0:00
Optimal, minimal.
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At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
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Can I ask you a personal question?
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No, it is my personal time.
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What if I did the opposite?
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I'm a cybernetic organism living this year with a metal endoskeleton.
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4:00
Well, hello, boys and girls.
4:00
This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show.
4:04
Good day, good evening, good afternoon, wherever you may be, my gorgeous little Mogwai.
4:12
My guest today is David Allen.
4:12
You may know of him, the man, the legend.
4:16
You may worship his systems, or you may not know who he is, so I will tell you who David is.
4:23
One of the world's most influential thinkers on productivity, David's 35 years experience as a management consultant and executive coach have earned him the titles of personal productivity guru by Fast Company magazine and one of America's top five executive coaches by Forbes magazine.
4:38
The American Management Association has ranked him among the top 10 business leaders, full stop.
4:42
His bestselling book, Getting Things Done, subtitled The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, has been published in 30 languages, and the GTD methodology, as it's known, that it describes has become a global phenomenon, being taught by training companies in 60 countries, probably more, at the time of this reading.
5:03
David, his company, and his partners are dedicated to teaching people how to stay relaxed and productive in our fast-paced world.
5:08
You can find him on Twitter at GTD Guy, GTD Guy, G U Y, and at gettingthingsdone. com.
5:19
And without further ado, please enjoy a very wide-ranging, very unexpected in some aspects conversation with David Allen.
5:31
David, welcome to the show.
5:33
Tim, delighted to be here.
5:33
Thanks for the invitation.
5:34
My pleasure, and it has been a very, very long time since since we've had any contact.
5:39
I know we were chatting before we we pressed record.
5:41
It was probably just a few weeks, maybe a month after the Four Hour Workweek came out in 2007, that I found myself being interviewed by someone alongside you, virtually on the phone, and I was a nervous mess.
5:57
I was very intimidated because I was I felt like I was stepping sort of into the arena with the literal and metaphorical black belt in the productivity space, because also at that time, in 2007, GTD, Getting Things Done, was ubiquitous in Silicon Valley.
6:20
I mean, it was the talk of the town, and 43folders, Merlin Mann, and all of these other outlets, Lifehacker, seemed to talk about GTD every day.
6:31
Uh so, it's nice to It's nice to have a conversation where I feel more comfortable asking questions. Catching up.
6:41
Well, you know, folks like you and me, time time is somewhat irrelevant here, so.
6:47
Well, that's what good friends are for, you know, it's like you show up and go, "Hey, what's new?"
6:50
I don't two years, 10 years. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
6:53
And I I was thinking back to that time frame.
6:56
2007 was a very important inflection point for me, if if if I want to look at it that way.
7:04
And around the same time, somewhere between I want to say 2007-2009, a friend of mine actually interviewed you at South by Southwest in a format that is very difficult, I think in some cases, for both sides, inside a car.
7:20
His name is Chase Jarvis.
7:23
He's a He's a phenomenal guy, fun.
7:25
He's a a phenomenal guy, uh brilliant photographer, and he was trying to do his best to squeeze out uh and you of course you're very good at providing this, but some type of nugget that he could extract in, say, a minute or two minutes, or however many minutes it was.
7:46
And I thought we'd begin there, because the answer, as I remember it, was, "Your mind is made for having ideas, not for holding ideas."
7:53
And I think this is is so important.
7:59
I would love to hear you just expand on what that means.
8:04
Well, your head's a crappy office.
8:08
And, you know, most people are still using their head as their office, and your brain did not evolve to remember, remind, prioritize, or manage relationships with more than four things.
8:18
That's new cognitive science data, by the way.
8:22
So, you know, how many people are trying to keep track of more than four things, and manage the relationship between them, and prioritize between them?
8:26
It's like, "Excuse me, how about 10,000?"
8:30
1,400, or God knows however many.
8:30
And, you know, I just sort of uncovered years ago, more practically and just on the street, how critical it was to empty your head.
8:40
And and, you know, what the what then the you know, in the early days of the new cognitive science field, they called distributed cognition, called get it out of your head.
8:48
And so, I discovered that, and and then discovered not to just get it out of your head, but there are other things you need to do to clarify.
8:53
Back to Peter Drucker, like define what the work is that you're getting out of your head, and what your commitment is to it.
9:00
So, so, you know, I that's I spent 30 the last 35 years trying to figure out what that algorithm is, and then spending thousands of hours, as you probably know, desk side with some of the best and brightest and busiest folks on the planet, actually implementing that process, and watching this transformational hap stuff happen.
9:18
You know, I'm you know, come on, if you're you've done a lot a ton of coaching and and advising, I'm sure.
9:22
And you know, best advice is not to tell people what to do, but ask them the right questions. Right.
9:27
You know, and find out what's going on in their head, and help them frame that in a way that's that's useful.
9:32
And so, I just you know, I just figured that out.
9:34
And it's you know, I don't know how long I'm going to be preaching this, Tim.
9:39
You know, it's Folks, your head is not Don't do that.
9:42
Don't leave your stuff in your head, and it's such a huge habit.
9:44
I think it's because, you know, people have this I think it gives people a false sense of control to keep it in their head.
9:53
And control is the master addiction, you know, so so, you know, you've got to feel vulnerable enough to unload everything that has your attention and take a look at it.
10:02
That's daunting, I guess, for most people.
10:04
You mentioned coaching, so I'll I'll jump to that next.
10:06
I'd love to hear you describe what you do with a say corporate client, past, present, hypothetical.
10:18
When you come in to meet with say executives and they're individually very high-performing people, nonetheless carrying far more than four items in each of their heads and you sit down, what what are the first questions you ask or exercises you do when you sit down with high-functioning, but nonetheless overwhelmed people to work with them?
10:42
What are What are some of the first things that you do with them?
10:45
Well, aside from establishing rapport, Right.
10:49
which is say, you know, "Hi, and why why why do you Why did you bring me in here?
10:53
What is your presenting issue as best you can describe it?"
10:54
And you know, "And here's a little bit about who I am and kind of what we're going to do."
10:58
But, you know, ideally, and over the years I discovered the less I tell people about what we're going to do the better. Surprise.
11:09
So, uh if I just walked in cold, you know, the the tabula rasa here is first thing I would do, Tim, with you would be um let's get Let's make sure you have an in-tray, a physical in-tray.
11:19
We have someplace to throw stuff until we can make decisions about what it means and what you're going to do about it.
11:25
But, we need to collect a bunch of stuff first.
11:28
So, that's what we're going to do first is get some sort of a material version of collection or capturing stuff that has people's attention.
11:35
So, we just get a big stack of printer paper, a favorite pen or pencil, sit them down and say, "Okay, um what's on your mind? What has your attention? Oh, I need cat food. Oh, I need a life.
11:47
Oh, I need a new vice president marketing.
11:48
Oh, our next vacation is coming up.
11:50
Oh god, my cell phone just just crapped out. The printer broke. Uh dad yada yada.
11:59
And we literally start writing.
11:59
They write each one of those items that has their attention on a separate piece of paper and they toss that into their in-tray.
12:09
You'd be surprised, by the way, first First of all, how many people don't have an in-tray or if they do have one, it's petrified because it's just been sitting there with, you know, crap on it for weeks. Right.
12:18
We need to have some sort of clear space to just collect all that stuff to begin with.
12:22
That process, Tim, takes usually, in my experience over all these years, for the mid to senior level professional that we actually coach with this process, it takes 1 to 6 hours just to capture what has their attention, not to organize it, not to prioritize it, not to make decisions about it, just to identify it.
12:37
Yeah, it's so impressive and horrifying at the same time.
12:43
And and I was doing prep for this conversation, I found one paragraph that struck me as important that's related to this, I think, in in some capacity.
12:54
This is from an older piece in Wired, but it reads as the following.
12:57
So, at at a seminar, Alan asked the audience to try to capture all their stuff by writing a list and at the end of a few minutes, tells us to look at the list and think about the way it makes us feel.
13:05
He guesses that our feelings include and feel free to fact-check any of this, by the way, a mixture of grief and relief.
13:11
The relief, he suggests, comes from the simple fact of making the list, but where does the grief come from?
13:15
And this is the the quote that really caught my attention.
13:20
These items represent agreements you haven't kept with yourself, Alan says.
13:23
What happens when you break an agreement with yourself is that your self-esteem plummets.
13:28
Could you speak to this a bit because I I I would imagine a lot of folks would say, "I feel guilt perhaps about all the things I haven't done for myself or for other people."
13:39
But, this grief and agreements that you haven't kept with yourself struck me as as important, at least got my attention.
13:47
Could Could you speak to that?
13:49
Well, I'm going to reverse engineer it a little bit Mhm.
13:50
and come back to the the fact that you're breaking an agreement is because you're keeping track of it in your head and where you keep track of that has no sense of past or future. Mhm.
13:59
So, so that part of you, that little subliminal part of you thinks you should be buying cat food 24 hours a day or hire a vice president 24 hours a day.
14:07
That's why it wakes you up at 3:00 in the morning. Oh cat food.
14:10
Oh my What am I going to do?
14:13
Because that thing has no sense of past or future.
14:16
So, because it doesn't, you can't do it all You can't do more than one thing at a time.
14:20
And so, there's a part of you that thinks you should be doing all of that all the time.
14:23
So, talk about us telling them broken agreements. Yeah.
14:28
So, you know, but but you don't have to finish the thing to keep your agreement.
14:32
You do need to get it out of your head. Mhm.
14:34
See, agreements, and this is one of the things I learned back in the old personal growth days, you know, agreements, you there's an automatic price you pay when you break an agreement is you just disintegrate trust, either with other people or with yourself or both.
14:48
So, if you don't want to If you don't want to have a broken agreement, uh you have three options.
14:52
One is don't make the agreement. I'll know. Not going to do that. Right.
14:56
Move it to someday maybe or something. Uh keep the agreement.
14:58
Go buy Go buy the cat food. Go hire the VP.
15:04
You know, go finish the thing.
15:04
Or, most importantly for most people is renegotiate the agreement. Mhm.
15:10
If I made an appointment, you know, today, for instance, Tim, as you people may hear ambient noise out there, there's a construction going on.
15:15
If that was too loud, I would probably have to try to renegotiate our and reschedule this this talk with you. Mhm.
15:20
Um and and and then I don't have a broken agreement if I don't do it because we renegotiated it.
15:29
you can only feel good about what you're not doing when you know what you're not doing.
15:32
So, most people just have just made so many more agreements than they're aware of.
15:36
So, all we do in our coaching is get people aware of what are all the agreements you've made.
15:39
What are all the woulds, coulds, shoulds, need tos, ought tos?
15:42
And that's one of the reasons people feel good when they make a list is they look at it and go, "Well, gee, I can't do all this right now." No kidding. Right?
15:49
And so, you know, that's the That's the It comes back to externalizing the stuff out of your head.
15:56
That's why it's so critical to do that.
15:57
And most people, I don't think have really understood or or certainly managed themselves under with an understanding of that dynamic.
16:03
I'd love to to underscore and maybe dig into a word that you used that I'm certainly in my own life trying to pay more and more attention to, which is reneg- renegotiate.
16:15
Could you Could you share perhaps uh any recommendations that you give or uh perhaps language you use yourself for renegotiating when need be.
16:29
What do What do you say to someone, whether via email or otherwise, when you need to remove a commitment, whether it's forever or simply for another time?
16:39
Is Is Do you have any particular suggestions or thoughts related to that?
16:45
Yeah, well, I There's probably I I can probably think of a dozen, but one of the most interesting ones and and useful ones, sometimes, is uh to make it really politically correct, it's like, "Wow, you know, what what you're asking me to do or what I've committed to do is going to require so much more attention that I have the bandwidth to actually give it the attention it deserves right now.
17:06
Can we renegotiate that in terms of when it's due or how we're going to make it happen or if I even need to do it at all?"
17:15
So, that's one way to do it. Mhm.
17:17
You just say, "Hey, you know, that's a cool thing.
17:20
I don't mean to This is not bad about you. Not even bad about me.
17:25
It's life, you know, life changes and sometimes we just have to renegotiate stuff in that way.
17:30
You know, I think it's important to tell yourself, as I say, you can only feel good about what you're not doing when you know what you're not doing.
17:34
That's why if In order for me to be on the the call with you and be present here, Tim, I Not long ago, I looked at every single thing I might, could, would, should be ought to do today and say, "No, this is it."
17:47
Maybe I made a mistake, we'll find out.
17:49
But, at least at least for now, this is the coolest thing to do.
17:52
It's the best thing to do.
17:53
It's the only thing to do right now.
17:54
But, I just I just looked at everything else.
17:57
But, it's hard to do if you haven't seen everything else cuz you don't know what everything else includes and so, you're not quite sure what you're not doing.
18:05
And so, most people then can't truly renegotiate with themselves because they're not sure what are all the things that they would, could, should, ought to do.
18:13
That's why, Tim, I mean, it to another point, but it it ties very closely to it.
18:16
When I'm not doing anything else, I'm cleaning up my backlog to zero because there's a surprise coming toward me I can't see.
18:23
And when that surprise hits, that could be good, bad, or indifferent, but when that thing hits, if I've got a big backlog of unclarified, uncaptured, un- organized stuff, I I I I'm going to be disturbed by any input, even if it's good, because I don't know what else I'm missing that if I decide to put my attention on that new thing, what's going to be missed?
18:45
What's going to fall through a crack somewhere? Mhm.
18:46
So, that's why I keeping it clean, you know, keeping the backlog as as minimal as possible is just a a fabulous way to just make sure that you know, that you're clear about what are all the agreements that you have renegotiated with yourself.
19:01
Yeah, that makes that makes very good sense.
19:02
It's on the whether this will turn out to be the best use of your time.
19:06
You Give me Give me a perhaps another half hour to disappoint.
19:08
We'll see how it turns out. Okay.
19:10
On the On the backlog, as minimal as as as it may be, where does that physically live for you currently?
19:19
What is the What What is the the holding pen for that for you?
19:24
Primarily two and a half places.
19:27
Uh one is obviously email.
19:27
You know, right now, I'm uh just because of some other stuff that's going on, I have about a screen and a half full of email, which is a little little too much for my comfort zone, but that's okay.
19:39
Um you know, I'll I'll clean it up sooner than later.
19:42
Um my physical in-tray that I'm staring at right now, which happens to be empty, you know, uh while I was waiting for the construction site to slow down a little bit out there, I was processing a bunch of a bunch of receipts that you know my wife and I collected in the last 24 hours.
19:57
Uh putting them into Quicken.
19:58
So that's all zeroed out right now.
19:59
And the other half place is my little note taker wallet that I carry around with me.
20:06
That has a OneNote in it that says chiropractor. Okay.
20:10
So I'm just throwing that into my in tray right now.
20:11
So those are the those are the places I capture really.
20:13
I don't capture much digitally.
20:16
I do have a an iPhone digital capture called Brain Toss.
20:21
Uh great little program that two GTDers, you know, in Amsterdam actually actually built.
20:28
Because what it does is it doesn't put it into the black hole of my iPhone and automatically transferred transfers it to my email.
20:33
So if I care to digitalize anything that I'm capturing, some thought, some idea, whatever picture I want to take or something, whatever, it automatically goes to email.
20:43
Which then I clean up like I clean up email regularly.
20:45
But those are the main places.
20:48
What are the benefits of minimizing the digitizing, so to speak? Are there benefits?
20:56
Is it simply a habit that you have continued over time since that's where it started?
21:01
Or are are there are there features to using physical paper? Oh yeah.
21:11
Yeah, there's two sides to the coin in the digital world.
21:12
I mean, first of all, it's a great time to be alive if you know what you're doing and you've got a little discipline.
21:18
Uh if you don't, it's a black hole.
21:18
And you're likely to just throw stuff in there that you will uncover, you know, a month later go, "Oh my god, I should have handled that." Whatever whatever.
21:28
And it's Do you Do you put it in Dropbox?
21:29
You stick it in Evernote?
21:29
You want to put it in Outlook?
21:31
You want to put it in WhatsApp?
21:32
What What Where are you going to stick this stuff?
21:36
So the plethora of options has made it almost more work. You know, come on.
21:40
I I don't know if you've seen all the studies that say that basically productivity hasn't gone up at all, though technology has gone through the roof.
21:50
You know, and a lot of that is because the technology hasn't necessarily improved productivity.
21:53
It's actually complicated people's lives a lot.
21:57
I know a bunch of high-tech people that are going back to paper planners.
22:00
Especially the ADD and ADHD type because there are too many clicks.
22:05
And out of sight, out of mind.
22:05
You know, I've got a Thunderbolt screen, but I still don't have the real estate on there that I used to have with my Time/system paper planner. You can't beat it.
22:12
Cuz you can see all of that sort of a relationship to each other much easier.
22:16
It's There are no clicks.
22:18
There's no battery, no Wi-Fi required. It has all the downside.
22:20
I mean, I'm a I'm a kind of a high-tech end user anyway.
22:24
I like I I like all that stuff because of connectivity and so forth.
22:28
But if you really need to know what you're doing, otherwise the tech the tech world can really be quite overwhelming. Mhm.
22:34
And uh I I think what I'd love to do is is rewind the clock a bit at to get a better understanding of how you became the the current version of of David Allen.
22:48
Could you uh describe where you were in high school, what you were focused on at the time, if anything, and and what you wanted to be, what you thought you would be when you grew up or what you wanted to be when you grew up.
23:05
Yeah, well, I have to rewind the tape quite a bit.
23:06
Um Let's see, high school.
23:08
Um Well, first of all, I was an actor as a kid way before high school.
23:12
When I was 10, 11, 12 years old, I I took acting lessons and and actually became sort of the child star in Shreveport, Louisiana, I pretty much spent most of my growing up years.
23:24
And um so that that was always kind of a love uh was that.
23:27
Then in high school I became a debater and state champion debater, regional champion debater, whatever.
23:33
So I didn't enjoy I loved debating. That was fun.
23:37
Uh standing up and trying to make it up, you know, kind of while you're on your feet.
23:42
And uh I thought I was you know You know, come on.
23:46
We're talking the '50s and and early '60s.
23:50
And in Shreveport, Louisiana, if you had any brains at all, you were either a lawyer, a doctor, or a teacher.
23:56
You know, if you weren't necessarily that you know, in that line of things, you either sold cars or insurance or something like that.
24:03
That That was pretty much it.
24:04
You know, there were there weren't a whole lot of other op consultant, what's that? You know, actor?
24:10
No, go get a degree, so you know, so that you can have a job.
24:14
So there there weren't a a whole lot of options basically in my head.
24:16
And it turns out I I actually had the opportunity.
24:20
We had an exchange student at our high school that I was going to from Germany.
24:24
And that kind of that was of interest to me.
24:28
And so I actually applied to the American Field Service, AFS.
24:31
And back then there were not many Americans that that that foreign families or international families would actually take an American for a whole year.
24:39
Usually Americans went for the summer.
24:41
But I applied for a whole year. I said, "What the heck?"
24:44
Uh and turns out I was able to I got chosen by a family in Zurich, Switzerland, and went and lived with the Swiss family for a whole for a whole year.
24:54
And that was eye-opening.
24:54
How old were you at the time? 17 and 18. Wow. Actually '63, '64.
24:58
I was over there when Kennedy was shot, which was quite traumatic for most of the Europeans anyway, you know, when that happened.
25:08
But uh you know, I went to the basically the high school that the the the boy in the family went to.
25:12
There It wasn't an academic program.
25:14
It was more social, live with the family, see how they live, and so forth.
25:19
Uh so I went to the Realgymnasium Zurichberg, which happened to be a block up from the Kunsthaus in Zurich that had Monet water lilies trout, you know, all over the walls.
25:26
And I was three blocks from the Odeon Cafe, which is where Dadaism started, where Jung and you know, all kinds of you know, so I was thrust into the middle of European history and culture just by being there.
25:39
And that kind of opened my eyes a good bit.
25:42
Uh also I had a It turns out I had a had I had a half sister much older than me who had wound up marrying one of the the intellectual chroniclers of the Beat Generation, a man named John Clellon Holmes.
25:55
If you ever looked up John Holmes, John Clellon Holmes, he you know, he wrote some very interesting books.
25:58
And they lived in Connecticut. They were very very hip.
26:03
My dad died when I was a young and my mom when I was nine took me to visit Shirley and and John, her husband.
26:08
And so I got I got introduced to probably the hippest of the hip in terms of of intellectual, you know, culture, New York City, Manhattan. Uh Beat.
26:20
Matter of fact, my brother-in-law John and and Kerouac coined the term Beat, you know, together, you know, watching somebody kind of beat themselves, you know, walk down Central Park.
26:30
Anyway, so I got introduced early on to a whole new different world of sophistication and you know, and culture really back then.
26:39
So I I wasn't I wasn't kind of blindsided by it the fact that the world was a lot bigger than, you know, my world I was growing up in in Louisiana.
26:47
So I kind of wanted to get out of there as soon as I could.
26:51
Uh nothing nothing against that. I still love Louisiana.
26:53
I'm still going back and you know, sort of seeing the the culture and the food and the bayous and so forth and all that.
26:59
Um but I certainly my world had expanded by that point and you know, I was interested in sort of pursuing that.
27:03
So I didn't didn't know I thought law maybe to begin with, but then after being in Switzerland, being around all that culture, then interest in the liberal arts, philosophy, and so forth was much you know, was more interesting to me.
27:16
So when I got into college, that was my focus.
27:21
And what's uh what for those who who aren't familiar with uh the the career path, uh so to speak, what did that what did that look like?
27:30
Uh Well, I went to a crazy little college in Florida that designed your own education, no grades, independent study, called New College.
27:39
And uh got I got bored by the philosophers.
27:41
They wound up proving their original hypothesis using their original hypothesis and so hm.
27:46
That kind of That's kind of a circle thing.
27:47
Uh but what was more interesting was the philosophers themselves.
27:51
And I had a great friend.
27:52
He turned out to be He was my academic advisor, turned out to be a good friend, who was an intellectual historian, history of thought.
27:57
So he turned me on to history of culture, history of thought.
28:03
I thought that was really cool.
28:03
And we didn't even use the word paradigm back then, but that's what I got introduced to.
28:08
I read Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, which is one of the earliest books, you know, 100 over 100 years ago, talking about cultures having their own psy- psyche, their own Geist, and how that affected art, philosophy, math, science, medicine, you know, and everything because you there was kind of a thumbprint or a signature in the various cultures that you could see through all of those things.
28:28
So I was fascinated by that.
28:31
So I guess that was kind of the early stages of me being interested in models.
28:35
You know, and understanding a model.
28:35
If you could understand a model with that that could help the world make a lot more sense.
28:40
I I've always been somewhat attracted to that.
28:43
Always also been attracted by how the invisible affects the visible.
28:48
So if you look back in my career, you know, my first job was a magician at age five on the on the sidewalks of Palestine, Texas.
28:54
I charged five cents for my magic show.
28:58
So you know, so you can you can trace it if you you know, kind of stretch a little bit, but you can trace it all the way back to there.
29:04
I've always been fascinated by how if we could understand what's going on invisibly that's affecting everybody and get a hold of it, that could make a huge difference in how you manage your life. Mhm.
29:16
And uh it it seems like you tried uh your hand at many different types of jobs.
29:24
And we we certainly don't have to trace through all of them, but how did you end up uh teaching say corporations or productivity, which I whichever and and that may not be the Yeah, how how would you Well, it's it's it I'll I'll make a very long story very short.
29:44
Uh you You I got um I got into graduate school um in American intellectual history.
29:53
Now, again, this is Berkeley, 1968.
29:56
Uh they say if you can remember being in Berkeley in 1968, you probably weren't there.
30:00
So, so so but that was heady times to be there and um then you know, at some point I realized, "Wait a minute, I really wanted to get my own enlightenment instead of just study people who had theirs."
30:15
So, I just figured that academia was not the place for it. And so, I jumped ship.
30:19
You know, left that, said, "Okay."
30:22
And then I got went on my own personal exploration path.
30:27
You know, lots of things, you know, lots of drugs, but also martial arts, uh spiritual stuff, you know, come on, this is the '60s, this is Berkeley, you know, early '70s.
30:36
So, as I studied all of that, I was more interested in finding out who I was and finding out about God, truth, and the universe than having a job.
30:41
But, of course, rice bowl and cave wasn't my style.
30:48
So, I said, "Okay, I got to pay the rent. So, how do I do that?"
30:49
Well, so then I had a I had several friends who themselves kind of knew what they wanted to do and they were starting their own businesses and, you know, running small businesses.
30:58
And so, I wound up being a good number two guy.
31:02
So, there just just have a good job.
31:02
I helped some I helped two guys start a New Orleans style restaurant in LA.
31:06
I helped a friend run a landscape company in San Fernando Valley. Um I sold mopeds.
31:12
I you know, cuz you could read the list in Wikipedia, there's a lot of stuff that I did.
31:17
But, I was just basically I would go in and see, "Well, how can I help them do what they're doing?
31:23
And how much easier can we make this?" Cuz I'm just a lazy guy.
31:25
And and you know, then I'd help improve their Now, we call that process improvement, but I was just trying to you know, not have to work so hard.
31:35
And and then I went fix it and then I get bored.
31:37
So, then I go find another job.
31:40
And then I discovered one day they call these people something, they pay them, they're called consultant, you know, so 1981, hung out my shingle, Alan Associates.
31:48
Couldn't spell it then, I are one.
31:50
So, then I said, "Okay, well, let me see if I can sort of just throw myself out there project by project with people and, you know, make that work."
31:58
But, then again, because I didn't want to have to work so hard, I thought, "Well, I'm really interested in models that would work in case I can't see, you know, obviously how to help somebody in their process.
32:08
It'd be nice if I had a model in my back pocket to pull out and be able to help them that would somehow improve their condition."
32:16
So, I got very hungry for those models.
32:18
Also, because of my meditation spiritual work, martial arts work, I I really loved the idea of being clear in my head.
32:24
You know, I'd sort of been you know, I had a lot of training in the martial arts about how do you clear your head, you know, so you can fight appropriately.
32:32
Uh and but then my life got more complex and I said, "Well, that's kind of screwing up my clear head."
32:39
Um so, both my interest in keeping a clear head as well as, you know, good models to help people had me start to get attracted to and uh pull in piece by piece, you know, then fast forward, all the stuff that became ultimately GTD and getting things done, you know, 20 years later.
32:58
But, there was no grand epiphany.
32:58
There were just little small epiphanettes along the way that I began to cobble together in in a system in a systematic approach.
33:08
And, you know, I found some stuff that worked for me.
33:09
You know, I had a couple of mentors teach me some of the key elements of these things and I went, "God, that's really cool."
33:15
And then I turned around and used those techniques with my own clients and it produced the same result, more clarity, more focus, more meaningful space in their head.
33:24
And I thought, "Well, that's cool."
33:24
So, that became a key part of my my own consulting.
33:27
We didn't call it coaching back then, it was just consulting.
33:31
And then I, you know, head of HR in a big corporation saw what I was doing and said, "Wow, we need that in our home company, David.
33:35
Can you design a training program, you know, with this methodology so we can reach a lot of people with this stuff?"
33:42
So, I spent a couple of months and designed a 2 and 1/2 day personal productivity training and we did a pilot program for a thousand executives and managers at Lockheed in 1983 and '84.
33:50
And that worked hit a nerve.
33:52
And I found myself thrust into the corporate training world. Could have fooled me.
33:57
If you'd told me as an American intellectual history major in Berkeley in 1968 that I'd be in the corporate training world, I'd say, "What are you smoking?" Are you kidding?
34:07
But, it turned out that that they hap- it happened to be the audience that was most attracted to what I had found out.
34:15
Cuz the world they you know, the mid to senior level professionals were just starting to get hit with stuff like email and the tsunami of stuff that was starting to hit the corporate world.
34:22
And they were also the the clients that were interested in actually paying for training and coaching and so forth, you know, that would assist, you know, people in those roles.
34:31
So, that's how I That's a very short version of a very long story. I got there.
34:38
I appreciate the uh the the background.
34:40
I would love to hear a bit more about your mentors.
34:43
Are there any uh particular mentors who were particularly important to the formation of GTD?
34:55
There were two and I just had them on stage in the in Amsterdam cuz I invited them to to you know, we just did the GTD Global Summit.
35:01
And I wanted people to sort of hear some of the original DNA of where GTD started.
35:06
One was Dean Acheson, the other was Russell Bishop.
35:10
And uh Dean was a had been a 25-year consultant and in executive consulting in organizational change.
35:19
And uh he had he had uncovered the techniques that were critical to be able to loosen people up so they were able to make change instead of having a lot of old business prevent them from being able to to do that.
35:31
So, the whole idea of a mind sweep, getting stuff out of your head, I learned from Dean.
35:35
He had figured that out that that was absolutely critical for executives particularly because, you know, if they had all this old business spinning around in their head for them to buy into some new goal and vision was like swimming in quicksand.
35:48
So, he discovered that getting that stuff out of their head and having them make next action decisions, the very specific next action.
35:53
So, I learned the mind sweep and the next actions from Dean.
35:56
And those are still core core elements that anybody needs, you know, to get clarity, you know, to get your head clear, you know, in terms of of your commitments.
36:05
And Russell Bishop was uh the co-founder of Insight Seminars, which was a sort of personal growth self-development thing that I got involved in in '78.
36:15
And, you know, I loved that. I loved that training.
36:17
And a large part of that training were was about commitments.
36:19
So, I learned about commitments there and how powerful that was.
36:24
And it was a transformative experience for me.
36:25
And then I actually became a trainer for Insight Seminars working working with Russell and uh we were designing some sort of personal productivity workshops and we were being brought into the corporate world.
36:37
Back in the '70s uh late '70s, early '80s, a lot of the corporate world was starting to be interested in sort of what the personal growth had to offer.
36:46
Actualizations, Lifespring, Insight, you know, things like that were suddenly being brought into the corporate world.
36:53
It was a little dangerous cuz, you know, you had to be a little vulnerable and you know, most corporate cultures were not you know, not that open for all of that kind of stuff.
37:01
But, it was an interesting, you know, experiment and foray into that world.
37:04
And so, I worked with Russell.
37:08
We we created the Insight Consulting Group and we started to do, you know, these you know, what I had learned both from Dean and and my own work, we started to do versions of this stuff in the corporate world.
37:20
And that's where, you know, Russell was my partner for many years.
37:25
That's that's where a lot of that started.
37:27
I'd love to dig into next action decisions.
37:29
Uh this is this is a really powerful concept and a really important distinction that uh many people do not uh have a whole lot of clarity on.
37:43
Uh so could you talk about next action decisions and how they perhaps uh differ from what a lot of people put on their to-do lists? Sure.
37:55
Well, when we talk about next actions, that means as granular as where physically, visibly are you going to go to do what to move the needle on this thing on this commitment?
38:08
Uh is that at your computer to write an email?
38:10
Is that at your computer to surf a website?
38:12
Is that at the hardware store to buy nails?
38:13
Is that at your life partner to have a conversation?
38:15
What is the very, very next thing you need to do to get clarity on Mom's birthday or increasing your bank credit line or hiring a vice president or getting a life?
38:27
You know, very next action.
38:27
If you had nothing else to do but that, what would you go do?
38:31
And people avoid that decision like the plague. They do.
38:35
Could have fooled me, but you know, it takes you know, when we coach people, it takes 1 to 6 hours for them to identify all the stuff they have attention on and then the rest of the day or two to go through each one of those and say, "Okay, what's the very next thing you need to do about cat food, about vice president, about get a life, about should you get divorced or not?"
38:51
Should, you know, what's the next thing?
38:54
And you know, and it takes people actually have to think to make those decisions. It's not hard.
39:01
There are actually two aspects to of getting clarity that that, you know, that I have to tie together is what's the very next action and if one action won't complete whatever this commitment is, what's the project?
39:13
You know, people if you look at most people's to-do lists, you think you see things like Mom, you know, and bank.
39:19
It's like, "Yeah, well, I'm sure you had a mom, so why is it on the list?"
39:21
Well, her birthday's coming.
39:23
What are you going to do about her birthday?
39:26
I don't know, it's just coming. Yeah, right.
39:29
So, you know, so taking something like that and then get Well, you captured the idea, great.
39:33
So, you that's step one, but then step two is you needed to then clarify what exactly you're going to do about that.
39:41
Uh and, you know, what's the final outcome?
39:44
So, give mom a birthday party goes on my project list and call sis my sister see, you know, what she thinks we ought to do for mom's birthday as a next action.
39:52
As simple as that sounds, outcome and action are the zeros and ones of productivity, but most people have not actually identified the outcomes and the specific actions.
40:02
You know, other things that have their attention. Good of old me.
40:06
But, there are very few people that that are exceptions to that.
40:07
And most people have tons of stuff.
40:09
Anybody listening to this right now, just pull out your to-do list and I'll show you what I'm talking about.
40:16
You know, and you most of the things on your to-do list are not the the very next action you need to take about those.
40:22
And probably the things on your to-do list are not the complete outcome that you're trying to achieve by whatever your action you need to take.
40:31
So, it's funny that that that zeros and ones of productivity people are avoiding.
40:36
I mean, getting things done, you need to know what done means.
40:37
You get to mark it off as complete when what's true and what does doing look like and where does it happen?
40:45
Oh, that's a phone call or that's a thing to buy at the store or that's a conversation I need to have with somebody.
40:50
So, I know it's it's kind of a duh, Tim, but it's it is something that most people are need to train a cognitive muscle to answer those questions about stuff cuz it requires thinking. Thinking's hard.
41:04
Well, it's it's it also requires a uh sort of a reframe as to what a an effective to-do list or next action list looks like.
41:14
Even the label itself, right?
41:17
Should I be using the term to refer to mom, bank, etc. as a to-do list?
41:22
What does that actually mean when applied to bank in all caps?
41:27
And in our case, it would just be your your capture list. Mhm. You captured those. Good. Great.
41:33
Then you need to throw those in your in-tray and then go through this decision-making process.
41:36
Is it actionable, yes or no?
41:40
If no, it's either reference or trash or incubate.
41:43
If yes, then it is okay, so what's the next action?
41:47
And if one action won't complete it, what's the project?
41:49
So, as simple as those questions are, that's how you get your in-basket empty.
41:53
Not by finishing everything.
41:56
Yeah, anything you can do in 2 minutes, you should finish right then.
41:57
That's the 2-minute rule, but uh, but otherwise, you just need to clarify it and then, you know, step three would be organize the reminders in some appropriate place.
42:08
I I would love to talk about uh And and please feel free to to rephrase this or take a different angle if if better, but sort of top-down versus bottom-up uh systems and specifically uh I looked at a number of listener questions that uh that were posed and one was related to after doing a mind sweep and sorting the results into do it, discard it, delegate it, defer it.
42:35
Uh some people still having an extremely large list after discarding aggressively and not being sure of how to then eliminate more if if uh if there are tasks or items that they can simply discard, things that are not worth doing.
42:55
I was just going to say, how you help people to if if they say, "I don't know what is important or I'm not sure how to prioritize things."
43:01
If if if you have any advice or thoughts for those people. Sure. I got a bunch.
43:09
One way to think about it is is from a hierarchical standpoint of priorities.
43:15
You know, one of the things that that, you know, I uncovered over all these years is the six horizons that we actually have commitments.
43:21
And they're at different levels with different content.
43:24
The top horizon would be what's your life purpose or what's the purpose of your Now, you can do this iterate iterated on your company or any enterprise you want, but let's do it let's talk about personal.
43:32
So, why why are you on the planet? What are you here to do?
43:35
You know, what's your purpose?
43:37
Obviously, that's going to set your priorities, right?
43:40
You don't want to be off purpose.
43:40
So, that's the the top level.
43:42
Of course, knowing your purpose is not going to help you decide which email to write first. A little bit.
43:46
You know, but then the next level operationally, and I say down not as less, it just means it's more operational, would be what's the vision of your purpose being fulfilled successfully.
43:57
5 years from now, Tim, where do you want to be?
44:00
What does your lifestyle look like?
44:00
You know, I'm sure living in New York as opposed to Silicon Valley was some part of a vision that you had as opposed to, you know, you know, just day-to-day.
44:09
So, you had some sort of a picture about, "Hey, if I really want to do kind of what I want to do, here's what it would look, sound, and feel like."
44:15
So, that's the vision level that people have.
44:17
In companies, that'd be three, four, five-year, you know, long-term plan or vision.
44:22
In terms of where does the company want to be?
44:24
Now, knowing the vision that you have in terms of life and career and lifestyle, does that going to help you decide which email is most important? Yeah, a little bit more.
44:33
Then there's a next level operationally, which is down from that, which is goals and objectives.
44:37
So, what do you if you want to that vision to actually come true, what do you need to accomplish over the next 3 to 24 months?
44:44
That'd be usually what people talk about in terms of annual plans and so forth.
44:48
Yeah, well, I need to make sure my kids get into college.
44:50
I need to make sure that we um you know, that we set up this new division.
44:54
I need to you know, I want to publish the book on you know, whatever whatever those things are.
44:57
Those would be goals that that are emerge uh as a way to get to your vision.
45:06
That's So, purpose would be horizon five.
45:08
Horizon four would be you know, vision.
45:10
Horizon three would be uh goals and objectives.
45:15
Horizon two, importantly, is all the things that you need to maintain uh that are important to you to maintain so that you get there, that you're balanced and you're moving in the right direction.
45:26
So, personally, this would be how's your health? How's your finances?
45:28
How's your relationships?
45:29
How's your spiritual life? How's your dog?
45:30
How's your fun vector, you know, whatever all those things are that you say, "I need to maintain these." You don't finish that.
45:38
You just need to make sure that they're up to par in terms of getting you where you want to go. So, that's horizon two.
45:45
In your organizations, that would be your job description.
45:46
What are the things you're accountable to do well?
45:50
Asset management, staff development, you know, customer service, project design, you know, yada yada.
45:58
So, that'd be looking at those levels there and saying, "Okay, well, once you define your job description and once you looked at your aspects of your life, that's going to help you decide a little bit more about what's the most important email you you need to send."
46:11
Then you get more operational say, "Well, what are all the things you need to finish about any of those things above?" Projects.
46:18
You know, and most people have between 30 and 100.
46:20
Get tires on your car, handle the next vacation, hire the person, get a dog, research whether I can give my kids karate lessons or not, yada yada.
46:30
So, then that's the project level. That's horizon one.
46:32
And then the ground level.
46:35
Um we use ground and then one, two, three, four, five like elevators in Europe as opposed to, you know, the US.
46:40
Since we're so international now, so we had to change the in my the first book, I called 5,000 50,000 ft and 40,000 and so forth, but uh they don't use feet in Europe.
46:50
And so, anyway, so then the ground level is is where all the things you need to do.
46:55
That's the actions you need to take.
46:57
And most people have 100 to 200 of those.
46:59
Emails to send, stuff to buy at the store, stuff to talk to people about, etc.
47:04
So, when you say, "How do I set my priorities?"
47:06
you say, "Well, which one of those horizons is not clear enough to you? Needs needs more work?
47:09
Or which one do you need to refer back to to then decide what's most important on your list?"
47:17
So, that's a and that's a big conversation, as you can imagine, for most people to try to figure that out.
47:22
But, I didn't you know, I tried to get it as simple as I could, but I can't lie to anybody.
47:27
That is the the That's the truth.
47:30
Those are all things that are either conscious or not, they're still they're still at effect for everybody.
47:36
And so, being aware of what your content is on all those different levels is going to help a lot. Help a ton.
47:42
On a more simple, practical level, I just set priorities by saying, "What's most got my attention?"
47:48
What's most got my attention right now?
47:49
What What most do I need to handle so I get to clear space again?
47:54
And you know, so at this point in my life, I've got that kind of simplified.
47:58
Let's let's talk about location for a second because this is this is something that I'm certainly very curious about uh and think about a fair amount.
48:07
I'm in New York right now for writing because I have a very set writing routine here in New York and it's I'm also pretty isolated in rural New York.
48:15
Uh the move that I made from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas was certainly dependent on my answers and descriptions to those higher levels that you described. Mhm.
48:27
And uh I I I'm sure this is written somewhere, but um I didn't want to try to research everything before the conversation.
48:37
Amsterdam, why did you move to Amsterdam?
48:40
What were the drivers or the reasons behind that?
48:46
Well, uh there's kind of a perfect storm of a lot of factors.
48:48
One is we wanted to get out of the US.
48:50
We were a bit tired of US-centricity in terms of thinking.
48:55
Um and we thought about We love Kyoto.
49:00
We love other places, but Europe Europe seemed to be the the the place to to go.
49:05
My Catherine, my wife and I don't have kids, and so you know, we're a little freer to do that.
49:09
My work was becoming much more virtual and actually much more global.
49:14
And Amsterdam is much more the center of my world these days than Santa Barbara was.
49:19
Um and we'd been to the city a couple of times and fell in love with it. We love the city.
49:22
It's it's an eye-candy city. It's just gorgeous.
49:24
And it's uh and it's lovely.
49:26
And we kind of naively thought, "Well, let's spend 3 months there and 6 months in Milan and 6 months in whatever."
49:32
cuz now that my work was becoming so virtual, you know, we had the ability to be able to do that.
49:38
Um Of course, once we found out what it takes to be legal and get legal residency in any place, you know, there's a lot of hoops to jump through.
49:46
And it turns out that and we just kind of threw a dart and said, "Amsterdam."
49:50
It was warmer and and not quite as dark as Copenhagen or Stockholm.
49:56
Uh little more foreign, you know, and adventurous than than London.
50:01
And everybody here speaks English, so you know, that was easy.
50:05
And you know, once we were here, the quality of life here is so wonderful.
50:08
And we just fell in love with the city even more so and still are 5 years later. So, we intend to stay.
50:13
As a matter of fact, we want to immigrate, so you know, going to be Uh we love the Dutch. We love the country.
50:20
Now, but golly, it's just an oasis of, you know, global thinking and openness of whatever.
50:26
That's kind of rare in the world these days.
50:29
It is it is definitely one of my favorite cities in the world.
50:30
Uh you mentioned a lot of wonderful places, but Amsterdam really does check so many boxes.
50:39
It's It's a marvel of a city. It really is. It really is. And it works.
50:45
You know, we haven't had a car in 5 years. It just works.
50:48
You know, uh and and you know, and we have Catherine and I both have two bikes a piece. Uh we walk. Gorgeous parks.
50:56
It's a very dog-friendly city.
50:58
Our favorite restaurants let, you know, allow dogs.
51:02
You know, that's worth moving to Amsterdam for that.
51:07
How have you found your uh state of being, whether it's your emotional state, mental state, uh if if it differs at all to differ being, say, in Amsterdam after uh a number of years versus being in California? Not really that much.
51:25
Come on, Santa Barbara is a gorgeous place.
51:27
I mean, it's not exactly, right? No, come on.
51:32
We actually lived in Ojai.
51:33
The hard the hard streets of Ojai, yeah.
51:35
Yeah, and you know, for 22 years and we loved it.
51:38
We thought we were going to be there permanently.
51:39
It's a beautiful place, wonderful place, great people, you know, great style of a of a of a sort of a country place to live.
51:46
And and so, it kind of surprised us that all of a sudden we just felt like we were done.
51:52
You know, I don't call it dharma, karma, destiny, whatever it is.
51:54
It's like somehow just you know, there are times in our lives when just things just are over.
52:01
And so, we haven't missed anything at all. It didn't really change.
52:03
Quality of life here is just so nice.
52:06
I mean, that's nice to do it every day.
52:07
No stray people and no stray dogs here.
52:11
As opposed to California.
52:14
Also, was it a a a lingering desire over time, maybe we should move, maybe we should move, or was there an event or a day or a conversation where you just said, "This is it. We're done."
52:29
it it kind of was a 4 or 5 year uh move from sort of someday maybe to, "Yeah, let's kind of start to see if we can get real about it."
52:37
We had built our own little sort of jewel box office building in Ojai.
52:39
Uh so, we needed to kind of unhook from that.
52:45
Uh our house that we that we bought in 1992 was so gorgeous.
52:50
It was like Gomer Pyle's little acre out on east end of Ojai.
52:53
It's just beautiful little property and it had old oaks and it and it was so but it was kind of a teardown house to begin with.
52:59
We just couldn't afford to tear it down and rebuild.
53:00
And we discovered that termites don't move that fast.
53:05
So, so basically, we just built a huge garden around it.
53:08
You know, we had 1 acre and we just built outdoor fireplace.
53:12
We had a stunning garden.
53:14
We had a fabulous friend who was a landscape gardener and it was a you know, so we just had great time. We just lived outdoors.
53:19
So, that was that was wonderful.
53:22
Then the termites started to win.
53:24
And we said, you know, with Catherine and my style and our our our inclinations, we would have rebuilt it with glass and concrete and and and you know, and iron.
53:34
You know, in in that environment, it would have been just gorgeous there, but we didn't have the money to do that.
53:42
Uh so, we said, "You know, let's just put a price on the house."
53:46
And it would the market was crap at the time.
53:47
We said, "I know, probably nobody is going to show up at but you know, come on, let's just put a price on it.
53:52
What the heck, you know, it'll be an emotional buy anyway."
53:56
And we said, "Figure damn, maybe 1 or 2 years from now, who knows."
53:57
And 2 weeks later, somebody walked on and said, "I want it right for that price."
54:00
And we went, "Ooh, this might be a sign."
54:04
So, uh so we got out from under the house and we said, but we weren't quite ready to move to Europe at the time.
54:10
There was still more work I needed to do sort of there and locally with the the business.
54:15
Um and so, we said, "Well, let's kind of get training wheels."
54:18
So, we then got a townhouse in Santa Barbara that we were at for 3 years.
54:23
And you know, we we sort of got training wheels for Europe.
54:26
We got Dutch bikes and we lived in a townhouse close to town.
54:30
We could walk into town and so forth.
54:31
So, you know, that was kind of our transition move there.
54:33
And then at a certain point, we said, "Okay, let's throw the dart. Time to go." And that's what we did. Off you went.
54:43
Yeah, it is it it it seems to be landing on the radar of more and more of my American friends as a as a possible uh home base.
54:53
It's It's a really is wonderful choice. It's a terrible place.
54:58
You'd never want to come. Stay away. Stay away. It's full. They hate dogs. Stray people everywhere. They really?
55:04
Uh There are certain decisions, at least in my life, I would imagine in your life, that are are real chapter changes and end up informing many, many things that come thereafter.
55:22
I I'd love to ask you, what is one of the most worthwhile or the best personal investments you've ever made?
55:32
And I'll I'll explain what I mean.
55:33
That could be money, time, energy, anything else.
55:36
So, for instance, uh if if I asked Tony Robbins that, he would point to a Jim Rohn seminar that he paid for at the time when he was working as a janitor.
55:44
If I talked to Amelia Boone, who's a four-time uh world champion in uh obstacle course racing, she'd say the first time she sort of cobbled together the fees to pay for uh one of the larger competitions, which then ended up showcasing how well-built and designed she was for this sport.
56:01
Does Does Does anything come to mind as a particularly important investment that you made that sort of had long-standing ripple effects?
56:16
You know, yeah, I mean, there are probably a dozen.
56:19
Uh but I'll tell you one that comes to mind.
56:20
I don't think I've shared this with many people.
56:24
But as you mentioned it, the what what pops to mind is um I had a guy that became a very good friend of mine and a mentor of mine many, many years ago that I met in Berkeley.
56:35
And he was the guy who offered to teach me karate.
56:38
Uh and he was quite an interesting guy.
56:41
Uh he he was a Olympic fencer. He was a Formula racer.
56:46
He had black belt in karate.
56:46
He was just a fascinating guy. He was also psychic.
56:51
He was studied by the University of Pennsylvania um just because of experiences that he had and things that he saw and things that he knew.
56:59
And back in the early days when, you know, universities were starting to study this psychic phenomenon and where it came from.
57:06
And you know, Michael became a very close friend of mine.
57:08
And as he started to teach me karate, um I found my life started to change.
57:12
I and and I suddenly I'd kind of been doing all the things that were that that were cool to do and that sort of were expected of me to do.
57:22
You know, I'd been a straight-A student.
57:24
I'd gone to a very hip and cool college.
57:26
Obviously, I got into graduate school.
57:30
You know, had good grades.
57:32
Um married a, you know, beautiful woman.
57:35
I got a house in Berkeley.
57:35
I mean, this was, you know, as cool a life as one could have.
57:38
And then one day I woke up and realized this wasn't the life I wanted.
57:43
That there was adventure that I that I was holding myself back from.
57:48
That there were things I wanted to explore and expand and so forth that I I wanted to to do.
57:52
And that sort of changed me.
57:54
You know, one day I just decided to not go back to school.
57:59
And I have no idea kind of records the University of California, Berkeley has of me, but I just didn't go back.
58:05
I said, "Not not for me."
58:07
So, left my marriage, left my life, left all of that, and then and embarked on a uh inner and outer adventure that was quite adventurous.
58:16
Um you know, I I I ran into, you know, you can read a lot of stuff about me out there.
58:20
I ran into a lot of false starts and a lot of things that didn't work very well, but it was all in my exploration. It wasn't really escape.
58:27
I was just looking and exploring an awful lot of things and then found more and more stable ways to and more inner ways to to, you know, in in a um with a much, much more consciousness and stability than kind of random and ad hoc.
58:43
So, I kind of grew up from that, you know, over the years.
58:47
And and sort of my outer life became a lot quieter, even though my inner life was still quite rich.
58:52
So, I I suppose that that was that was a hallmark event, you know, was for me to make that decision to sort of leave what people would probably consider with, you know, one of the best and coolest kind of lifestyles you would have and, you know, go on my own trip.
59:08
Was that a difficult decision?
59:08
I mean, then I I hate to sound like a broken record, but it was it was this a kind of one day I'm done, or was it something that developed over time?
59:19
I mean, that's Well, a lot of people don't leave situations that Well, I I don't remember exactly whether it was days or weeks or months, but it certainly wasn't I don't think it was months.
59:29
I think it was probably weeks that I had that thought.
59:32
But, you know, I'm I'm Mr. Approval Sucker.
59:35
You know, I like people's approval.
59:37
I don't You know, I don't I don't like being the rebel and being out.
59:42
You know, I like people to like me.
59:45
And so, that was that was tough to give all that up.
59:48
What was the conversation like with uh your your wife, with your partner at the time? Not fun. Yeah.
59:57
I mean, was it just short, like I'm leaving today?
59:58
Or was it more of a lead time more lead time than that? Yeah. Yeah. No, it was it was short.
1:00:05
You know, I just I didn't know I didn't understand myself well enough.
1:00:09
You know, not comfortable enough in my own skin to know how to engage with that.
1:00:12
So, it was kind of a you know, a radical you know, God bless her.
1:00:16
She She She endured it as well as anybody could, I suppose.
1:00:20
Uh but it but you know, I was not a class act in terms of how I did that.
1:00:25
In other words, I The The mentor that you mentioned earlier, um my my listeners will kill me if I don't return to at least one description of of this mentor.
1:00:33
The The psychic abilities or extrasensory abilities that uh led to him being studied by uh as you mentioned, the University of Pennsylvania.
1:00:46
Did you observe Were you able to observe any of this uh or to What What What types of things did you observe?
1:00:54
Well, he would see certain things.
1:00:55
In other words, he would have a vision of something and say, "By the way, I know this person did X, Y, and Z."
1:01:00
And they Indeed, that's exactly what they did or what they were going to do.
1:01:06
So, he just had an extrasensory perception ability um for that.
1:01:09
You know, in in his own story, he's now dead, but you know, if he if he told the story, you know, he he was quite depressed as a kid.
1:01:21
Um and didn't know He was just had was so sensitive and didn't understand where people were doing what they were doing.
1:01:26
And so, he did all kinds of things to try to compensate for that.
1:01:30
You know, all these sports things that he would was extremely good at.
1:01:33
And then one day he went to sleep and was taken out of his body and you know, was shown other levels of why he'd been going through all the experiences he had and who was going to be coming toward him.
1:01:46
And that uh he would have this job, essentially, uh the karma of being able to share what he had learned with them cuz he owed them.
1:01:54
So, uh it turned out I was one of those people, at least according to him. So, Wow.
1:02:00
That's That's you know, that's kind of in woo-woo land, but you know, there may be some people listening to this that know what I'm talking about. Yeah.
1:02:07
No, I appreciate you sharing the story.
1:02:09
I uh Yeah, this is this is something we could talk a lot much longer about.
1:02:12
But, I I will try to sort of keep the thread of the the last question in the sense that many of the uh listeners who asked questions, they would hope I would explore with you as something along the lines of what uh Nick Dobos asked, which is asked, excuse me, which is how does he deal with things like mental fatigue, motivation, and mood's role in productivity.
1:02:38
I'm going to I'm going to approach that from a from a a sideways angle and kind of relate it to my last question, which is uh could you describe a particularly uh difficult period that you faced because it's it's very You've done a lot of incredible things.
1:02:55
You have GTD being taught, as I understand it, in 60 plus countries, probably, at this point.
1:03:02
Massive success on so many objective levels.
1:03:05
Um I I really like to humanize guests by asking about tougher times and how they got through it or found their way through it.
1:03:13
Would Would you be open to describing any particular tough or dark period uh that you went through and how you made your way through it? Sure.
1:03:23
Well, you know, back in my early Berkeley days, I had a really uh interesting time where um I I was having my own kind of sort of psychic or spiritual experiences and didn't understand where they came from and didn't understand why other people didn't understand them.
1:03:40
And so, you know, though I'd been sort of Mr.
1:03:43
Nice Guy, suddenly I found myself outcast.
1:03:46
And that was, you know, quite painful.
1:03:48
So, I wound up you know, involved in sort of aberrated behavior out of my frustration of all that and they put me away in a mental institution.
1:03:59
You know, which I thought was kind of interesting because at the time I could see as much about what was going on with the people who put me there as as anybody in there.
1:04:08
And I thought, well, that's kind of fascinating just to be able to see all that.
1:04:11
And I'd read, you know, much of the literature about, you know, is crazy really crazy or are you tapped into something you know, very different.
1:04:22
So, I knew I was tapped into something very different, but couldn't get anybody to understand that.
1:04:25
So, uh and then it became quite painful.
1:04:27
And at so a certain point, I said, "Well, you know, this is too painful.
1:04:31
I think I'm going to uh decide to cooperate instead of rail against these people that can't see what's going on."
1:04:38
So, as I say, I never really got cured.
1:04:41
You're just looking at a high state of cooperation.
1:04:42
So, So, I managed to to get And it wasn't very long, but it was you know, How long How long were you in? Oh, a couple of weeks. Couple of weeks.
1:04:51
I If If I could If I could interrupt for just a second, what were the behaviors that led you to end up there?
1:04:58
And How How did you end up there?
1:05:01
I mean, was it family, friends?
1:05:03
No, I got really pissed off at my at my mentor friend.
1:05:06
And he knew that, you know, I was I would kind of had gone off the rails.
1:05:10
And um I threw a brick through his window.
1:05:13
And so, he called the cops and the cops put me away.
1:05:18
Anyway, that's it it's a much longer, more intricate story than that, but that's the simple version.
1:05:24
And so, you decided to cooperate and you get released.
1:05:28
What What What did your life look like for the the the weeks following that experience? Well, I got a job.
1:05:38
You know, and you know, sort of straightened myself up and started to cooperate with the world.
1:05:43
And then that's when I discovered, you know, a whole lot of I wasn't sure what had happened to me, but I was walking down the street in Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and walked into a store called Shambhala Bookstore.
1:05:58
And I walked in I don't know what I just intuitively and I looked around and I looked down on the shelf and I saw this book that said The Gateways to Spiritual Science by Rudolf Steiner. I said, "Hmm.
1:06:08
I wonder if there are people who actually know what all this stuff is really about."
1:06:12
And so, I spent the next oh, three or four or five months exploring huge amounts of the esoteric literature of the occult and the you know, the the white brotherhood and all kinds of stuff that I didn't know anything about.
1:06:23
But there's a whole body of literature, the Theosophists to begin with in the late 1800s, early 1900s in Europe, um that were sort of studying the science of spirituality, essentially.
1:06:35
And dug into that like crazy.
1:06:35
I said, "Oh my god, you know, I'm not so crazy.
1:06:41
You know, I tapped into something that there was something to tap into."
1:06:42
So, then started to go on an exploration to see if I could find somebody who knew a lot more about that than I did.
1:06:47
And that's when I discovered a guy named John Roger, who then wound up being my spiritual coach.
1:06:53
I said, "So, I'll hang out with him."
1:06:55
Said, "Well, I'll I'll see how much I can learn from him."
1:06:57
And that was, you know, 45 years.
1:07:02
And he was just further down the path than I was, but had a lot of that information.
1:07:05
So, that That's when my life sort of my outer my outer life, you know, got much simpler and much more calm and and traditional.
1:07:14
My inner life, you know, got quite rich, you know, at that point.
1:07:17
What What does the word spiritual mean mean to you in in this context?
1:07:24
Or for for people who are can't Stuff you can't Yeah, stuff you can't see, you know, that's affecting us.
1:07:29
And you know, we all exist on many different levels.
1:07:30
Like you can't see your mental You can't see your thoughts.
1:07:34
You can't see your emotions.
1:07:35
I mean, yeah, there are people who can sort of see your energy field around that, but there's a lot of stuff you can't see that's affecting us.
1:07:42
And I use spiritual with a small S. And let's call it yay.
1:07:44
There's a lot of worlds out there.
1:07:46
And you know, it's possible to experience those worlds uh you know, if you if you meditate, if you practice certain practices, you can, you know, quiet yourself enough to be able to tap into a lot of the other levels that we actually exist on.
1:08:00
So, this level is just a school room.
1:08:02
You know, but we are much bigger than all of that.
1:08:04
So, you can call it whatever you want, your soul, your spirit, your intuition, your gut, whatever you want to call it.
1:08:10
There's this still small voice, essentially, inside of all of us that's tapped into all of this and it is part of it.
1:08:16
So, that that's a huge universe.
1:08:16
What What does your meditation practice look like these days?
1:08:25
Or for people who want to develop a meditation practice, but don't have one, what do you recommend?
1:08:28
Maybe there's two different things.
1:08:30
Well, it's a good You know, I don't know that I have a recommendation other than follow your intuition.
1:08:35
I think I think there's a perfect timing for all that for everybody.
1:08:38
Everybody's on a spiritual path, whether they know it or not.
1:08:42
Everybody's, you know, doing what they're doing, you know, as a way to fulfill, you know, something that they're trying to complete here on the planet.
1:08:49
So, you know, and it's all around.
1:08:49
It's it's it's in everything.
1:08:52
So, whatever is going to allow you to be quieter and listen to As I say, the universe is always on.
1:09:01
So, meditation is not like stopping the universe or stopping anything.
1:09:03
It's just quietening this sort of material loud world out here so you can pay attention to the more subtle voices.
1:09:11
What What have you taken from that uh if anything from that initial experience that landed you in hospital?
1:09:20
As you said, you weren't cured, but you be just became more cooperative as a uh as a as a strategy that has informed uh what you've done uh later or or even what you do today.
1:09:34
I mean, were there particular insights or realizations that have translated? not really.
1:09:41
So, I mean, more just the strength to get through all that.
1:09:45
You know, and and to come out the other side and uh you know, and and make life work.
1:09:51
You know, in the way that it works for me.
1:09:52
So, I I can't I don't know that there was any other, you know, particular aha that happened other than uh hm, well, I think I will change my attitude.
1:10:05
And and shift my approach so that it's much more effective.
1:10:09
And uh Yeah, so that that that helped it.
1:10:11
I mean, having gone through that, there's not a lot There's not a whole lot that scares me out here. Hm.
1:10:20
That makes a lot of sense.
1:10:22
Yeah, uh I mean, once you've Yeah, it's particularly true, I find, with people who have been uh sort of taken to task in the sense of dealing with all that is in here at in addition to all that is out there, if that makes any sense. Hm, sure.
1:10:41
Uh do you ever feel overwhelmed or unfocused?
1:10:46
And if so, what do you what do you do when you feel either of those things?
1:10:50
And I don't want to Daily. Okay, okay. kidding?
1:10:53
I just I don't want to make assumptions, yeah. Yeah, okay.
1:10:55
Oh, come on, it's not always you know, come on.
1:11:00
Every vision you have, every creative thought you have, everything you decide to do is going to throw you out of your comfort zone cuz you you're going to have to undo what you were doing before and reconfigure everything for the new game.
1:11:11
So, you know, it's not like I'm, you know, totally feeling overwhelmed.
1:11:14
I just don't let myself go very long before I fix it.
1:11:18
You know, but soon as I'm you know, this huge project I had, this GTD Summit, was quite I could, you know, there were many times that I felt somewhat overwhelmed cuz I wasn't quite sure what was going to happen.
1:11:29
There were a lot of unknowns and so forth that that I didn't feel like I could control that well.
1:11:34
And so, you know, but you know, I eat my own dog food, as we say.
1:11:37
All right, sit down, write it down, make next action decisions.
1:11:41
Say, what can I handle, what can I not handle? Yeah.
1:11:45
So, you you know, everybody is it's like surfers.
1:11:47
You're always going to fall off.
1:11:49
You just want an ankle tether on so you can get back on real quick and it allows you to surf bigger waves.
1:11:54
Uh are there any beliefs or behaviors or habits that have uh materially improved your life in the last handful of years?
1:12:01
Any any that come to mind?
1:12:06
Nothing comes to mind except just our wonderful dog that we had to put down a few months ago that we're going to need to get another.
1:12:12
You know, walking your dog and just being quiet, you know, very cool.
1:12:17
Uh I'm actually reading I'm reading a brand new book right now that I was getting um I was getting shiatsu uh at at um a spa and uh my shiatsu master who was working on me said, by the way, cuz I went to sleep, he said, by the by the way, you have a little bit of sleep apnea.
1:12:36
Uh and he said, you must read this book.
1:12:38
So, I am halfway through this book called uh The Oxygen Advantage. The Oxygen Advantage.
1:12:44
I had no idea how critical it is to do nasal breathing instead of mouth breathing. It is amazing stuff.
1:12:53
Anyway, so that's There's there's a new habit.
1:12:55
The Oxygen and sleeping with, you know, actually, he he suggests um going and getting adhesive um cloth tape.
1:13:06
Get a 4-in piece and putting it over your mouth when you go to sleep.
1:13:10
So that you you train yourself and, you know, you build the practice of actually sleeping with nasal breathing. A fascinating stuff. The Oxygen Advantage. Yep.
1:13:18
Uh So, that that that's you mentioned it, that's a brand new brand new habit I just started 48 hours ago.
1:13:28
Uh are there are there any particular books that you have um outside of of your own that you have gifted or recommended often to other people?
1:13:39
Uh one of the latest one is called The Antidote. Uh Oliver Burkeman. Fabulous book. Totally fun.
1:13:44
It's happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking. Oh, you'd love it. You'd love it, Tim. It's great.
1:13:52
Uh it's the the the content is is a good bit more serious than what the title sounds like.
1:13:57
He's really into uh kind of poo-pooing the people that just say, oh, don't have any negative thoughts, just go think positive thoughts, just and not not accepting reality.
1:14:10
And so, he he goes into quite a bit of exploration of stoicism.
1:14:14
And the you know, I couldn't agree more with actually his hypothesis and and his thinking. Anyway, it's a fun book.
1:14:19
My wife just broke out laughing regularly as she was reading the book.
1:14:23
It's it's very well written.
1:14:24
So, that's that's one of my latest recommendations, for sure. The Antidote. Yep. All right, note taken.
1:14:32
Uh what what is your if Do you have a consistent, say, morning routine or the first hour or two of your day uh when you are outside of a gigantic event like the summit that you just completed, but when you're in the sort of in-between spaces around those larger commitments?
1:14:49
You know, I tell what I do regularly is the night before, I look at what my hard I look at my calendar for the next day or two and see what my hard landscape is, meaning, what are the things I got to do, you know, no choice that in terms of uh commitments that I've got.
1:15:07
So, I know how long to sleep. I'm a huge fan of sleep.
1:15:11
Uh you know, I used to think I was just lazy, but now, given the new cognitive science, I'm just smart.
1:15:20
We all need 8 to 9 hours of sleep a night, you know, unless you're really an exceptional person. So, I love sleep.
1:15:26
So, that's my first thing is the night before, just to see how long I can sleep.
1:15:29
And when I get up in the morning, first thing I do is a glass of lemon water, cleans the system, uh French press cup of coffee, uh sooner or later, a protein drink.
1:15:37
If we have a dog, the dog goes out.
1:15:40
Uh I read The New York Times on my iPad, uh European version.
1:15:48
And I'll probably play a game or two of Words With Friends cuz I like to get my brain sort of going by just, you know, doing Scrabble with people around the world.
1:15:58
Um and then, whatever I feel like doing next.
1:16:00
Take a long bicycle ride by those canals in Amsterdam.
1:16:08
Usually, I go out and Cath and I usually go for a We have a beautiful park about a an 8-minute walk from where we are that that we love to just walk around.
1:16:15
You know, it's just a it's a nice thing way to clear your head.
1:16:17
Even we don't have a dog, we, you know, get out get outside.
1:16:21
And it's such a beautiful place here that uh that helps, too.
1:16:27
What's What do you find What do you wish uh GTD uh adherents or people who were, say, have read the have read your books once once through each would pay more attention to?
1:16:41
Are there any particular aspects or concepts or or details that you that you wish more people would pay attention to?
1:16:52
Well, I'm not into having anybody change any of the behavior they don't want to change.
1:16:56
You know, my my job was just to give people information, whether they want it or not.
1:16:59
I'm I'm not going to beat anybody up about it or I'm not even going to proselytize about it very much.
1:17:04
I just say, look, you want a clear head, here's how you get it.
1:17:07
Well, then you can do it or not. I don't care. Well, I I care.
1:17:10
Otherwise, I wouldn't share this information cuz it's it's potentially transformational and life-changing for people when they actually get this methodology and capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage with their stuff.
1:17:23
You know, if they do that.
1:17:23
But people can fall off on any one of those.
1:17:24
A lot of people just don't write everything down, so they don't trust their head or their lists.
1:17:30
A lot of people don't decide next actions and outcomes for stuff, and so, their lists are, you know, when they look at them, creating as much stress as they relieve.
1:17:38
And a lot of people don't have a trusted organization system that they trust that they their head can absolutely let it go knowing they're going to see the right thing at the right time, be reminded of the right stuff.
1:17:48
And an awful lot of people don't step back and reflect in what we call the weekly review or or any kind of a regular reflection review.
1:17:53
We step back and take an hour or two at least once a week and bring up the rear guard and and, you know, and get current, you know, get clean again.
1:18:03
You know, cuz life like that.
1:18:03
And those are all the the the the steps that people don't take.
1:18:08
So, I'd say, hey guys, read the book again.
1:18:10
I had somebody read the book 20 times.
1:18:11
He said, it's a different book every time you read it.
1:18:15
Cuz you're ready for a different cut on the stuff when you when you read it again.
1:18:20
So, there's all, you know, it sounds like it's pretty simple, but it's it's, you know, quite a habit for most people to change. The weekly review.
1:18:28
I'd love to spend uh just a a few minutes on that.
1:18:32
Could you could you describe what the weekly review might look like for someone?
1:18:37
What is What are the steps of the weekly review?
1:18:41
Well, first of all, I step back a a second and say, if you don't if you haven't captured, clarified, organized, and reviewed most of the stuff of your life, you don't have the whole thing to review yet.
1:18:51
So, it it the weekly review the the ideal weekly review means that that your system is relatively current, at least it's only a week old in terms of maybe stuff that you haven't brought brought current yet.
1:19:02
Uh then again, even if you haven't set up a system, just to take an hour a week and step back and look at your life, you know, and say, hey, what's happened the last week?
1:19:11
What do I need to do about that?
1:19:13
You know, just any kind of a thinking, you know, in a more reflective process is going to help anybody, you know, at any time.
1:19:18
And not just go zone out, you know, or drink or or even just meditate, but to really focus on your the the work of your life.
1:19:27
You know, it's a different focus. Mhm.
1:19:29
Uh it's when you're thinking about, well, what did I commit to? What's new?
1:19:32
What do I need to be aware of?
1:19:34
If nothing else, just look at your calendar for the coming up the next 2 or 3 weeks.
1:19:39
You know, everybody's going to go, "Oh god, that reminds me." Yeah, no kidding.
1:19:43
You know, so any of that kind of stuff, and again, the more that you have externalized your life and your your work, the more valuable this review is going to be.
1:19:51
When do you tend to do your weekly reviews? Mhm.
1:19:55
Is there You don't have a standard time? No, I don't really.
1:20:00
I just just when sort of ambient anxiety sort of creeps up on me.
1:20:04
But it's usually about every 7 days.
1:20:06
You know, years ago I actually read somewhere Tim that that that cuz we've always said we always knew just practically anyway that a weekly review was really kind of critical to keep your system current alive and well.
1:20:18
You know, and then it grows.
1:20:18
If you don't do that, it does it gets out of date.
1:20:21
You'll fall off the wagon pretty fast and pretty coherently.
1:20:25
So, but then I read one somewhere that your brain actually if if you try to recall something that happened within the last 7 days, you can pretty well recreate the context in your mind.
1:20:37
After about 7 or 8 days, it's kind of like there's a part of your brain that does a control-alt-delete.
1:20:42
And it's like it just you're trying to recreate something that happened 2 weeks ago is like can't find it. What what? Where?
1:20:48
So, there seems to be some sort of a natural cycle of a 7-day cycle.
1:20:54
Uh you know, in in in in that kind of thinking.
1:20:57
So, you know, I that is it's probably one of the most challenging habits to set up, uh but certainly the most rewarding if you if you do.
1:21:07
Do you have uh any rules or commandments for yourself for types of things that you categorically say no to?
1:21:18
Uh and the the the the reason I ask this is that I I at least in my own life have have really tried uh and found quite valuable figuring out trying to figure out the single decisions that remove many, many, many decisions.
1:21:33
So, for instance, no to all speaking engagements outside of Austin for X period of time, whether it's 6 months or 12 months, whatever it might be.
1:21:40
Are there certain categories of things that you simply say no to as a default?
1:21:47
Not really, except unpleasant people.
1:21:52
You know, that I that's that's about it. I don't know.
1:21:55
I I I'm I suppose this will change, but it still at 73, I still take advantage of every I think there's probably two or three or maybe five interviews or podcasts that we've refused cuz the the sleaze factor was just too high.
1:22:10
But I've done 2,000 since the since Getting Things Done was published in 2001.
1:22:15
I just I say, "Hey, anybody wants to is interested in this?
1:22:16
Sure, I'm I'm here to share it with the world. Here we go."
1:22:21
Um and, you know, I I don't have really really that deep a pocket.
1:22:24
I haven't been that entrepreneurial or aspirational to go, you know, build this huge fortune.
1:22:28
You know, and so I still take advantage of work that shows up.
1:22:33
You know, if it seems interesting, it seems like, you know, like something that people are interested in me doing.
1:22:38
I go, "Yeah, you know, my price has gone up, so I'm not doing as much, but that's okay."
1:22:46
Let's return to the unpleasant people for a second.
1:22:48
Uh What, if there is, feeling gives you an indicator that someone is a person you want to avoid?
1:22:57
Or is it more looking at them online, doing a little due diligence, and deciding this is not the the tone of of person I want to interact with?
1:23:07
How do you vet and filter those people out?
1:23:10
I don't have to do much of that these days, Tim.
1:23:11
I mean, I just given where I am in my life, people usually don't contact me unless they're nice.
1:23:17
You know, or at least fun to.
1:23:17
You know, and I I have a little bit of the of the um uh what's his name? I never met him.
1:23:23
A guy that I didn't like, you know, um Will Rogers.
1:23:28
You know, I have a little bit of that in me.
1:23:29
You know, I think most people are good people to begin with.
1:23:31
And most people just don't come to me with negative stuff.
1:23:36
You know, you know, I I guess maybe in the old days I I would a little bit, but I kind of just made a joke.
1:23:41
Kind of like, yeah, I I don't like unpleasant people, but I have a blessed life and I have nothing but, you know, pretty much pleasant people around me.
1:23:49
I'd like to uh read a short quote and ask you to uh elaborate if if if you're able, because it it seems to allude to something very important.
1:24:01
Uh this is from a a Fast Company piece some some time ago.
1:24:06
Um This is a a quote of of yours that they may have gotten wrong, so you can correct it if if need be.
1:24:10
People assume that I am a hard-working, left-brain, results-oriented, OCD, anal-retentive kind of guy, he says with a laugh.
1:24:16
In fact, the reason that I was attracted to this work was that it allowed me to be more creative, more spontaneous, freer. I'm a freedom guy.
1:24:26
Uh could you explain what you mean by that?
1:24:31
I I it's self-explanatory.
1:24:34
I don't know what else I can say.
1:24:34
Well, in the sense that why why does at face value someone might say that there are a lot of rules.
1:24:40
This doesn't And this is this is what some people asked, like, well, it seems like GTD is very rigid and has a lot of process.
1:24:46
I want to be able to use my intuition and creativity.
1:24:50
So, that that So, it it may be self-explanatory, but I'd like you to explain it anyway, because it doesn't seem totally obvious to everybody. Yeah.
1:24:59
Well, I think it was Flobert that said, "Be steady and well-ordered in your life so you can be crazy and spontaneous in your work."
1:25:08
That was 120 years ago that he said that.
1:25:10
It's funny, people say, "I don't want to be so structured."
1:25:11
I said, "What do you think about the middle line on the road out there?
1:25:17
You know, it's a constraint. It's a limitation."
1:25:21
No, the center line is great. Why?
1:25:21
It lets me think about other things while I'm driving as opposed to someone who's going to hit me.
1:25:28
So, just enough structure to give you the freedom.
1:25:32
So, I don't I don't structure anything more than I need.
1:25:36
But you do need a certain rigorous structure, you know.
1:25:39
Uh well, throw away your calendar if you don't like lists. You know. Come on.
1:25:44
It's just the price of missing an appointment is so is emotionally pretty high.
1:25:48
That's why people, you know, maintain that structure pretty well. Right?
1:25:53
So, you just need as much structure as you need.
1:25:56
Ask any, you know, ask anybody out there.
1:25:58
Was it Was it Picasso that said inspiration is for amateurs? It could have been. It sounds like Picasso. sounds like him.
1:26:06
Yeah, I think that I think that was him.
1:26:08
It was like, as opposed No, butt in chair, paintbrush, paint to canvas, stare at it, you know, discipline yourself.
1:26:19
Anyway, so uh I think there is a the degree to which um that Well, I don't know.
1:26:26
You know, that that just seems so self-evident.
1:26:27
I Most of the people that that basically that that I know, some of the most creative people I know.
1:26:33
One of the most creative guys I know, and he just spoke at the summit, by the way.
1:26:37
Sent sent in a video, so I I know since he since he was public about it, I can make it public.
1:26:44
Um probably the most one of the most successful entrepreneur He just won actually the the EY World Entrepreneur of the Year for 2019. Uh Brad Keywell.
1:26:52
And Brad's he's on five boards.
1:26:55
He teaches entrepreneurism at the University of Chicago.
1:26:59
Uh He built Groupon and sold it before he has his own jet.
1:27:03
Um his new startup now is like now is 4 years old, but even 2 years in had a $2 billion market cap.
1:27:12
This guy is so smart, so creative.
1:27:15
You know, he collects modern art.
1:27:15
He's, you know, he runs the Chicago Ideas Week. He started it.
1:27:23
So, this guy is probably one of the most creative people you would ever meet.
1:27:26
Certainly one of the most productive people you'd ever meet.
1:27:27
And I spent a year with him.
1:27:28
People say, "Well, why would he bring Why would he do GTD?"
1:27:30
I said, "Well, his presenting issue with David, I'm just up to here." He's He was 27.
1:27:36
He said, "I'm just just getting my traction, but I I wake up with million-dollar ideas, but I don't know what to do with them or where to put them or who to give them to.
1:27:44
So, he just needed more room.
1:27:46
So, you know, this what what GTD does is it provides space.
1:27:52
Invariably, if you capture, you know, if you, you know, capture, clarify, organize, and reflect on all the things that have your attention, it will give you more room.
1:28:01
What you do with that room is unique to you.
1:28:06
Some people use it to be more creative.
1:28:08
Some people use it to be more strategic.
1:28:10
Some people to be more innovative.
1:28:10
Some people to be just present, you know, with whatever they're doing.
1:28:13
One of my biggest champions, a guy named Howard Stern.
1:28:16
You can't find a more creative guy than Howard.
1:28:19
You know, he'd tell you it changed his life.
1:28:22
Gave him the time to learn to paint, which he always wanted to do, as well as keep Sirius Radio going.
1:28:27
So, you know, or or people like Will Smith or or Robert Downey Jr.
1:28:30
They're big champions of my stuff.
1:28:32
I can say their names cuz they were public about that, so So, you know, if people think that creative people, you know, can't use GTD, I'd say, "Mhm, there are a few people you ought to meet."
1:28:46
A a nitty-gritty question about the weekly review, as a few people asked this uh and and I'm curious as well.
1:28:49
Is Is the weekly review inherently a solo process, or do you ever involve your staff in weekly reviews?
1:29:02
Well, I know people that would do weekly reviews with their families. Very cool to do.
1:29:05
I think you need to do your own private one at any case, no matter what.
1:29:09
But then you if you have groups of people to say, "What are the things that we are all interested in as a group that we can share and update each other with?" So, absolutely.
1:29:17
You know, that's a great It's a great time to do that.
1:29:19
Probably wouldn't necessarily frame it so much as a weekly review so much as let's review all the things that have our attention as a team, as a group, as a family, as a couple. Mhm.
1:29:28
Do you uh manage your email in a task manager or is it's is it its own system?
1:29:36
Is it simply the email client that you happen to be using?
1:29:41
Um Do you have any Could you describe how the the tools you use for for processing email?
1:29:50
Well, I still use IBM Notes, the old Lotus Notes.
1:29:52
We still use that in our company.
1:29:54
Um and I actually had my CTO for say 15 years uh Eric Mack built uh uh an app that sits on top of or within uh notes that lets me use email as my task manager.
1:30:12
Uh but you'd have to be using notes to use it, so it's not publicly available unless you want to It's publicly available if you wanted to set up Lotus Notes or IBM Notes and then get eProductivity to stick on it.
1:30:23
But that's you know, basically um as I look at my screen for instance I have navigator bars on the left-hand side and they have my action list.
1:30:35
There's one of them says projects, one of them says agendas, one of them says calls, one of them says computer, one of them says creative writing, one of them says errands, one of them says home, one of them says online, one of them says someday maybe, and then waiting for.
1:30:48
And so, I can actually drag an email into any one of those and it becomes that.
1:30:51
Or I can just open that folder and then add anything to that folder that I want.
1:30:56
So, it's both an email manager as well as a task manager at the same time.
1:31:01
Do you use any particular app or program for pulling material like articles or references uh off of web browsing into a system of any type? No, not really. Not much.
1:31:16
I use Evernote and you know, I I've used the Evernote you know, little function that captures something. the web clipper. Yeah, the web clipper.
1:31:24
But I still don't use it that much.
1:31:24
I don't I don't I don't have that much stuff that I want to do about that.
1:31:31
You know, the problem with things like Evernote is somebody described it as as write only.
1:31:37
In other words, they spend all their time adding stuff in there and don't even go go in and look at what they've got. Yeah.
1:31:44
It's a risk with a lot of digital technology. only, you know. It's a read only, yeah.
1:31:50
Yeah, addition addition and not sufficiently well, at least subtraction from attentional perspective.
1:32:00
Uh Any of those things will work.
1:32:00
You know, all you need are lists basically.
1:32:04
And you just need something to be able to cut and paste reference material in.
1:32:07
I've got reference material all over Lotus Notes.
1:32:08
I've got reference material all over Evernote.
1:32:11
I have reference material in, you know, in just in Word files.
1:32:15
You know, I don't have any particular template or any particular suggestion other than you know, probably not a bad idea to every once in a while maybe yearly curate all of that stuff.
1:32:25
So, you don't have a lot of old dead wood in there.
1:32:29
I you've mentioned uh quite a few quotes.
1:32:31
You seem to have a good memory for for quotes of various types in in this conversation so far.
1:32:38
Are there any quotes that you would consider you try to live your life by or think of often as a as a mantra {slash} reminder of sorts?
1:32:48
Are there any quotes that come to mind as being particularly important to you?
1:32:52
Well, my screensaver just says let go. Let go. Yeah. Mhm.
1:32:57
Control is the master addiction.
1:32:57
So, not a it's always a good idea to say, "Hey, drop it." Let go. You know, Mhm.
1:33:02
let let life just, you know, be what it is. Mhm.
1:33:08
You know, I I often ask people if you could you could have if you could have one gigantic billboard, metaphorically speaking, to get a message out to uh billions of people or could be a question, could be a quote, could be a word, would that be let go or would it possibly be something else for you? I don't know.
1:33:23
I don't You'd have to give me that billboard that opportunity.
1:33:24
Let me see let me see what shows up.
1:33:26
Cuz I need to let go to be able to see what showed up.
1:33:30
As opposed to try to preconceive that.
1:33:33
I mean, you know, your your head's for having ideas, not for holding them. It's not a bad one.
1:33:36
You know, you know, prac practical you know, GTD-esque you know, quote.
1:33:42
You know, I was reading a piece in The Atlantic.
1:33:44
Um uh which which which which which I I found some of it very fascinating and this was before you had applied the new labels to the uh various vantage points.
1:33:58
So, this was back when we you were using the the 30,000-ft view and so on. Yeah.
1:34:04
But um you mentioned at one point in this and again, feel free to fact-check, but Is this Jim Fallows' article? I think it is.
1:34:13
He met you where he talks about meeting you for dinner after a seminar in Washington. Right.
1:34:17
And there's a portion here that that says, you know, "Back in the old days," this is quoting you, "I had this naive idea that people would see this cool tool we're offering and say, 'Okay, what else?'
1:34:26
We'd have this great big Trojan horse that would march into state corporate world and let us find people who are interested in how life is really lived and they'd say, 'Hey, let's go discover X, Y, and Z truth reality that sits behind all this stuff.'
1:34:35
But of course, that never happened."
1:34:38
Do you still have that hope that people will do something with the space that is created related to bigger questions?
1:34:47
Um No, it's not really a hope. You know, come on.
1:34:51
After all these years, I go you know, I'm not a proselytizer. I'm really not.
1:34:56
I just think you know, what I what I've you know, I've I've had the the good fortune to uncover something that that allows people to create more space.
1:35:07
And again, what they do with that space is up to them.
1:35:08
Whether they want to use it to be able to do their spiritual practices.
1:35:12
People will often say, "Is this a spiritual thing?"
1:35:13
I go, I guess everything is, but No, but if you're in a if you're in a if you're if you're into practicing spiritual practices, this gives you a lot more space to be able to do that in a quieter way.
1:35:27
Um but again, it's you know, I don't I I People will do whatever they do.
1:35:31
The people are already spiritual.
1:35:32
They just may not be that aware of it, but you know, I don't have any I'm not out trying to get people to be something that they're not.
1:35:40
Or to, you know, uncover something that they're not.
1:35:43
And you know, again, you know, I've been doing this for 35 years.
1:35:47
You know, so at a certain point you go, you know, people just do what they do.
1:35:52
Let me just do do the best work I can do.
1:35:54
And you know, if just with what's in front of me, complete it with as much elegance and excellence as I can.
1:35:58
And then the next thing is going to show up.
1:36:02
You know, that was a big freeway aha moment I had years ago when I was agonizing about what I should do with my life.
1:36:07
This little still small voice inside of me said, "David, don't you know, don't worry.
1:36:11
You have created so much in this life and probably many others.
1:36:14
You don't have to worry about that.
1:36:16
Just complete whatever's right in front of you with as much excellence as you can and the next thing will automatically show up."
1:36:21
And I haven't turned back from that.
1:36:23
That's that's constantly been what's happened.
1:36:27
Well, David, I appreciate you making space for this conversation.
1:36:31
We're many, many time zones apart and I don't want to consume too much of your finite time.
1:36:37
Uh but I I very much appreciate you making space for having this conversation. And Oh, this was fun.
1:36:45
Uh nice to chat with you, Tim.
1:36:47
And connect connect again Yeah.
1:36:47
after all these all this time. After all this time. It's been a while.
1:36:51
Let's not wait so long for the next one.
1:36:52
No, I I'll uh I'll let you know when I'm when I'm headed to Amsterdam because I do absolutely love that city and uh people can find you of course on on Twitter at GTD Guy at gettingthingsdone. com.
1:37:05
Uh is is there uh anything else that you would like to say or share or mention to people as we as we wrap up?
1:37:15
Oh, you know, the new edition of the book that came out, you know, two or three years ago is if you haven't got the new edition, it's really worth reading, I think.
1:37:20
You know, I I've updated a bunch of stuff and and you know, sort of tweaked the languaging a good bit.
1:37:26
A lot of people really appreciated that.
1:37:28
And read it a second time.
1:37:28
If you haven't read it but once, believe me, it'll be a whole different book.
1:37:32
And we're coming out with the GTD workbook in September. Penguin's doing that.
1:37:35
It's kind of the 10 moves to stress-free productivity cuz, you know, the getting things done can be quite daunting for people.
1:37:42
They pick up the book and look at it and go, "Oh my god, too much to do."
1:37:45
So, kind of in the you know, in the in the genre of the the workbook for the seven habits that was written and the workbook for some of the other sort of business guru books.
1:37:54
I don't know, Tim, have you written workbooks for the four-hour workweek?
1:37:57
I I haven't, but workbooks are really, really helpful.
1:38:00
Uh And so, I I think that'll that will really aid a lot of people.
1:38:05
Uh And I certainly found the Morning Pages workbook and other things like that to be personally very helpful.
1:38:10
So, I will I will definitely check out the GTD workbook and you said that's coming out in September. Yeah. Perfect.
1:38:19
Uh any other any other closing comments or recommendations for people uh David or or No, I would say Have we you know, you know, if if there's one thing most people could probably do more of, it's relax. Relax. Uh yeah. Enjoy life.
1:38:34
Very little downside to at least physically relaxing. Let it go.
1:38:41
Is it Is it let go or let it go that's on your screensaver? Let go. Let go. Good advice.
1:38:49
Uh Everybody listening, I will have links to everything that we've spoken about in the show notes as per usual at tim. blog/podcast.
1:38:59
Uh so, to everybody out there, thank you for listening.
1:39:01
And David, once again, really appreciate the time.
1:39:03
This has been a real pleasure and I have I will I have a whole extra set of notes here uh, follow up on myself.
1:39:12
and really appreciate it. Thanks, Tim. My pleasure. All right. Until next time. Thanks.
1:39:18
Hey guys, this is Tim again.
1:39:18
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FreshBooks makes it super easy to track things like expenses, project time, and client info, and then merge it all into great-looking invoices.
1:40:44
FreshBooks can save users up to 200 hours per year on accounting and bookkeeping tasks.
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I don't know about you, but I like to do as little of that as possible.
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So, 200 hours is a lot of hours.
1:40:56
FreshBooks is always releasing new features that make running your business easier, and here's just a few of the major upgrades they've made in the last 12 months alone.
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Number one, they've redesigned the time tracking feature to create a more intuitive time tracking experience.
1:41:11
Number two, they know just how frustrating bank reconciliation can be, so they've automated bank reconciliation, removing the pain.
1:41:19
Number three, they've added ACH bank transfers.
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That means you now have an even faster way to collect payment from your clients.
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It's easy to see how FreshBooks can grow with your business and also help your business grow.
1:41:32
It just gives you more time to focus on growing the business as opposed to running the business and the admin stuff.
1:41:38
They have plans to match your needs, no matter the size of your business, from the basic to comprehensive, from small to big, and it all starts at just $15 per month.
1:41:46
Right now, they're offering my listeners, that's you guys, a free 30-day trial of FreshBooks.
1:41:55
You can try it out with no credit card.
1:41:56
No credit card is required. Just go to freshbooks.
1:41:59
com/tim and enter Tim Ferriss, that's two Rs, two Ss, in the how did you hear about us section. That's freshbooks.
1:42:06
com/tim and enter Tim Ferriss in the how did you hear about us section. Check it out. freshbooks. com/tim.
1:42:18
This episode of The Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by 99designs.
1:42:22
99designs is a global creative platform that makes it easy for you to find an amazing designer and create designs you'll love.
1:42:28
From logos to branding to packaging to books, you name it, they have it, and I've used them for just about everything.
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99designs is the go-to creative resource for any budget.
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I've used them for years now for book covers, for instance, mock-ups of The 4-Hour Body, which went on to become a number one New York Times best-seller, illustrations for the multi-volume Tao of Seneca, including the cover, and many other creative projects.
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I've been very impressed by the quality of their work.
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Most recently, I used 99designs to update the illustrations and layout of my Five Morning Rituals ebook.
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The illustrations worked out great.
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I loved working with the designer we selected, and I plan to work with him on more projects in the future, and that's something you can do.
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You don't have to start from scratch every time.
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And right now, my listeners can get $20 off plus a free $99 upgrade on their first design contest.
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Simply submit a brief on the site describing what you need, and designers who are interested in your project, often from around the world, will submit concepts for you to choose from.
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You refine as you go, give feedback, and once you're ready, you choose one to finalize.
1:43:29
It's a great way to get started and find the right match, a great designer and a great design at a great price. So, head to 99designs.
1:43:36
com/tim to learn more or get started today.
1:43:39
You can also see examples of some of the work that I have done with designers on 99designs. So, check it out. 99designs. com/tim.