EP 153: The Stress-Free Process for Getting Things Done | David Allen

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Hi, welcome to the Radical Responsibility podcast. This is your host, Fleet Maul. And today I'm speaking with David Allen. You know, if you've ever struggled with getting things done, this is the one you want to listen to. David Allen is renowned for his model for getting things done, best selling books, program coaching. He's really has transformed the corporate world and, you know, helped many businesses and many individuals figure out how to become more productive. And how do you really structure productivity into your work life and how do you really understand on a deep level so dealing with all the things that tend to undermine productivity and then setting ourselves up for, for success. He's got a whole system built around the idea of getting things done. So if that's a, an area of interest for you, being more productive in your life, you want to listen to David Allen.

Thank you for joining us.

Thanks Lee. Thanks for the invitation. Always happy to share this information with those who might be interested for sure.

Absolutely. So I'm going to share a bit of your bio and to familiarize our audience with, with you. Those of you who, anybody who's really been in the business world has probably heard of you, but some of them, some of our audience may not have heard of you. And your principles are applicable to every aspect of our life, not just business. So David Allen is one of the world's most influential thinkers on productivity. David's 40 years experience as a management consultant executive coach have earned him the titles of personal productivity guru by Fast Company and one of the top five executive coaches by Forbes magazine. His best selling book, the groundbreaking Getting Things Done and its Methods spawned a movement with millions of practitioners and fans around the world. His methods of staying relaxed and focused in our fast paced world are now spread by certified trainers and coaches in more than 90 countries. Our day today is focused on mindset and performance. And of course productivity is really critical to performance in any domain of our life. Just using our time well and doing it in such a way that we're not getting overwhelmed and stressed out. So in your system, it just helps so many people. How did you find your way into that, into that kind of work and then developing that system in particular?

You know, I had an attraction to a clear head through my spiritual and meditative practices and the martial arts, getting a black belt in karate, you know, where you learn that it's very, it's quite, it's quite a practical thing to make sure you're not distracted and your head is totally present with the thing you're doing. So the mindfulness people, you know, say, focus on your breathing, keep you present. I learned that 50 years ago from the martial arts, exactly that technique. So, and so then I got into the professional world, after all my different professions and jobs and whatever, became a consultant. And then my world got more complex, more professional, more busy. But I said, wait a minute, I'm losing the clear head that I got so attracted to. So I searched for myself ways and was very interested in techniques that helped me stay really clear, you know, no matter what. So I had more room in my head to focus on the meaningful stuff. I found techniques one by one. I didn't wake up one morning with this whole methodology, sleep, you know, it was a long string of epiphanets over about five or ten years where a piece and I'd start to implement that for myself and it worked. That helps. And then another piece and another piece. And it turned out that I had consulting clients. So I turned around and started to share what I'd learned myself with them. It turned out it produced the same results. More clarity, more control, more sense of freedom to be able to think about what I wanted to think about the way I wanted to think about it. And so that became sort of the core of a lot of what I was teaching. And then some of the, you know, some head guy in corporate training in a big corporation saw what I was doing, said, gee, David, we need those results in our whole company. Can you design some sort of training program around what you've come up with? So I did, and it was quite successful. So we did a pilot program for a thousand executives and managers in Lockheed 1983 and 84. And it hit a nerve. You could have fooled me. I didn't expect to be in the corporate training world out there, but suddenly I was thrust into that simply because that was the hungriest world for what I'd come up with. That was when the, you know, in the mid mid 80s was when the tsunami of email and corporate change and flattened organizations were starting to hit the world out there. And, you know, and so, you know, could have again, could have fooled me that as an, as an intellectual history major in graduate school in American history And Berkeley in 1968, if you told me that was what I'm going to be doing, I go, what, are you kidding? But it turns out Again, that was the ripest audience. They were willing to pay for education around it. And so I then spent the next 20, 25 years training hundreds of thousands of people, mostly in the US Corporations and businesses, even startups and entrepreneur whatever. And then my consulting became more a lot of coaching for mid to senior level people that wanted to have me sit desk side with them and hands on, implement the methodology I'd come up with. And so, you know, then at some point I had.

I didn't know, I didn't recognize what I'd come up with. Took me 20 years to figure out what I'd figured out, nobody else seemed to have figured out. And it was unique and it was bulletproof. If you started to implement any of this, anybody in any situation in their life or circumstances, that would create more control, more focus, more ability to stay.

Meaningfully engaged in whatever they wanted to be meaningfully engaged with.

And so somebody said, David, you ought to write the book. So I did. So in 2001, we published the first version of Getting Things Done Art of Stress Free Productivity, which was basically just to get it out of my head, what I'd learned in 20 or 25 years of my work out there. Thousands of hours with best and brightest folks on the planet implementing this stuff. So I wrote the manual and then that sort of changed the world because then the world sort of caught on to this stuff and then they brought me into for the world stage of people who were interested in what this was doing. That's a very short version, fleet of a very long story.

I'm sure that's really the shorthand version. And I'm not surprised to learn that you have a background in meditation and martial arts is certainly reflected in the nature of your work. And that's something that our audience will resonate with a lot. So yeah, interestingly, you published a book. I started my consulting and executive coaching career right around 2000. And so your book arrived just in time to be one that was really helpful for many of my clients. So your system is designed to help us get things done in a more stress free way and to avoid the overwhelm that can really undermine productivity. So could you just tell us a bit about, you know, what is getting things done? What are some of the essential elements of the system? I realize, you know, it's, you have a whole book on it, but maybe what a couple of the core principles that give us a sense of what.

We'Re talking about here. Yeah, sure. And you know, very appropriate. That mindset, you know, and performance you know, tie into all this because it really is about the thinking process that you need to apply all the stuff you're dealing with. There's nothing new in the world except how frequently things are new and how much volume there is in the new stuff. So you know the basic principles will be true as they're old as dirt and will be true thousand years from now that you need to then capture the stuff that's got your attention, what's not on cruise control in your life and work. So you need to then identify what those things are. That has my attention. I need cat food. I need to do vice president marketing. I need to figure out whether we should adopt or not. Those are the things that are on people's minds. And most people don't realize how many things are rattling around in there in terms of their own internal commitments about those kinds of things. So it's step one of the process is to identify those and get them out of your head. Your head is a crappy office.

Your brain was designed to have ideas, but not to hold onto them. Your brain did not evolve to remember, remind, prioritize and manage relationships between more than four things. That's now new scientific data of the cognitive scientists. Your brain evolved to do very cool stuff, to take long term history and pattern recognition. Say, that's a tiger, that's a light, that's a computer, that's a person, as opposed to vibrations of light and sound. So your brain is doing very sophisticated stuff, but it doesn't do the remember, remind, prioritized stuff very well. And so most people are still trying to use their head at their office. And that's where a lot of the overwhelm and stress is coming from. Because they're trying to manage a whole lot more stuff than your mind is actually designed to do. So you kneel. Anybody listening or watching this that maintains a calendar, you're already demonstrating what I'm talking about. If your head could do it, throw away your calendar. Oh no, because I don't want to miss an appointment. That's right.

You need some sort of an external brain, some sort of an external reminder system of all the things that you're committed to do. And most people have.

A calendar and maybe a.

Relatively incoherent to do list as the best of what they're trying to do to manage all that. And that is truly.

Less than suboptimal in terms of managing the complexity of what people are dealing with these days. So step one, capture the stuff, get it all out of your head. Write it down somewhere. Put it someplace that you trust you won't lose it. Step two is that once you write it down, then you need to decide what. What do I need to do about that, if anything? Is that a dumb idea? Trash it. Is that a maybe I could do that two months from now, incubate it, put market somewhere and remind yourself later. Or is that something I need to move on? I need to get new glasses. I need to. We need to clarify with my life partner whether we should adopt or not. And then you need to make some decisions. This is where the mindset and the thought process comes into play.

Actionable stuff. What's the next action you would need to take to get closure on it? And what's the outcome that you're committed to complete? So action and outcome, actually, those are the zeros and ones of productivity fleet. Come on, what are we trying to accomplish? And then how do we allocate or reallocate resources to make it happen? So outcome and action are universal principles of productivity. It's just most people don't really apply that in a really discreet way with all the things that are spinning around in their brain in terms of their own commitments. Step two, clarify. Is it actionable? If yes, then what's the next action? And if one action won't finish it, what's the project? Step three, if you can't finish the action on the project right, then you better have some way to track what those actions are that you need to take, be reminded of those at the appropriate time and place, and the projects and outcomes that you're committed to complete. So that's where organize comes in, where you basically just simply, you just need to list. Here are the errands I need to run. Here's the things I need to go to buy at the store. Here are the projects that I need to complete. Here's the things I need to talk to my life partner about. So it's just basically then creating some sort of an external system, much like your calendar, to remind you of what you need to do. It's just that these things are not necessarily tied to a day or a calendar. They're tied to, as soon as I can get to them, around my calendar and around what the other things that I'm committed to do during the day. And so that's. Step three is organized. So you're captured. Now you've clarified, now you've organized the results. Step four is to make sure you step back and look at those lists, look at the inventory of what you committed to here's my errands, I'm going to run it for errands. Show me all the errands. Oh, that's right, I gotta pick up my watch at the watch repair place. Oh, yeah, I need to. So it's in this to review and reflect in terms of the content of what you come up with as you externalized all this stuff and clarified what it is. So that's a step four is to review or reflect on the content. So step five, engage. That's where you focus your attention and your activity based upon the overview of that whole gestalt. And when you engage, you may not engage in anything on your list. You may go, I'd rather have a beer, I'd rather take a nap right now, or I need to walk the dogs or whatever. And you just are doing that with a lot more comfort that you're not missing anything. So those are the five steps that I didn't make them up. I just recognized what we do. If you're trying to get a situation under control and stable, you capture what's got your attention, you clarify what you need to do about it, and you organize some trusted way that you know you'll be reminded of it in the right place or time. And step four, that you know, you then you use your system to look at it when you need to look at it. That then gives you confidence about your choice about what you do.

Well, David, I'm sure there's lots of tools that we can use to make your basic system work for us. And the most important thing you, you just landed right. There was this idea that we have a very limited amount of cognitive real estate and we really want to use that for creativity, not for the things you just described. And so the key is really getting that out of our head, capturing it and getting it somewhere. And I don't know whether if you invented the tickler system, but before the computer age, there was a tickler file ideal. So we could look at today and up would come the stuff that we're. Now we all have online calendars, and I'm a creature of my calendar. If it's not my calendar, it's probably not going to happen. Right? But some people use personal organizers, physical personal organizers, people use calendars. Now there's all these project management systems. I have to admit that, you know, I'm not really great at some of this stuff, but my team is really good. So we use project management software. They keep all this stuff on track. But, you know, there's so many tools out there today and, and whether somebody's in business or just how to organize your personal life, sometimes even using the tools can feel a bit overwhelming because it just gives you more. So we have access to so much data now and even organizing your computer so you don't end up with 30 tabs open on your, on your computer and so forth. So I'm just curious about the interface between your system and the plethora of tools that we have available today for organizing ourselves.

Yeah, you don't need much. You don't need all that. All you need are lists. I needed a way to capture stuff to begin with. So here's the high tech I use to capture a lot. It's called pen and paper. You know, those are my. And that's at my desk. And if I'm not at my desk, I'm not walking a dog and have an idea. There's my capture. Like, oh, right. So low tech for capture. But those are different tools. Just because I write it down doesn't mean I'm going to do something with it or even know where it needs to go or how I'm going to be reminded about it. It was just an ide. So let me not lose the idea. It might have value. 80% of those notes I throw away, it was kind of a dumb idea. No, I'm not going to do anything about that. But the 20% that I did have, oh, I'm glad I remembered that. That or I'm glad I had that now what I need to do about that. So then it needs to go into my system. So using my physical entry, which is where those notes will go if I don't finish what's on the note right in the minute that I have the thought, then it goes right into my entry as a reminder. And then getting all that emptied is within what I need to do. And getting it empty then means the thought process. And by the way, none of those tools your project, I don't care how good your team is, your project management tool is not going to tell you who's going to do what, when, exactly what that specific next action is. They have to decide that they have to look at what's in that tool. That's mine, that's theirs. Okay, if that's mine, what do I need to do next to then be able to mark that off so that the team is aware of what's going on. So there's still an individual accountability no matter how good the tools are to make sure you got it. And by the way. No tool is going to tell you what to buy for your mom's birthday. I'm sorry.

What the tools can do and where they're going is decision support. You may be able to look into your reference material wherever that you were, wherever you're keeping Evernote or, you know, OneNote and Microsoft, whatever, wherever you're keeping stuff out there. Oh, by the way, here's where mom's birthday is. Here's what I bought her before. Here's her favorite flower. Here's her whatever. So you can use the tools to then help you make good decisions. But tools will make the decisions for you. You have to think about it, what that means. And so the. The tools are not. They will support your thinking, but they won't do their thinking for you. So if you don't know how to think about your stuff, all the tools are going to do is add chaos to your life. It's going to add more stuff to do more stuff. Oh, my God. I don't. Now I have to learn that. Where. Well, where do I put this? And yeah, so once you get this methodology I'm talking about, you can make any tool work. It doesn't matter, because the tool won't be the impediment. The impediment for most people is the thinking process they're not doing about their stuff.

That's really fascinating because we all find our way into different tools systems that work for us if we're actually thinking about and applying something. I mean, I used to be a piles person and working with people, clients. You know, some people are just piles. They got their pile, they work their way down through the pile. You know, I really try to avoid any piles accumulating on my desk anymore. And fortunately, I have a team to help with stuff. And I'm not good at using all those tools. I find them overwhelming, actually. But fortunately, I have people on my team who do and do a good job of it. But.

Well, let me interrupt you there. The reason you had piles is you still didn't make decisions about what's in that pile and what you're going to do about it.

Right. Some of those things in the pile are just reference you need to refer to in case the client calls. And you want to be able to have that access to. So you would need to have that in some sort of folder so that when the client calls, you can pull it out. Right. And you have access to that. You just have it organized appropriately based upon what those different things mean. And that's the problem with Piles and the stress they produce is because they've got very different meanings inside of that pile. Some things you need to act on, some things you need to get rid of because it's now out of date. Some things you need to just have access to when you need it. Some things you need the things you need to act on, some of those, you haven't decided what the next step is. And you could have delegated a lot of the stuff in those piles had you had this thought process built in.

Well, I think we may be getting down to where the rubber meets the road there now because I think it is that where we get into overwhelm, I know from personal experience, is not being willing for whatever reason, resistance or just not developing a good habit of engaging in that decision making process to organize and prioritize things, instead just letting things accumulate so that regardless of what system we're using, that seems to be the thought process that really is where the rubber meets the road.

Sure. No, all of my digital stuff disappeared right now. That's fine. I'm just going to have a physical in basket pen and paper. I, you know, I'm not going to lose a step. All I have to do is take my system and use whatever tools are around to implement that system. But if you don't have a systematic thought process, you know, or then way to organize your thinking.

None of that's going to help.

So getting things done then rather than so much being.

A particular system, it really is a mindset and a thought process indeed.

And it is a systematic way to do that. So you know, there are core principles. If it's in your head, it's in the wrong place. That is a core principle. That's not yes or no, that's like, that's a got to right. If it's in your head, because your head has no sense of past or future when you're keeping it in there. So it tends to confuse it with all the other stuff you're committed to do. And wake up at 3 o' clock in the morning, oh God, I need to, oh yeah, I should. Or whatever. So step one is absolutely critical. How you capture this stuff is totally up to you. You could write it in your arm, you could write it down. You could use the digital capture tool, although most people do that. Don't clean those up. So that's a bit of a black hole. But it can be if you've got the discipline and the thought process.

So yeah, so that that tool is absolutely critical. But which one you use is up to you. And once you decide, oh, here's an errand I need to run, where do I need to keep track of errands I need to run? That's up to you. So which system you use is totally up to you. You know, and there are hundreds out, if not thousands already now that have been built on my model. You know, just. Then they're all just list managers, you know, just some bells and whistles on each one of them, but they're all about, okay, here's my list of errors to run. Great. I don't use anything more complex than I used for a previous system. We moved, migrated to Office365. So I just use my, my past in, in, you know, Microsoft. It just list. Easy to make a list in there. And that's all. That's all I need. Then where you keep reference material, that's again, quite up to you. You want to keep it in every note. You want to keep it in physical paper files. I do both. So, so what you, you know, the tools you use is truly up to the individual in terms of what works for you. But the thought process is absolutely critical. If you don't distinguish between what's reference material on your desk and what's actionable on your desk, then you know, you've added stuff to your life.

Well, let's talk about two more things that I essentially are tools. But they're very familiar areas for a lot of us that can create a lot of stress. And I want to talk about to do lists and email. Let's start with to do lists because often, you know, we have a to do list, whether it's on paper or it's in digital form of some kind. And we start to just even thinking about our to do list creates stress and overwhelm. We almost don't want to look at the to do list, right? And so there's got to be some lack of mental organization behind that that's creating that sense of overwhelm and resistance because a lot of people just have negative associations with to dos. In fact, there's even teachers out there that say, throw away your to do list. You don't want to live by a to do list. These kind of ideas, because there's so much negativity associated with people's to do lists.

Well, then they should throw away their calendar too. Don't be intellectually dishonest.

Yeah, I, I never, it never made sense to me when I heard that.

But anyway, anybody that said throw away your to do list, it's like grow up. Are you kidding? You know now. But you're right, most people's to do lists are still incomplete, incoherent lists. They can create as much stress as they may have relieved to begin with. You'll see things on a to do list. Like Mom. Oh, good. I'm sure you had one good historical data. Why is it on the list? Oh, her birthday's coming. Well, what are you gonna do about Mom's birthday? I. I don't know. Yeah, right. So what you're looking at is something that's reminding you of decisions and thinking you haven't finished about commitments you've got. Right. So I just figured out what the algorithm was about. What's the thinking you need to finish? What do you need to think about? Mom's birthday. Are you going to do something about that? Yeah, I guess we should celebrate it. Oh, fabulous. Now you got a project. What's your next action?

Why don't you call my sister, see what she thinks we ought to do. Oh, good. Now you have an action. So now you've got this thing that you captured. You captured the idea of mom. Good for you. You've got step one. But if you don't go to step two, where you decide, okay, so what exactly are you going to do about that? So anybody listening or watching this, pull out your to do list right now. What you're seldom going to see on there are any next action. You're going to see things that need some more thinking to decide. What's the next step you need to do about that? Does that surf the web? Does that talk to your sister? Is that. Is that draft, you know, a document, you know, what's the next thing? If you had nothing else to do but that, I'm going to pay you a million dollars to get going on that thing on your to do list. Where would I see you go? What I see you do? And most people resist that thinking. And that is that will not show up by itself. That's what knowledge work is, is where you have to think about stuff to know what to do. As opposed to the old days where you just crank widgets. Uncranked widget shows up, you know what to do. That's not the way life is these days. So now as knowledge workers, you actually have to think. Sorry, don't shoot the messenger. But that's the. You actually have to think. Thinking is kind of tough work, but this is a cognitive muscle you can actually train about how to think about. Wait a minute, what is that? What's the next step I need to take will that finish this thing? Okay, then what's the project? And let me put the action where I need to be reminded to call my sister. Let me put the project on a project list that I look at at least weekly to see where I am against my commitment with myself.

That you're not born doing that, you know, that's something you actually need to learn, like learning cook spaghetti or learning to raise kids or learning to speak Dutch. You know, none of those show up by themselves. You actually have to learn to do this. So what's strange is that I actually uncovered an algorithm about how you define your work that's not obvious.

That need to actually think about things. So in terms of our to do list, another I think inefficient habit that we often fall into is we were attracted to the easier things on the to do list. There are certain things we got to do that require more thought process that we, we perceive to be harder and some things do to take more effort. So there can be a tendency to keep putting off the things that we either are actually harder or require more effort or we perceive them to be and keep getting attracted to the easy stuff. And that makes a to do list pretty inefficient tool for organizing our efforts as well.

Well, because most people don't figure out the next action on the things on their to do list.

They don't know what to do.

Once you figure out the next action. I don't care. The next action on fulfilling your life purpose is as easy as the next action on buying soap.

Next actions themselves. In terms of what physically do you need to do to move that needle or to move this situation to, you know, the next actions are, you know, buy something, surf something, write something. Those are not hard. So you can actually make your to do list a lot easier once you figure out what the next actions are. And so what? Many times I do the easiest things simply because I want to get my energy up. I don't have the energy right now to do the creative thinking I need to do about this particular thing I need to do. Let me just go get a few simple things done so I get my energy up and clean those things up. So there's no, there's no template that says which one of those is the priority? Yeah, priority. What's going to most fulfill your life purpose on your list right now? Buy cat food? Make a decision about adopting? I don't know. I don't have the answer to that. Only you do. You know that's your intuition, your gut, your heart, your spirit, you know, whatever you use to make, look at all the options and go, that's what I need to do right now. That would make the biggest difference to me in terms of my psyche and in terms of my health and my terms of my relaxation or whatever. That's what I need to do. And I, I. There is no template for that other than trust, that inner thing. But most people can't tell the difference between intuition and indigestion simply because they've got so much spin going on in their head. They're using their head as their office to try to arrange all that, get it all out of there, take a look at it all, empty your head, take a look at the whole game. Then you go.

That'S what I ought to do right there.

Yeah. Part of what you're referencing there with the next step, especially with projects that are on our task list or in our calendar and they may appear to us to be relatively complex or hard, and we're going to require some thought. So you're really talking about breaking those down and maybe in a more workable components and then what is the specific next step for each one of those? So when we get to that, the next step is never hard if we've kind of broken things down into their component tasks.

And sometimes what you need to do is take a next step to break it down.

In order. This is a big project, you know, we need a meeting about this. Well, what's your next step about? Setting a meeting. Great. So many times it's a process. Next action. Not necessarily. You don't have to have all the next action for all your big stuff. You just need to make sure that you're appropriately engaged with how you're managing the big stuff. And that may or may not be. Have all the answers that may be. But here's the step I'm taking to get the answer.

Well, let's talk about email for a moment because.

You know, I mean, I hear what you're saying about, you know, sometimes you'll just, you'll choose maybe an easier task just to get your energy moving. And I said, and I can understand how that works. And I think I probably intuitively do that sometimes. Although I also kind of tend to try to tackle some of my hardest tasks first and most creative tests in the morning because I tend to have more energy. But one thing that can be a huge time suck is just going into email, because responding and answering and looking at email can be a fairly mindless Activity. And so I think a lot of us get lost in our email. And we get so much email today. If we're not organized, if we don't have some. If we don't have a task structure for organizing our email box, it's going to be overwhelming. But even if it is, it can be the path of least resistance just to get lost in email today.

No, you're right. And there's no difference. It's like fleet. Do you only take out part of your garbage? The really smelliest stuff?

No. No, not usually.

Right. What do you do? You take out the whole garbage so you're ready for the next good or bad stuff. Right. What's it. How about your physical mailbox? Do you only take out the stuff you might be interested in and leave the junk mail in there?

If I thought somebody takes the junk mail away for me, I would, but.

Yeah, I don't think so. So what's the difference? Volume, that's all. Just the volume of email that we get. But learning to go, that's trash. That's a reference material. That's an incubate. I might want to see that later. Oh yeah, I do need to do something about that. Can I do it in two minutes or less? Let me do that right now. Going to take longer than two minutes to do it. Let me put that on an action list or an action folder in terms of my email. So making decisions, you know, it's these same decisions you need to make about anything. Your to do list or anything you've captured. Same thing is true with your emails. Just an inbox. No difference between that, you know, and your physical entree or your physical mailbox or your whatever. Most people are just not aware how, how much more freedom you have when you clean out your garbage, when you clean out your. Your whatever, when you clean out all the residue, when you clean all the old stuff and get very current.

Makes it much easier to focus on the higher horizon stuff. You know, I'm a big higher horizon guy. I mean, you. Yeah. You want to know your priorities. Why are you on the planet? Where do you want to be five years from now? You and your life partner in terms of lifestyle or career or company. Well, great. What do you need to do in the next year or two? Make sure that happens. So these are the horizons of commitments that we have, or as we tell ourselves, we maybe should have. If you want to feel comfortable about what you're doing in your life right now. But at the same time, if you're not handling the day to day stuff, it's very difficult to have the bandwidth to think about those higher horizons. So, you know, if this is year end stuff, my biggest, my biggest coaching for new year is clean up that absolutely no New Year's resolutions, except maybe get current with your basement, with your cellar, with your, with your, you know, with your anything. Clean up, get the old stuff brought up to date and clear the decks. That will make it much easier for you to then set appropriate goals or set appropriate kinds of things you might want to do or focus on. But I wouldn't even be committed to those as long as you're willing to be flexible and change them as life changes.

Well, I love what you pointed to there. The interdependent relationship between having the cognitive space and even the physical space to, to really think about those horizon issues. But then they so critically inform the way we organize our lives. And so it's an interdependent thing and we got to do both. And also, you know, we have a day on the summit that's focused at least somewhat on simplicity and the kind of decluttering movement. Right. So there's a lot of work around decluttering our home, decluttering office, decluttering our physical space. And what you're talking about is really decluttering the mind as well, or doing both, obviously. And if we're willing to, you know, I think that's the big hurdle for so many of us, that we're not willing to take those steps to make that effort that will then make everything much easier. So we sit back on the other side of that effort feeling overwhelmed and feeling stressed because we haven't decluttered our mind, we haven't decluttered our home, we haven't decluttered our office and so forth. So it really is that making that commitment to making that effort to start using some of these principles to really make our life work better.

Sure. And by the way, the only issue I have with a lot of the decluttering consultants out there is example, Paul Smith, great designer. I love his socks, they're so creative in the uk. And he likes to keep all kinds of stuff in his office around him, all kinds of what you might consider clutter. They're like child's toys, they're like all kinds of things. Because he likes that kind of environment to help him think. He just doesn't have any issue with any of those things sitting around him about something needs to change about that. That's just input for him. So sometimes what people might consider clutter might Be a creative environment that you like to be in that may help you think even more creatively. You just need to be very discreet. To your point about, wait a minute, is that something I still need to do something about that's still spinning in my office, in my head, or is that just fun, cool input, you know, enjoyable input and creative input to help me think more about what I might be doing. So be careful about decluttering is the total answer.

Yeah, we all, of course, we all have our own style, our own way of being. So it's going to be a really individualized process for any of us. We all have to find our own systems. I think it's the core principles that, that are more universal here that you've been, You've been talking about it again and again. I'm curious that I'm sure, you know, you said that this really began with your experience as a meditator and a martial artist and learning to clear your mind that way and then. And then really applying that to productivity and business and organization and your consulting work and so forth. I assume you're still a meditator and I don't know whether you're still engaged in martial arts or not, but. But I'm wondering how these two things have interfaced throughout your career. And, you know, it would seem, again, coming full circle, a lot of us who aspire to have a meditation practice, we never really get going with it because, well, I'm too busy and my mind's too scattered to meditate.

Right.

So again, it's that, it's that chicken or egg kind of full circle thing. And so I'm curious if you could talk about the interrelationship between a lifelong path of aspiring to greater productivity as well as being a meditator and so forth.

Well, let's bring it down to a very practical thing that the cognitive scientists have uncovered in the last decade. A good friend.

Of mine is Theo Compranoli, who teaches psychiatry, psychology, cognitive science at the University of Brothel. Brilliant guy. And his latest book called Brain chains, like chains around your brain.

Was the accumulation of 600 or over 600.

Studies that he studied to come up with the fact that your brain needs rest in order to optimize its ability.

And how your brain needs rest means sleep. It means stop thinking about what you're thinking about, think about nothing.

Just get off the wheel, essentially, of that spin about thinking about thinking about, thinking about thinking about, and be able to stop that process. Because we have three brains, essentially. You have the forebrain which is the latest thing that evolved, which is decision making and strategy and so forth. And the limbic brain, which is, I just need to procreate and eat and survive. You got both those going on for everybody right now.

A lot of, you know, your forebrain says do this, but your limbic brain says they ain't gonna do that. And then there's the archive brain. Because everybody is dealing with such a complex world these days. The amount of inputs that we're all getting in terms of decision we're making, thinking we need to do, given the input that we need to do, all that stuff is coming in and you don't have the time or the bandwidth as that's happening to be able to make sense out of all that and tie all the stuff together in some appropriate way for yourself psychologically. That's why you need every 90 minutes to get up and walk around for five minutes. That's why you need to take a nap for 20 minutes to an hour in the afternoon. Better than a cup of coffee. That's why you better be getting seven to eight to nine hours of sleep a night, so that your archive brain is able to then put all that stuff together. That's why sleeping on a problem will often give you the result in the morning.

They know you need to focus on the intention to solve the problem, but then go to sleep and then let the archive brain put all that stuff together. Because what that does is your archive brain then moves past your consciousness.

Conditioning and allows you to see relationships that your conscious mind wouldn't necessarily have because of your conditional responses. So it allows you to bypass all that. That's where the aha often show up. But anyway, so, you know, to your point, if you're not letting your brain relax. And of course, the way I let my brain relax is to take all this stuff that I am involved in, making sure I got that all in the system, and they go, I didn't just see any nap till tomorrow and I'm done. And then my brain is like, free to then think about whatever it wants to think about or put together relationships of whatever it wants to do. Some of my best thinking is done at night after I put the dogs to bed, put my wife to bed, and I'm just sitting there with a glass of wine going, okay, that's my goal. And then let show up. What shows up. That to me, is one of my most. My richest times.

Yeah, I think a lot of. As I'm listening to you, a lot of it is about.

Creating that Space in our lives, creating that space in our head, that space in our mind, that space in our lives to allow for that natural creativity and natural processing. And I have a very similar experience of when some of my best thinking or my most creative ideas arise, and if I'm not taking care of myself, if I'm not consistent with my meditation practice, if I'm not getting sleep, if I'm not well organized, I'm not going to be at my creative best at all. And it's really, it really is about creating that space in our lives. And I wonder if there's some, some value, you know, not that we can or what we got all inspired at whatever level of accomplishment, productivity makes sense in our lives, but even within that, there may be some less is more principle because we're just more and more and more. It's probably because we're not well organized.

Well, you know, productivity has just got a bad rap fleet. You know this. There's got a lot of garbage around that word. Most people think, oh, harder, harder, sweat more, sweat more. No, if you go to a party to boogie, and you know, boogie, it's an unproductive party. You go to a vacation to relax. You don't relax. That's an unproductive vacation. Productivity simply means produce whatever either outcome or experience you're after. See, I'd like to be happier today. Great. How you doing?

But what do you. What might you need to do to be happier today? So, you know, productivity, if you really think about it in the, in the largest context, has a lot to do with just, okay, well, what are you after? You know, what, what are you, you know, what are you trying to do? So, you know, to your point, if people are just in the busy trap, you know, running around the rat cage, you know, with all that stuff, what do you want? I'd love to be able to relax about this. Great. Well, good. What do you need to do about that? And there's probably things that people need to do to then be able to release the pressures that they've got. It might be clean your desk. It might be. Get your email to 0. It might be, you know, any or all of those kind of things that then allow you to have more space. But again, you know, I trust people listening or watching this. Go trust your intuition.

So, yeah, you've been alluding to this all through our conversation today, David. You know, we often find ourselves just overwhelmed with life and we get a focus on problems and limitations and, you know, and it can just be. Or even the mindset I think so many of us feel like life is something that's happening to us rather than for us or with us. And that's all the more.

Likely today because life is moving so fast and there's so much going on and it's very easy to slip into that mindset of life is just happening to me. I'm just trying to cope with it. And everything is about problems and limitations and fears. And of course our fear based reptile brain can get very involved in a reactive relationship to all that. So how can we make that shift to instead see things as challenges and then turn these challenges into projects, then organize them into their component parts and just start taking action. And so again, we're in a leadership, we're in a self leadership position. Well, ourselves and more in the driver's seat of our own life. But I think you've already been alluding to it. But I'm wondering if you could say a few things of just making that fundamental shift that's going to get us back more in the driver's seat of our own life rather than feeling like we're kind of being dragged around or shoved around by our lives.

Yes.

You said it. I mean, well said in terms of what you need to do about this. You can also take a bit of a Zen approach to this and just go, so what? Let life happen to me, that's fine. That's why I incarnated, that's why I took on the body. That's why I'm here, is to learn. So yeah, life's coming at me. I'm going to learn from each one of these experiences that I'm dealing with life and then deal with it appropriately. But probably dealing with it appropriately is what you're talking about. You know, people don't have free choice. They have, they don't have free will, they have free choice.

You can't decide which body you decided to embody in. You can't decide, you know, you had that choice, maybe back on another level again. That's my spiritual context. But once you got here, you got the menu, you know, you got the, you got the program. But then what you have is free choices about what you do with the options that are given to you, given the game that you're playing. So making conscious choices about should I do that, should I do that, should I not do that, should I not do that, what do I need to do now? And being conscious about the process of how do I engage with my life in a conscious way. So I'm in The driver's seat, not in the victim seat. That's the shift.

So you, you, you might feel like you're the victim of life coming at you. But, you know, I've been on. I had a sailboat for a couple years, and I was the victim of storms and surf and weird things I didn't expect, but I needed to grab hold of the helm and make sure I then managed that well. So it doesn't make life easy. It just means you need to make sure you're in the driver's seat, how you're handling what life is throwing to you.

So that, that kind of more Zen perspective you're kind of referencing there. So being well organized and being productive isn't the same thing as being a control freak or thinking we can control life.

You know, if anybody. People meet me and they go, oh, my God, you're very different than I thought you'd be. They read my book, they thought I had to get anal retentive, you know, type A, you know, anal, whatever. They go, God, you're nothing like that. I'm nothing like that. I follow my intuitive, spontaneous hunches, do what I feel like doing. I just discovered this methodology allows me to do that.

Yeah, I had that same impression. Well, I had never met you, and I don't know what I was expecting, but, you know, but you were. You seemed a lot more relaxed and laid back than the person I expected I was going to meet today. And that's. That's really refreshing. So.

So here we are, you know.

January 2023. People are, you know, experiencing this summit, and, you know, my. What might be the best way for them, you know, they're listening to. All of a sudden, you know, wow, this makes a lot of sense. And what might be the best way to just get started, to just begin to start to use some of these principles. Because people are going to get a lot of inspiration from the summit. They're going to want to take next steps, and they're going to want to make some steps towards being our best selves, having our best life and so forth, or having the best version of that. And what might be just some simple ways to get started.

Well, first of all, the new edition of my book of getting things done in 2015 is a manual for all of this. Not everybody's gonna necessarily want to implement all that. But look, if you're interested in the whole game, you know, as best that I've just described it and experienced it in my life, you know, get the book.

If you want to Say, okay, well how do I kind of maybe get started on this? I said, well, look, any of these principles we've talked about, get a pen and paper, write stuff down that's on your mind, just, just, you know, empty your head. And then sooner than later, look at what you wrote down and say, what do I need to do about that? What's the next action? So train yourself to the thought process simply by going, okay, this thing has my attention. What do I need to think about that?

And then have some sort of a list manager. Just start to keep list if you don't have them already.

That says here the errands file and here's what I need to talk to somebody about. Here's the websites they need to search, I don't know. And then, you know, those are the basic things that won't take long. You could implement this in 10 minutes.

You just have to do those things. And those are not hard. They're not a foreign language, they're not a new technology you need to learn. You all know how to do these that I just said. So that's how you get started. And then, you know, if you want to connect in with, you know, I got, you know, hundreds of hours of YouTube stuff, two minute things, cool stuff, just go to getting things done.com YouTube and you'll see, you know, lots of, you'll see my three TEDx talks, you'll see all kinds of things that will, if you like to do those kinds of ways to integrate with this material. You know, those are all out there.

Well, this has been, there's been a delight, David, and a pleasure to meet you. And your principle has been very helpful to me over the years and to all of my clients. But I think this is obviously applicable to anyone. And we all have busy lives today unless we're really unusual and you know, parents and responsibilities with children and our financial life and all the rest of our life. And clearly these principles are applicable for any of us. It's not just for corporate executives. So I really encourage everyone to think about this. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, it's been a delight to finally meet you and thank you so much for being part of our summit.

Thanks, Fleet. Yeah, it's been fun. Good luck, everybody.

Okay, be well.

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