Ep. 287: Frederik Pferdt and Your Future You

So, hi, David Allen here. I'm in conversation with Frederick— come on, tell me how to say your last name— Firt?

Correct, yes.

Thanks, David.

Okay, I, yeah, I, I, I tried.

That's cool. And, um, because we have a mutual connection, Paul Sacco in California, who's just, you know, has been such a great supporter of GTD and my work over these years. He was the keynote speaker at our summit in 2009 or whenever that was. So anyway, uh, met with you, and our— I saw your work and your book, which was fascinating. So this is going to be a conversation mostly to sort of promote your thought process and, and, and what the book is about. But maybe you could take me back a little bit, and let's rewind the tape. Let's see, Okay, how did Fredrik get to writing a book about your future?

Yes, yes.

So give us at least a short version of that story.

Yeah, and it's so great to reconnect, David. I think, you know, last time we spent time, quite a significant time actually, in a green room in Copenhagen at the President's Summit. And so that was just wonderful to sit down with you and kind of like hear about what you're up to. And, you know, you had such an influence on so many people with GTD. And so, yeah, I'm a big fan, I have to say. And I was really looking forward to our conversation here. And so, yeah, the future, you know, it's, I think, something that is everybody interested in, right? Everybody wants to know, you know, what's next and what the future is about. And there's this great saying that, you know, everybody's interested in the future because we will spend the rest of our lives there, right? So we rather have a good understanding of not just what the future is going to be about, but like how we can actually shape a better future moving forward. And I really come back to that question, what are you actually doing for your future, right? What are some of the choices that you make right now that really have an impact on the future? Because I deeply believe that the future isn't something that just happens to us, right? It's something we can actively create. And I want to show people how they can actually do that. And so throughout my life, I've seen how, you know, how powerful it is when individuals and organizations really harness their potential to innovate and lead change. And I wanted to share these insights and provide really a roadmap for others to develop what I call their future-ready mind state.

Fredrik, wait a minute. You said throughout your life. Come on, give me some anecdotal story. What was that life? How did you get to this? What interested you and why did you get into this game?

Yes. So again, I share kind of like these probably experiments or experiences I had throughout my life where, you know, on the one hand, growing up in a small town in Germany where change was not really something that happened frequently, right? Everything basically stayed the same. And for me, kind of like moving on and really going out into the world to experience that everything is changing all the time, right? So change is inevitable, right? Helped me really to not just follow change, but really embrace change. And seeing that change is something that actually powerful, right? And it's something that we should look forward to, right? And so I went out and I worked at this tech company in Silicon Valley that some people heard of named Google and really wanted to understand how this organization really innovates, right? Because At that time, it was really in a state—

And what was that time?

It was a time when Google had about 26,000 people, employees globally. It was a time when, you know, products like Gmail and YouTube and Search, obviously, and others, Google Maps and so forth, were hitting about a billion users, right, on a 30-day active or a monthly basis. So it was a time when like, you know, this incredible growth happened in this organization. And I felt so interesting that there is a culture of innovation already happening, but it was not really, how to say that, it was not really kind of like understood, I think, in a way that you can train people to innovate and come up with these incredible ideas. So what I did is I went on a trip in my first 8 months in the organization. I spent about a significant amount of time in about 27 offices around the world to really try to understand, like, how does that organization innovate, right? And what I found is that it's not a specific environment people are in, right? It's not like there is a magical room that people go into and then they come out with these breakthrough ideas. The second thing I found is it's not that they had an incredible access to resources, right? So there was not a lot of money if people came up with these breakthrough ideas. And thirdly, it's also not a specific framework or something that people followed. So what I've tried to do is then really looking at the people and the individuals and trying to understand what is going on with them so that they can create these incredible breakthroughs and these ideas and innovate. And so I framed that as a mind state, right? That's when people have a very positive forward-looking approach where they use curiosity, they use optimism, they use openness, they use experimentation and empathy. For me, those dimensions of what I call a future-ready mindset to really come up with these incredible ideas. So I went on and tried to really systematize that, right? Really trying to give those, um, that mind state to, um, as many individuals as I could. And, uh, Google grew to an organization with about 170,000 people when I was, when I was there in that time. And so really my, my job was to train as many people in that future-ready mind state to really help, uh, every single individual to come up with these incredible ideas. And that was for me, the most fascinating work because, you know, you see people tapping into their curiosity, asking these big questions, but also experiment their way forward and so forth. And I shared 14 stories in the book about these individuals, or it's a, it's a, it's a selection of these individuals that really created their remarkable futures, right? The lives that really are incredibly incredible. And so if you love to listen or read stories, right, I highly recommend kind of like just go to these stories and feel inspired like I was for a long time training and coaching those people moving forward. And that's really at the heart of it. It's these stories of incredible individuals. It's practices that everybody can try. And it's talking about those dimensions that I mentioned that really help you to create a better food future for yourself.

Wow. And so tell me, what's the basic best message of the book? I mean, you just gave me, you know, some pretty big highlights right there. But if you wanted people to know something, you know, whether they're 14 years old or 48 years old or whatever right now, you know, what would you tell them, Fredrik?

Um, so it's, it's literally one sentence. I would say it's the future shouldn't be something that happens to you, that it should be something you make happen, right? And I think that shift in thinking about the future as something that is really, um, something we can shape, we can create with the choices that we make in every moment is for me the essence of what I want to help people to understand and, and, and really make use of. Right. And we talk a lot about the future. Everybody talks about the future. Right. But mostly I think we talk about the future in a way that we use predictions or we use kind of like forecasting or something like that. Everybody loves the weather app, right? Because it gives you a little bit of an insight into like what could potentially happen, right? In the next couple of hours.

But the weather doesn't pay a lot of attention to the weather app. I've seen it.

Exactly.

Especially in Amsterdam. It's like, who knows?

Yeah. But it gives you that sense of, I would say it's a false sense of safety, right? Because then you think you know, But it's absolutely unpredictable, right? There could be things that are, as you said, changing immediately. And so for me, I want to move away from these predictions that give you a false sense of that you know something about the future towards what choices can I make in the moment so that I can create a better future for myself? And these choices should be influenced by again, optimism. They should be influenced by openness, by curiosity. They should be influenced by empathy, right? And for me, that's, I think, critical to really boil it down to that simple equation, which is the choices you make right now equal your future, right? And so that's also in the title of the book, right? What's next is now. Because it really is depending on what you're doing in this moment that will shape your future.

Good stuff, Fredrik. So if people wanted to get in touch with you or find out more about what you've written or what you're doing, how would they do that?

Yes. So there's really 3 ways. The first one is get a copy of the book. Highly recommend it as these stories I share, kind of like these practices really helped so many people already to name it.

Name of the book is just for everybody.

What's Next Is Now.

Yeah.

Again, these practices helped so many people already, and I hear tremendously positive feedback that this is not a book about the future, right? This is a book about your future and how you can create a better one. So get a copy. Another thing that I recommend is maybe my next letter. I share that every other Friday. And so there's a deep dive into, for example, optimism, how you can be more optimistic in this world. There's practices and experiments that you can try out. So sign up, it's for free. And then the podcast is coming out soon. Highly recommend to just listen in and hear from so many people and how they create a better future for themselves. Again, there's going to be a sleep expert, there's going to be a nutrition expert, there's going to be someone who talks about social connections and how that influences your future as well. So really good stuff. And yeah, Find me, find me online.

Yeah, Frederic, thank you very much.

Wonderful. Thank you so much.

I'd like to give a short message to those of you who've been participating and playing with GTD Connect for a while. Sort of remind you that all of us with this GTD methodology and this set of practices go through cycles. You know, I still go through cycles myself. Initially, there's, there's kind of the inspiration and there's a lot of material to ingest and to get familiar with. And so people oftentimes when they first come on to Connect are just potentially overwhelmed by how much information there is. In a way, it's just a huge library where we've been able to archive So much different information from so many different perspectives and people and points of view. And so understood that it's like walking into a library, go, gee, where do I start? So that's oftentimes the initial phase of this. And many people after a year or two, you know, probably get on some level or some plateau where they go, well, I kind of got it now. I've got my system set up and everything's fine and I'm fine-tuning. And you may find yourself at that point also finding yourself saying, gee, I'm now becoming a resource of this methodology for people around me. You know, people asking me for assistance and help on this. And we've seen in the forums a number of people now sharing ideas about how to get your teams more involved or families more involved with this information. So some of that information is in there as well. But I think you'll find yourself going through cycles of this, and you may find that much like if you've ever read a software manual— I remember when I read when I learned Microsoft Word to begin with, for instance. I read the manual, like, wow, this is really cool, and I started to use the tool and didn't need the manual anymore. As a matter of fact, a good example of that right here, the manual for this camera that's taking this picture right now. Initially I read this, got it all set up, that's really cool and that's really fine, and so pretty much everything was on cruise control. I didn't need to go back to my library to make this really work. And then of course as I started to get more sophisticated in terms of stuff I wanted to do, got more inspired about some things I saw other people are doing. I go, ah, how do I do that? Went back to the manual, I went, oh God, I didn't realize I could do that, I didn't realize I could do that. I remember at least 2 or 3 iterations of going back to Microsoft Word back in the days when there actually was a manual for that as opposed to just all online and realizing, oh my God, I didn't realize that, oh, I could do that now, I could do that now. I think that's what you might find with Connect too, is that it's a goldmine of stuff. Many people have read Getting Things Done more than 3 or 4 times, and every time they read it, they get something new out of it. So I think you may find Connect the same way, and probably even easier, because hey, it doesn't take much to just click on, surf around, see what might be new or what might be of interest to you. And pay attention. There's more than meets the eye in there.