, you know, workand I don't know where you are
in this game. But many peoplewho get enthralled by GTD and
really start to practice it gettotally overwhelmed themselves,
because they get so inspired, Ithought how many things they now
can produce. They start throwingmore in and taking on more and
more. And if someone wouldthink, oh, wait a minute, I'm
(31:37):
burning out does that GTD not ifI was burning out was your goal.
Morten Andersen (31:41):
And I've actually been through that
process myself, too. In thebeginning, I was like, Whoa, I
can really do a lot. And I cando a lot by doing this. But I
actually got trapped into likingdoing more and more, and then
finding out that that was notwhat it was about. And it's
interesting what you say aboutproductivity, because most
people would not say, I want tohave a productive holiday, they
would use some kind of otherword. And I know exactly what
(32:03):
you mean. And and that's why Ithink the productivity label can
sometimes be a misconception forwhat they say,
David Allen (32:09):
if we could have found a different word, we would
have used it, but there justisn't one. No language hasn't
that most languages even havetrouble, You know, translating,
getting things done, ortranslating mind like water or
translating next action.
Strangely, you know, that stuffthat became sort of common sense
to be in many of the differentlanguages in the books and 30
(32:30):
languages out there havetrouble, you know, translating
some of this stuff.
Morten Andersen (32:36):
And I think your background in martial arts,
but also your concept of MindLike Water is actually a really
important component of this. Canyou explain what Mind Like Water
means and and,
David Allen (32:49):
you know, I stole that from the martial arts,
Bruce Lee's sensei that trainedhim to talk Bruce about be like
water be as flexible, but aspowerful as water is. And water
is totally appropriate to itsenvironment. It doesn't
overreact doesn't under react.
And it's quite fluid and quiteflexible. So the whole idea of
having mind like water is havinga mind that doesn't over or
(33:09):
under react to anything. You'redealing with stuff in present
tense. But if you're distractedby a meeting that went south
this morning, is hard to bepresent with your kids, it's
hard to be present cookingspaghetti, you know, it's not
mine, like there's not a mindlike water state. So like water
simply says are you present? Areyou present with whatever you're
doing. And you decide what youwant to do by being present. And
(33:32):
you decide how you want to usethe space that creates for you.
People use it to be morecreative. Some people use it to
be more strategic, a lot ofpeople use it just to be more
present, and coach to seniorexecutive and actually head of a
large, global organization. Andhe said, David, my presenting
issue is when I go home with myyoung kids on the weekend, I do
not want to bring thisorganization with me to be able
(33:54):
to watch your girl play socceror football without being on
your iPhone. Those are a lot ofthe AHA is that people start to
implement this, they start toexperience to go wow, this is
really more about quality oflife than just being busier.
Morten Andersen (34:09):
Exactly. So the connection you also made to
mindfulness before was that inorder to have a good mindfulness
experience, it's literally aboutobviously focusing on your
breathing. But the more the moreyou get disturbed by your own
thoughts, or you know, yourattention gets carried away,
then the harder that is, and oneof the key ways actually to
(34:31):
support your mind of not beingdistracted too much is to get
everything out of your head andnot be worried about am I
forgetting this? Or I need toremember this and so on. And I
think getting things done as amethodology actually supports
that mindful experience. You canhave them
David Allen (34:51):
Yeah, well, so
Morten Andersen (34:53):
a lot of people are attracted to productivity
tools, and there are certaintypes of people and I might
actually be Even though one ofthose types, what do you think
attracts people to productivitytools in general?
David Allen (35:06):
I don't know, if you like to cook, aren't you
attracted to cool kitchen gear?
Morten Andersen (35:10):
Yes, I am.
David Allen (35:12):
One of my many jobs back in those days was working
in a construction with, youknow, for for a construction
company doing all kinds ofstuff. And man, just don't let
me into a hardware store becauseI would come out with bags of
coups, too. So I think, youknow, cool tools, depending on,
you know, if you're, if you'reinto, you know, sort of, as
(35:34):
somebody described GTD is asknowledge work athletics, it's
right here, the moves you needto take to be able to then make
sure you're managing yourthinking process, you know,
optimally. And so any tools thatfacilitate managing the thinking
process, you know, and in justin the last 10 days, you know,
here's a new tool, remarkablepad that I'm just experimenting
(35:57):
with, to see, you know, becauseit gives you really the touch
and feel of paper, but at thesame time, it's digital. And so
you can send this PDF, this youcan do whatever. And I still
don't know, jury's out withthat. Right? before I've talked
to you. There's a company that'snow designing training programs,
(36:17):
using these virtual realityglasses. Yes. So there's another
tool, I'm always fascinated by,you know, if what you want is to
be able to be more creative, orbe clearer, any kind of tool
that helps you do that I'm, I'm,I'm for that, of course, my buy
to use ratio is about 10. toone.
(36:39):
Yes. Cuz, you know, a lot ofthis stuff is, it's kind of a
cool idea in concept. But, youknow, the trick is, are you
still using it two months fromnow, if not, it probably didn't
quite match to your what youreally needed and how you really
move and work
Morten Andersen (36:55):
for Getting Things Done. As a methodology, I
use OneNote as my preferredtool. It's very simple.
Actually, I know there are appsthat can be used, and you can
optimize and you can do a lot ofthings. But it actually really
works for me. And whether it'son my iPhone, or on my desktop,
or whether I write things downon a piece of paper, and then
put it into OneNote, Later. itactually really works for me.
(37:17):
And I think, whatever works, Idiscovered that on, on, somebody
had had used it on on OneNote,and wrote a blog about it. And I
just copied that and it workedwell, for me, I like
experimenting with new things.
But I always return back to theOneNote. Because it, it works
well. For me.
David Allen (37:34):
Anything that's a list manager will basically
manages all of not all managers,you know, a huge amount of this,
you can do it all on Evernote, Iknow people that are huge
Evernote fans and saying verysimilar to OneNote, how you
could use that. It's so openended and you create your own
heuristic about how it'sorganized and so forth. And
that's great. That's kind of, Idon't know how long it took me
(37:55):
about six months to feelcomfortable with how to organize
all my Evernote notes. And we'rejust migrating into office into
into 365 right now. So I'm goingto be experimenting with OneNote
myself, because we've beenmoving from IBM notes there,
I've been keeping my listbefore. So I still have that
exploration to do as well. Andso a lot of these things take a
(38:15):
little while to get comfortablewith the the formula that I've
got that works for me. So I haveto keep thinking about the
system, I'm just using thesystem. So all these things have
a little bit of investment time,some of them a lot to try to
figure that out.
Morten Andersen (38:38):
So What Monkeys Do is a podcast about change.
And many of our listeners wouldlike to implement a change in
their life. And I guess itrequires sometimes two things.
One, it requires more time. AndI guess getting things done can
help getting an overview ofwhat's actually what are you
spending your time on andeliminate some things or you say
(38:58):
that's not important, or this ismore important than others. And
then it is a system to keepfocusing on what is important.
And I guess Getting Things Donecan also do that. If we take an
A person who is just using alittle bit of of notes for
buying groceries, and maybe a todo list and maybe having an
email list and so on. If aperson wants to use Getting
(39:22):
Things Done, what should be thefirst step do you think?
David Allen (39:25):
Well, as I mentioned before, the first step
is to have just a good capturetool, so that you wherever you
are, no matter where you are, orwherever you are, you've got a
place you can capture stuff andmost of my capture is low tech.
Morten Andersen (39:36):
Yes. So it's a it's a notepad.
David Allen (39:39):
There's my notepad today, you know, I've got two
things. Those were handled thatone new thing on here. I haven't
transferred that into my systemyet but i was i was doing other
things, but I needed to be ableto grab this when it happened.
So I have this on my desk, andthis in my pocket. And little
paper. God knows when lightningsgonna strike and I occurs an
(40:00):
input comes in that I need tothink I might want to do
something about. So having agood ubiquitous meaning always
with you are always somewherethat you can write stuff down.
I've, I've coached, you know,couples, I've coached, you know,
homemakers, you know that theyneed to make sure that they've
got a notepad in the kitchen,because they're trying to keep
track of two young kids in theliving room playing on the
(40:22):
floor, and they suddenlyrealized, I don't think they
need to have a place they can goget that out of their head, you
know. And so, capture tool, andmost of mine is low tech, you
could capture high tech, if youwant, you know, there, I have a
capture tool on my iPhone. Butagain, you got this, you have to
click it, you have to, there aretoo many clicks I have to do,
and then I have to then makesure I get it out of there
again. So that's actually, youknow, a lot more work than just
(40:45):
low tech capture and capture isnot organized. Capture is just
to get the stuff out. And that'sthe first thing that people need
to have some capture tool andthen an entry, you know,
physical in basket. Here's mine,right here.
Morten Andersen (41:00):
Yeah, that's a that's a physical things in
David Allen (41:03):
it. Because, yeah, I mean, we're still getting
paper, guys, don't kid yourself,they're still you're still
getting physical mail, you'restill getting things you need to
print out and to decide what todo with.
Morten Andersen (41:13):
So the first the first step is to find a
place where you can capturethings, when you get an idea or
an action you need to remindyourself to do or you need to
Oh, by the way, I need to callPeter to do this, or I need to
do that, or whatever. So that'sthe first step is to find a tool
that works that you have withyou all the time.
David Allen (41:33):
Yeah. And if you really wanted to implement the
process, then use that tool, orfrankly, if I were coaching
somebody, I'd give them to get abig stack of paper, make sure
they have a physical in basket,a big stack of printer paper and
get them to empty their head oneidea per page, and throw that
into their in tray. And that'sdifferent than what you would
have once you get the systemstarted. And then the like, yes,
(41:55):
you need it, like I have justthese ubiquitous tools that are
available all the time. But justto if you're implementing the
process to begin with, youprobably need some place more
than just these little notepadsto dump everything out of your
head. as best you can. Yeah,that'll anywhere will work as
long as you're working. So youknow, some sort of a notepad. So
that'd be the first thing to do.
So you just want to keep goingas long as it goes. And that
(42:18):
could be, you know, as long aslong as it takes, I've had to
take up two or three days withsome executives that I've worked
with just to empty it all andget it all out. But even if just
take 10 minutes to do that,it'll help. So you don't have to
do some major project. But justto whatever degree you do that
as just start to externalizethose things, then step two is
train yourself to think what'sthe next action about any of
(42:39):
those that you actually need todo something about, and then
make those decisions about thosethings, and then have a list
manager. So where that you cankeep track of what do I need to
be reminded of is nothing else,it's a simple next action list.
Morten Andersen (42:54):
But that will probably still give you a list
of 200 potential to do's and howdo you then go from there to put
should I do now?
David Allen (43:03):
Well, come on, anybody keeps a grocery list,
they're already doing that,like, Oh, that's something you
need to buy at the store thatgoes over here in that list.
Here's an errand I need to runhere, it goes over that my list,
here's a call I need to makegoes over here. And that calls
list. So just organize thosethings. Based upon the context
that makes sense to you. Theseare things to do when I'm wired
(43:25):
or into when I have a digitalaccess would you could do it off
your iPhone, or your laptop, oryour iPad or whatever, you might
have all of those on one list.
If you have a whole lot, thensometimes it makes more sense to
sort those into into ways itmakes it a little easier to
manage them because a lot ofthem we couldn't do right now
anyway, because you're not whereyou could do them. You know,
going off for errands you don'tneed to look at your errands
list, you don't need to havethat disturb you.
Morten Andersen (43:47):
Yes. So it's actually breaking down that long
list into other lists. Somewhere you do it. When you have a
you need to phone some you needto do errands, some you need to
do on your computer, some youneed to do when you're out
buying groceries or something.
So you have different lists.
David Allen (44:04):
And you need some sort of some sort of tool and
they need to make sure you needto look at the tool and key and
review it and keep it current sothat then your brain doesn't
have to keep reminding you aboutanything.
Morten Andersen (44:14):
So you've obviously implemented this with
hundreds, maybe even 1000s ofpeople over the years and you
have coached them. So you'veliterally sat next to them as
they've been implementing this.
If you look back and think ofsome of the most let's use the
word successful in using thistool, what have they they've
been successful with? There mustbe a hump at some point where
(44:34):
some people they look at and saywell, it's too much bother for
me and others have havecontinued and really been
successful with it. What hasbeen the difference Do you think
between those who who reallyused it? Well,
David Allen (44:50):
well, just legions of testimonials we've gotten
over the last 35 years. Theyrange from a guy who's
attributes this to curinghimself of cancer all the way
Howard Stern is bigentertainment guy in the US,
etc, changed his life givingroom to learn how to paint, as
well as keep all of hisentertainment businesses going.
So, you know, it just rated ithowever people have decided to
(45:14):
do that. But for most peoplethat would say it totally
changed the quality of theirlife.
Morten Andersen (45:18):
And and did they do something? I mean, I
guess what I'm trying to ask is,did they do something in
particular that made it work?
Well, for them? I mean, did theyuse a particular system? Or did
they look at it every day? Ordid they? Or was it literally
just, you know, that theydecided to use it, and then they
made it work for them?
David Allen (45:38):
I don't know. And arranged all over, you don't
have to do you can do any littlepart of this. I had a major
Hollywood producer, probably oneof the most successful you'd
ever know, who just read my bookand said, I just got the next
action concept. And it allowedhim to create movies a whole lot
faster and a lot moresuccessfully than we did. It's
just that one thing. I roll withthat, you know, and that really
(45:59):
works. So whatever it did, itcreated more space and more of a
sense of focus and control. Andthen people have used that. And
for whatever way they've donethat to do whatever they were
doing themselves.
Morten Andersen (46:10):
I guess what I just took from that was because
I've probably seen it as amethodology that here are five
steps. And here are the steps inthe steps. And this is how you
do it. And what I guess whatyou're saying is, if you just do
any of it, that that might evenhelp you. And if that works for
you. Good luck with that. Imean, that works well for you.
So if emptying your head, youknow, somewhere and that works.
(46:31):
Well done. And it's the wholemethodology. Well, that works
for you. So it's really bits andpieces or all of it.
David Allen (46:38):
Yes, it's not running with scissors?
Morten Andersen (46:40):
No. Okay.
David Allen (46:43):
It's all good stuff. That said, if you really
want to taste, how cool is tohave nothing on your mind, other
than whatever you're focusingon, you really do need to
implement the whole methodology.
Morten Andersen (46:57):
Because that's what I did, I took the whole
thing and probably was good thatI didn't know that I could just
take parts of it. But I took thewhole thing. And I think it was
the whole thing that worked wellfor me, because it was also
having, you know, a quarterlyreview and think about, am I
heading right in terms of myfive year plan, or connecting
that to the day to day, and thatworked really well, for me to
(47:18):
have the whole plan implemented?
I guess the thing is that onceyou start on it, you need to
continue to do it every day.
Because otherwise you get abacklog of things that maybe
sounds a little bit too regular,but it is something that you
need to keep maintaining?
David Allen (47:32):
Yeah, well, you need to keep maintaining it if
what you want to do is get ridof your addiction to NBN
anxiety. So that's the biggestproblem most people have is they
start, they get sort of excitedwith this, but then they fall
off because it moves them into amore relaxed state than they're
used to. And if you're talkingabout how to change their
biggest limiter to habit changesyour comfort zone is what are
(47:56):
you familiar with? Right? And sothe comfort zone can keep you
coming back to the ambientanxiety unless you change that
unless you raise the barinternally about what you're
willing to tolerate. Do youwilling to tolerate waking up at
three o'clock in the morningabout something? Are you willing
to tolerate? Having your ideasabout stuff keep banging around
in your head without making anyprogress on them? Are you
willing to tolerate the subtlestress that that starts to build
(48:19):
in people where they're feelingoverwhelmed in any one thing in
your life? Especially if it's astrategic thing? Should we get
divorce? Should we adopt? ShouldI you know, how do I handle
bankruptcy? How do I dowhatever, any one of those
things that you haven't appliedthis methodology with will call
your whole life, that dark grey,it'll make everything feel
overwhelming, everything thatmakes so that's why I say, you
(48:42):
know, just getting thismethodology down as a way to
approach whatever then takes upspace in your life, and
understanding how to engage withthat appropriately. And that's
not something that's not a onetime event. Actually, you know,
I just turned 75 I've been doingthis for 40-35 years anyway, to
some degree. And I'm not goingto stop Why should I? I like
(49:04):
being present. makes life a lotbetter.
Morten Andersen (49:08):
I think that's a fantastic note. To end this, I
want to say thank you very much,David for taking the time to, to
speak about getting things done,I have to admit that I am a
converted person already. Inthat sense. I've also adapted
this quite a lot to my ownneeds. But I think it works well
for me. And I just want to sayto everyone listening that you
(49:29):
should you should have a look atit and see what it can do to
you. Because getting things outof your head and not being
stressed with that. It'sactually it's actually a total
relief. So thanks a lot for yourtime and thanks a lot for your
for your input on this.
David Allen (49:42):
My pleasure Morten.
Thanks for the invitation.
Morten Andersen (49:51):
What a great interview. I took three things
away from my talk with David.
One. productivity is really justabout doing what is most
effective. To you, I thinkpersonal productivity has got a
bad name. To many, it eithermeans to be more efficient at
work, or measuring everything ortrying to achieve. And that's
not what it's about at all. It'sreally just making sure that
(50:14):
you're prioritizing what youthink are the most important
stuff in your life. And that hasrarely, anything to do with
being more productive at work.
Two (50:26):
get stuff out of your head, David Allen has a saying that
your mind is for having ideas,not holding them. He believes
that we should empty our mindscapture it all, and then start
doing the tasks that mattersmost to us, instead of just
thinking. In fact, a lot of whatkeeps us awake at night, or what
(50:48):
gets us all stressed out, isthat we desperately are trying
to keep stuff in our heads. Wecan't and we shouldn't. And
that's why David's mostimportant advice in this
interview was to get all yourstuff out of your head. And
three, find out what works foryou. David has designed this
whole system, and thisidentifies how to capture stuff
(51:11):
and how to sort it and how tomanage tasks, etc, etc. But that
system may not work for all. Infact, he suggests that you find
a system that works for you, andthen follow that. And that's a
great advice. And this is comingfrom a person who actually lives
of selling a particular system.
But one thing he does suggestfor all of us to do is to get
(51:31):
stuff out of our head. GettingThings Done is a world
bestseller and with good reason.
If you're interested in personalproductivity, you really should
read it. If you prefer to watchvideos, then he has made a
number of TED Talks which areworth watching. The one I would
recommend is called the Art ofStress Free Productivity. Until
(51:55):
next time, take care
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.