David Allen of Getting Things Done on GTD's Methodology and Building a Movement of 2 Million People

Your brain is just a really crappy office, and most people are still using their head as their office, and they're driven by latest and loudest. It's just— I've just never seen an exception to that.

Do you want to impact the world and still turn a profit? Then you're in the right place. Welcome to Growth Everywhere. This is the show where you'll find real conversations with real entrepreneurs. They'll share everything from their biggest struggle to the exact strategies they use on a daily basis. So if you're ready for a value-packed interview, listen on. Here's your host, Eric Siu.

How many of you have experienced making a bad hire or had bad hires on your team? I personally lost over $840,000 on just one bad hire alone. So that's why I'm doing a free class called the 5 Secrets to Avoiding Bad Hires That Can Cost You $50,000+ each. All you need to do is to text BADHIRE, spell it out, B-A-D-H-I-R-E, to 33444. That's double 3, triple 4, and you'll be registered. I'll see you there. Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's edition of Growth Everywhere, where we interview entrepreneurs and bring you business and personal growth tips. Today we have David Allen, who is the founder of the David Allen Company, who's best known as the creator of the time management method known as Getting Things Done. David, how are you doing today?

Terrific, Eric. Thanks.

Yeah, thanks for being here. So why don't you talk a little bit about the company itself? I know it's much more than just the book, which is a bestseller, which I'm a huge fan of, but can you talk about the company?

Sure. We're still a bit of a small company. We do— this is work, and actually when I wrote the book Getting Things Done, it was about a lot of the work that I'd been doing for 30 years in various iterations and forms of it. And we're still doing quite a bit of that. We do one-on-one coaching both virtually as well as desk-side. We do quite a bit of training programs around the world actually in large companies or small companies, large companies, all different sizes and shapes. And we do that usually within the, you know, sort of training and development world around the Getting Things Done methodology. And we have various, you know, audio products about that as well. And we are now franchising our training program around the world. So we're in the process of setting up Exclusive franchisees in most of the major countries. So that's a lot of what we do.

Awesome. Now, can you explain the GTD methodology to all the technology people that are watching or listening?

Sure. It's really a— there's 2 aspects of getting things done. First of all, you need to know what done means and what does doing look like. So that's a sort of a cognitive framework that actually requires a little bit of horsepower to actually think through. But to simplify it a little bit, it's really about 2 elements, and that's, how do I get things under control, and how do I get things appropriately focused? So, there's a couple of different dynamics about that. You get things under control with a 5-step process. You capture and then clarify what you've captured. You organize that into appropriate categories, which you step back and review and reflect on. So that then when you engage your resources or your focus or your attention, it's done from a trusted place, being able to see essentially all the different elements of your commitments and where you are in space and time. So that's how you get things under control and that's a 5-step process. And then how do you make sure that you're focused appropriately? Well, we couldn't get it any simpler, but there are 6 horizons of focus as we've identified them, all the way from your life purpose all the way down to all the emails you need to send. And there's, you know, 6 different levels of that conversation that you probably need to have with yourself and other key people in order to, you know, really trust your focus. So it's really about just identifying those best practices that don't seem to happen by themselves. They don't happen automatically. You actually have to put some cognitive horsepower and focus in order to be able to frame these things appropriately and also to navigate with, you know, the world of sort of 24/7 always-on stuff that everybody's, you know, dealing with these days. So That's in a nutshell, that's really what the thought process is.

Okay. Now, can you give me an example of how you would apply this methodology to like just say something you had to take care of this morning?

Well, sure. It's really about— well, the first thing that I do is I look at the hard landscape, which is my calendar. Calendar says, okay, what commitments do I have that are specific to today and specific to times? What else do I need to know or do today? And that's the first thing to glance at so I know what the hard landscape landscape is, I know how late I can sleep, and then navigate everything else around that. And that's, you know, I try to plan as little as I can get by with. I like to be spontaneous, follow my intuitive hunches. But, you know, I've got then several things that are on my list to do that have some time, not so much urgency, but they have some time factors to them. So those will, you know, step up in terms of my priorities. You know, I got surprised. I got an email this morning. It turns out that 2 of my trainers are actually certifying some trainers very close to my hotel here in Santa Monica. So that was kind of unexpected. It's great, it's great. But that was, you know, that's the spin that all, you know, when you really apply the Getting Things Done methodology, it allows you a lot of space and a lot of freedom to be able to then change course, you know, quickly redirect, refocus. I'm also looking at my red traveling file folder called In, my In Basket. It's got some receipts in there that I need to process. Then, I was cranking through some emails a little bit earlier and, you know, not leaving them in In but, you know, handling the, deleting the ones I could delete and handling the 2-minute ones and negotiating the rest. So, that's how I do it.

Okay, cool. So this is, you know, it sounds like, you know, all the, all the, you know, the best practices, you know, the processes, it's all in the GTD book, which you now have a revised copy coming out in— was that 6 days?

Yep.

Yeah, it'll be out. I really actually totally rewrote the book, though a lot of the language and a lot of the methodology is still the same, but I wanted to update it in terms of my perspectives as well as some of the languaging and some of the examples that I use and also I've matured a good bit in terms of how I see this Getting Things Done methodology and some of its subtleties. So it was an interesting rewrite. But it won't look real different for people that are very familiar with the book. There are some subtle differences in terms of the language. And as I say, a lot of what we've discovered is that the Getting Things Done methodology is really a whole lifetime and lifestyle It's not a single sort of transactional event. It's really something we've watched people over the years as they get more mature with this methodology. There's a real trajectory of a path of mastery of this. And so describing that, I've added 2 or 3 chapters to the book.

Got it. Okay. Yeah. And the book, I mean, the book itself, I mean, it's almost become a movement. I mean, you yourself, you have over a million Twitter followers and it's just every entrepreneur that has their processes down will talk about the whole GTD method. So how did you make GTD what it is today? How did it get so big?

Kind of by accident, quite frankly, Eric. I, you know, sort of the little brand that sort of ran out from under me. I, I, we were just using GTD as the, the letters GTD as a shorthand ourselves internally in our staff, and somehow somebody picked it up out there and it just, uh, you know, struck a nerve. And, you know, when it, when it showed up in paperback in 2003, that was when the, that was when the blog world sort of caught caught on, and that's when this methodology hit a nerve in the tech community, and that spread it pretty fast globally. So I think somebody just did a web search and said they got 7 million hits when they did GTD. Part of that's the Volkswagen brand. There is a Volkswagen car out there called GTD. But yeah, over 300 apps, last count, have been created not by us, but just by somebody out there that says, hey, this is— if you really want to do GTD, use my app. So yeah, it kind of just took off. I think part of it too is because it took off because the tech community spread it. You know, the tech community, they're almost as lazy as I am.

True.

The tech world, the whole world is designed to be— you know, they're the hardest working people about how to make life easier. That's what the tech world really is as an industry. And also the Getting Things Done methodology is tool independent. So what it did was it allowed people to actually use, utilize their own favorite gear and their own favorite tech and their own favorite apps, but it let them turbocharge it with this thought process. I think for all those reasons, that's why it spread. And I think it was probably the prime catalyst for the whole life hack movement. So that sort of took off as well.

All right. Now, to date, how many copies have been sold?

I don't actually know. There's so many international there. It's in 30 languages.

Wow.

Our best guess is about 2 million.

2 million. Wow. Okay, cool. So, we talked about a little— I think you might have alluded to this a little earlier. I mean, entrepreneurs are very ADD by trade. There's so many opportunities flying around. People want to do business all the time and we're all told to focus on the big picture, but it's so easy to get distracted. I mean, I have stuff flying around all the time. Even though I have processes down to follow, it's really easy to veer off track. So how do you— have you ever gotten off track before and then how would you get back on track?

Well, I get off track regularly. I mean, I think if you're not getting off track on a regular basis, you're probably not playing a big enough game. It's like, how do you know if that track you're running down is your intuition telling you there's something around that corner that might be interesting, might be valuable? So I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I fall off regularly. You just don't want to stay off. You just want to recognize when you're off and go, oh, wait a minute. Let me get back on again. That was the wrong rabbit trail. Let me get back in the driver's seat. And so the Getting Things Done methodology is very much like the ankle tether for surfers. You know, the more that you can trust that you've got a tether on your ankle so that you won't lose your board and you can get back on whenever you need to, the bigger waves you'll surf. So the more that you really understand the Getting Things Done methodology, how to get yourself back in control and back focused when you lose either one of those, That's what's so cool about it. It's not about, you know, always being in some sort of sartorial or, you know, satori, you know, Zen on the mountaintop. Nothing wrong with that, but it's really about being able to navigate yourself back into control if you happen to lose it.

Got it. So you mentioned Zen for a second, and, you know, that actually got me thinking about meditation a little bit. I mean, meditation allows you to actually, you know, veer off track but actually refocus, right? So it's kind of like that in a sense.

In a sense, yeah. Well, Getting Things Done is really about creating space. It's really not about getting things done. It's really about being appropriately engaged with your world so that there's nothing distracting you, so that wherever you put your focus, it's an undistracted focus. And it also allows you to unfocus. You know, the new brain research is showing that if you can only hold a conscious focus with your executive function in your mind for so long, it'll tire out. And ultimately you need to refresh it, and you refresh it by daydreaming, by being spontaneous, by sleeping. And that's how you know your brain actually. Eric, an illusion?

Yep, I I lost you for a second, but I think you're back. I lost you at spontaneous.

Ah, okay. Do do do do. Yeah, getting done is really about being able to. You know, I need to be able to be fully focused on what I'm focused on, and I also need to be able to stop and and be refreshed. You know, at any point in time, let my brain catch up, if you will.

Got it. Okay. So, you know, one thing you mentioned, and I looked at another interview, you said 80% of what people say in their head is negative. You know, what should people do about that, or what can they do about that?

Well, you know, somehow we love to beat ourselves up more than anybody. I mean, as I say, what if your friends talked to you like you talk to yourself? You know, hey Eric, you dumb guy, that was really stupid. That, you know, come on. We just, we do that internally. I think, you know, learning to read reframe your own self-talk is actually something you can actually practice and something you can get better at. So, you know, thinking affirmationally, thinking in positive outcomes, thinking about, okay, how would you like it if life was the way you wanted it to be? That doesn't necessarily happen by itself. You know, I think— I read a statistic many years ago that, you know, if you grew up in a healthy American home, like in a, you know, that was not dysfunctional, at least 80% of your feedback was negative. Don't do that. You're going to hurt yourself. Da da da da da. So that that makes sense that we've internalized, you know, the sort of negative critical course correction. You know that that that we were given probably growing up.

Okay. Now what can people do around that? I mean, you know, I know for sure I beat myself up all the time, and I actually think it's it's kind of it's kind of productive for me. But you know, I could see it being shifting in in in the negative direction quickly. Yeah.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with being self-critical in a healthy way. Like, wow, you know, there was a— you know, course-correcting yourself and learning from your mistakes. I mean, all that's good stuff. I think a lot of it just depends on, are you in expansive mode or are you in contraction mode? So to me, that's kind of the criterion. If I'm doing something or engaged in something and I feel like I'm expanding myself or growing or something, you know, somehow it has a positive directionality to it, that's cool. If whatever I'm doing, if I feel like I'm contracting, I'm hunched over, I'm, you know, I get too wrapped up around my own axle internally, you know, that's— but learning to recognize those states and recognize when you're in one and then being able to sort of course correct that is really useful.

Got it.

And I think also that, you know, a lot of the new brain research is showing you really just need to move. You need to move around. I mean, we can get really wrapped around ourselves pretty easily. Probably 90 minutes is about it in terms of your being able to really focus on any one thing for any period of time. You need to get up at least for 5 minutes, take a break, stretch, walk around the block, do something like that. I think being able to shift gears is oftentimes one of the best ways to get out of those negative habits.

Got it. The whole ADD where you're jumping everywhere thing isn't that bad based on what you're saying. That's kind of what I'm getting.

No, you know, it only is— not that there's anything bad, it's just, you know, it's a syndrome that you may find yourself not then accomplishing stuff that you want to accomplish that requires you to be a little more focused in terms of what you're doing. So, you know, if you have that tendency to bounce around to a lot of things, you just need better strategies. Sometimes your strategy is to limit how many things you stick in front of yourself. You know, as I say, I can resist anything but temptation. So, you know, just shut down social media. And that's one of the problems these days. And there's a new book out, by the way, called Brain Chains, 2 words, Brain Chains, as in chains around your brain keeping it from being optimal. And a lot of research is now showing that, you know, don't kid yourself if you think you can multitask. Your switching costs in terms of your head, you know, are huge, and you're going to sub-optimize yourself. Not only that, but all that social media and constant 24/7, you know, with your smartphones and all that stuff is highly addictive. There's a study that's shown even just thinking about what text you might be getting on your smartphone gives you a dopamine rush.

Guilty, very guilty of that.

Just having it close by. Oftentimes the thing to do is just give yourself a— go on a social media diet. Just don't take your phone with you.

You mentioned social media and I took a look at your Twitter feed before and it looks like it's really active. Is it you managing it or do you have someone else managing it?

No, I do it. I do all my own stuff. But, you know, to me, Twitter is like a cocktail party. I like Twitter and I like Instagram just because it's kind of fun to play in them, and I just don't feel particularly obligated one way or the other about that. It's just something that I do when I feel like doing it, like a cocktail party.

Got it. Okay, and is, you know, doing these podcasts part of the cocktail party thought as well? Because, I mean, you do a ton of podcasts.

Sure.

And I'm wondering why.

Well, you know, come on, GTD helps the planet. Anybody, you know, this is not— GTD is not like running with scissors. And one of the reasons that I still am so enthused of doing it— I'll be 70 this year— it's like, wow, one of the biggest miracles is that I still stay so involved and engaged with this stuff whenever I get a chance to talk about it, because it is such powerful information. And, you know, over all these years, you know, nobody's ever said any part of it is wrong. Everybody says, oh, it's right, I just don't do it. The biggest issues, people not building these as sort of automatic habits in their life.

Got it. Now, do you feel like it's a— you said you're turning 70 and you still have all this drive. I feel the energy from you. Do you feel like it's almost as if— I've heard someone say before, I asked him, why do you help people so much? He's like— and he told me, Eric, honestly, it's like a drug. I wonder how you feel about that.

I don't think too much about it. I mean, it's really nice. To be doing stuff that helps people. I don't know. I'm just kind of wired that way. It's lovely to have a profession that has created so much value out there on the planet. And it's great to— we get feedback every day from people around the world saying, wow, this changed my life.

Absolutely.

And the neat thing about it is it's not something that you have to go do 100%. I mean, any one little aspect of this, even if you just implement the 2-minute rule, if you don't already have that habit, will give you an extra 6 months to your life.

So let's talk about the 2-minute rule. What is that?

Well, as soon as you decide what the next action is on anything, if you can actually complete the action in 2 minutes or less, if you're ever going to do it at all, do it then because it'll take you longer to organize it and look at it again than it would be to finish it the first time it's in your face. So, 2-minute rule is great. Got it.

Yeah, if the audience wants to take away anything from this podcast, that's the takeaway, the 2-minute rule. It saved me a ton of time. So, thanks for that.

Oh yeah. Yeah, no, that's right.

Okay. Now, David, I'm sure you have all these productivity processes and tips, but what is your absolute top productivity tip?

Your head is for having ideas, not for holding them. Okay.

What do you mean by that?

I mean, if you've got something potentially meaningful that you think you need to do, finish, take care of, would, could, should, ought to, might want to, or whatever, if you can't finish it that moment that you're having the thought itself, Then you better get it out of your head. Because if you leave stuff like that in your head, even as simple as, gee, I need cat food, you know, but the amount of brain space I need cat food takes up and then starts to spin around in there. It has no sense of past or future. You'll wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning thinking, oh damn, I need cat food. You can't do anything about it. Your brain is just a really crappy office. And most people are still using their head as their office. And they're driven by latest and loudest. I've just never seen an exception to that.

Got it.

So being able to externalize it, and the cognitive scientists now have even identified that as building the external brain. Anybody that keeps a calendar is already doing that. Why not do it all in your head? Well, because your head can't manage that kind of detail. Well, duh. Why do you think it's different with the rest of your life and you only do it with your calendar? Most people do it with their calendar because the punishment, the downside to screwing up on your calendar is pretty big.

Right.

Miss an appointment, miss something, those aren't fun. When you make an agreement with yourself, it's still the same thing. It's just more subtle in terms of you not keeping an agreement with yourself or forgetting that you told yourself you need to or having that vague sense that you ought to be doing something, just forgot what it was.

Totally agree. Yeah, it's— yeah, I totally agree with you. I mean, there's really no exception. I think this is why— I mean, it all comes down to process. I mean, I think I heard a quote before, it's, you know, 95% of the time it's a process problem, you know, 5% of the time it's a people problem, right? So, you know, shifting gears a little bit here, I mean, you know, can you tell us about one big struggle you faced while growing the GTD company or the David Allen Company or, you know, just, you know, for yourself?

Well, I think the biggest issue is a marketing issue. I solve a problem that most people don't realize they have or they don't realize that it could be solved. Most people, you know, last thing a fish notices is water and the last thing people often notice is how much stress they're actually in because they're in it so consistently.

Got it. Okay.

So that's the biggest issue that we have is getting— is being able to convince people about that. As I say, it took me 25 years to figure out what I'd figured out and then probably the rest of my life to figure out how to actually distribute this to the world and get it to stick, you know, in terms of people actually getting— being able to do it and make it, you know, an ongoing sort of lifestyle habit.

Right.

So figuring out how to promote it essentially and how to give people a taste of it and a sense of what it is, at least to give them the option and the opportunity to be able to take advantage of it if they want. So that one's one I'm still working on.

Okay, now you sold 2 million books. I mean, was there, in terms of promotion, was there any key moment where you just kind of saw hockey stick growth, and can you talk about that moment?

No, there wasn't, Eric. It was actually pretty linear growth with that. It kind of slowly took off and then just kept going, and it's been, gee, I don't know, last I looked, it's still in the 125 on all of Amazon Books. 14 years later. So it just pretty much, you know, kept— it just kept going out there. And I think there were a lot of factors that happened, as I mentioned earlier. You know, when it went from hardback, they kept it in hardback from 2001 and 2002. And then when they went to paperback, it's the kind of book that you probably wouldn't give to 20 staff, 20 of your staff in hardback, but you would in paperback.

Mm-hmm.

So I think it sort of hit a nerve then as well as, again, when the tech world and the blog world sort of took off. In the early 2000s, that it was well-timed, kind of a perfect storm there. So I think that certainly affected it. It always gets bumps. It gets a big bump in sales around New Year's. Everybody's trying to get their act together. They say, okay, I'm now really going to get myself organized, or whatever. And so it does have a— tends to have a bump then.

Awesome. Is there an audiobook version of GTD?

Yeah, yeah. Perfect.

Cool. I can imagine the lazy tech people would probably listen to it on 3x. I know that's what I'd do today. So what's one piece of advice you'd give to your 25-year-old self?

To my 25-year-old self, don't take myself too seriously and sort of lighten up and trust my intuition about what I feel like I want to be doing. As opposed to maybe what I think I should be doing.

Okay.

Yeah.

And who do you consider your idol and why?

My idol. Hmm. I've just got a lot of people that I really respect for lots of different reasons and whatever. My spiritual coach and mentor, a guy named John Rodger, who just died last year, you know, was really a, you know, probably a very bright light in my life and certainly was a very helpful sort of big brother and guide in that whole, in my sort of spiritual or inner journey, and he was certainly a model in that better than anybody that I know. So I hung out with him. When I met him, I said, well, this guy is kind of sharp and looks like he knows what he's talking about. I think I'll hang out with him until I find— until I've learned everything I can learn from him. And that never stopped. I met him in 1971, and so what's that, 45 years, something like that?

Okay, and so how do you go about finding a spiritual mentor, and what do they do that's different versus like a coach or something like that?

You know, I don't know. It's a good question. To me, it's— I think it's something that you just recognize. It's sort of like the Sufis say, you know, when the teacher shows up when the student's ready, you know, and I think people just need to be first of all, attracted to, or at least curious about the inner worlds, or the outer worlds, if you will, and what that's like and what that's about. And I think on that search, I think you're going to run across people that then resonate with you. And I think probably certain people resonate with certain kinds of teachers and other people with other kinds. And I think it's a very personal event.

That's interesting. So, I mean, can you walk us through, like, you know, because I've never heard of this before. I've had mentorship situations before, but it's like, you know, what do you guys go through when you guys go through like a session or something like that?

What do you go through? Well, you know, a lot of it is just information, you know. So John Roderick, gosh, he's written, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of books, and there's a lot of his seminars and a lot of his talks were recorded. So just listening to him, reading any of that information, it has a certain frequency and an energy to it that automatically resonates with a part deeper inside of me. It clears things up and I get to lift on top of my world again. So some very practical stuff.

So that's the spiritual side of it. Okay, I see where that's coming from now. Okay. Now, aside from your book, which is a must-read for the audience, and you talked about another one, I think it was Brain Chains. What's one must-read book you'd recommend to the audience?

Well, Brain Change is read at your own peril, especially if you're a 24/7, always hooked on kind of guy because it's a lot of very interesting information and awesome information about sort of the digital world. It's not saying don't be involved in that. It's just saying what are you not doing when you're letting yourself get wrapped around that too tight. And, you know, missing out on other aspects of it. A book that came out right before that, and they didn't even know each other, but very, very similar. And, you know, they're 2 of my favorite books right now, is The Organized Mind by Dan Levitin, L-E-V-I-T-I-N. And it's a whole lot of that is about the requirement for the external brain and a lot of the research, a lot of the aggregation of the research about, you know, that showed up in the last 20 years that your head is really capable of handling about 4 potentially meaningful things. And you add any more than that and it loses it.

Interesting.

And so, you know, just— they're certainly favorite books of mine right now because they very much validate this whole Getting Things Done methodology. I mean, I learned it on the street, you know, in 30 years and thousands of hours deskside with some of the brightest people on the planet sitting there and working with this model and seeing how it works and refining it and testing it out. But these guys now, the cognitive scientists, are proving it from the— coming around from the other side, from the scientific side. About how it works. So I can't help but be enthused about it because it very much helps sell the idea. Hey guys, your head is for having ideas but not for holding them.

Awesome. We'll drop that in the show notes for sure. Actually, all 3 of the books. And definitely got to— well, I'm going to get myself the revised copy. But what's the best way for people to find you online?

GettingThingsDone.com.

Okay. And your Twitter is?

@gtdguy.

@gtdguy. So everyone, gettingthingsdone.com and find him @gtdguy. David Allen, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. Stick around for 1 second afterwards and we'll chat a little bit, but thanks so much for being on the show.

My pleasure, Eric. Thanks.

Thank you. How many of you have experienced making a bad hire or had bad hires on your team? I personally lost over $840,000 on just 1 bad hire alone. So that's why I'm doing a free class called the 5 Secrets to Avoiding Bad Hires That Can Cost You $50,000+ Each. All you need to do is to text BADHIRE, spell it out, B-A-D-H-I-R-E, to 33444. That's double 3, triple 4, and you'll be registered. I'll see you there.

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