10X Your Productivity with David Allen

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you.

One of these today.

The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals.

I'll see you there.

Welcome to Lead on Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive coach to global leaders and high performers. In every episode I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you lead your life and business on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself.

Enjoy the show.

David Allen is considered the leading authority in the fields of organizational and personal productivity. Time Magazine heralded his book as the defining self help business book of its time. If you want to talk productivity, let's do it. Sit back and enjoy the show.

David, a huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thanks James. Thanks for the invitation.

So great to connect with you. As I said to you before we hit record there, I was really brought to your work by a friend of mine in Brisbane. She was so impressed with GTD and what it's done for her life and she said, James, a you've got to buy the book and B, you've got to talk to David. You got to get him on the show. So absolute pleasure to create some space here for us to have a chat.

Yay. Let's go.

Let's have some fun around this gtd. So for people who are listening right now, those leaders that are listening, if somebody's listening going, hey, I've got so much on my plate. I'm spinning lots of plates. I'm struggling with productivity. I spend all day in my email.

In one sentence. How could GTD help them?

It'll give you more room.

What you do with that room is going to be unique to you. You might want to use the room to be more creative, to be more strategic, to be more of service, to be more present. Just with whatever it is that you're doing, you don't need time. There is no more time. Time is. It's an important factor, but you can't change time. You don't mismanage five minutes and come up with six or four and a half.

It's just, what are you doing? What are you doing with you during those five minutes. Time management is a bit of a hoax. They call it time management so you don't have to be embarrassed by saying, I need help in managing myself. But that's what it is. How do I manage what I'm doing? So I feel comfortable about what I'm doing and maybe more importantly, comfortable about what I'm not doing. And that's a lot of what this methodology is about, is getting you comfortable. That right now, James talking to me is exactly what you need to be doing on the planet. You're not missing anything else. Nothing's falling through a crack, right? So that's what my stuff is about. It's about how do I get rid of the distractions to create more psychic space or cognitive space to use, however I might want to use that.

That's beautiful. And so you're getting rid of all that noise, all that extraneous noise, getting focused in on the one thing that you need to be doing right now.

Well, the biggest issue most people have is not so much overwhelm. If you were overwhelmed, you'd fix it. And if your building caught on fire right now, you'd handle it. The biggest issue is what I now label is ambient anxiety. You're willing to tolerate being waked up at 3:00 in the morning with the OS's, oh, shoot, I should have, or what happened or whatever. And it's that ambient anxiety that's actually creating this sort of subliminal stress that's underlying most everything. Most people, most busy people anyway, and professionals are enduring and it's keeping them from being as creative, as strategic, as present as they could be.

Do you think that's a new thing? Is that in the last couple of decades or has this always been part of the human mind?

It's always been true for knowledge workers. You know, the late great Peter Drucker sort of identified knowledge workers where you actually have to think to figure out what your work is.

You have to think. The email doesn't show up and say, I'm junk email, toss me.

You actually have to look at it, read it. That's junk email I'm gonna delete. Yeah. So you actually have to think to figure out what to do. And so that's knowledge work. As soon as knowledge work showed up out there a hundred years ago maybe, where people actually, you know, 90, you know, 150 years ago or whatever, 90% of the workforce just made and moved things. So if you show up and there's stuff to be made, there's stuff to be moved. It was obvious how to spend your day. Now Taylor and other people said, okay, you can more efficiently make and move stuff. So there were these sort of external models that were then created 100 years ago, over the last.

Hundred years anyway that sort of improved that all the way up to Scrum and Agile and, and Six Sigma and all those different kind of external models about how do I get more efficient, about how I manage the flow of work. But it doesn't help you define what the work is. So as soon as knowledge work showed up on the scene where you actually had to think to figure out what to do, it wasn't so obvious. And then you started to have more and more things you had to think about, about what I need to do about it. That's where this probably began. You know. The first edition of Getting Things Done was published in 2001. I wrote it between 97, 1997 and 2001 when it was published. It was really targeted for the fast track professional because they were the people first getting hit with the tsunami of email and organizational change and flattened organizations and, you know, all that stuff. And so they were the hungriest audience actually for what I had come up with to be able to surf on top of that game and not feel buried by it. So I think that's what's happened in the last two or three decades is nothing's different in terms of the methodology or how to be productive. It's about the speed and volume of inputs that you have and the change in the audience. The second edition I wrote in 2015 was the methodology didn't change in terms of what I wrote in there, but the audience did. Now I knew back in, when I was doing these thousands of hours of coaching from 1982, when I started this game, I knew it worked for physicians, for stay at home dads, for students, for the clergy. All these people, once they ran across my stuff and started to use it, if they had a busy life, it improved their condition, improved their life.

So I knew that it worked. But.

Again, the first edition of the book was not targeted for that group. It was targeted for the again, the fast track professional because they were the ones most hungry for it and could pay for it. I was thrust into the corporate training world with my stuff and spent thousands of hours. My consulting practice turned more into a, into coaching one on one desk side with the executives that ran across my stuff that wanted hands on, you know, work with us, like your friend. And so I spent a lot of hours you know, dealing with the best and brightest folks in the world applying this methodology. So what, so what's happened is the expanse. It used to be 10% of the professional force probably really needed this to stay sane. Now 90% do. That's a big change. You know, because, you know, bosses, if you have a boss, if you're not in a sort of a self organizing organization like I am, but if you actually have a boss on hierarchy, whatever, they don't have time to hold your hand, they don't have time to tell you what to do. They don't have time to track, you know, whatever that you need to be doing. They need to track what they've given you, you know, which most of them aren't doing. It's creating a lot of their stress.

Things have sped up and the audience has expanded. That's what's changed, I think, James, in the last couple of decades, what actually.

Got you through the very first edition? What got you started on the GTD methodology? What inspired you to actually put it together?

Hey, James here.

I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates, to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes.

Accident almost really, you know, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.

I thought I was going to be an academic. I was studying intellectual history, you know, in graduate school, then decided I wanted my own enlightenment, not just studying people who aren't there. So I dropped out of graduate school. I went on a self exploration. You know, this is, you know, 1968 Berkeley, right? So these are headache times for self development and all that stuff. And so I jumped head on into sort of personal growth and self awareness and all that. So meditation, spiritual practices, miscellaneous gurus here and there and martial arts. Got a black belt in karate in my 20s and a lot of that sort of gave me a sense of the value of clear space. Certainly in the martial arts, the higher levels of practice, there were a lot of meditative, kind of practices. Now, there may be a spiritual component, but there's certainly a very practical component. If you're jumped by four people in a dark alley, you don't want 2,000 unprocessed emails somehow hanging around your psyche, right? So you need to be clear. You need to be clear. You need to be clear. You need to be clear. And, you know, I learned 40, what, 45 years ago. Focus on your breathing. I'll get you present. Well, the mindfulness people know are present. Sharing that with everybody now. But come on, that's not, that's not, that's not news. That's about how do I get present so I'm not distracted by past and future. So I'm here. Focus on what to do. So I kind of had that as a reference point. And then as I started my own consulting practice, you know, I was the number two guy for a lot of friends. So I didn't know what I wanted to do, but they did. So I just wound up, you know, that's why I, you know, if you read my wikipedia, I had 35 jobs by the time I was 35, simply because I just was help people do what they were doing. So that's why I helped manage a landscape company, help a couple of friends start a restaurant. I sold vitamins. I sold mopeds. I helped a friend manage a car restoration business in la. So I did all kinds of stuff, but I'd walk in and look around and see what they were doing. Can we leave a little earlier? Isn't there some easier way to get this done? I'm the laziest guy you ever met. I mean, I guess you could call it efficiency, but I, I just kept looked at it and said, come on, there's got to be some easier way for your systems to do whatever you're doing. And so I'd help them. Now they call that process improvement. You know, didn't. We didn't call it anything other than let's get out of here sooner. And. And then I'd. And then I'd, I'd sort of fix it or improve it and get it, somebody's on cruise control. And then I get bored if I leave and go help somebody else do that. Then I discovered they pay people to do that. They call them something consultant. Oh, wow. Now I couldn't spell it. Now I are one. So 1982 hung up my shingle Allen Associates, and I said, well, let me just see if I can sell myself on a project by project basis. And that's how I started Put it in the game. But at the same time, given the background I had of martial arts and meditative practices and so forth, I said, my life is getting more complex and busy. It's kind of distracting me. Let me look for it. And I got hungry for techniques that work for me to keep me clear about all the stuff I was doing. And so I discovered technique after technique. I didn't wake up one morning with all this. Some grand epiphany. It was like piece by piece, you know, that I discovered this, and I had a couple of mentors that taught me some big pieces of this that were great. And then I started to use that not only for myself. And as I started to apply these techniques and these practices, it created more stability, more clarity, more focus, more control in my world. So I turned around my consulting clients. I started to use it with them, too. And it turned out it produced exactly the same result. They started to empty their head, decide action steps, have some sort of external brain to organize their stuff and review it and reflect on them on some consistent basis. And they all felt more space, more control, more room to focus on the meaningful stuff as opposed to being distracted, down in the weeds too hard. That became just a lot of what I was doing with my clients. And then head of human resources in a big corporation saw what I was doing and said, gee, David, we need that result in our whole culture. Can you design some training program around what you've come up with here so we can reach a lot of people at least with a model as opposed to one on one? So I did, and it was quite successful. 1983, 84. We did a pilot program for 1,000 executives and managers in Lockheed and Burbank in California. And it hit a nerve. Wow. Who'd have thought? Now, as an American intellectual history major In Berkeley in 1968, if you told me that I was going to be thrust into the corporate training world, I'd said, well, what are you smoking? Come on. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you mean? But it turned out that was, again, the ripest audience for what I had come up with. And interestingly enough, again, we can dive into this deeper if you want, James. But interestingly, the people probably listening or watching this right now who might be most interested in it are the people who need it the least. They're already the most productive, organized, focused, aspirational people you'd ever meet. It's just they run out of room. And so the people that have been attracted to what I've done over the years are the people who need it the least. Trust me, I have been asked to coach some of the absolutely the most productive people you would ever say, given anybody criterion about productivity. But they just run out of room. And they knew a systems work, they had their own. They had some. They knew they could produce results because they had. They got them to where they were. They knew if they had more room, more space, more resource, they could produce even better and even more. And so the good news about my career is I've had the chance to work with the best and brightest and busiest folks on the planet. Basically implement, first of all, in the first 10 or 15 years of testing this out and refining the model, with all these thousands of hours, literally I've spent desk right you know, with these folks, you know, practicing this stuff. Anyway, long, long answer to your short, short poke at me.

No, it's brilliant. So essentially, really high performers, they want the edge, the slight edge, the 1%. And so they know that GTD methodology can help them get that extra edge.

Well, once they start to experience it, they realize it does. You know, just, just reading the book doesn't you actually have to engage with this stuff. So, James, I don't know what your experience was, but you can read the book and go, ah, oh, that's cool. But you actually have to start to do it before you start to experience this. As many people would say, transformational. You don't have to change yourself. You don't have to go have some transformative experience and change your whole life to get value out of this. It's simple stuff and everybody's doing some version of it already. Most people write some stuff down. Most people decide what they need to do about something as a next action. So these are not foreign behaviors or practices, but very few people do them in a consistent way with the aim of getting clear and getting stuff off their mind. And that's what I uncovered.

That's powerful. So for the person that's listening right now going, okay, where do I start? So if we could walk through what it looks like to use your methodology, where would someone start? What's the first thing you would advise someone to do?

Well, first of all.

Create a bit of a time frame, little time slot to actually start to implement this process. Because the process includes, if I or one of my certified coaches around the world were actually to work with you, the first thing you need to do is to have room to then sit down and empty your head literally every single thing that's got your attention. Little big personal, professional doesn't matter. Not to organize it, not to prioritize it, just to record it. So if I were working with you, James, you and I'd have a big sheet of. Big pile of just printer paper, and you'd have a favorite pen. And I'd say, okay, what's on your mind? What's got your attention? I need cat food. We'd write that on a piece of paper, throw it in your entry. First of all, make sure you had an entry. Be surprised how many people don't, though their life is their entry. As opposed to having a. A physical, you know, thing to categorize that and. Oh, we need to. I need to. I think we need to hire a vice president of marketing. Great. Write that down on a piece of paper. Throw that in your entry.

We're wondering if we should adopt or not. Write that down on a piece of paper. Throw in your entry. My tooth hurts. I think I probably need to look into whether I need to get it. Write that down in the entry.

So as much time as you're willing to give yourself, most professionals takes one to six hours to truly clear their head just with that process. Not to organize, not to prioritize, just to record all the things that have their attention. And things have your attention because you're not yet appropriately engaged with them, whatever that is.

You only think about cat food because your system is not set up to get cat food.

Or your systematic process is done. The only reason you have, you know, higher, you know, question mark, higher VP of marketing, is because you're not yet appropriately engaged with that commitment with yourself.

So all that is just identifying all those things that are yanking your chain somehow internally. That's the first step.

So that with that first step, if someone's struggling to, like, figured out and they spend five minutes and they go, cool, I'm done. And really, they are not done. What kind of questions? Or is there one question you could get them to ask themselves to kind of uncover what else is lurking in there?

Well, we've got an incompletion checklist in my book.

I love that. Incompletion checklist.

Yeah. And we just go through that list. Great. Any projects that are started that are not finished yet. Any projects that need to be started, haven't been started yet. Go take a walk around in your apartment or your house or wherever you live. Anything need to be fixed, finished, handled, done, whatever. Let's think about all the people in your life. Anything you need to talk to them about. Anything to check, you know.

All I do is just start Asking the questions about what are all the areas of your life and work that you may have things going on that are not complete, that are somehow grabbing your attention. You keep passing that light, that, that bulb in your house that needs replacing.

You know, as that pops into your head twice, that's totally inefficient. Why? You're just not appropriately engaged with it.

That's really powerful.

Well, yes and no. I mean, it's so simple, very. You know, it's kind of a. You know, I hate to say it, but there's a bit of a duh factor here. Yeah, well, duh. And most people are trying to use their head to remember, remind, prioritize, manage that stuff in your head. It's just a crappy office. It's just a terrible office.

Your brain evolved to do some very cool stuff, use long term history and pattern recognition. So, you know, that's a computer, that's a light, that's a book, that's a person, as opposed to vibrations of light and sound. So your brain evolved to do some very sophisticated stuff that computers can barely even start to do now in terms of recognizing what that is and what it means to you. So your brain's very, very, very good at that stuff. But you go to the store for lemons, you come back with six things and no lemons. What happened? You tried to use your head to remember, remind it, you know. And I discovered 35 years ago that your head's for having ideas, not for holding them. But in the last 10 years, the brain scientists, the cognitive scientists, the people researching this have basically proven the number of things you could actually hold in your head. If that's the only place you've got reminders about it and still function optimally, is 4. As soon as you have more than that going on in your head, you won't be able to take a test as well. You won't be able to cook spaghetti as well, you won't be able to be as present, tucking your kids into bed at night. And don't shoot the messenger. That's now scientifically proven data.

It makes total sense. When you think of someone talking about their phone number, if you ask them for their phone number, generally they tell it to you in groups of three or four. Remember, smaller groups. So if people are not taking all of these things out of their head and capturing them, putting them in their entry, what's the risk? What's the side effect of the consequence of having everything just up here all the time?

Lack of focus, lack of being present, lack of space.

You know, just most people are so used to that they don't know that they could get really clear. So you don't have to finish all this stuff to get it off your mind, but you do have to record it, track it, decide specifically what you're going to do about it. If anything, park those results in some sort of a trusted external brain like your calendar or like a shopping list or a grocery list. Anybody keeps a calendar or grocery list is already doing this. Your head can't do it nearly as well as an external brain. Your head can. Then make choices. See if I have a real appropriate grocery list, then when I get to the grocery store, I have the freedom to buy stuff not on the list. Oh, there's a cool thing. Let me get that. Oh, that's really neat. Let me do that. Why? Because I'm freed up. Because I know I'm not going to miss anything on the list. So it gives me the freedom to be spontaneous, to be intuitive. See, I'm not a naturally organized guy, really. You know, people meet me or hang out with me and they go, God, you're nothing like what I thought you'd be. You know, my, my. No, I, I, I like to be free and spontaneous and follow my intuitive hunches. That's why I came up with all this stuff, because it allows me to do that.

That's amazing. It's so interesting when you look at some of the greatest artists that have been, they talk about, you know, they would create a time every day, and that was painting time, or that was artist time. And that give them these boundaries to work within. But because they had these boundaries, they could be more spontaneous, they could be more creative within that framework. So I really resonate with what you're saying.

Yeah, well, I think it was Flaubert, when they were one of the great novelists, you know, who said, be steady and well ordered in your life so you can be spontaneous and crazy in your work, or something like that. He said it better than I could, but that's the idea, right?

I love that. So let's say we've got this in tray and we've started putting everything over the head and onto the paper. Where do we go next? What's the next step?

Well, then next step is, as I've identified it. First is capture. Second is clarify. Clarify means, and that's probably the most subtle and sophisticated part of this model, is the thinking process. You have to apply to those emails, to those thoughts you wrote down, to anything that's shown up that you've allowed come into your psychic ecosystem. You need to then decide, why is that there? So you don't care what's showing up in your neighbor's mailbox? I don't think it's only what's in yours. Right. So what's landed in your world, you then need to make some decisions about it. So there's a very simple algorithm. You can see it in the book. It's a very simple model. The thought process you need to apply to those things you wrote down. And that thought process, first thought is, what actually is that thing? That sounds like a dumb question, but it's not really. I mean, I'm trying to, you know, I'm in Amsterdam, moved here, have two Dutch little corporations I've created, and a whole lot of my mail is in Dutch. Well, I'm only beginning to learn Dutch, so I have to ask this dumb question. What is this from the tax department? Are they telling me that they're sending me money or that I need to send them money? So I need to decide exactly what that thing is. Or is it junk mail, by the way? Mail doesn't show up, I'm junk mail. You actually have to decide that that thing is junk mail. So there's a decision process. So the first thing is, what is this thing? The second thing is this something I'm committed to act on or to do something about. Yes or no. Now, we get a lot of stuff into our world that there's no action required. And that's three things. That's either trash, I didn't need it, or now that I've seen it, I don't need it. Delete, shred, whatever, recycle. Then there's stuff you say there's no action on that, but I want to keep that because I want to be able to refer back to it later on, potentially. That's reference. There's a lot of stuff we get, we just need to keep. Because I want to be able to refer back to that for whatever reason. So the second non actionable thing is reference. Third thing is, you know, this notice you get from the local symphony, and the thing you really want to hear is not for three months out and you're not sure exactly if you want to commit yet. To buy a ticket, incubate. I need to potentially move on that later on, not now, but I need some sort of trigger, you know, someday, maybe, maybe I'll. Maybe I'll do that later, but not right now. But I don't want to throw it away totally. So you know, trash, reference, incubate. Those are the three non actionable stuff that you allow into your world. So you'd have to make that decision about all the stuff you wrote down. You're actually going to buy cat food, you're actually going to hire vice president, you actually want to adopt, you know, whatever. And you may say, there's still something I might need or want to do or decide about that. And that's the actionable stuff. That's where we get a lot of that stuff. And then if it's actionable, first question is, what's the next action? What's the very next thing? If you had nothing else to do but move the needle on that project or that thing that has your attention, what would you be doing? Is that an email to send? Is that a website to serve? Is that a conversation point to have with your life partner? What's the next step?

Once you decide the very next action.

Then if you can actually do that action within two minutes, you ought to do it right then. Because it would take you longer to organize it, remind yourself about it, than to finish it. I've had a lot of executives that said, David, it's worth every dollar I ever paid you for this coaching. Just for the two minute rule.

That'S gold.

So once you decide the next action, if you can finish the action within two minutes, do it. And a lot of people find that even just that one little technique out of this whole methodology is worth its weight in gold. And if you can't finish it in two minutes, whatever the next action is, then you need to ask yourself, are you the right person to do that action? If not, you need to hand it off.

Should your life partner handle that thing? Should your assistant handle that thing? Should your boss handle that thing? Should the accounting department handle that thing as a next step? So delegate would be the second option if it's an actual next action. And thirdly, longer than two minute action, can't hand it off. I got to do that action. Then that goes to what we call pending or that's that sort of goes into your inventory of actions you need to take in and around all the other stuff you need to do. So that just goes into your inventory, parked into your inventory. One last question to clarify stuff, to appropriately engage with it is will one action finish whatever this commitment is that you've got? If not, you got a project that you need to then identify and track.

Project. You might not have decided whether to hire a VP of marketing, but researching whether you should or could would Be a project for me so you don't have to finish it or even make that decision. You need to go, okay, I need to get to a go or no go decision about this opportunity, this situation or this problem. And that's a project. And then what's the next action about that? You know, I ought to get my board together and have a conversation or I need to get my, you know, whatever. So actionable stuff, do it, delegate it or defer it. That doesn't mean procrastinate, just means put it into your inventory of stuff and you know what's what, the outcome that you're committed to that this thing is triggering or is this thing is about. So that's a clarification step that sits very close to step three, which is if I can't finish those things, they're all going to suck back up into my head if I don't park reminders in some sort of external system. Lists.

So the list is actually an important thing to have, right?

Oh, it's like a calendar. Your calendar is a list. Your groceries list is a list. Any of these things are just said, look, so my head doesn't have to keep remembering and reminding. Let me create a list of all the stuff to talk to my partner about. Let me create a list of all the stuff I need to do when I'm at my computer and tied into the Internet. Let me have a list of all the errands that I need to run. So these are just lists and that's really all they are. And so the organization system is really being able to keep build some sort of a, or format, some sort of an external brain that can hold reminders of all of these things you've come up with, you know, as decisions you made about stuff you need to do, what you need to do about them. That's step three. Step four is then use the system. So you're making sure you're looking at your errands list. When you go out for errands, make sure you're looking at the stuff that you identified for a board meeting agenda. Make sure you're looking at stuff to talk to your life partner about when you're talking about the business of life stuff. So you make sure that you're using your external brain. Otherwise your brain has to start to become your brain again and you don't trust it.

You're an experience with people. What's the biggest block from them? You know, actually having their list but not engaging and not using it. What stops most people?

They're just used to stuff in their head. They think it's too much trouble trying to keep track of all that stuff externally. Yeah, they may get inspired in the seminar, they may get inspired in a coaching, but they, you know, most people run back into their habits, which is keep stuff in their head. Takes a while to train yourself not to keep stuff in your head and to externalize all that stuff. As soon as you don't trust your system, as soon as your lists are out of date or incomplete, you don't trust it. You say it's too much trouble, it's not giving me the freedom that I think I want. And so you keep their stuff in your head. So.

If I had a magic pill that would get people to automatically decide, wow, clear head is what I need. And so I will automatically do a weekly review and once a week catch up and make sure my systems are current, make sure my head is empty.

Maybe make a lot more money than I'm making. But, you know, come on, it's a huge habit to change.

Yeah, it's massive. And yeah, I totally understand where you're coming from. Personally, I have a Sunday, one to two hours on a Sunday where I review my week. I look at what happened, what went well, what didn't go well, and then I set up the next week and each day I have, you know, it might take 90 seconds, it might take four or five minutes at most each day, just checking through the same thing on a daily basis and a monthly basis. So the people that you work with that are your highest performers, your best clients, what is it that helps them actually embrace this methodology, the GTD methodology, and run with it, they taste it.

And they go, oh, my God, clear space, wow.

And they say, I want more of that, or how do I, how do I keep that?

And keeping it so, you know, tasting it's one thing, keeping it's quite another.

And is there a time where you're like, hey, if they do it for three or four months consistently, it's part of who they are. This their new DNA?

Yeah, probably. I say a couple of months. If they kept with it, then it would probably. At least some of it would be habitual.

Right.

And by the way, you don't have to implement this whole thing. I mean, it's nice if you, if you did, you'd experience something quite unique. But just a little piece of it, if you just wrote a few more things down than you normally do out of your head, you'll feel better, be more control. If you just made a next Action, decision about one or two things that are bugging you right now about what you're going to do about it. You'd feel better. So this is not like running with scissors. There's nothing. There's nothing, nothing in this methodology that wouldn't do anything but improve your condition. But the whole game, oh, that's a whole new. That's a whole new experience. If you're actually willing and if you're willing to stick with it long enough to see what it's like, just live more strategically, more creatively, more present.

But see.

You don't just do this once. Life keeps changing. You keep getting new stuff. While you're talking right now, James, you've got stuff piling up in your email that's going to potentially change your priorities tomorrow morning.

Me, too. So it's a constant process of new stuff coming in, integrating the new stuff. What does it mean? Recalibrating it against all the other stuff that's potentially meaningful that I've captured or whatever, and rethinking that whole gestalt. And you don't. That's not going to end until you end. I don't think so.

It's a habitual set of behaviors. See, if I told you David said, hey, David, would you get back? Would you send me a picture that I can put on the one. Oh, okay.

Pin.

Notepad. Or if I'm not. If my notepad's not there, pen notepad. I live with it. Right. People say, well, how often should you sit down and empty your head? I don't ever have to sit down and empty my head because I keep my head empty.

But that's a habit. It takes really sophisticated people a couple of years to really build that habit. Where you're not saying, oh, I'll remember that. Oh, I'll remember that. Sure. And then two minutes later, when you're thinking of the next thing, you sure you won't forget? You forgot. You forgot the first thing.

I'm guilty of it for sure. Like, I have to write things down and take notes. But sometimes, here's the problem. Yeah, you give me a good old. For those that are listening, that's David. Give me a few face slaps there. Um, so, David, when it comes to taking notes, I have lots of places I capture. And I've started to capture everything on the phone recently in one spot. But I'm guilty of having a few lists. And sometimes those lists get lost, get mixed up, get forgotten. So what's the best way to capture in an effective way and Then track back in and make sure that, hey, have I completed that list? Is that list merged over with the other new list that I've created? What's the most effective way of doing it?

Well, when you say list, are you talking about capture list? Are you talking about organized list?

Capture list?

Yeah, well, capturing. That's why I just. 98% of my capture is low tech. No WI fi, no batteries, it's quick. That's not my organization system. That's just placeholders for things that then later on will go into my organization system based upon what I decide I'm going to do. About what the notes that I took. But it sounds like you're doing digital. The problem with digital capture is the black hole. You know, if you're not emptying out everything you captured in there within every 24 to 48 hours, you're screwed. You know, you're not, you're going to, oh, I think I've got stuff. Oh.

You get that ambient anxiety, it's going to creep back up into you again. So it's fine to use your digital capture as long as you empty wherever you capture that every 24 to 48 effort.

If you're not, stop, use low tech and then throw the low tech notes. I throw away probably 80% of the notes I take. I don't, you know, when I have the idea, I think, I think it's a great idea because I had the idea. But then later I'm like, too much wine, David Dan with it, what a dumb idea. You know, and I just toss it, that's fine. But then I don't have. My mind is freed of remembering, reminding, you know, of anything that's potentially meaningful. Potentially meaningful doesn't mean that everything I think of is meaningful. Again. I throw away most of that stuff because it was brilliant while I had the idea, but later on it's like, dumb idea.

So good. Now what's the next stage? So after that, what would be the next step for the individual?

Well, next step after what would be the question. After they've captured and clarified everything and got some sort of organization system. It's just then, then the, the real key is the weekly review. Once a week, as you do on Sundays, sit down and regroup, you know, bring up the rear guard, you know, because, God, things are. You and me both have probably had stuff happen in the last one or two or three days that we haven't had a chance yet to sit down and say, wait, wait a minute, that's really a project. And what's My next step on it, I just know I got it. I just haven't decided exactly what I'm going to do about it. That's natural. I mean, that shows up as life is coming at us faster than we can keep all this stuff pristinely captured, clarified and processed and organized. But you can't let that go very long. As soon as you let that go longer than seven or eight or 10 days, your brain says, gee, my system's out of date. I'm out of date. Oh, damn. And then you go back to your old habits. So the main thing, once you. Once you start to catch the application and the implementation of this methodology, then it's keep it up. And the week to review will really be the one that does that. Now, reviewing, as you know, if you remember in the book, takes on lots of different levels. So, you know, everybody says, well, how do I set priorities about all that? And what do I do? Well, there's all those six horizons that I identified that we actually have commitments all the way up to. What's your life purpose or what's your business purpose? What are your core values? What are your core principles? All the way down to. Then what's the vision of wild success that you're committed to complete? What are the goals that you need to finish and objectives you need to accomplish over the next year or two? And what are all the things you need to maintain in terms of quality control and finances and health and vitality? And what are all the things you need? And then what are all the projects you got about all that? So, you know, life is a pretty complex mix of a lot of different commitments we have at a lot of different levels. So the weekly review will keep you more operationally clear. But that doesn't necessarily mean some of those projects you need to get rid of because of where you're going or where you want to go. And you need some new projects you might need to add on based upon some goals you've got or some vision you have about your ideal future. So, you know, you can't negate, you know, any of those aspects to also, how do you get stuff done? What do you need to get done? Well, I need to fulfill my purpose. I need to achieve my vision. I need to complete my objectives. I need to manage and maintain, you know, all the stuff I need to maintain. So I've got a healthy, balanced engine that's going to get me where I need to go. And all the projects I need to finish about all that. Come on. Most people have 30 to 100 projects and most people have 150 to 220 next actions just in terms of their right now the reality of what all that stuff is about so much more than people really realize. So that's what I've. A lot of our work over all these years has been just getting people not to tell them what should be on their list, but get them to get clear about what their lists are.

Yeah, that's really important. And when we think of decision fatigue, so you wake up each day and you've got this ability to make decisions, but the more decisions you're making throughout the day and remaking decisions because you haven't taken action on things, that obviously takes its toll on our cognitive thought processes, our ability to make good decisions. So with this methodology, can this help people reduce that decision fatigue?

Oh, for sure, absolutely. One of my biggest big champion and friends of mine, Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, wrote a book a few years ago actually called Willpower. And they were the ones that popularized the idea of decision fatigue. They actually flew out to California while I was still living there to find out. David, how did you figure this out? 30 years ago we just uncovered this ourselves about how critical it was. And Baumeister is probably the top researcher of cognitive science in the us teaches at University of Florida.

And he's the one who came up with all the research that proved four things as max in terms of keeping your head. And Baumeister would tell you, I think in his book, look, you don't have to finish something to get it off your mind, but if you know you have a plan for what you need to do and you've got some reminder about what you need to do about that in some appropriate place freed up clear. So I forgot what you asked, but that's, that's the, that's the essence of being able to stay clear, is to make sure that you've well captured, clarified, organized this stuff in some appropriate place.

And for the person that's going right now, oh, this sounds like a lot of work and a lot of time and I got to sit down on a weekly basis. Can you just explain to them that, hey, if you sit down across a week for an hour to two hours, however it might long take a week, how much it's going to save them in time?

Well, I say, how many of you have a favorite sports team?

How much time do you think they spend thinking about the work they need to do on Saturday afternoon when they play? How about whole week?

And most people don't even take 10 minutes to think about their day. I'm saying, well. Well, come on, you know.

Sorry. You got to think.

Thinking's hard, but it's. But it doesn't take a lot of time. But again, it takes stepping back and being able to see, locate yourself in space and time. Anybody who's listening or watching this right now, who's looked at your calendar over the last day or two had done exactly that. At least you stepped back and said, okay, where do I need to be tomorrow? What do I need to do tonight? But I don't want to miss an appointment, phone call, or whatever. You just located yourself in space and time to a small degree. So what. What you and I are talking about here is. Let's do that. Totally. So how much time does it take?

And everybody who's ever done a real weekly review will change their strategies for the next week, I guarantee you guarantee. You never seen an exception to that. The executives we coach called. Oh, my God. Who? Oh, yeah, I was worried about that. Now I know where this is. Now I know how these things fit in there. And, you know, it's like the fire tower versus hugging the tree. You know, we all hug trees. The tree huggers. You know, it's like you and I are doing that right now. We're down in the weeds and we're doing this thing that we agreed to do together. Yeah. But at some point when we stop, we're going to need to have to lift up and look around. Oh, now what? Totally now what? Right? So it's like, then you need to climb up into the fire tower and look around. If you never went up to the fire tower, you'd never see the fire that was coming.

But you go up in the fire tower, say, oh, smoke over there. Oh, okay, I guess we better. So you need to lift up and just get a higher horizon, essentially, of look at your life and work to then locate yourself in space and time. See, if you wait until the fire lands in your tree, you're screwed. Yeah.

Too late, dude. You know, but you could have seen it coming had you lifted up and seen a little higher horizon. Doesn't mean this is easy. Oh, my God. No. But if life was easy, you never grow, you never expand, you never win. You'd never beat your competitors. Come on. And, you know.

Life'S not. You don't want it to be easy, but you want to be able to be in the driver's seat of how you're navigating it. And then that's going to give you the Edge about what to do. As a matter of fact, you get into your zone usually when it's tough, if you're appropriately engaged with it. That's where you learn. That's where you expand. That's where you express. Is when you are navigating the things that are stressing you or the opportunities presented to you or the problems that you need to address.

I really resonate with that as well. David, you look at Csikszentmihalyi and his studies around flow, he said there was three things that had to happen. One, you've got to focus on one thing only and nothing else. Just has to be one thing. Two, the thing that you're focusing on has to be meaningful in some way. And then three, relating to what you just said there was. It's got to take you that this activity that you're doing, it's got to take you to the upper level of your comfort zone. It's got to be at the upper level of your ability and stretch you. So, yeah, I think, yeah, I really do resonate with what you. What you said.

Yeah, you just want to be in the driver's seat. That's all. You don't want to be a victim. See, that's why a lot of the purpose of our work is to create a planet where people perceive problems as projects.

That's amazing.

If you think. If you think about that, any of you listening or watching this right now, what are the biggest problems you think you have? And I would say, well, what is the project you have? What's your desired outcome in that situation? Resolve it, clarify it, finish it, handle it, deal with it. That's a project. Doesn't mean that's easy. Doesn't mean it's fun. Believe me, I've been in many situations that I would say are not easy and not fun. However, if you name it as a project, then you're in the driver's seat. What's the next step I need to take? What's the next thing I need to do to resolve this, to clarify this, to move it to closure. I challenge any of you listening or watching this right now to do that with three things. The biggest things right now that you would say are either problems, opportunities.

Or, you know, situations that have your attention and then say, okay, what's my desired outcome? To get that resolved, to get it clarified. Doesn't mean that you're gonna. Doesn't mean if I've got a project called Should I merge with your company? James?

My project may be to research that I may have to make. At some point, I just need to make a go or no go decision about the opportunity or the challenge.

If I say no, got enough data, just not right. We both are going different paths. And so whatever, I get to mark that project off as done successfully. I have now clarified that very few people are willing to or have automatically start to see life in that way.

That's a lot of what this methodology does is it gives people the tools to be able to think about life more from the driver's seat as opposed to being the victim. Because as soon as you complain, you're in victim mode.

Right. And you can't be both, you know, you can't be the victor and the victim. You've got to choose, you know, which one you're going to go with.

Yeah. And being the victor does not mean that you win, beat everybody down, you know, whatever. It just means you get that you're clear with yourself about how you are with this situation.

And David, for you personally, when was there a time when you had a problem, a real problem, and you realized, oh, I could take the victim approach. Now I'm going to turn this into a project. And then it worked out. You use this methodology in real life, say in your personal life, perhaps, or professional, but it worked out brilliantly. What was an example of that?

Hired the wrong guy to run the company.

It took a long time, it was expensive and painful to unhook from that and to redo it. At some point I had to go.

Okay, here's the project. It's going to get clarity about that situation and get that under control. And, you know, wound up having to fire the guy and having to pay a bunch of money and, you know, he just didn't match the DNA of what was going on. But it took three years to find that out and to finally step up to the plate to make that a project.

Brilliant. It's good to see your own methodology in action. Right?

Yeah. It's tough talk, but again, you know, learned. I learned from it. And, you know, he was a lovely guy and just kind of wrong fit. But it just took a while for that to become.

An issue that had to be addressed.

And that's the whole, I guess, the reflection that we chatted about earlier to having your weekly review, your monthly review, reflecting on things that went well, but also not so well, and how did they end up that way? So what when people are reflecting, if they haven't got the book yet, which I encourage everybody to do, I will be putting it in the show notes Please do go and get a copy of Getting Things Done. And in fact Time magazine, they heralded this as one of the best business self help books of its time. So incredible book. So please do go and buy the book. If you're listening to this just, you're probably listening to it on your phone. So get it out, go to Amazon and get it ordered, David, or your local bookstore.

Come on guys, support your local bookstore.

Yeah, it's even better.

I'm a big fan of supporting those guys because there's. They're great. They're actually making a comeback which is nice to see because a lot of people are missing that sort of community and local sense of sort of locavore from a, from an intellectual standpoint.

Yeah, you cannot beat it. Going into a beautiful local bookstore and just perusing and browsing. It's brilliant.

Yeah.

Now go and go.

Okay. Get the book. However you're going to get the book, that's just a plug for the locals.

Yeah, definitely. So horizons, let's actually take a second. I've written it down here because it was something I thought that the audience would really appreciate hearing about. So would you mind going into a little bit more detail around the horizons?

Sure.

Well, it's like anybody listening or watching this right now, what are you committed? What do you need to get done? Getting things done well, what do you need to get done? Well, at the highest level that would be I need to fulfill my purpose.

By the way, you can use this model. You could iterate this model on an enterprise as well as yourself personally. So you can take you to one. So what's your purpose? Like why are you on the planet? How are you doing? And I don't know that I have a final answer to that. I have a working hypothesis and I'll change it if I get better data. And I think that's a good approach for all of us. It's like it's a working hypothesis. So until I get better data, here's what I think I'm about and what I need to be doing. So purpose, that would be what you need to get done is fulfill your purpose. Right. And at the same level would be your core values. I need to fulfill my purpose within these value systems. In other words, James, what would really, really, really, really bother you. You don't care where you work, you don't care where you live, you don't care who you live with as long as what.

And that would be, that would start to give you some resonance about. Okay, I need to make sure that I'm of service. I need to make sure that.

I'm serving people around me that I'm connected with. I need to make sure that in your company and your organization, I need to make sure that X, Y, Z. And so many companies have gone through that exercise to define here are core values.

What you need to get done is to be fulfilling your purpose within the parameters of your values. Right? So this top level now, knowing what that is, is that going to help you decide which email to write first tonight? A little bit. But then there's another operational level. If you, when I say drop down, that doesn't mean less, it just means move to a more operational focus. So, okay, if you were fulfilling your purpose wildly successfully, James, what would you be doing five years from now.

Or three years from now, or 10 years from now or 100 years from now? What's your vision? Essentially? And this is what would bring it down into, into real space and time. Like, okay, here's what it would look like. So you could have a very similar purpose of serving people to somebody next to you. But they may want to do that by being a teacher or being a physician. You may want to do it by being a great podcaster that's giving great, you know, help and cognitive juice for people that want to improve their lives. Both of those could fulfill that purpose, but they'd be a very different vision of what it would be looking like in the world. So the vision would be what would wild success for your purpose being fulfilled in the world look sound or feel like?

Now, if you clarified that.

Would that help you decide which email to write first tonight? A little bit more.

Then you may probably have. Okay, well, my vision is to be the great New Zealand author of fictional books world known. Fabulous. What do you need to do over the next three to 24 months that would sort of move you in that direction? What are your objectives or goals? So this would be. I count these much like elevators in Europe. There's level 5, level 4, level 3, level 2, level 1 and ground. Level 5 is purpose and principles. Level 4 would be vision. Level 3 would be objectives or goals. What are the things you need to accomplish that you think would maybe have your vision occur? Usually in organizations. This would be your typical level of your organizational plan, your strategic plan, your annual budgeting or whatever is done on a yearly basis where you're looking at the next year or two, that would be at that level. Now, once you have your sort of objectives or goals, you have them. You had that laid out. Would that Help you decide which email to write first tonight, a little bit more. Then you have all the levels of things that you need, all the commitments you've got to maintain the engine of the enterprise, yourself, personally or your enterprise that will make sure this thing can get toward your goals and your vision, areas of focus and accountability. This would be Horizon two.

In your company. How's sales? How's customer service? How's it? How's hr? How's.

I don't know, admin? How's. How are all the things you don't finish? Those things, you just need to make sure that they're all okay enough to keep your engine balanced and going toward where you want to go. For you personally, James, how's health and vitality? How's your finances? How's your relationships? How's your dog? How's your, you know, how's your creative expression? How's your fun factor? You know, all the things that say, okay, these are the things that actually matter to me to make sure my life is okay, so I'm moving toward where I want to go. That's Horizon to your job description, if you will, in your, in your work.

And then you say, okay, what are all the things I need to finish about all of that? That's. Then Horizon 1 would be your projects.

I need to research whether to hire vice president of marketing.

We need to restructure the board.

We need to deal with this offer to buy us as a company.

We need to, yada, yada, I need a new assistant.

So just the project level, all the things that are going to take more than one step to complete, that you still need to complete to make all that other stuff happen. That's projects. And again, back to that point that most professionals have between 30 and 100 of those. If you include personal, get the tooth fixed, get a dog, research whether we want to give the kids karate lessons or not, etc. Once you get that clear, is that going to help you decide which email to write first tonight? A lot. That will help you a lot. But then of course, you don't have anything to do until you get down to the ground level, which is the doing level. Okay, what do you need to do about any of that stuff? Emails to send, stuff to buy at the store, stuff to talk to your partner about, stuff you need, you know, draft things you need to draft on the computer, things you need to research on the web, you know, and most people got 150 to 200 of those right now. So those are the different levels of commitments I'M sorry, don't shoot the messenger. I couldn't get it any simpler than this. A lot of people trying to set priorities and they try to cram all that into something called set your priorities. I say, well, wait a minute, which one of those conversations is lacking or needs to be assessed more or clarified more or paid more attention to in order to feel ideally your actions are going to finish projects that are there because you've got areas of focus that need to be maintained that are moving you toward the goals you need to have and the vision that you're going to create with all that and then fulfilling your purpose. Yay. So the more those are all aligned and the more comfortable you're going to feel about whatever it is you're doing. I couldn't get any simpler than that, James. I would have loved to have.

Beautifully.

I tried. I tried and there's no way I could get any simpler than that. But going through those exercises with my clients at whatever level they seem to have the most attention about some of them. For instance, I work with one client who just move from chief operating officer to CEO of a big, very well known financial firm. And so he needed to go through what are all the things now in my job description as CEO that I need to look at and make sure I'm okay about. That's different from his CEO job. So sometimes it's just a job description that would. That brings a lot more clarity, a lot more comfort with what's with the current reality.

If we look at GTD and what your purpose and your vision is, where are you trying to take it? What's the end game for you?

As many people in the world that can get some piece of this to improve their condition, that's all I'm about.

I'm 76, so.

I couldn't stop doing it. I couldn't stop. I mean, I think I'm not really a motivational speaker. I'm really more an educator probably more than anything else. I don't really care whether people do this or not. I care or I wouldn't do it. But whether you do it or not, it's up to you. My job is to let you know there's a game out here to play. And the result of that game is X, Y and Z. You can decide how important that might be to you and then I'm there to help you in whatever way to do that. So that we're teaching kids nine years old this stuff. We're teaching, you know, CEOs, you know, we're represented in 90 countries now around the world with certified trainers and coaches that we've trained to teach this stuff and to bring it out to other people. And so, you know, it's a big world and a lot of people that don't know about this yet that could use it. So my job basically and how I see the rest of my life, career wise, anywhere professionally is just expand it as whatever opportunities present themselves. Like talking to you.

That's right. There'll be a listener listening to this right now. That goes. I need to get the book right away. I love it. Please do that. Go to your local bookstore. Get on Amazon, get that book now. David, I've got one last question for you before we wrap up. And I want you to think about someone who's dear to you in your family, someone who's maybe substantially younger than you. And they said, hey, look, I want one piece of advice. And that question comes in this form. It says, how can I lead my life with more purpose? How would you answer that? Family member?

Something that took me many years to recognize was that I had an inner still small voice.

That knew me, that loved me, that knew my game. I just had to stop and pay attention to that. But I didn't realize that was there or that I could access it. So my coaching to anybody is learn to be quiet, learn to listen, learn to let go and relax and then pay attention to the still small voice inside of you that knows who you are, where you're going, what you should be doing. But should with a. I use that word cautiously. You don't want to should on yourself.

But but has. Has your directive. And that's been my experience over all these years, is that that voice is there anytime I want to listen to it and pay attention to it. And it's always there. So if anybody can learn that sooner than I did. I was probably in my late 20s or 30s before I really caught that. And how to exercise that you could do it through meditative or reflective. Any kind of you have to do is stop, take a breath, go, hey voice, what's up? What do you think I should do about X, Y and Z? And listen, pay attention.

Beautiful advice. And the meditation side of things. So that's obviously something we've talked about a few times here. You've brought it up. So is that something you practice daily?

Yeah, I do.

Great.

You know, in the, in previous years I spent a long time doing it. Now it's just more kind of lifestyle is how I think, how I stop and relax and Stop and let go and you know, do that sometimes they're more, more focused times than others.

But yeah, they show up more and more with leaders, great leaders around the planet. Meditating, detaching, going for meditation walks, open eye meditations. Have you got any favorite type of meditation that you enjoy?

Close your eyes, relax, listen. You know, my screensaver says let go.

So good.

I mean control is the big human addiction. So being willing to relax and let go, you know, it's let go, let God is my sort of mantra. And then so, you know, I'll just let go and let whoever the powers, the powers that be have at me and then pay attention to that.

Well, what you've created is incredibly powerful and the book itself is phenomenal. So I really do hope for the listener that's listening right now. Go get the book. Read it. It will be transformational if you take action on it. And Dave, I just want to wish you all the best with GTD and the methodology globally. I hope it continues to be a great success.

Thanks, James. Yeah, this was fun.

So great to keep you. So much.

Yeah, indeed. Good luck to you and have a great rest of your life.

For all of you, thank you so much.

Thanks for tuning in today and investing.

In your own personal leadership.

Please hit that subscribe button and I'd love if you'd leave me a rating and review.

I've got some amazing guests lined up.

For you in the coming weeks and leaders, it's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.

Sa.