#873: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) (Repost)

0:00 Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. And then also does some questions. No, it is seen. My cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal and the scale. Sure

0:24 Well, hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. Good day, good evening. Good afternoon, wherever you may be. My gorgeous little Magwai. My guest today.

0:37 is David Allen. You may know of him, the man, the legend, you may worship his systems, or you may not know who he is. So I will tell you. Who David is. One of the world's most influential thinkers on productivity. David's thirty five years experience as a management consultant and executive coach.

0:54 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. The American Management Association has ranked him Among the top ten business leaders full stop. His best selling book.

1:10 Getting Things Done subtitled The Art of Stress Free Productivity. has been published in thirty languages and the GTD methodology, as it's known, that it describes has become a global phenomenon being taught by training companies in sixty countries, probably more. At the time of this reading. David, his company, and his partners are dedicated to teaching people how to stay relaxed and productive in our fast-paced world. You can find him on Twitter at GTD Guy.

1:37 G T D guy. G U I. And at getting things. Done. Dot com. And without further ado.

1:43 Please enjoy. A very wide ranging, very unexpected in some aspects conversation. With David. Allen.

1:51 David, welcome to the show. Jim, delight to be here. Thanks for the invitation. My pleasure. And it has been a very, very long time since we've had any contact. I know we were chatting before we pressed record. It was probably just a few weeks maybe a month after the four hour work week came out in two thousand seven, that I found myself being interviewed by someone alongside you virtually on the phone and I was

2:17 A nervous mess. I was very intimidated because I felt like I was stepping sort of into the arena with the literal and metaphorical Black belt. in the productivity space because

2:32 Also at that time in two thousand seven. GTD getting things done was ubiquitous in Silicon Valley. I mean it was The talk of the town. And forty three folders, Merlin Man, and all these other outlets, life hacker.

2:49 seem to talk about GTD every day. It's nice to have a conversation where I feel more comfortable asking questions. Catching up. Well, you know from Folks like you and me.

3:03 Well that's what good friends are for, you know? It's like you show up and go Hey, what's new I don't Two years, ten years. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I was thinking back to that time frame two thousand seven was a very important inflection point for me, if I want to look at it that way. And

3:21 Around the same time, somewhere between I want to say two thousand seven, two thousand nine. 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. His name is Chase Jarvis. I remember that. He's a a phenomenal guy.

3:42 Brilliant. Photographer. And he was trying to Do his best to squeeze out.

3:49 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. 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. And I think this is so

4:09 Important. I would love to Here you just expand on what that means. Well Your hands are crappy office.

4:19 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. That's new.

4:31 On the science data. By the way. So You know, how many people are trying to keep track of more than four things. And manage the relationship between'em and prioritize between them, like excuse me, how about ten thousand or fifteen hundred or how God knows however many.

4:45 And you know, I just sort of uncovered years ago, more practically than just on the street. How critical it was to empty your head. Yeah, you know what? You know, in the early days of the new cognitive science field they call distributed cognition, called Get It Outta Yet. Mm-hmm. So I discovered that and and then discovered

5:01 You not only just get it out of your head, but there are other things you need to do to clarify back to Peter Drucker, like define what the work is that you're getting out of your head and what your case is to it. So I spent thirty the last thirty five years trying to figure out what that algorithm is. And then spending thousands of hours as probably no design with some of the best and brightest and busiest folks on the planet.

5:20 Actually implementing that process and watching this Transformational. Stuff happened. You've done a l a ton of coaching and and advising, I'm sure, and the best advice is not to tell people what to do, but ask'em the right questions. Right.

5:33 Find out. What's going on in their head and help them frame that in a way that's useful. And so I just No, I just figured that out. I don't know how long I'm gonna be preaching this to him. Yeah.

5:44 Folks, your head is not Don't do that. Don't leave your stuff in your head and it's such a huge habit. I think it's because I think it gives people a false sense of control. Mm-hmm.

5:55 And control is the master addiction. You know, so you've got to feel vulnerable enough. to unload everything that has your attention and take a look at it. That's daunting, I guess, for most people. You mentioned coaching, so I'll jump to that next. I'd love to hear you describe What you do.

6:12 With A Say corporate client. Past, present, hypothetical. When you come in to meet with, say, executives.

6:21 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 are the first questions you ask or exercises you do when you sit down with high functioning buttons

6:38 None the less overwhelmed. people to work with them. What are some of the first things that you do with them? Well, aside from establishing rapport. Right. Which is you know, hi. And why did you bring me in here? What is your presenting issue as best you can describe it. Um You know, and here's a little bit of who I am and kind of what we're gonna do.

6:57 But Ideally, and over the years I discovered the less I tell people about what we're gonna do, the better. Surprise. So If I just walked in cold, you know, the tablerosa here. Is first thing I would do, Tim, with you.

7:10 Would be. Let's make sure you have an entry. A physical entry. Some place to throw stuff. Until we can make decisions about what it means and what you're gonna do about it. But we need to collect a bunch of stuff first.

7:21 So that's what we're gonna do first is get some sort of a material version of collection. Or capturing stuff that has people's attention. So we just get a big stack of prior paper. A favorite pen or pencil. Sum down.

7:34 Okay. What's on your mind? What has your attention? Oh, I need cat food. Oh, I need a life. Oh, I need to do vice president marketing. Oh, our next vacation is coming up. Oh god. My cell phone just crapped out.

7:46 The printer broke. Yeah, yeah. And we literally start Writing. They write.

7:52 Each one of those items that has their attention on a separate piece of paper. And they tossed that into their entry. You'd be surprised, by the way, first first of all, how many people don't have an entry or if they do have one, it's petrified because it's just been sitting there with you know, crap in it for weeks. We need to have some sort of clear space to just collect all that stuff to begin with. That process 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 one to six hours.

8:21 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. Yeah. It's so impressive and horrifying at the same time. And I I was doing prep for this conversation I found one paragraph.

8:38 that struck me as important that's related to this, I think, in in some capacity. This is from an an older piece in Wired, but reads as the following. So at at a seminar, Alan asked the audience to try to capture all their stuff by writing a list at the end of a few minutes. Tells us to look at the list and think about the way it makes us feel. He guesses that our feelings include And feel free to fact check any of this, by the way. A mixture of grief and relief. The relief he suggests comes from the simple fact of making the list, but where does the grief come from?

9:05 And this is the quote that Really caught my attention. These items represent agreements you haven't kept with yourself, Alan says. What happens when you break an agreement with yourself is that your self-esteem plummets. Could you speak to this a bit? Because I I would imagine a lot of folks would say I feel Yaut. Perhaps about all the things I haven't done for myself or for other people, but this grief and agreements that you haven't kept with yourself.

9:30 Struck me as as important, at least got my attention. Could you speak to that? Well, gonna reverse engineer it a little bit. Mm-hmm. Your breaking of the agreement is because you're keeping track of it in your head.

9:43 And where you keep track of that has no sense of past or future. So that part of you, that little sublime part of you, think you should be buying cat food twenty four hours a day. Vice President twenty four hours a day. That's why it wakes you up at three o'clock in the morning. Oh yeah, cat food. Oh my god. What Because that thing has no sense of past or future.

10:00 So because it doesn't you can't do it at all. You can't do more than one thing at a time. And so there's a part of you that thinks you should be doing all of that all the time. So talk about us. Tell them broken agreements. Yeah.

10:12 So You don't have to finish the thing to keep your agreement. You do need to get it out of your head. Agreements and this is one of the things I learned back in the old personal growth days. You know, agreements there's an automatic price you pay when you break an agreement is you to send it right trust. Either with other people or with yourself.

10:27 Or both. If you don't want to have a broken agreement. You have three options. One is don't make the agreement. No, I'm not gonna do that. Right. Move it to somebody, maybe, or something.

10:38 Keep the agreement. Go buy the cat food. Go hire the VP. I'll go finish the thing. Or most importantly for most people is renegotiate the agreement. Mm-hmm if I made an appointment, you know, today, for instance, to Mizzy

10:50 People may hear. Ambient noise out there. There's construction going on. If that was too loud, I would probably have to try to renegotiate or reschedule this this talk with you. And then I don't have a broken agreement. If I don't do it.

11:02 Appreciated it. But you can only feel good about what you're not doing when you know what you're not doing. So most people just have just made so many more agreements than they're aware of. So all we do in our coaching is get people aware of what are all the agreements you've made. What are all the wood, could, should and to talk to's. And that's one of the reasons people feel good when they make a list is they look at it and they go, Well, gee, I can't do all this right now. No kidding.

11:23 And so it comes back to externalizing the stuff out of your head. That's why it's so critical to do that. And most people I don't think have really understood or or certainly manage themselves with an understanding of that dynamic. I'd love to Underscore maybe dig into a word that you used.

11:38 That I'm Certainly in my own life trying to pay more and more attention to, which is renegotiate. Could you share? Perhaps any recommendations that you give or Perhaps language you use yourself.

11:51 for renegotiating when need be. 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.

12:05 Do you have any particular suggestions or thoughts related to that? I could probably think of a dozen, but one of the most interesting ones and and useful ones. Sometimes. Is To make it really politically correct. It's like wow.

12:20 You know? What you're asking me to do or what I've committed to do is gonna require so much more attention than I have the bandwidth to actually give it the attention it deserves right now. Can we renegotiate that? terms of when it's due or how we're gonna make it happen or If I even need to do it at all.

12:36 So That's one way to do it. Mm-hmm. Just say hey. You know? That's a cool thing.

12:41 I don't mean to not bad about you. Not even bad about me. Life changes. And sometimes we just have to renegotiate stuff in that way. 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.

12:55 That's why in order for me to be on the Call with you and be present here. Not long ago I looked at every single thing I might could should be on to doing today and say, No, this is it. Maybe I made a mistake. We'll find out.

13:08 But at least for now this is the coolest thing to do. It's the best thing to do. It's the only thing to do right now. But I just looked at everything else. But it's hard to do if you haven't seen everything else because you don't know what everything else includes. And so you're not quite sure. What you're not doing. 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, oughta do.

13:31 That's why Tim. I mean to another point, but it ties very closely to it. 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. And when that surprise hits. That could be good, bad or indifferent.

13:45 But when that thing hits. If I've got a big backlog of unclefied on capture on organized stuff. I'm gonna 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

13:59 What's gonna be missed? What's gonna fall to a crack somewhere. Mm-hmm. So that's why keeping it clean, you know, keeping the backlog as minimal as possible. It's just a fabulous way to just make sure.

14:11 That You're clear about what are all the agreements that you have renegotiated with yourself. That makes very good sense. On the uh whether this will turn out to be the best use of your time, you give me a Perhaps another half hour to disappoint. We'll see how it turns out. You guys know I love wearables, I'm sure you do as well. And they're great.

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16:53 Tim. In twenty twenty six, stop waiting and start selling with Shopify. On the back log. As minimal as it may be, where does that physic live for you?

17:05 Currently. What is the The holding pen for that. For you uh primarily two and a half places. One is obviously email.

17:15 Right now I'm Just because of some other stuff that's going on, I have about a screen and a half full of email. Little too much for my comfort zone, but that's okay. Yeah, I'll I'll clean it up.

17:24 Son it later. My physical entry that I'm staring at right now, which happens to be empty. While I was waiting for the construction site to slow down a little bit out there, I was processing a bunch of receipts that my wife and I collect in the last twenty four hours. Putting them in the quick and

17:39 So that's all zeroed out right now. And the other half place is my little note ticker wallet that I carry around with me. That has One note in it that says chiropractor. Okay. I'm just throwing that into my entry right now.

17:53 Those are the places I capture, really. I don't capture much digitally. I do have an an iPhone digital capture called Brain toss. great little program that two GTDers you know in Amsterdam actually built. Because what it does is it doesn't put it into the black hole of my iPhone and automatically transfers it to my email. So if I care to digitalize anything that I'm capturing some thoughts, some idea of what uh picture I wanna take or something.

18:18 Whatever, it automatically goes to email. Which then I clean up like I'm Clean up my email regularly, but those are the main places. What are the benefits of Minimizing

18:28 The Digitizing, so to speak. Are there benefits? Is it simply a habit that you have continued over time since that's where it started? Or are there features to Using Physical.

18:43 Well there's two sides of the coin of the digital world. 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. If you don't, it's a black hole. And you're like, you can throw stuff in and then you'll uncover A month later go, Oh my God, I should handle that. And if if do you put it in Dropbox, you'd stick it in Nevernight. You want to put it in Outlook? You wanna put it in WhatsApp? What where are you gonna stick this stuff?

19:07 So the plethora of options. Has made it Almost more work. No, come on. 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 to the roof.

19:19 And a lot of that is because the technology hasn't necessarily improved productivity, it's actually complicated people's lives a lot. I know a bunch of high tech people that are going back to paper planners. Especially the A D D and A D H D type because there are too many clicks. And out of sight out of mind. 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 design paper planner.

19:40 Can't beat it. sort of a relationship to each other much easier. It's There are no clicks, there's no battery, no wi fi required. It has all the downside. I mean I'm a I'm a kind of a high tech.

19:52 End user anyway. I like all that stuff because of connectivity and so forth. You really need to know what you're doing, otherwise the tech world can Really be quite overwhelming. And I think what I'd love to do

20:02 Yeah. Rewind the clock a bit. to get a better understanding of how You became the the current version of David Allen. Could you describe where you were In high school.

20:15 what you were focused on at the time, if anything, and what you want it to be. What you thought you would be when you grew up or what you wanted to be when you grew up. Yeah, well I have to rewind the take quite a bit. Well, first of all, I was an actor as a kid. Wait before high school. When I was ten, eleven, twelve years old, I took acting lessons and and actually became sort of the child star in

20:34 Freeport was the other worry. I pretty much spent most of my growing up years. So that that was always kind of a love. Was that Then in high school I became a debater.

20:44 And state champion debater, regional champion debater, whatever. So I enjoyed I love debating. That was fun. Standing up and trying to make it up. You know, kind of. While you're on your feet. We're talking the fifties and and early sixties. And then.

20:59 You had any brains at all. You were either a lawyer, a doctor, or t or a teacher. You know, if you Not necessarily. In that line of things. Insurance or something like that. That's pretty much it.

21:12 You know, they're a whole lot of other op consultants. What's that? actor? No, go get a degree, you know. So that you can Have a job. There weren't a whole lot of options, basically, in my head. It turns out.

21:23 I actually had the opportunity. We had an exchange student at our high school. That I was calling to from Germany. That was of interest to me. And so I actually applied to the American Field Service AFS.

21:35 And back then they were Not many Americans that foreign families or international families would actually take an American for a whole year. Use the Americans went for the summer. I applied for a whole year. I said, What the heck.

21:47 And turns out. I got chosen by a family in Zurich. What's lived the Swiss family? For a whole year. That was eye opening. How old were you at the time? Seventeen and eighteen.

21:58 Wow. Actually sixty three, sixty four I was over there when Kennedy was shot. Mm which was quite traumatic for most of the Europeans anyway. You know when that happened. Yeah, I went to the h basically the high school that the boy

22:10 And the family went to. The w it wasn't an academic program. It was more social, live with the family, see how they live and so forth. So I went to Real Gymnasium, Julieberg. Which happened to be a block up from the Kunsthaus in Zurich that had Monet water lilies. You know, all over the walls. And I was three blocks from the Odeon Cafe, which is where Dadaism started, where Jung and you know you know, so

22:32 I was thrust into the middle of European history and culture. Just by being there. And that kinda opened my eyes a good bit. Also, I had a I had a half sister.

22:42 Much older than me. who had wound up marrying one of the intellectual chroniclers of the beat generation, a man named John Clown Holmes. You ever looked up John Holmes, John Calone Holmes, you know, he wrote some very interesting books. And they lived in Connecticut. They were very, very hip. My dad died when I was really young and my mom

23:01 When I was nine took me to visit Sillian, her husband. And so I got it introduced to Probably the hippest of the hip in terms of Intellectual Culture

23:11 New York City, Manhattan. Beat. Matter of fact, my brother in law, John and Carolac. Coin the term beat. Yeah, watching somebody.

23:20 Kind of beat themselves you know, walk down Central Park. Anyway, so I got introduced early on to a whole new different world of sophistication. And culture really back then. So I wasn't kind of blindsided by the fact that the world was a lot bigger than My world I was growing up in in Louisiana.

23:38 So I kinda wanted to get out of there as soon as I could. Nothing against that. I still love Louisiana. I'm still going back and Yeah, sort of seeing the the culture and the food and the bios and so forth and all that. But I certainly my world had expanded by that point and you know, I was interested in For the pursuing that. So

23:54 I thought law maybe to begin with, but then after being in Switzerland being around all that culture, then the interest in the liberal arts. Philosophy and so forth was More interesting to me. So When I got into college, that was my focus. For those who aren't familiar with

24:10 A career path. So to speak. What did that look like? Crazy little college in Florida that would design your own education. No grades, independent study, called New College. got bored by the philosophers, they wound up proving their original hypothesis using their original hypothesis, which are

24:26 Kind of a circle thing. But what was more interesting was the philosophers themselves. And I had a great friend. 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. So he turned me on to History of culture, history of thought. I thought that was really cool. And we didn't even use the word paradigm back then, but that's what I got introduced to.

24:45 I read Oswald Spingler The Decline of the West, which is one of the earliest books, you know, over a hundred years ago. Talking about cultures having their own. Psyche, their own geist. And how that affected art, philosophy, math. Science.

24:59 No, and everything because you there was kind of a a thumb print or a signature in the various cultures that you could see through all of those things. So I was fascinated by that. So I guess that was kind of the early stages of me being interested in models. Understanding a model. If we could understand a model that could help the world make a lot more sense. I've I've always been somewhat attracted to that.

25:19 Always also been attracted by how the invisible affects the visible. If you look back in my career. You know, my first job was a magician at age five. On the sidewalks of Palestine, Texas, I charge five cents for my magic show. So you can trace it. If you kinda stretch a little bit, but you could trace it all the way back to there. I w always been fascinated by how

25:39 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. It seems like you tried your hand at many different

25:53 Types of jobs. And we certainly don't have to trace through all of them, but how did you end up Teaching. say corporations or productivity, whichever and that may not be the yeah, how how would you I'll make a very long story very short.

26:09 I got into graduate school. In American intellectual history. Now again, this is Berkeley, nineteen sixty eight. They say if you can remember being in Berkeley in late sixty eight, you probably weren't there. So But that was eight times to be there and At some point I realized, Wait a minute, I really wanted to get my own enlightenment instead of just study people who had theirs.

26:28 So I I just figured that academia was not the place for it. And so I Chip chip. You know, let that. Said okay.

26:37 And then I got went on my own personal exploration path. You know, lots of things. You know, lots of drugs, but also martial arts. Spiritual stuff. You know, come on, this is the sixties. This is Berkeley. You know, the early seventies. 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.

26:56 But of course. Rice bow and cave wasn't my style. So I said, Okay, I gotta pay the rent. How do I do that? Well, So that I had a I had several friends who themselves kinda knew what they wanted to do and they were starting their own businesses and you know, running small businesses. And so I wound up being a good number two guy. So just just have a job.

27:16 I helped two guys start a New Orleans style restaurant in LA. I helped a friend run a landscape company in San Fernando Valley. I sold mopeds. You could read the list of Wikipedia of a lot of stuff that I did, but I was just Basically I would go in and see well, how can I help them do what they're doing. And how much easier can we make this? Is that just a lazy guy?

27:36 You know, then I'd help improve their p now we call that process improvement, but I was just trying to Not have to work so hard. And then I went fix it and then I get bored. So then I go find another job. And then I discovered one day they call those people something. They pay them. They call consultant.

27:50 You know, so Hung out my single album associates. Couldn't spell it now, I R one. 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

28:03 Make that work. 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. Obviously how to help somebody in their process. It'd be nice if I had a model in my back pocket to pull out and be able to help them.

28:19 That would somehow improve their condition. So I got very hungry for those models. Also because of my meditation, spiritual work, martial arts work. I I really love the idea of being clear in my head. Yeah, I had a lot of training in the martial arts about how do you clear your head. You know, so you can fight appropriately.

28:36 But then my life got more complex and I said, Well that's kind of screwing up my clear head. So Both my interest in the Keeping a clear head as well as You know, good models to help people.

28:46 had me start to get attracted to and Cole in. Piece by piece. You know, and fast forward all the stuff that became ultimately G T D getting things done, you know, twenty years later. But there was no grand epiphany. I there were just little small epiphanets along the way that I began to cobble together in in a system.

29:05 A systematic approach. Yeah. You know, I found some stuff that worked for me. You know, had a couple of mentors teach me some of the key elements of these things and I went, Yeah, that's really cool. And then I turn around and use those techniques with my own clients and it produced the same result. More clarity, more focus, more

29:21 Meaningful space in their head. And well that's cool. So that became a key part of my Consulting. We didn't call it coaching back then, which is consulting. And then I you know, head of HR and a big corporation saw what I was doing. He said, Wow, we need that on our whole company, David. Can you design a training program? With this methodology, so we can reach a lot of people with this stuff.

29:41 So I spent a couple of months and designed a two and a half day. Personal productivity training and we did a pilot program for a thousand executives and editors at Lockheed in nineteen eighty three and eighty four. Yeah, And I found myself thrust into the corporate training world. Could have all me.

29:55 You told me as an American intellectual history major in Berkeley in late sixty eight that I'd be in the corporate training world. I'd say what do you smoke? But it turned out that that it happened to be the audience that was most Attracted to what I had found out. You know, the mid to senior level professionals were just starting to get hit with stuff like email and the tsunami of

30:16 Stuff that was starting to hit the corporate world. And they were also 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. That's a very short version of a very long story.

30:31 I appreciate the background. I would love to hear A bit more about Your mentors. Are there any particular

30:41 mentors who were particularly important to the formation of GTD? There were two and I just had'em on stage with me at Amsterdam'cause I invited them to to you know, we just did the GKD Global Summit. And I wanted people to sort of hear some of the original DNA of where G D D started. One was Dean Acheson, the other was Russell Bishop. Dean was a had been a twenty five year consultant and in executive consulting in organizational change.

31:09 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. So the whole idea of a mind sweep getting stuff out of your head I learned from Dean.

31:24 Him figure 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. So he discovered that getting that stuff out of their head and having'em make next action decisions, the very specific next action. So I learned the mind sweep and the next actions from Dean.

31:45 And those are still core elements. that anybody needs, you know, to get clarity, you know, to get your head clear. No, in terms of Commitments. 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 seventy eight.

32:02 And you know, I love that. I love that training. And a a large part of that training was about commitments. So I learned about commitments there. And how powerful that was. And it was a transformative experience for me. And then I actually became a trainer for insight seminars working with Russell. And We were designing some sort of personal productivity workshops and we were being brought into the corporate world. Back in the seventies.

32:25 late seventies, early eighties, a lot of the corporate world was g starting to be interested in sort of what the personal growth had to offer. Actualization is white spring. Insight. things like that were suddenly being brought into the corporate world. It was a little dangerous'cause, you know, you had to be a little vulnerable to you know, most corporate cultures were.

32:44 Not. But it was an interesting Experiment and and for rate. Into that world. And so

32:52 I work with Russell We. created the insight consulting group and we started to do. At least 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. And that's where

33:06 You know, Russell was my partner for many years. That's where a lot of that started. Love to dig into next action decisions. This is a really powerful concept and a really important distinction.

33:20 that uh many people do not have a whole lot of clarity on. So could you talk about next action decisions and how they perhaps differ from what a lot of people put on their to do lists. When we talk about next actions, that means as granular as we're physically, visibly are you going to go to do what? To move the needle on this thing.

33:42 On this commitment. Is that at your computer to write an email? Is that at your computer to surf a website? Is that at the hardware store to buy nails? Is that at your life partner to have a conversation? Or 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.

34:06 What would you go do? If people avoid that decision like the plague. I do. Could have fooled me, but You know, when we coach people it takes one to six hours for them to identify all the stuff they have attention on and then the rest of a day or two. To go through each one of those and say, Okay, what's the f next thing you need to do about cat food, about vice president about

34:24 Should you get divorced or not? Should you know? What's the next thing? And it takes. People actually have to think.

34:31 To make those decisions. It's not hard. There are actually two aspects. of getting clarity 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? If you look at most people's to do lists, you think you see things like Mom, you know, in bank.

34:49 Yeah, well. Sure you had a mom, so why is that on the list. Well, her birthday's coming. What are you gonna do by her birthday? I don't know, it is coming. So taking something like that and then Well, you captured the idea, great. So you that's step one, but then step two.

35:05 Is you need to then clarify what exactly you're gonna do about that. And You know, what's the final outcome? So give Mom a birthday party goes on my project list and call my sis to see, you know, what she thinks we ought to do. Formile's birthday is the next action.

35:19 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. You know, of the things that have their attention. Could all me. But there are very few people that that are exceptions to that. And most people have tons of stuff. Anybody listening to this right now, just pull out your to do list and I'll show you what I'm talking about.

35:42 Most of the things on your to do list are not the the very next action you need to take about those. And probably the things on your to do list are not the complete outcome that you're trying to achieve. By whatever you Action you need to take. So it's funny that zero's ones are productivity people are avoiding.

35:59 I mean, getting things done, you need to know what done means. You get to mark it off as complete when what's true. And what does doing look like and where does it happen? 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. I know it's kind of a duh, Jim.

36:16 But it's something that most people need to train a cognitive muscle to answer those questions about stuff. Because it requires thinking. Working hard. It also requires a sort of a reframe as to

36:27 What an effective to do list or next action list. looks like even the label itself, right? Should I be using the term to refer to Mom bank, et cetera, as a to-do list. What does that actually mean when applied to Bank in all caps.

36:43 In in our case it would just be your capture list. Mm-hmm. We've captured those. Good. Then you need to throw those in your entry. And then go through this decision making process. Is it actionable, yes or no?

36:55 If no, it's either reference or trash or incubate. If yes. Then it is, okay, so what's the next action? And if one action won't complete it, what's the project? So as simple as those questions are, that's how you get your in basket empty.

37:09 Not by finishing everything. Yeah, anything you can do at two minutes you should finish right then. That's the two minute rule, but Otherwise you just need to clarify it. And then you know, step three would be organize the reminders in some appropriate place. I would love to talk about And please feel free to to rephrase this or take a different angle if if better, but

37:28 Sort of top down versus bottom up. systems and specifically I looked at a number of Listener questions that were posed in. One was related to after doing a mind sweep. And sorting the results into do it, discard it, delegate it, defer it.

37:44 Some people. still having an extremely large list after discarding aggressively. Not being sure of how to then Eliminate more if there are Tasks or items that they can simply

37:57 discard things that are not worth doing. How you help people to if they say I don't know what is important or I'm not sure how to Prioritize. things if you have any advice or thoughts for those people. Sure.

38:09 I got a bunch. One way to think about it is from a Hierarchical standpoint of priorities. You know, one of the things that that I uncovered over all these years is the six horizons that we actually have commitments.

38:22 And they're at different levels with different content. The top horizon would be what's your life purpose. And you can do this iterated on your company or any enterprise you want, but let's do it. Let's talk about personal. So why why are you on the planet? What are you here to do? What's your purpose? Obviously that's gonna set your priorities, right? You don't want to be off purpose. So that's top level.

38:41 course knowing your purpose is not gonna help you decide which email to write first. A little bit. Yeah, 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? Five years from now, Tim, where do you want to be? What does your lifestyle look like?

38:59 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 Day to day. So you had some sort of a picture about hey. If I really want to do kinda what I wanna do, here's what it would look sound and feel like.

39:12 So that's the vision level that people have in companies that be three, four, five year Long term. Plan or vision. Now knowing the vision that you have in terms of life and career and lifestyle

39:24 Is that gonna help you decide which email is most important? Yeah, a little bit more. Then there's a next level. Operationally. Down from that, which is Goals and objectives. If you wanted that vision to actually come true, what do you need to accomplish over the next three to twenty four months?

39:39 That'd be usually what people Yeah, well I need to make sure my kids get into college. I need to make sure that we set up this new division. I need to you know, I want to publish the book, uh you know, whatever those things are. Those would be goals. better emerge. As a way to get to your vision.

39:56 So purpose would be Horizon five. Rise and four of the up. vision Horizon Three would be. Goals and objectives. Verizon two

40:05 Importantly. is all the things that you need to maintain. that are important to you to maintain so that you get there, that you're balanced and you're moving in the right direction. So personally this would be how's your health, how's your finances, how's your relationships, how's your spiritual life, how's your dog, how's your fun factor, you know, whatever all those things are that you say, I need to maintain these. You don't finish that.

40:27 You just need to make sure that they're up to spar. I'm just getting you where you want to go. So that's Horizon Two. In your organizations that would be your job description. What are the things you're accountable to do well? Asset management.

40:39 Staff development, you know, customer service. Project design. You know, yellow yellow. So that'd be looking at those levels there and saying, Okay, well once you defined your job description or once you looked at your aspects of your life That's gonna help you decide a little bit more about

40:54 What? The most important email you. You need to serve. Then you get more operational say, Well what are all the things you need to finish about into those things of bows.

41:03 Projects. And most people have between thirty and a hundred. 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. Yeah, they are.

41:16 So Then that's the project level. It's Horizon One. And then the ground level. We use ground and then one, two, three, four, five like elevators in Europe as opposed to

41:26 U S. Since we're stuck with international now, so we had to change. Yeah, in the first book I called five thousand fifty thousand feet and forty thousand and so forth, but They don't use feet in Europe anyway, so then the ground level is is what all the things you need to do. That's the actions you need to take. And most people have a hundred to two hundred of those.

41:43 Emails to send, stuff to buy at the store, stuff to talk to people about. Etc. So When you say how do I set my priorities, I say, Well, which one of those horizons is not clear enough to you need more work. Or which one do you need to refer back to to then decide.

41:57 What's most important on your list? And that's a big conversation, as you can imagine, for most people. To try to figure that out. I tried to get it as simple as I could, but I can't lie to anybody. That's the truth. Those are all things that are either

42:12 Conscious or not, they're still not going to be able to do it. out effect for everybody. And so being aware of what your content is on all those different levels is gonna help a lot. Help a ton.

42:22 On a more simple practical level, I just prioritize basically what's most got my attention. What supposed cut my attention right now? What most do I need to handle so I get the clear space again? At this point in my life I got that kind of simplified. Let's talk about location for a second because this is something that I'm certainly very curious about.

42:40 And think about a fair amount. 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. The move. that I made from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas was

42:54 Certainly. dependent on my Answers and descriptions to those higher levels that you described. Mm-hmm. And I'm sure this is written somewhere, but didn't want to try to research everything before the conversation. Amsterdam

43:08 Why Did you move? to Amsterdam. What were the drivers or the reasons behind that? Well Uh, there's kind of a perfect storm of a lot of factors. One is we wanted to get out of the US.

43:20 We were a bit tired of US centricity in terms of thinking. And we thought about We love Kyoto, we love other places, but Europe seemed to be the place to go. My wife and I don't have kids, so

43:35 My work was becoming much more virtual and actually much more global. And Amsterdam is Much more the center of my world these days than Santa Barbara was. And we've been to the city a couple of times and fell in love with it. We love the city. It's it's an eye candy city and it's just gorgeous. And it's lovely. And we kind of naively thought, Well, we'd let's spend three months there and six months in Milan and six months in whatever,'cause now that my work was becoming so virtual. You know, we have the ability to be able to do that.

44:00 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 through. And it turns out that and we just kinda threw a dart at Amsterdam. It was Warmer and not quite as dark as Copenhagen or Stockholm.

44:16 A little more foreign. You know, and adventurous than London. Yeah. Everybody here speaks English, so you know. That was easy.

44:24 Um You know, once we were here, the quality of life here is just so wonderful and we just flow up with the city, even more so and still are five years later. So we intend to stay. So We love the Dutch, we love the country. Now.

44:38 Golly, it's just oasis of global thinking and openness or whatever. It's kind of rare in the world these days. It is definitely one of my favorite cities in the world. You mentioned a lot of wonderful places, but Amsterdam really does Check.

44:54 So many Boxes. It's a marvel of a city. It really is. It really is. And it works. You know we haven't had a car in five years. It just works. Captain I both have two bikes apiece.

45:05 Yeah. Are we walking? Gorgeous parks. It's a very dog friendly city. My favorite rests allowed dogs. No, that's worth moving to after this.

45:15 Back in the day, this was 2004, maybe, I had someone approach me in a coffee shop and say, Good day, mate. And introduce himself. Who was that? It turned out to be the founder of AG1. Believe it or not, way back in the day. And people often ask me, what has survived after 20 plus years of testing every supplement under the sun? Just about what actually has stayed in the rotation, in the toolbox. This episode sponsor, AG1, is at the top of that very Very short list. I started using it close to 15 years ago when it was still called Athletic Greens. I put it in the four hour body, didn't get paid to put it in there, and it's outlasted almost everything else that I've tried. One scoop covers your nutritional bases, right, fills the gaps.

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46:44 Slash Tim. That's drink A G one. dot com slash Tim. This episode is brought to you by Five Bullet Friday. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers. Every Friday I send out five bullet points.

46:58 of the coolest things I've found that week. It's free, it's always going to be free, and you can learn more at Tim.blog forward slash Friday. Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. Also if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else, I share it first with Fiblet Friday subscribers. So check it out. Tim.blog forward slash Friday. Again, that's Tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. Yeah. How have you found your

47:34 State of being. Whether it's your emotional state, mental state, if it differs at all to differ being, say, in Amsterdam after a number of years versus being In California. Not really that much. Come on. Santa Barbara's a gorgeous place. Not exactly. Actually we lived in Ohio. The hard the hard streets of Ohio, yeah.

47:56 Yeah. And you know, for twenty two years and we loved that. We thought we were gonna be there permanently. It's a be beautiful place, wonderful place, great people, you know, great style of a sort of a country place to live. So it kinda surprised us that all of a sudden we just felt like we were done. I call it. Dharma, karma, destiny, whatever it is, it's like Somehow just

48:14 You know, there are times in our lives when just things just are over. And so we haven't missed anything at all. Didn't really change. quality of life here is just so nice. I mean that's nice to do it. I mean there are no straight people and no straight dogs here. As opposed to California.

48:29 Was it a lingering desire over time, 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. It kind of was a four or five year Move from sort of someday maybe to Yeah, let's kinda start to see if we can get real about it.

48:48 We had built our own little sort of jewel box office building in Ohio. So we needed to kinda unhook from that. A house that we bought in nineteen ninety two. Was so gorgeous. It was like Goslittle Acre out on the east end of Ohio. Beautiful little property and it had old oaks on it, and it was so for it was but it was kind of a tear down house to begin with. We just couldn't afford to.

49:09 Tear it down and rebuild. And we discovered the termites don't move that fast. So basically we just built a huge garden around it. Yeah, we had one acre and we just built outdoor fireplace. We had a Stunning garden. We had a fabulous friend. There's a landscape gardener and there was just

49:24 You know, so we just had great time. We just lived outdoors. So that was wonderful. Then the termites started to win. When we said you know. Inclinations we would have rebuilt it with glass and concrete and iron.

49:38 in that environment. It would have been just gorgeous. There, but we didn't have the money to do that. So We said, You know, let's just put a price on the house. And they would the market was crap at the time. We said

49:49 Yeah, probably nobody's gonna show up at L But you know, come on. Let's just put a price on it. What the heck, you know, it'll be an emotional buy anyway. And we said that maybe one or two years from now. Then two weeks later somebody walked on and said, I want it right for that price. I went, this might be a sign. So we got out from under the house and we said, but we weren't quite ready to move to Europe at the time. There was still more work I needed to do sort of there and locally with the the business.

50:13 So we said well let's kinda get trainer wheels so we then got a townhouse in Santa Barbara. That we were at for three years. We sort of got trainer wheels for Europe. We got Dutch bikes and we l lived in a townhouse close to town. We could walk into town and so forth. So No, that was kind of our transition move there. And then A certain point we said okay. Let's throw the dart. Time to go.

50:33 That's what we did. Off you went. It seems to be landing on the radar of more and more of my American friends is a possible Home base. It's it really is uh Wonderful choice.

50:46 It's a terrible place. You'd never want to come. It's full. It's full. They hate dogs. Stray people everywhere. There are certain decisions, at least in my life, I would imagine in your life, that are the old chapter changes and end up informing

51:04 many, many things that come there after. And Love to Asked You what is one of the most

51:13 Worthwhile or the best. personal investments you've ever made and I'll explain what I mean. That could be money, time, energy, anything else. So for instance, 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. If I talk to Amelia Boone, who's a four time world champion in obstacle course racing, she'd say the first time she cobbled together the fees to pay for.

51:37 one of the larger competitions, which then end up showcasing How well built and designed she was for this sport. Does anything come to mind as a particularly Important.

51:49 investment that you made that sort of had long Standing Ripple Effects. Yeah, I mean there probably be a dozen. But I'll tell you one that comes to mind. I don't think I've shared this with many people. But as you mentioned, what pops to mind is

52:03 I had a guy that came a very good friend of mine and a mentor of mine many, many years ago. But I met overly. And he was the guy who offered to teach me karate. Um He was quite an interesting guy. He was a

52:17 Olympic fencer. Uh he was a formula racer. He uh had a black belt and karate, he was Just a fascinating psychic. It was studied by the University of Pennsylvania. Just because of experiences that he had and things that he saw and things that he knew. Back in the early days.

52:33 Universities are starting to study this psychic phenomenon and where it came from. And um you know, Michael became a very close friend of mine. And as he started to teach me karate. I found my life started to change. And I suddenly

52:47 All the things that were cool to do and that sort of were expected of me to do. You know, I've been a straight A student, I'd gone to very difficult college. Obviously I got to graduate school. Okay.

53:00 Narrate it. You know, beautiful woman. Got a house in Berkeley. I mean this was You know, as cool a life as one can have. And then one day I woke up and realized this wasn't the life I wanted.

53:10 that there was adventure that I was holding myself back from. that there were things I wanted to explore and expand and so forth that I I wanted to do. And That sort of changed me. You know, one day I just decided to not go back. It's cool.

53:25 And I have no idea records. University of California, Berkeley has it. But I just didn't go back. I said not for me. So left my marriage, left my life, left all of that and then

53:36 Embarked on. Inner and outer adventure that was quite adventurous. I ran into it. You know, a lot of stuff about me out there. I ran into a lot of false starts and a lot of things that didn't work very well, but that was all in my exploration. It wasn't really escape. I was just looking at Exploring a awful lot of things.

53:54 And then found more and more stable ways to and more inner ways to Much more consciousness and stability than kind of random and ad hoc. So I kinda grew up from that over the years. And sort of my outer life became a lot quieter, even though my inner life was still quite rich. So I suppose that that was a hallmark event.

54:14 was for me to make that decision to sort of leave. what people would probably consider would you know, one of the best and coolest kind of lifestyles you would have and you know, go on my own trip. Was that a difficult decision? I mean, and I hate to sound like a broken record, but was this a Kind of one day. I'm done, or was it something that developed over time? I mean that's

54:36 A lot of people don't leave situations that I can't remember exactly whether it was days or weeks or months, but it was certainly wasn't I don't think it was months. I think it was probably weeks. That I had that fault. But

54:50 You know, I'm Mr. Approval sucker. I mean, I like people's approval. I don't Like being the rebel and being out. You know I like Able to like me.

54:59 And so that was tough. What was the conversation like with Your wife with your partner at the time. Not fun. Yeah.

55:09 I mean, was it just short like I'm leaving today, or was it more of a lead time more lead time than that? Yeah. Yeah. No, it was short. No, I just I didn't know. I didn't understand. Myself. Well enough. you know, not comfortable enough in my own skin.

55:22 You know a radical, you know, God bless her. She endured it as well as anybody could, I suppose. I was not a class actor how I did that. In other words. The mentor that you mentioned earlier, my listeners will kill me if I don't return to at least one description of this mentor. The

55:42 psychic abilities or extra sensory abilities that led to him being studied by As you mentioned, the University of Pennsylvania. Were you able to observe any of this? Or two. Oh yeah. What types of things did you observe?

55:57 He would see certain things. In other words, he would have a vision of something and say, By the way, I know this person did X, Y, and Z. And they indeed that's exactly what they did or what they were gonna do. So he just had an extra sensory perception ability. To that. And in his own story, he's not dead, but if he told the story He was quite depressed as a kid.

56:18 He just had was so sensitive and didn't understand where people were doing what they were doing and So he did all kinds of things to try this. Compensate for that. Extremely good at. And then one day he

56:31 Went to sleep and was taken out of his body. And you know, just show other levels of why he'd been going through all the experiences he had and who was gonna be coming toward him. He would have this job essentially. The karma of being able to share what he had learned with them'cause he owed them.

56:48 So Turned out I was one of those people. Least according to him. Well it's that's you know, that kind of in woo woo land, but there may be some people listening to this that know what I'm talking about. Yeah.

56:58 No, I appreciate you sharing the story. This is something we could talk a lot much longer about, but I will try to sort of keep the thread of the last question in the sense that many of the Listeners who asked questions they would hope I would explore with you as something along the lines of What Nick Dobos act, which is

57:18 How does he deal with things like mental fatigue, motivation, and mood's role in productivity? I'm gonna Push that from a A sideways angle. And kind of related to my last question, which is

57:28 Could you describe a particularly difficult period that you face because it's very You've done a lot of incredible things. You have GTD being taught as I understand it in sixty plus countries probably at this point. Massive success on so many objective levels.

57:46 I really like to humanize guests by asking about tougher times and how they got through it or found their way through it. Would you be open to describing Any particular tough or dark period. that you went through and how you made your way through it. Back in my early Berkeley days, I had that really

58:04 Interesting time where 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. And so though I'd been sort of Mr Nice guy, suddenly I found myself

58:19 Outcast. And that was Quite painful. So I wound up. Involved in the

58:25 Sort of aberrated behavior out of my frustration. Of all that and they put me away in a Middle institution. Yeah, what I thought was kind of interesting because

58:34 At the time I could see as much about what was going on with the people who put me there as anybody in there. And I thought, Well, that's kind of fascinating just to be able to see all that. And I'd read much of the literature about is crazy really crazy or even are you tapped into something very different. So I knew I was tapped into something very different, but couldn't get anybody to understand that. So Mm-hmm.

58:55 I said well You know? This is too painful. I think I'm gonna Decide to cooperate instead of rail against these people. They can't see what's going on.

59:05 So As I say, I never really got cured, you're just looking at a high state of cooperation. And it wasn't very long. How long were you in? Oh, a couple of weeks.

59:15 What were the behaviors that led you to end up there and how did you end up there? I mean, was it uh family, friends? No, I got really pissed off at my mentor friend. And he knew that I was kinda had gone off the rails.

59:31 And um I threw a brick through his window. And so he called the cops. And the cops put me away. Anyway. It's right. Much longer, more intricate story than that, but that's the simple green.

59:44 And you Get released. What did your life look like for the the weeks following that experience? Well, I got a job and sort of straighten myself up and Started to cooperate with the world.

59:57 That's when I discovered a whole lot of I wasn't sure what had happened to me. But I was walking down the street in Alegrass Avenue in Berkeley and walked into a store called Shambhala Bookstore. And I walked in I don't know why, just intuitively and I looked around and I looked down on the shelf.

1:00:13 And I saw this book that said The Gateways to Spiritual Science. by Rudolph Steiner. Oh. I wonder if there are people who actually know what all this stuff is really about. And so I spent the next

1:00:24 Oh three or four or five months exploring. Huge amounts of the esoteric literature. of the occult and the White Brotherhood and all kinds of stuff that I didn't know anything about. But there's a whole body of literature the theosophists to begin with in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds Europe that were sort of studying the science of spirituality, essentially. And

1:00:45 dug into that like crazy. I said, Oh my God. You know, I'm not so crazy. You know, I tapped into something that there was something to tap into. 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. And that's what I discovered. A guy named John Roger.

1:01:00 Who then wound up being my spiritual coach. So I hung out with him. So I'll see how much. I can learn some. Yeah. And that was Forty five years.

1:01:09 And he was just further down the path than I was, but had a lot of that information. So that's when my life sort of my outer Otherwise. got much simpler and much more calm and traditional my inner life. You know, got quite rich. Uh what does the word

1:01:23 Spiritual mean. This context. Yeah, stuff you can't see. You know, that's affecting us. And you know, we all exist on many different levels. Like you can't see your mental you can't see your thoughts, you can't see your emotions. I mean yeah.

1:01:36 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. And I use spiritual with a small S. It was called. Yeah. There's a lot of worlds out there. Um

1:01:47 It's possible to experience those worlds. If you meditate if you practice certain practices, you can Quiet yourself enough to be able to tap into. a lot of the other levels that we actually exist on. So this level is just a

1:01:59 School room. But we're much bigger than all of that. So you can call it whatever you want, your soul and your spirit. Your intuition, your gut, whatever you want to call it. There's still a small voice essentially inside of all of us that's tapped into all of this and it is part of it. So

1:02:12 That's huge universe. What does your meditation practice look like these days? Or for people who want to develop a meditation practice but don't have one, what do you recommend? Maybe those are two different things. Well, it's a good You know. I don't know that I have a recommendation other than follow your intuition.

1:02:28 There's perfect timing for all that for everybody. Everybody's on a spiritual path, whether they know it or not. Everybody's Doing what they're doing. As a way to fulfill. You know, something that they're trying to complete here on the planet.

1:02:40 And it's all around. It's in everything. So whatever is gonna allow you to be quieter and listen to That's why I say the universe is always on. So meditation is not like stopping the universe or stopping anything. It's just quieting this sort of material loud world out here. So you can pay attention to the more subtle voices. What if you take in

1:02:59 From that. If anything from that initial experience. that landed you in hospital, as you said, you weren't cured, but you became more cooperative as a strategy. That has informed What you've done.

1:03:15 Later or even what you do. Today. I mean were there particular insights or realizations that have translated? No. Not really with the more just the strength to get through all that. And to come out the other side. Um Make life work.

1:03:28 And the way that it works for me. So I don't know that there was any other Aha that happened. Other than Well, I think I will

1:03:36 Change my attitude. And shift my approach. So that it's much more effective. That helped I mean having gone through that. There's not a whole lot that scares me out here. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

1:03:49 Yeah, that's particularly true, I find, with people who have been taken to task in the sense of Dealing with all that is in here in addition to all that is out there. If that makes any sense. Oh, sure.

1:04:04 Do you ever feel overwhelmed or unfocused? And if so, what do you do when you feel either of those things? Every vision you have, every creative thought you have, everything you decide to do is gonna throw you out of your comfort zone. You're gonna have to undo what you were doing before and reconfigure everything for the new game. That's not like him.

1:04:30 Totally feeling overwhelmed. I just don't let myself go very long before I fix it. But This huge project I had, the GTD summit, was quite You know, there were many times that I felt somewhat overwhelmed'cause I wasn't quite sure what was gonna happen over a lot of unknowns and so forth that I that I didn't feel like I could control that well. And so

1:04:48 I eat my own dog food, as we say. Sorry, sit down. Write it down. So what do we handle or what do we not handle? It's like surfers. You you're always gonna fall off. You just want an ankle tether on so you can get that going real quick. Allows you to surf bigger waves.

1:05:02 Are there any new beliefs or behaviors or habits that have materially improved your life in the last Handful of yours, any that come to mind? Nothing comes to mind except Just our wonderful dog that we had to put down a few months ago that we're gonna need to get another.

1:05:18 You know, walking your dog and just being quiet. You know, very cool. I'm actually reading a brand new book right now. I was getting suit. Uh a spa.

1:05:26 And um My Xiotsu master who was working on me said, By the way, you'cause I went to sleep. By the by the way, you have a little bit of sleep out, yeah. He said you must read this book. So I am halfway through this book called

1:05:40 The oxygen advantage The oxygen advantage. Had no idea. how critical it is to do nasal breathing instead of mouth breathing. It is amazing stuff.

1:05:51 Anyway, there's a new habit. The oxygen sleeping with actually he suggests. Going and getting. Adhesive. Plot.

1:06:00 A four inch piece and putting it over your mouth when you go to sleep. So that you Train yourself. You know, you build the practice of actually sleeping. With nasal breathing.

1:06:09 That's stuff. The oxygen advantage. Yeah. You mentioned it. I that's a brand new brand new habit. I just started Forty eight hours ago.

1:06:18 Are there any particular books? outside of your own that you have gifted or recommended. Often to other people. One of the latest ones called The Antidote. Oliver Berkman.

1:06:30 Fabulous book. Totally fun. Happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking. Oh you'd love it. Yeah. It's great.

1:06:40 The content is is a good bit more serious than what the title sounds like. He's really into Poo pooing the people that just say, Oh, don't have any negative thoughts, just go think positive thoughts, just uh and not not accepting reality. And so he goes into quite a bit of exploration of stoicism. I couldn't agree more with actually his

1:06:59 hypothesis and and his thinking. Anyway, it's a fun book. My wife just broke out laughing regularly. She was reading the book. It's it's very well written. So that's one of my latest recommendations. The antidote. Yeah. All right. Note taken. Do you have a consistent say morning routine or the first hour or two of your day. When you are outside of

1:07:19 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. Tim, what I do regularly is the night before. I look at my calendar for the next day or two and see what my hard landscape is, meaning What are the things I gotta do? No choice in terms of commitments that I've got.

1:07:39 So I know how long to sleep. I'm a huge fan of sleep. I used to think I was just lazy. But now given the new cognitive science, I'm just smart. Yeah.

1:07:48 Yeah. We all need eight to nine hours of sleep a night. Unless you're really a an exceptional person. So I love sleep. So that's my first thing is the night before. Just to see how long I can sleep. And when I get up in the morning, first thing I do is a glass of lemon water.

1:08:03 Clear the system. French press. Coffee. Soon or later. A protein drink. We have a dog, the dog goes out. I read the New York Times on my iPad.

1:08:12 European version. And I'll probably play a game or two of Works with Friends'cause I like to get my brain sort of going. I just Doing scramble. With people around the world. And then

1:08:23 Whatever I feel like doing next. Take a long bicycle ride by those canals. In Amsterdam. Usually I go out Catherine and I usually go for we have a beautiful park about a an eight minute walk from where we are that that we love to just walk around.

1:08:39 No, just uh the some ice. Way to clear your head. Even when we don't have a dog, we get outside. And it's such a beautiful place here. That helps too. What do you wish?

1:08:48 GTD adherents or people who were say have read your books once through each would pay more attention to? Are there any particular Aspects or concepts or Details that you wish more people would pay attention to. Well, I'm not into having anybody change any of the behavior they don't want to change. You know, my job was just to give people information, whether they want it or not. I'm I'm not gonna beat anybody up about it or I'm not even gonna proselytize about it very much.

1:09:15 I say look, you want a clear head, here's how you get it. And you can do it or not. I don't care. Well, I care. Otherwise I wouldn't share this information'cause it's Potentially transformational and life changing for people when they actually get this methodology and capture, clarified, organized, reflect, and engage with their stuff. But people can fall off on any one of those. A lot of people just don't write everything down, so they don't trust their head or their lists.

1:09:38 A lot of people don't decide next actions and outcomes for stuff and so Their list your When they look at them creating as much stress as they relieve. A lot of people don't have a trusted organization system that they trust that their head can absolutely let it go, knowing they're gonna see the right thing at the right time. Be reminded of the right stuff. Awful lot of people don't.

1:09:56 Step back and reflect, you know, what we call the weekly review or any kind of a regular reflection review. We step back and take an hour or two, at least once a week. And bring up the rear garden. Correct. You know, get clean again.

1:10:08 Because life's like that. Steps that people don't take. So hey guys, read the book again. Somebody read the book twenty times. You're ready for a different cut on the stuff. When you read it again. It sounds like it's pretty simple, but it's you know quite a habit for most people to change.

1:10:25 The weekly review. I'd love to spend just a a few minutes on that. Could you describe what the weekly review Might look like it's a good idea. For someone. What were the structs of the weekly review? First of all, let's step back a a second and say 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.

1:10:44 the ideal weekly review means that your system is relatively current, at least it's only a week old in terms of maybe stuff that you haven't brought current yet. Then again. Even if you haven't set up a system just to take an hour a week, step back and look at your life. You know, and say, Hey, what's happened in the last week? What do I need to do about that? You know, just any kind of a thinking, you know, in a more reflective process is gonna help anybody. You know, at any time. And not just go zone out.

1:11:09 drink or even just meditate, but to really focus on your The work of your life. You know, it's a different focus. When you're thinking about well, what did I commit to? What's new? What do I need to be aware of?

1:11:21 If nothing else, just look at your calendar for the coming up the next two or three weeks. Everybody's gonna go, Oh, that reminds me. Yeah, no kidding. You know, so any of that kind of stuff. And again, the more that you have externalized your life and you'll work the more valuable this review is gonna be.

1:11:36 When do you tend to do your weekly reviews? No. Yeah, yeah. No, I don't really know. Just when sort of ambient anxiety sort of creeps up on me.

1:11:46 But it's usually about every seven days. You know, years ago I actually read somewhere, Tim, that the Because 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.

1:11:59 Then it grows. If you don't do that, it gets it gets out of date, you'll fall off the wagon pretty fast and pretty coherently. But then I read somewhere that Your brain actually If you try to recall something that happened within the last seven days, you could pretty well recreate the context in your mind. After about seven or eight days it's kinda like there's a part of your brain that doesn't control all delete.

1:12:21 And it's like it just trying to recreate a something that happened two weeks ago. It's like Can't find it. What? Where? So there seems to be some sort of a natural cycle of a seven day cycle. In that kind of thinking. So

1:12:35 It's probably one of the most challenging habits to set up. But certainly the most rewarding to do. Do you have any Rules or Commandments for yourself.

1:12:45 For types of things that you categorically say no to. The reason I ask this is that I, at least in my own life, have really tried. And found quite valuable. Figuring out. trying to figure out the single decisions that remove many, many, many decisions. So for instance, no to all speaking engagements outside of Austin for X period of time, whether it's six months or twelve months, whatever it might be. Are there certain categories of things that you simply say no to as a default?

1:13:13 Not really, except unpleasant people. That's about it. I suppose this will change, but still at seventy three, I still take advantage. I think there's probably two or three or maybe five. Interviews or podcasts that we've refused'cause the the sweeze factor was just too high. But I've done two thousand since getting things done. It was published in two thousand and one.

1:13:35 I'd say hey anybody wants is interested in this. Sure, I'm here to share it with the world. Here we go. And I don't have really that deep a pocket. I haven't been that entrepreneurial or aspirational to go build this huge Fortune. So I still take advantage of work that shows up.

1:13:50 Yeah, if it seems interesting it seems. Like something that people are interested in me doing. I go, Yeah, you know, my price is going up. So I'm not doing as much. But that's okay.

1:14:00 Let's return to the unpleasant people for a second. What if there is Feeling gives you an indicator that someone is a person you want to avoid, or is it more looking at them online, doing a little due diligence and deciding this is

1:14:14 Not the tone of person I want to interact with. How do you vet? Filter those people out. I don't have to do much of that these days to I mean I guess given where I am in my life. People usually don't contact me unless they're nice, you know, or at least fun to, you know, and I'm I have a little bit of the What's his name? I never met a guy that I didn't like.

1:14:32 Will Rogers. I have a little bit of that in me. I think most people are good people to begin with. And most people just don't come to me with it. Negative stuff.

1:14:41 I guess maybe in the old days a little bit. But I kind of just made a joke. I w I don't like unpleasant people, but I have a blessed life in it. I have nothing but pretty much pleasant people around me. I'd like to Read a short quote and ask you to

1:14:57 elaborate if you're able, because it seems to allude to something very important. This is from a fast company piece some time ago. This is a quote of yours that they may have gone wrong, so you can correct it if need be. People assume that I'm a hard working, left brained, results oriented, OCD anal retentive kind of guy, he says with a laugh. 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. Could you

1:15:23 Explain. What you mean by that? Self explanatory. At face value, someone might say that there are a lot of rules And this is what some people ask, like Well it seems like

1:15:37 GTD is very rigid and has a lot of process. I want to be able to use my intuition and creativity. So it may be self explanatory. But I'd like you to explain it anyway because it doesn't seem totally obvious to everybody. I think it was Philip Bear that said, Be steady and well ordered in your life so you can be crazy and spontaneous in your work.

1:15:57 That was one hundred and twenty years ago that he said uh. It's funny people say. I won't be so structural and say, What do you think about the middle line on the road out there? It's a constraint. It's a limitation.

1:16:09 No, centerline is great. Why? It lets me think about other things while I'm driving. As opposed to someone who's gonna hit me. So Just enough structure. To give you the freedom.

1:16:20 So I don't I don't structure anything more than I need. But you do need a certain rigorous structure. Well, throw away your counter if you don't like lists. Come on. It's just the price of missing the appointment is so

1:16:33 Emotionally pretty high. That's what people You know, maintain that structure pretty well. You just need as much structure as you need. Ask anybody out there. Was it Paco that said inspiration is for amateurs? It could have been. It sounds like Picasso. Yeah, I think that I think that was it was like as opposed to No, but in chair. Paintbrush. Paint the canvas.

1:16:55 Stare at it. Discipline yourself. All right. So I think there is a the degree to which Well, I don't know. That that just seems so self evident. Most of the people that I know some of the most creative people I know. One of the most creative guys I know. And he just spoke at the summit, by the way. He's in it's in a video. So I I know since he was public about it, I can make it public.

1:17:15 One of the most successful entrepreneurs. He just won, actually the the EY world entrepreneur. Of the year for twenty nineteen. He's on five boards. He teaches entrepreneurialism at the University of Chicago. He built Group on it and sold it, but he has his own jet.

1:17:31 His new startup. Now it's like now it was four years old, but even two years in Have it. Two billion dollar market cap. This guy is so smart, so creative.

1:17:42 Well he collects modern art. He runs Chicago Ideas Week. You started it? So Disc is probably one of the most creative people you would ever meet. Certainly one of the most productive people you'd ever meet.

1:17:54 And I spend a year with him. People say, Well why would he do GP D? I say well his presenting issue with David I'm just up to here. He's he was twenty seven, he said, I'm just just getting by traction, but I I wake up with million dollar ideas, but I don't know what to do with them or where to put'em or who to get'em to. So He just didn't needed more room.

1:18:11 What GKD does is it provides space. Invariably. If you Chapter. Clarify, organized. and reflect on all the things that have your attention. It will give you more room. What you do with that room is unique to you.

1:18:26 Some people use it to be more creative. Some people use it to be more strategic, some people to be more innovative, some people to be just present, you know, with whatever they're doing. One of my biggest champions a guy named Howard Stern. Can't find a more creative guy than Howard. He did it change his life.

1:18:40 Gave him the time to learn to paint. Which you always wanted to do as well as keep serious radio going. Are people like Will Smith or Robert Dowley Jr. The big champions of my stuff. I can't say their names'cause they were public about that, so If people think the creative people

1:18:54 Can't use GTD. There are few people you ought to meet. A nitty gritty question about the weekly review is a few people ask this. I'm curious as well, is the weekly review inherently a solo process, or do you ever involve your staff? in weekly reviews.

1:19:12 I know people that Would do weekly reviews with their families. Very cool to do. I think you need to do your own private one in any case, no matter what. But if you have groups of people to say what are the things that we're all interested in as a group That we can share and update each other with. So absolutely.

1:19:28 It's a great time to do that. 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. Do you manage your email in a task manager or is it its own system? Is it simply the email client that you happen to be using? Could you describe how the tools you use for

1:19:52 Processing email. Well I still still use IBM notes, the old lotus notes. But we still use that in our company. And I actually had my CTO for

1:20:01 Fifteen years. Eric Mack. Built. For the app. That sits on top of or within

1:20:08 Notes. That lets me use email as my task manager. But you'd have to be using notes to use it. It's publicly available if you wanted to set up. Blow this notes or I'd be in notes and then get e productivity stick on it.

1:20:21 But that's Basically. As I look at my screen, for instance, I have navigator bars. On the left hand side. And they have my action list.

1:20:31 There's one of'em says projects, one of'em says agendas, one of'em says calls, one of them says computer, one of'em says creative writing. One of them says errands, one of them says home. One of them says online. Well, some day maybe. And then waiting for it.

1:20:44 And so I can actually drag an email into any one of those and it becomes that. Or I can just open that. folder and then add anything to that folder that I want. So it's both an email manager as well as a task manager at the same time. Do you use any particular app or program for pulling material like articles or references

1:21:05 Off of web browsing into A system of any type. No, not really. I use Evernote and I've used the Evernote. Little function. Yeah, the web clipper.

1:21:17 In the web clipper. But I still don't use it that much. I don't have that much stuff that I will do about that. You know the problem with things like Evernote. As Right only.

1:21:29 They spend all their time adding stuff in there and don't even go in and look at what they've got. Yeah. It's a risk with a lot of digital technology. Yeah, addition and not sufficiently Well, at least subtraction from an intentional perspective.

1:21:47 Any of those things will work you know, all you need are lists, basically. And you just need something to be able to cut and paste reference material in. I've got reference material all over Lotus Notes. I've got reference material all over Evernote. Have reference material in just in word files. All over. I don't have any particular template or any particular suggestion other than Probably not a bad idea to every once in a while, maybe a yearly curate all of that stuff.

1:22:11 So you don't have a lot of d old dead wood in there. You've mentioned quite a few quotes. You seem to have a good memory for quotes of various types. In this conversation so far. Are there any quotes that you would consider you try to live your life by or think of often as a mantra slash reminder of sorts. Are there any quotes that come to mind

1:22:32 as being particularly important to you. Well, my screensaver just says let go. Let go. Yeah. Mm.

1:22:38 Control is the master addiction. So It's always a good idea. How do you drop it? Let life. Just it'll be what it is. Mm-hmm.

1:22:47 I often ask people if you could have one gigantic billboard, metaphorically speaking, to get a message out to 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? You'd have to give me that. The word that opportunity. Let's let me see what shows up. Because I need to let go to be able to see what showed up.

1:23:06 As opposed to try to preconceive that. I mean having ideas not for holding them's not a bad one. Just Practical. GTD S.

1:23:15 Quote. Yeah, I was reading Peace in the Atlantic. Which I've I found some of it very fascinating. And this was before you had applied the new labels to the uh Various vantage points. So this was back when we

1:23:31 You were using the thirty thousand foot view and so on. Yeah. You mentioned at one point in this, and again feel free to fact check, but I think it is he met you for he talks about beating you for dinner after a seminar in Washington.

1:23:46 And there's a portion here. That says back in the old days, this is quoting you, I have this naive idea that people would see this cool tool or offering and say, Okay, what else? We'd have this great big Trojan horse that would march into state corporate world and let us find people who were 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. But of course that never happened. Do you still have that hope that people will do Something with the space that is created.

1:24:12 related to Bigger questions. No, it's not really a hope. After all these years, I'm not a proselytizer. I'm really not. I just think

1:24:21 I've had the good fortune to uncover something that Allows people to create more space. And again, what they do with that space is up to them whether they want to use it to be able to do their spiritual practices. People often say is this a spiritual thing. I guess everything is, but if you're into practicing spiritual practices. This gives you a lot more space to be able to do that in a quieter way.

1:24:43 But again, it's People will do whatever they do. The people are already spiritual. 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

1:24:54 Or two. Uncover something they do not. You know, I've been doing this for thirty five years. You know, so at a certain point you go, You know. People just do what they do.

1:25:03 Let me just do the best work I can do. And you know, just with what's in front of me pleaded with as much elegance and excellence as I can. And then the next thing's gonna show up. No, that was a big Freeway aha moment I had years ago when I was agonizing about what I should do with my life.

1:25:18 This little still small voice inside of me said David, but you don't Or you have created so much in Live Life and probably many others. You don't have to worry about that. Just complete whatever's right in front of you with as much excellence as you can, and the next thing will automatically show up. And I haven't turned back from that. That's constantly been what's happened. Well, David, I Appreciate you making

1:25:38 space for this conversation. We're many, many time zones apart and I don't Want to consume too much of your finite time, but I I very much appreciate you making space For having this conversation.

1:25:51 Oh, this was fun. Uh nice to chat with you, Tim. And connect again. Yeah after all these all this time. After all this time. It's been a while. Let's not wait so long for the next one. 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 People can find you, of course, on Twitter at GTDguy at getting things done dot com. Is there anything else that you would like to say or share or mention to people as we wrap up? 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. You know, I I've updated a bunch of stuff and you don't sort of tweak the languaging a a good bit. A lot of people really appreciated that. And read it a second time. If you haven't read it but once, believe me it'll be a whole different book. And we're coming out with a G T D workbook in September and what's doing that.

1:26:38 It's kind of the ten moves to stress free productivity.'Cause you know, the getting things done can be quite daunting for people. They pick up the book and look at it, got Oh my God, too much to do. So Kind of in the in the genre of the workbook for the seven habits that was written in the workbook for some of the other business guru books. I don't know, Tim, have you written work books for The four hour work. I I haven't, but workbooks are really, really helpful. So I think that will really aid a lot of people. And I've certainly found the Morning Pages workbook and other things like that to be s personally very helpful. So I will definitely check out the GTD workbook. And you said that's coming out in September.

1:27:13 Yeah. Perfect. Any other closing comments or recommendations for people? David or No, if we cover the thing.

1:27:22 One thing most people could probably do more of it's relax. Relax. Enjoy life. Very little downside to at least physically relaxing. Let it go. Is it let go or let it go that's on your screen, Saver? Let go. Let go.

1:27:40 Good advice. Everybody listening, I will have links to everything that we've spoken about in the show notes, as per usual at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. So to everybody out there, thank you for listening. And David, once again, really appreciate the time. This has been a real pleasure and I have a whole extra Set of notes here to follow up on myself. Right. And uh really appreciate it. Thanks, Tim. My pleasure. All right, until next time. Thanks.

1:28:06 Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun? before the weekend. Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out. every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. Kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast. guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun again it's very short.

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