HI 90 - Stress Free Productivity with David Allen

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Hello and welcome to episode 90 of the Heroic Investing show where we focus on the unique challenges faced by first responders, members of the military and veterans. But we also focus on those issues that are common to all investors because let's face it, we're all looking for the same thing. Replacing that W2 income with some passive income sources that enable us to focus on unique genius, do those things that we enjoy, get back time with our family and have a little more fun. So as you know, on episode 90 here, a tenth episode, just like on Jason's other podcasts, I choose to go off topic here on the Heroic Investing show to provide something of a little more general life interest. We've gotten consistently positive feedback since we started doing this here on Heroic Investing as Jason has on creating wealth. But I would love to hear from you and would also love to get one of those five star ratings. So please jump out there if you would and be so kind to give us a rating on the Heroic Investing show today on the 90th episode. This is Jason interviewing David Allen. David is a productivity expert. Personal and business productivity. As Jason says, he's an expert in just getting stuff done and certainly when, whether you're in operating a personal business, whether you're trying to juggle a couple of jobs and work your real estate and other things in the evenings or coach the kids soccer team, we all have too many things to do in too short of time. So I think you will really appreciate what our guest today has to say. I enjoyed it. It's a long one so I'm not going to add much of an intro to this one. I'm just going to tell you that it's worth listening to and I'm gonna go listen to it one more time with all of you. I hope you enjoy it and again, please give us a rating. Thanks so much and we'll see you next episode.

It's my pleasure to welcome David Allen to the show today. He is a guru and expert on personal productivity and organization. His latest book is Making It All Work, Winning the Game of Work and the Business of Life. David welcome.

Delighted to be here.

Dave. Great to have you. I first discovered you a few years ago with the book Getting Things Done. And I know that's not the latest, but it seems to be rather foundational, and I thought maybe we'd talk about that one first. What do people need to do to be more productive? We're all distracted today with overly committed lives, and we're just all too busy. And it seems like a lot of times we're just kind of going in circles. What's the key to getting things done?

Well, I think if you back it up a little bit and ask yourself when you've had a really good day, when you really got things done, you probably would call that in. You were probably in your zone. You know, the athletes call that in. The time disappears. It's like lunchtime, where did the morning go? So that state where you're clear, you're relaxed, you're highly focused, you're inspired, but not like giddy and Teehee and haha, but inspired, meaning you are engaged, you're just on when time disappears. I think that's the most productive state to be in. It's the most productive state to operate from, whether you're hitting the golf ball off the tee or in a difficult conversation, or trying to rethink your life strategies, whatever. It's like, you're clear, you're highly focused, and you have all of your resources available to you. Well, if you could stay in that state. And that's a lot of what my work is about, is, well, how do you get into that state? And when you fall off, how do you recognize you fall off and how do you get back on? So I think what most people need to do is to understand there actually is a definable set of behaviors that allow you to get on top of your game instead of feel like you're behind it. And that's what I did. I spent a lot of years just uncovering, not really making it up. It's not like a foreign language or a technology you don't understand. But what I did was just begin to really examine very closely what it is we do that works for us in that regard. And I just wound up defining those sets of behaviors and describing essentially a coherent methodology that if you start to apply it, lets you get a lot more done with a lot less effort.

So you call this kind of a new practice for a new reality. Tell us about that, if you would.

Well, what's different these days is how frequently everything is different. That's what's New is the fact that while we're talking right now, stuff is piling up in there that is potentially meaningful new input that could cause us to have to recalibrate our whole mix of our priorities and our commitments and recast the whole game, if you will, and then repoint and refocus. It's just that's happening many times a day, as opposed to once a month for our parents. So that's what's different, is things are coming in much, much too fast to let them lie around without defining what they mean and without having a lot more rigor in terms of keeping track of what all of our commitments are at multiple different levels and being able to step back and see that whole inventory and keep it current so that you're making much more objective decisions on an ongoing basis and can reset very fast. That's what's really different. So the flexibility to be able to unhook and redo and refocus is really, really critical these days. And that's not really being taught. Everybody's kind of in it. But I think what I did was let people know there's light at the end of that tunnel, but it's not free. There are certain behaviors you have to do and certain things you've got to get good at and better at and much more on the front end about and more rigorous. I don't want to make it sound hard because it's stuff that's actually pretty easy to do, but most people don't seem to have done it or understood it in a coherent way like I did.

Yeah, well, things are moving so fast nowadays, and I believe it was Peter Drucker that said, the one thing constant is change. So very much to your point, what do people do? I mean, what are some sort of the fundamentals of getting things done?

Well, the real fundamental is, well, all you have to do to get things done is define what done means and what doing looks like and where it happens. It's just that those don't show up by themselves. You know, what does done mean in terms of mom and elder care? What does done mean right now in terms of, you know, I got to rethink how I need to restructure my business now that the world may be waking up a little bit more out there. So defining what our outcomes are is not. Is not an easy task necessarily. And then even when you define those, say, okay, well, what's the very next step? What's the next thing I need to do? Oh, yeah, well, making that decision, those don't show up already in nice little pink bows and well defined. So we have to train ourselves how to make those, you know, somewhat common sense and obvious, you know, executive operational decisions. That's the basic sort of thought process and behavior that's embedded in gtd. But how do you do that with the flood that we are engaged with and that we have to deal with on an hour by hour basis? Now, that's the challenge. And that's where I came up with the five phases of how do you really manage to get that under control and keep it under control? And what are the six different conversations or horizons that we need to evaluate in terms of what our commitments are? So essentially I got it as simple as I could, but I couldn't get it any simpler than that. So that's sort of the detail of how do I manage that thought process and make sure that it's installed out there.

Well, take us through those steps, if you would. There are six, six and five, you said.

Yeah, well, they're five and six. I take it like, let's get control first. Because if your foot is slipping off the rock, you can't really focus on where you want to climb. You know, you need to get control first. If the ship is sinking, you don't really care where it's pointed. So the first thing is, how do I get this situation under control? And that could be my email, it could be a client relationship, it could be my office, it could be my country, it could be anything. And those five stages of how you get control, very simply, I'll give you the quick bullets are first of all to capture the stuff. Just capture, capture, capture what's pulling on me. Capture what's not on cruise control. I need to identify that. Number two is I then need to clarify or process what those things are. What does that mean? How do I relate to the fact that that email is sitting there and giving me information about X, Y and Z? Is there something I'm committed to do about it or not? Do I need to throw it away? Is there something I need to review later on? And if it's something I'm committed to, move on. What's the outcome I'm committed to, and what's the action step I must take? So that's essentially those are the clarifying questions about what emails mean, what my meeting notes mean, what do I now need to do after I get off the phone with this person? So that's the clarify. That's stage two. Stage three says, okay, once you make a decision, oh, I need to call Fred Smith about this. I then need to organize some reminder about that. So stage three is to organize the results of that thinking about your stuff. Stage four is to step back and make sure now that you've organized it, that you're reflecting and reviewing the contents that you've organized in some appropriate manner on some appropriate recursion or regularity. Then stage five says, okay, now how do I allocate resources? What do I go do? How do I engage with what do I do next? Is this an email? Do I need to go to sleep? Do I need to have a conversation with my boss? What's next? What's the very next allocation of resources? So essentially you capture, you clarify, you organize, you reflect, and then you engage. So that's at micro levels or macro levels. That's actually what we all do. If things get out of control and we wind up getting them back into control. We did some version of those phases in that order. So there's a lot of detail on each one of those. I can drill into those in more detail. But then if you say, okay, well, once I've done all that, I've got a lot more things to do than just one thing. No kidding. And that's where how do I make priority decisions or how do I then decide which of those things I need to do right now? And that's where a critical component for that is the six conversations you really need to have to really feel comfortable about, you know, what you're doing. And I put them in altitude, in an altitude analogy because they it tends to work that way. You know, I kind of lift up and see higher that the very highest would be what I call a 50,000 foot level. That's your ultimate purpose and your core values. What are you about? Why are you on the planet? What's really important to you? The next level down from that would be, okay, what would wild success of you doing that look, sound or feel like? What are the long term picture of success for you? That's what you could call it vision. 40,000ft, let's drop down, make the purpose more operational here. Then I have a vision of what that might look like. But then of course you need to step that down a little further. I come down to 30,000ft, say, okay, what do I need to accomplish from the next three to 24 months? The goals, the objectives, the plans that I need to do, what do I need to do to start to make the vision happen? And then you need to step down to 20,000ft and say, okay, well, what are all the components of the engine that need to be maintained so that this enterprise is healthy and can get me there? So in your work, this would be the area four to seven things you're responsible to maintain, grow sales, grow, grow staff, manage assets, stuff like that, as well as in your life? Well, I need to maintain health and my relationships and my household and my spiritual life and my recreational life and my own personal development, et cetera. So those would be sort of the areas that we need to maintain sort of our personal and lifestyle and business org chart, if you will. But then out of all that you say, well, okay, if I think through all of those things, I probably got a lot of stuff I need to finish, things that take more than one step. So then you come down to 10,000ft and say, okay, what are all the projects I now have out of all that? And Most people have 30 to 100 projects, like from get tires on the car, to hire an assistant, to launch the new ad campaign, et cetera, you still don't have what to do yet. Those are the five sort of horizons of outcomes at different levels that you would need to think through. And then you come down to, okay, what do I now need to do out of all that? And out of all that come about 150 to 200 next actions. What are the next physical things that need to do? That's what I call the Runway. That's where the rubber truly is. Hitting the road. Emails to send, phone calls to make, stuff to buy at the store, things to go over with my spouse, the next things that need to happen to complete the projects that are going to fulfill my areas of responsibility, that are going to get me to my short term objectives, that are going to let me get my vision accomplished, that's going to fulfill my purpose. Now, I couldn't get it any simpler than those six conversations. So that's why I don't recommend ABC priority codes or 1, 2, 3, or high, medium and low, because you've got a much more sophisticated set of variables that you have to deal with and that somewhat oversimplifies it.

Well, there's been certainly volumes written and many talks and conversations about the concept of time management. David, is this about time management? Is it about organizing things and papers or is it more philosophical than that?

It's actually none of that. What it is is really describing at the end of the day, how good do you feel about what you did versus what you didn't do. So it's really about action. It's about you Know, how well did you manage your allocation of your attention and your resources? That's really what it's about. You can't manage time. That's the problem. They've called it time management for so many years, but if you misidentify a problem, you'll never come up with a solution. The problem is not time. You can't manage time. You don't mismanage five minutes and come up with six. You know, I think one of the reasons it got called time management is because actually, most executives think they need it. And it's a little embarrassing for executives to admit they need help in managing themselves and their decision making, you know, so let me call it time management. Makes me sound important. But the truth is it's really about how you manage yourself. How do you manage your allocation of your focus and your resources? It's that simple and that complex and all the variables that go into that. And it's actually. Yes, organization, as you heard, is a critical component of how do I get things under control. But if you just try to go get organized, and I understand that idea, people go, hey, let's get organized and get focused. That's two very appropriate admonitions, whether you're trying to get a project going or redo your company or rethink your career. I need to get organized and I need to get focused. No kidding. I mean, when the recession hit, believe me, that's a lot of conversations, you know, in the hallway. I gotta get organized and I gotta get focused. Now, assuming you don't just want to let yourself feel run over by the bus. So those are two appropriate admonitions. That's why. But I sort them into control and perspective. But oftentimes to get control, you need to disorganize what you're doing the way you've been doing it. That's the problem, is a lot of people's organization is not an appropriate structure for the kind of flexibility or it's an old structure that they haven't redone. They're too embedded in their comfort zone about it. So people tend to think of me as an organization guy, but I'm really not. I'm really as much a disorganization guy as anything else.

That's an interesting paradigm.

Well, come on, you know, everybody's already organized. You wouldn't be listening to this right now if you weren't. There's some level of organization and some level of stasis that you've. That you've got together just so that you could Focus on anything. What you need to do is you need to. Is this the appropriate organizational model or structure for what I'm trying to accomplish? Because too controlled is out of control. Because you lack then the flexibility. You don't have the responsiveness, you don't have the sensitivity, you don't have the recalibration capability. So you have to be very careful about it. It's kind of like, you know, you want to get as organized as you need to be, but no more. But I understand it because for the most part, I think most professionals have over created and gone way beyond their systems to be able to keep track of what they've committed to. So I understand that for the, I'd say probably for the larger majority, the organization part of this component is a big missing one. Simply because most people are just running around the victims of their own creativity, you know, what they put into motion way beyond what their systems and their behaviors are keeping up with. That's why they're so feeling so burned out.

Yeah, I've definitely felt that way myself at times. It seems like there is so much about organization and focus and project management that sometimes that becomes the end in and of itself, doesn't it? And when you say people sometimes over organize and need to get disorganized, that becomes very inflexible, doesn't it? It does.

Well, you know, you always have to come back to what are we trying to accomplish, where are we trying to go? And if you think about it, you know, a lot of people move into pretty high performance behavior in a crisis simply because it forces them to focus on an outcome. It forces people to have to sacrifice certain things in order to accomplish the result called live or get out of here or survive or whatever that thing is. And so people will tend to naturally, you know, make some pretty good choices when the heat's really on. Actually, I say make good choices. The problem is if you wait till crisis mode to do this, unfortunately you lose track of your intuitive executive intelligence and your forebrain. You go, you go into fight and flight mode, which actually, you know, shuts down your ability to be able to make really good decisions. But the truth is, this is longer than what you ask about. The truth is, yes, if you focus too much on the process itself versus what the process is supposed to be accomplishing, people often say, gee, David, how organized should I get? And I say, is your head empty yet? And they go, no. I say, well, you need more.

Is that project still on your mind? Yeah. Then you need more project management.

Right, right.

If the project's on cruise control, don't look. You got enough stuff to think about. Don't over organize that before we leave.

The getting things done. Are there sort of some specific mechanical things like for example a certain type of time management and I'd hate to say that word, a calendar system, probably software based. Is there a certain sort of workflow or paper flow that people should adopt? Do you want to say don't be a pack rat, throw things out or. I remember there's an old thing, the practical tactical, right?

Yeah, go practical tactical goes like this. First of all, stage one, which is capture the stuff that has your attention. You need all the tools that get stuff out of your head. So you need to be able to just write stuff down, have pen and paper with you everywhere, write it down, have end baskets, answer machines, recording devices, keep stuff out of your head. That's the worst thing to do, is to file stuff in your head. So the first best practice is to make sure any commitments or any potentially meaningful input had better be captured into some sort of trusted bucket that you trust. You will then rummage through and assess sooner than later. So you need good end baskets, just physical in trays, stack baskets so you can throw paper and meeting notes and things in it. You need a pocket note taker like I have where I just carry around with me with a pen in it so I can take notes wherever I am. And capture is very different than organize for capture just means I make sure I've got the meeting notes there that I have the thought of the idea that I had when I was running through the store. So capture tools, you know, the simplest ones are just paper and pen and I've got those all around. Wherever I have a flat surface on a phone and conversations, I've always got legal pads and pads I can write on so that I capture stuff and I carry stuff with me to do the same thing. Then stage two is really how do I then I then need to empty those end baskets. So then I need to go through. And there are no tools for that other than your brain. That's what your brain is for, is to pick up the note you just said and say, okay, what the heck am I going to do about that? What's the next action? Now? Once I decide what these things mean, that's the thinking process you have to apply to the stuff you captured. Then I need to organize the things that I can't finish, you know, right away. So once I decide what something means. Oh, this email. Nothing to do, but I do want to keep it, then I better have a place to store it. That's where organize comes in. So then you need to have good categories for stuff. Now the action reminders, the things that you need to be reminded of to do those basically just need to be in some form of a list. So somewhat everybody needs a good list manager, a list. They're not going to handle everything, but they'll handle the vast majority of things you need to be reminded of of things you need to do. You need a list of all the projects you have. You need a list of all the action items you need to take about those. And your calendar is a list it. So the short answer, I know this is not very short, but I have to describe when you say a planner or a time management tool, basically you're talking about oftentimes a loose leaf notebook is a great tool. You can hold a calendar in it and it can also hold lists of reminders in it as well. But it also may have reference material which is telephone and address. It might have project plans, it might have a lot of stuff in that one particular tool. But what you really need are a list capability. Now, by the way, you can keep a list in a low tech or a mid tech or a high tech way. A low tech way to keep track of all the calls you need to make would be a file folder just labeled calls to make. You could just throw pieces of paper in there and that works well. If you wanted a little more mid tech, what I call, then you probably could use a loose leaf notebook with paper, just paper pages in it, where you could create a page, you could create a tabbed section called action list. And one of those pages could be called calls, another one could be called stuff to do at the computer and so forth. So you could divide your actions in ways that make sense. Say, yeah, when I get to a phone, show me all the calls I need to make. And you could just have a page in a loose leaf notebook for calls. You could also have a page or two or three pages that list just give you an index of all the projects that you need to keep track of until they're finished. So just a way to manage lists. A loose leaf notebook is an elegant way to do that. And then of course there's lots of software ways to manage lists. If you're in an environment or an organization that's using either Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook or some sort of very popular kind of groupware applications out there, you can actually configure those so that they can make lists. Oftentimes that's not very intuitive when you get those programs. So we've written a couple of white papers on for instance how to reconfigure Outlook so it matches this good list management model or Lotus Notes. And you know, people can find that on our website.

Give the website, if you would, it's.

Davidco.Com d a v I d c o dot com you can do that. And of course I think There are over 200 software applications we've seen that have been that are purporting to support the Getting Things Done model. You know, based on my first book, not that we've designed, but all kinds of sort of geeks out there have taken this and go wow, you know, David really came up with a great idea about lists. Let's create better ways to manage lists. So there's all kinds of list management software out there. There's some that's based in the clouds on the web, there's Omnifocus or things. Those are two very popular programs for Mac based people that just manage lists. The Apple world, the Mac world is not quite as productivity oriented as Outlook or Lotus Notes because you still have to kind of tie together various components like email and your calendar plus then these other Lisp programs. But basically all you need are some way to manage lists. Now this comes back to a lot of people out there are into what people have often referred to as productivity porn, which is how many different ways and wow, let me get a new piece of software that will solve my life. It won't unless you really know what list you need to maintain and then you need to keep it very simple. But if you understand what list you want, you can make pretty much any tool work as long as you have the capability of making more than one list and can, you know and categorize them based upon different ways you want to set that up.

Very good points. Anything else on the practical tactical before?

Well, you need a good filing system.

Yeah.

You know, if you don't have a place to put paper, the manual for your LCD LED projector. If you don't have a place for that, then you'll stack it up and it'll blend all across your environment. So you need, interestingly it's kind of in a low tech level in most people's offices. That's one of the biggest improvement opportunities is just to have a good general reference filing system, just A to Z so that you can instantly make a label, make a new file and have a place very Easily you can put paper or material things that you want to organize in case you might want to have access to them later on. Obviously you need digital filing, but oftentimes it's the paper stuff around you and that being disorganized, it kind of backs up on you like bad plumbing. And it can really get in your way psychologically as well as visually in terms of just your workspace. So that's a real good one to handle.

Well, can you tell us, are there any just quick recommendations on the low tech filing system? Because there's just a million philosophies on this stuff, David. And I think people are not sure who to follow or how to do it. And they always default into sort of blending systems together.

I wrote about this in my, in my first book. I think I got about four or five pages on setting up a good, easy to use filing system. The simple components of it that I've seen is if you have, you know, specialized kinds of files like contract files or financial files, oftentimes those can just be in their own system. And that makes sense. But trying to blend all the other things, well, these are vendors and these are projects and these are, you know, interesting topics and these are whatever I just found. There's nothing that beats a simple alpha system A to Z. So, you know, I'm sitting here right by mine. If I open up my mno drawer, I see menus local. That's under M, you know, so in case I'm calling out for food. Right behind that is a file on Richard Metzger. Behind that is my file on Mexico that has Mexican pesos in there that I still last time I came back from Mexico, as well as maps and just things I've torn out of. Behind that is Mexico, Baja, because there were some articles I've torn out about that. Get the idea? There's no. The rhyme nor reason is called alphabetical because that's how I'll remember it. That's how I can find it.

So for example, would you have all of your vendors for your company in that same file? All of the, like the billing stuff.

Along with mail, if it's accounting files, that I would probably have that in its own system. Like I've got my financial files in one special drawer, but it's still alpha. So there's American Express and then Blue Cross and then, you know, Business first my bank and then Citibank and there's, you know, it's still alphabetical within that context.

Sure.

But because I'm in and out of that a little More frequently with receipts and, you know, and, you know, reconciling bank statements and credit card statements and so forth. I just keep all those together. I could theoretically just distribute them all alphabetically and go find them however I wanted to. It's just, you know, I've got about, you know, I'd have to look through multiple drawers to find them instead of. Instead of just one right here by me. But all the rest of them, you know, I've got about four or five hundred files otherwise.

Yeah. One of the problems that we have with that is, is it first name or last name? Is it. The vendors sort of have multiple names too. When you're dealing with other companies.

Sure. Make a decision and then.

And just stick with it.

The thing is, could only be. If you got one system, it could only be two or three places. Is Bill Smith Plumbing under Smith comma Bill? Or is it under B under Bill Smith Plumbing? Or is it under Plumbing Bill Smith? Who cares?

Right?

Well, yeah, there's no perfect system. Do one or the other. The problem is, if you've got multiple systems, then you've magnified exponentially how many places something isn't. If you forget how you labeled it one system. It could only be under P Plumbing or B, Bill or S. Smith. I mean, how long does that take? So it actually, we found over the years, that actually is the simplest way to do that. You know, as soon as you try to do well, all my friends are going to have a pink stripe on them that are also my vendors. But your vendor may be your friend and then also your customer.

They fold over it a little too much.

Yeah. Yeah, they do. Okay, fair enough. Your other book, before we get to the most recent 152 Productivity Principles for Getting Things Done. You've touched on a couple of those, I'm sure. Are there a couple you just want to point out quickly?

You know, that's just a collection of essays that kind of range all around this. And, you know, there's a lot of subtlety to this. Once you start to catch this, for instance, there's a speed, like speed up by slowing down, where I'll expand on that. Or there's kind of an infinite way to think about this. That the strange thing about it is that as you start to work this stuff, there are some interesting truths that start to show up. And I think what I've done is just kind of elucidate some of those. More food for thought, you know, as you really start to do these. These principles. You know, I probably uncovered two or three hundred principles I couldn't even bring to mind off the top of my head because they're constantly there. It's more like there's an inverse proportion between on your mind and getting done. I've just expanded on that. I mean, the more stuff is on your mind, the less it's probably happening. And here's how come that's true. So there are lots of kind of examples of that. Basically what I did was sort of explore our human behavior and human nature and say, okay, out of all of that, here are the things that really tend to work.

So your latest book is Making It All Work, which strikes me as less tactical and more from that 50,000 foot level. But you do drill down. What about this book? I mean, what's really going on this.

Book, it doesn't change any of the basic principles from getting things done, and it takes it deeper and wider. In the seven years between the publication of those books, a couple of things happened. One is I was fascinated by how absolutely universal the uptake was on the, on getting things done and sort of the phenomena about why that spread so much around the world without any bias of male, female or profession or country or any of that, and just seemed to spread universally. And also why some of these simple, very simple techniques and principles, when you started to apply them, had such potentially transforming kind of results for people. And I'm just, you know, we get, still get daily, just emails from people saying, wow, I just read your book. This totally changed my life. I said, well, I understand that, because actually when you start to start to work these principles, the difference between feeling sort of half a beat behind in your life and then being a half a beat ahead is phenomenal, though it's not that much. These simple techniques just happen to happen to have a profound payoff to them. And so what I wanted to explore was why that was true. What's the principles underneath these principles? How come that's true? And then as I began to explore that, I really realized that these principles can be applied all the way across your family life, your department, your company. And so it was really sort of taking it deeper and wider and a little more, I guess, as you say, more of a kind of a right brain and a gestalt about what this whole sort of mindset and approach can do in terms of improving conditions.

Well, one of the things you talk about in the book is you've got a great chart that talks about perspective on one axis and control on the other and the sort of the victim responder relationship. I Guess tell us about that.

Well, you know, part of the simplicity on the other side of complexity, which I loved, it's sort of like you don't want things too simple, but what you want to do is after you get through the complexity and sophistication of our lives, is there a simplicity that is a useful way to think about it and to work it? And I think that simplicity is that self management really comes down to those two elements, control and perspective. And they are two different elements. They're very closely tied to each other in many ways, but they are different elements that are approached in different ways. And if you map those together in a matrix, so you can have no control and no perspective, or you could have high control and no perspective, or you could have, you know, high perspective and no control, or you could have high control and high perspective. So obviously those are the four quadrants. If you map these together. And what I discovered was that it really does map to where we are situations. Oftentimes if you got no control, I don't know what to focus on and I'm out of control. That puts you sort of in the victim quadrant and we all fall in there. This is not about personality. It's just about a situation. I mean, you get off the phone from a major phone call, it could be totally exciting. That totally gives you ideas you never thought of before and it'll throw you there. Like, wow, now I thought I had my day planned, but this thing just was totally unexpected. It blew me out. Now I'm disorganized, out of control, and I don't know what to focus on next. That's not a bad thing. You just don't want to stay there. If you stay there, you'll wind up being, you know, in a toxic kind of situation. But basically, you need to get out of there. Now. Let's say organizations sometimes say, well, okay, we need more structure. Or you might need more structure. But if you get more structure without vision or focus, now you've got micromanagement. Now you've got too much structure. Okay, let's go get structure. But again, to your earlier point, yeah, but you forgot what you're actually trying to accomplish. And you're not moving toward the vision and toward your goals because you've got. You're too constrained. You tie yourself in your own knickers, if you will. Too many rules, too many policies, too many procedures, not enough flexibility or too old. It's inappropriate structure to now where you are. So then people go, okay, well, let's, let's get some more vision here and if you go hire some visionary person, you know, then, but they don't have any control factors or if you're there now, you are a crazy maker or you got one where you're constantly having ideas all over the place and not much of a consciousness or awareness of constraints or resources. So they're jumping all over the place, creating all kinds of new things, making everybody nuts and themselves as well, you know, just because of, you know, so many ideas going in 43 different directions. So ultimately there is an ideal quadrant that is what if I have just enough control and just the right amount of focus? The analogy I use, I call it captain and commander mode, where you're in a sailing ship and you've got a light touch on the helm and you've got a keen eye on the horizon where you're going and your gut is just tied very sensitively to all the different components as you're getting there. The wind and the tide and the waves and the rope and the sails and you can, you know, you can smell it, you can, can feel it. You're just sort of, you know, you're on, if you will. You might be in stormy seas, but you're on about how you're navigating the stormy seas as opposed to being tossed around with no, you don't know where the ship is pointed and it's sinking. So that's the idea is, okay, how do I get to that? Captain and commander modality. So, and by the way, anybody listening to this, if you wanted to take a free assessment that will let you know where you are on that, you can go to GTDIQ, as in GTD, you know, your IQ, GTDIQ.com and take about a three minute assessment and it will actually dot you where you are. It's free. You just go there. A couple of articles you can see right on that page as well about the matrix and how to use it. But if you just wanted to go there and take a look, we found we had a very, very sophisticated company help us design that assessment. And we've had thousands of people take it and use it. That's kind of a neat way to see it. And it'll give you a little bit of a prescription based upon where you wind up on that chart. Give you a little bit of prescription about. Okay, here's then. What might be more important to you? Whether it might maybe you need to set a little more direction or maybe you just need to get a little more control.

Yeah, I'm looking at that quiz right now, and those are some interesting questions. What's interesting about this chart is. Okay, so the worst place to be. And of course, it's not about a person's personality. It's just about a situational thing. So we all move around these four quadrants.

You could be a victim on the golf course and captain and commander in the kitchen.

Sure.

Or you could start out captain and commander because you got to work early and you're on your game. But then the first three phone calls and two people that walked into your office kind of blew the heck out of what you thought you were doing, and you wind up in victim mode. And then you wind up sort of getting over organized, but then you get a little too organized because you got a phone call that's a little risky. So you just keep trying to avoid it by getting more ready. And then you finally get on the call and you get totally excited because now you've handled that successfully, and now you get 43 different ideas, and you've moved over to crazy maker. So, yeah, you can move around this chart, you know, many times a day.

Right. I think sometimes I do.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah. Yeah. So. So the worst place to be victim responder, and the best place to be captain and commander. And I love the way you put that. You said you see the horizon, you see the distant goal, and that's the visionary side, but without being a crazy maker because you're. You've got a light touch on the helm, you're controlling the ship, and you're not a micromanager either. You're visionary enough, but you manage details well. Is also right.

Sure. Well, the. And the idea is flexibility about where your focus is. Should I be focused now? Right down. Oh, oh, there's a leak. I better run down there. Let me put this on automatic pilot so I can go down below and see what's happening down there. And then. Okay, well, I've been down below long enough. I better get back up. And I need to come back up, and I need to take it off. And what's happening with the current? The wind just changed and shifted. We need to shift the sails. So what you don't want to do is stay anywhere longer than you need to to be able to get onto cruise control again. One of the key points I wrote in my last book is pay attention to what has your attention. Because if you don't pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it'll start to take more of your attention than it deserves. So back to the captain and Commander analogy or metaphor? Yeah, boy, I've been a sailor and had a boat, and believe me, you really get very sensitive. Wait a minute. What has my attention right now? You know, I just. Somehow I see something coming up there, and I think I better loosen that sail a little bit or I. There's a ship coming. Gonna look like it's about to cross my bow in about six minutes. Whoa. So it's really paying attention, and we all do this, but I think the analogy holds.

Very good. Very good. Well, what would you like to say in terms of wrapping all of this up, David?

Well, I think, you know, one of the. I guess one of the core messages I have is that, you know, all I've done is identify what we all already do. So there are no new. There are no new skills required to be able to really have your head totally clear and kind of get yourself in the captain and commander mode. Nor do you need any more tools than you currently have. Everybody's got all the tools you really need to really make this work. And everybody knows, in other words, you know, how to write things down, you know how to make action decisions, you know how to make lists. So there's nothing particularly foreign about this. And I suppose the big message is, and why I still say so inspired, and I guess a lot of people still do with this material, is there's so little risk and so easy to actually start to do some of this. And the payoff is huge. The risk, in other words, the risk reward ratio, the ROI here is huge in terms of how much time and energy you might want to focus on your own process using my model. And then you just notice the benefits you get out of it. And there are lots of ways to play.

So two different websites, gtd, which, by the way, should just point out, that stands for Getting Things Done gtdiq, where you can take that quiz. And then David Co is the other website, right?

Davidco.com yeah.

Excellent. Well, David Allen, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. And hopefully we'll be a lot more productive from talking to you today.

It was fun. Jason, take care.

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