Bookworm Transcripts
Search
About
1: Getting Things Done by David Allen
00:00:00
Mike, since this is, I guess, Bookworm was your idea here.
00:00:06
We both came together here trying to,
00:00:10
we both thought that we wanted to do a podcast together,
00:00:13
and we knew we wanted to get together and talk,
00:00:16
but we didn't know specifically what about,
00:00:19
and then you posed this idea of Bookworm.
00:00:22
So where did that come from?
00:00:24
>> It was basically an idea that I had
00:00:28
based on what I knew of you and a lot of synergy
00:00:34
with our approaches to how we work and how we look at life,
00:00:39
I guess, where we're both trying to become
00:00:42
better versions of ourself.
00:00:44
I'm putting words in your mouth,
00:00:45
but I think that's pretty safe to say.
00:00:47
And one of the things that I've been doing for a while
00:00:49
is reading a lot because it really helps me
00:00:52
with my work over at Asian Efficiency.
00:00:55
But I got the idea for a mini masterminds,
00:00:59
basically, that we would record and release as a podcast
00:01:02
where we would read the same book,
00:01:05
and then we would kind of talk about what we got out of it
00:01:08
with the intention that that's going to help us
00:01:11
synthesize what we're learning,
00:01:12
and then identify what action steps we can actually apply
00:01:17
to our life from these books.
00:01:19
So it's not just things that we crank through
00:01:21
to check off a box on a to-do list
00:01:23
and read a whole bunch of books and get a whole bunch
00:01:25
of information that doesn't actually change anything.
00:01:29
But actually produces tangible results in our lives
00:01:34
as we chase awesome together, so to speak.
00:01:38
- Yeah, and you and I, we've done a couple different
00:01:40
recording sessions, one of which was on my podcast,
00:01:45
one of which was on the Asian Efficiency podcast.
00:01:48
And whenever you pose this idea of, let's read a book,
00:01:52
and then let's talk about it.
00:01:54
I love that idea at the same time, my thought was,
00:01:58
well, that means that we're reading a certain number
00:02:01
of books at a certain number of days.
00:02:05
And I'm not always the best at getting through those
00:02:07
in the time that I want to get through them.
00:02:10
So from my standpoint, whenever we decided
00:02:14
that we were going to go and we were going to read books
00:02:16
at the same time and discuss them,
00:02:19
my first thought was great.
00:02:21
It's finally, I guess, that motivator, that accountability
00:02:25
that I was needing to read books.
00:02:27
I've been a reader for a while, just not,
00:02:29
I guess, regularly in the way that I want to be.
00:02:33
So the idea of, let's get together, let's read a book,
00:02:37
and then let's do something with the words that we're reading.
00:02:40
'Cause that's, to me, that's a piece that I've missed
00:02:43
for a long time, is I can read a book,
00:02:44
and then, like you're saying, let's check it off the list,
00:02:47
let's get the next one going,
00:02:49
and just keep running down the list.
00:02:51
But it's not until, as we'll see with the book
00:02:54
we're gonna go through today,
00:02:56
it's not until we actually make that decision
00:02:58
on something to do with it that it really becomes real.
00:03:02
Does that make sense, Mike?
00:03:03
- Yep, absolutely.
00:03:06
My pastor would say it this way,
00:03:07
"Change isn't change until you change."
00:03:09
So it doesn't matter all the facts that you collect,
00:03:12
you have to actually, the rubber has to meet the road.
00:03:15
It has to be some manifestation of this stuff
00:03:17
in your life before you actually are applying this,
00:03:21
and it's actually making a difference.
00:03:23
- Yeah, it's so true.
00:03:24
And some of this comes from our first book
00:03:28
that we've now both read,
00:03:30
and actually this is a reread with a different version,
00:03:33
but getting things done by David Allen,
00:03:36
just get it out there.
00:03:37
The main crux of the book is do something with your ideas
00:03:43
and have a system together on putting those ideas into action.
00:03:48
And this is a book that I read,
00:03:53
oh gosh, it's been four years ago, three years ago.
00:03:58
Somewhere in there.
00:03:59
I, so from my standpoint, Mike,
00:04:02
I got into GTD by not reading the book,
00:04:05
so let's just get that out there as well.
00:04:07
I started trying to put a lot of these systems together
00:04:10
that David Allen talks about before even reading it.
00:04:14
I was just trying to figure out how to get through
00:04:17
certain things in corporate that I was in at the time,
00:04:20
and just really needed some help getting through that,
00:04:22
and someone recommended getting things done,
00:04:24
and I picked it up and I read it in like two days,
00:04:28
and immediately destroyed every bit of organization
00:04:31
that I had and started trying to implement it,
00:04:34
failed miserably, and then rebuilt the whole system
00:04:36
like three times.
00:04:37
So it was quite the journey,
00:04:42
but from your standpoint, how would you,
00:04:44
like what's the book about?
00:04:46
What's the crux behind it from your viewpoint?
00:04:50
- Getting things done is basically a organizational framework
00:04:55
that you can use to free up your cognitive resources
00:05:00
is how David Allen would put it,
00:05:03
and what that kind of means in layman's terms is that
00:05:06
you don't have to constantly be worried about the things
00:05:09
that you might be forgetting to do.
00:05:12
He uses a really powerful analogy of emergency scan modality.
00:05:17
It's kind of like a firefighter
00:05:18
where you're constantly looking for the next fire to put out,
00:05:21
and I think that resonates with a lot of people.
00:05:24
Sounds like that resonated with you and the situation
00:05:26
that you are in, that picture resonated with me
00:05:29
when I read the book, and it provides the framework
00:05:34
that you need to escape that.
00:05:35
So he really clearly defines the problem,
00:05:38
and then he provides a solution for a way out of that,
00:05:43
and he breaks it down into five basic steps.
00:05:47
And do you wanna go through the steps right now?
00:05:51
- Yeah, I think so, 'cause I think if we go through them,
00:05:53
then it clears up a lot of the other stuff
00:05:56
we're gonna talk about.
00:05:58
- Okay, sure.
00:05:59
So the first one is Capture,
00:06:01
where you just basically have to get everything
00:06:04
that's on your mind, out of your mind.
00:06:07
And once you have it all down,
00:06:10
the second step is to clarify all that stuff.
00:06:13
So you identify what these things are
00:06:16
and where they're supposed to go in this system,
00:06:19
which he's teaching you to establish
00:06:22
so that you can actually trust that everything
00:06:23
is where it's supposed to be
00:06:24
and nothing's falling through the cracks.
00:06:27
That's really the third step, I guess, is organize,
00:06:29
where you're making sure that everything
00:06:31
is in the appropriate container.
00:06:34
The fourth step is to review.
00:06:37
So once you have everything where it's supposed to be,
00:06:39
you have to review it weekly at least,
00:06:43
where you evaluate every single piece of the system.
00:06:47
And ideally, you look at everything that's in there,
00:06:50
at least at the project level and say,
00:06:52
is this something that I still wanna be doing?
00:06:55
But that's important because you can't just set it
00:06:57
in your system and forget it.
00:06:58
If you do that, it's not gonna be very long
00:07:01
until entropy kicks in and then you've got this system
00:07:03
that you can't trust anymore.
00:07:05
And then the fifth step is engage
00:07:08
or in the previous version it was called do.
00:07:11
It's actually where you would do the work.
00:07:12
And this is what most people try to skip straight to,
00:07:15
is like, well, I don't even need to do any of that other stuff.
00:07:17
I already know what I need to do.
00:07:19
But the problem is you don't know everything
00:07:21
that you need to do in addition to what you're supposed
00:07:24
to be doing right now.
00:07:25
And when you're done doing that thing
00:07:26
that you know you need to do right now,
00:07:28
you're gonna be stuck thinking about,
00:07:30
okay, what is the next step that I have to do
00:07:33
in whatever project?
00:07:35
And it's when you stop and think about those things,
00:07:37
that little bit of friction in my experience anyways,
00:07:40
is the thing that keeps you from actually taking
00:07:44
the next step and doing the next thing.
00:07:47
And so it's really important.
00:07:48
I think the key part to this system
00:07:49
that really makes it work for me
00:07:51
is that you clarify all this stuff on the front end
00:07:55
so that when it comes time to actually do the work,
00:07:58
you can just queue up the next thing,
00:08:00
you have all the requirements right there
00:08:02
and you can just crank it out.
00:08:03
You can actually do the work really quickly,
00:08:06
really efficiently.
00:08:07
- Whenever I look at this five step system
00:08:09
because when you go through it like that,
00:08:12
it seems really simple.
00:08:14
And whenever you reread the book,
00:08:17
because David Allen talks a lot about people
00:08:19
who reread the book and then they get a lot of new stuff
00:08:23
from it because he's got so many tips and tricks
00:08:26
in the book on how to do certain things
00:08:28
and how to think about them,
00:08:30
how do you think about the work,
00:08:31
the ideas that you're having.
00:08:33
And he has so many little tidbits of information
00:08:37
that you can read the thing multiple times
00:08:39
and get a lot out of it.
00:08:40
And one of the reasons I wanted to go ahead
00:08:42
and reread this along with you here is that it's one,
00:08:46
it's been a long time since I've read it.
00:08:48
And I've kind of gotten into my normal routine, my normal,
00:08:51
I don't wanna say a rut,
00:08:53
but my normal what I call GTD,
00:08:55
which going back through it turns out
00:08:57
that I was dead on for the most part.
00:09:00
But one of the main focuses that I wanted to have
00:09:05
going through this,
00:09:07
I guess one of my expectations was that
00:09:10
this would allow me to,
00:09:11
I guess get a little more sense of control
00:09:14
on what's going on in life
00:09:15
'cause there's so many different aspects of,
00:09:20
just typical how we do and how we live
00:09:23
within our culture and our society.
00:09:25
You think about, we've got our work stuff
00:09:27
where we have side projects or,
00:09:30
well side projects don't really exist
00:09:32
when you go out and do a solo-preneur lifestyle.
00:09:35
But whenever you've also got kids, you've got a spouse,
00:09:39
you've got, if you're into church,
00:09:42
you've got all these different aspects of life
00:09:45
and the longer that you spend with this framework
00:09:49
and the more time you spend with it,
00:09:53
it seems like you continue to find more levels
00:09:57
that it applies to.
00:09:58
At least for me, that's what I continued to find.
00:10:00
It was every time I would read a next section of the book
00:10:04
and he would talk about project planning,
00:10:07
well, I know how to plan projects,
00:10:09
I know how to come up with ideas for that.
00:10:10
And this was one of my struggles with rereading it
00:10:13
and I'm terrible at rereading books, Mike.
00:10:16
But whenever I reread a book,
00:10:18
I'm usually like, well, I already know this
00:10:20
and then I have a tendency to wanna skim it.
00:10:22
It's like, I don't need to read this, I already know it.
00:10:25
Thankfully, I didn't do that a whole lot with this one
00:10:28
simply because I knew he had rewritten a lot of the sections
00:10:32
and he's even got a whole new chapter on the science
00:10:35
behind this stuff.
00:10:36
And going through the little tiny bits,
00:10:39
there were a lot of things that I picked up from it,
00:10:42
but some of the simple ones is just,
00:10:45
how do you come out an inbox?
00:10:47
How do you deal with reference material
00:10:50
in just those little tiny tips that I guess
00:10:53
I'd been skipping quite a bit?
00:10:55
I don't know if that makes any sense,
00:10:57
but just going through it again,
00:10:59
it really reinforces a lot of those habits
00:11:02
that have been in place for quite some time.
00:11:05
- Yeah, one of the big things that I got
00:11:08
from rereading this book,
00:11:10
and I don't really wanna go in and try to teach people
00:11:14
necessarily what GTD is in this particular podcast
00:11:17
because that could be several hours worth of material.
00:11:22
There's a lot of stuff out there on the internet already.
00:11:24
- It's true, that could be a podcast
00:11:26
whole show in and of itself, probably.
00:11:28
- Yeah, so we kind of gave you a rough outline
00:11:31
of the different tenets of the GTD system,
00:11:33
but there's a lot of other places you can go
00:11:35
if you really wanna get more in depth
00:11:36
on what exactly that looks like.
00:11:38
And if you haven't read the book,
00:11:39
absolutely pick it up and it's worth reading.
00:11:41
But the things that I got from this were filling in
00:11:44
the little cracks in the system that I knew were there
00:11:49
but I didn't really know how to solve, I guess.
00:11:53
So for example, he mentioned about how the right amount
00:11:58
of complexity is whatever creates optimal simplicity.
00:12:04
And in the past, I've been guilty of trying
00:12:06
to have one specific thing that I would use
00:12:09
for my everything bucket and put everything there.
00:12:13
So specifically what that looks like for me,
00:12:16
my reference files,
00:12:18
I have in the GTD methodology,
00:12:21
you basically put everything that you want to keep
00:12:24
into a reference file.
00:12:26
The problem for me is that I don't want everything
00:12:31
that I want to keep in Evernote,
00:12:34
even though Evernote could be used for all that stuff.
00:12:38
So as I was reading through it this time,
00:12:42
it occurred to me that there are different things
00:12:47
that I can add to my GTD system,
00:12:50
which while it will make it a little bit more complex,
00:12:53
it's actually going to create less friction
00:12:56
and in actual daily usage,
00:12:59
it's gonna make it more simple.
00:13:00
One of the big ones for me is quotes.
00:13:05
And the GTD book is full of awesome quotes.
00:13:10
So I was going through there and I wanted to keep
00:13:14
like a dozen of them and I use an app called quote book.
00:13:18
And so as I was reading through GTD for the second time,
00:13:22
I realized that that is completely okay.
00:13:24
That is still GTD,
00:13:27
that I have a second app that I'm gonna store
00:13:29
something specific like that.
00:13:32
That was kind of a revelation point for me, I guess.
00:13:36
Another one that stood out to me was defer dates
00:13:40
in OmniFocus.
00:13:41
David Allen talks about the tickler file with the folders.
00:13:44
Do you do the tickler file?
00:13:46
- I do a version of it.
00:13:49
That was one of the things, it's like, okay,
00:13:50
I'm doing this,
00:13:52
but, and so just to kind of get it out there,
00:13:56
I do a little bit on a calendar.
00:13:58
I've got a tickler calendar and if it's like an event
00:14:01
that I'm interested in, I'll put it there.
00:14:03
But like you're saying with the defer dates,
00:14:06
I leverage those heavily in OmniFocus,
00:14:08
but I'll let you explain it.
00:14:09
- Yeah, so basically as I was reading it this time,
00:14:13
I'm, he, I don't know if he explained it a little bit
00:14:16
different in the revised version,
00:14:18
but he articulated the reason for the tickler file
00:14:22
and it's so that you can get the things that you need to see
00:14:26
when you need to see them.
00:14:27
And he advocates for the physical tickler file
00:14:30
where you have 43 folders,
00:14:32
that's where Merlin Mann's famous website got its name.
00:14:37
You have one folder for each day of the current month
00:14:41
and then one folder for each month in the year.
00:14:44
And so you have the next 31 days,
00:14:47
basically has a separate folder for each one of those things.
00:14:50
And then everything beyond that just goes into the month folder.
00:14:54
It occurred to me as I was reading this book
00:14:56
that that's exactly what the defer dates in OmniFocus do.
00:15:00
They make sure that whatever you need to see
00:15:03
comes to your attention at the right time
00:15:05
that you need to see it.
00:15:07
And so it kind of fleshed out for me
00:15:10
if I were to map out all the different apps that I use
00:15:12
in my personal workflow.
00:15:16
It helped me connect a few dots and fill in a few holes
00:15:19
that were there that I never really just took the time
00:15:23
to sit down and think about before.
00:15:25
But I think that alone was worth reading the book
00:15:28
in my opinion.
00:15:29
- So let me ask you a question.
00:15:30
So you mentioned Evernote and reference material.
00:15:33
Is that where you keep a lot of your reference material?
00:15:36
- Yes, yeah, I keep a lot of stuff in Evernote.
00:15:39
But like I said, there's specific things
00:15:41
that I don't want necessarily to keep in Evernote.
00:15:44
Like the quotes I'll put in quote book.
00:15:48
- Okay.
00:15:49
I don't know if you know this.
00:15:51
I just completely trashed Evernote.
00:15:54
- I did know that.
00:15:55
Yeah, I saw you mentioned that.
00:15:58
- So I used to be huge into it and got away from it.
00:16:01
It's interesting that you came away from it
00:16:04
with the idea that it's okay to have a number of apps
00:16:09
'cause I can see how you take that.
00:16:11
I took it the other way of seeing that yes,
00:16:15
you could use a bunch of different apps,
00:16:17
but simplifying it down to as few as you can get away with
00:16:20
would create a lot of clarity.
00:16:23
At least that was my perception of it.
00:16:25
And that's why one of the things that I wanna try to
00:16:28
incorporate is one, a consolidation of inboxes.
00:16:31
He talks about, you know, we get too many inputs,
00:16:35
too many different collection points.
00:16:37
You think about like social media, files, emails,
00:16:41
and we got tons of them.
00:16:42
Even like my normal checklist of clearing inboxes
00:16:45
currently prior to the book had, I think,
00:16:47
12 different inboxes I was clearing out on a daily basis.
00:16:50
It's like, this is ridiculous.
00:16:51
So one of the things I wanted to do was consolidate those.
00:16:55
And some of that requires pairing down the number of apps
00:17:00
that I'm using.
00:17:02
And I was already pretty slim whenever I left Evernote
00:17:06
and I don't have a central app or structure.
00:17:11
Well, I do have a structure,
00:17:13
but I don't have a specific app that I use for anything.
00:17:16
Really, like anytime there is like a quote app
00:17:21
or what's the other one?
00:17:23
There's one for books that's online.
00:17:25
I'm not gonna think of it.
00:17:28
- Well, let me interject here,
00:17:29
'cause this was really the tipping point for me,
00:17:31
'cause I agree with you in theory.
00:17:33
And really what makes this work for me
00:17:34
is that I don't go to Evernote
00:17:36
or I don't go to quote book to put things in.
00:17:38
I put things in on drafts on iOS.
00:17:42
That's my inbox.
00:17:43
So that's the key thing.
00:17:44
But then let me ask you this,
00:17:46
where you keep your contacts.
00:17:48
You probably don't keep your contacts
00:17:50
and your phone numbers in Evernote,
00:17:52
but that's technically still a reference file.
00:17:55
Where do you keep your passwords?
00:17:57
For me, it's one password.
00:17:59
So as I was thinking about all these things
00:18:01
that would technically fall under the category
00:18:04
of reference file,
00:18:06
it occurred to me that there's no way
00:18:08
I'm putting all of that stuff in Evernote.
00:18:10
That's not gonna be the easiest app to use
00:18:14
for a lot of these different applications.
00:18:15
When I need to use a password,
00:18:18
one password makes it really, really simple to find that.
00:18:22
But I might actually put it in drafts to start off with.
00:18:27
I might put that phone number or that person's name
00:18:30
or email address in drafts to start with.
00:18:33
So the inbox stays the same,
00:18:34
but then ultimately where it ends up
00:18:36
is gonna be different based on the specific use case.
00:18:39
- Yeah, see, I think that makes a lot of sense.
00:18:40
If you're gonna have one starting point,
00:18:44
that changes a lot of that.
00:18:45
'Cause if you're, in my mind,
00:18:48
whenever you were explaining using the different apps,
00:18:50
like if I start a new password, of course, for me,
00:18:52
it's gonna be created in one password as well.
00:18:55
Anytime I have something like that,
00:18:58
some of those have a specific place,
00:19:00
like you're saying, but if you have a central collection,
00:19:04
like that comes back to the ubiquitous capture
00:19:09
process that he talks about all the time.
00:19:10
If you gotta have a piece of paper,
00:19:11
you gotta have an app or something that's always with you.
00:19:15
And I think if you've got one of those in place
00:19:18
and you're collecting into that,
00:19:19
not into this other structure, that I get.
00:19:22
- Exactly, and there were a lot of, to be honest,
00:19:25
a lot of little things like that.
00:19:27
As I read through the book, I'm like,
00:19:28
"Ah, I don't know if I agree with you, David Allen,
00:19:31
"on that particular thing."
00:19:33
But it's, the way I kind of reconciled it in my mind
00:19:36
is it's not really disagreeing with the principles.
00:19:40
It's more so disagreeing with the process
00:19:45
that he proposes for some of these things.
00:19:47
Like another thing he talked about was an email system,
00:19:51
where you have in, you have a folder for action,
00:19:55
you have a folder for archive and a folder for waiting for.
00:19:59
I personally don't think that's real efficient.
00:20:02
I think you need an inbox, that's where everything goes.
00:20:06
And then you've got your archive folder
00:20:08
where you put things after you've sent it
00:20:10
to the correct place.
00:20:12
And the action folder, I don't think you need that.
00:20:16
That's what task management system is for.
00:20:18
And then the waiting for, that could be task management
00:20:21
also, it could be something like omni-focus,
00:20:23
but in my opinion, something like Sanebox is perfect for this.
00:20:28
Because, do you use Sanebox, Joe?
00:20:30
- I do not.
00:20:31
I've heard a lot about it.
00:20:33
I've seen a lot of people talk about it.
00:20:35
I don't see the point.
00:20:37
- Okay, well maybe this will change your mind.
00:20:40
Sanebox has a lot of features.
00:20:42
And the, really the big thing that they do is they filter
00:20:46
your emails so that you only see the things
00:20:48
that are important to you.
00:20:49
That's kind of their flagship feature.
00:20:51
And the way it does that is it looks
00:20:53
at the sender's names and the subject lines.
00:20:56
It doesn't look at the contents of your emails
00:20:57
so it respects your privacy.
00:20:59
But the thing I love about it is this BCC feature.
00:21:03
So if someone emails me, let's say you email me,
00:21:07
and I reply to you with a question about bookworm.
00:21:11
Okay, now typically what you would do,
00:21:13
if you were following GTD is you would put a task,
00:21:16
I would put a task in my omni-focus
00:21:19
to follow up with you in a week, let's say.
00:21:22
Okay, and I put that in a waiting for context
00:21:25
or I could put it in a waiting for folder in my email.
00:21:28
But like I said, I don't really like
00:21:29
the folder classifications in email.
00:21:31
Then if a week passes and you didn't get back to me,
00:21:36
then I can follow up with you.
00:21:37
But if you do reply to that email before the week is up,
00:21:40
I still have that task inside of my task management system
00:21:45
that doesn't know that you've replied to me.
00:21:48
So I have to go back and do something with that.
00:21:50
With the BCC feature in Sandbox,
00:21:52
it eliminates the need to duplicate that
00:21:55
in the task management system,
00:21:56
but it also doesn't really treat your email
00:21:59
as a task manager either.
00:22:00
What it does is it will create a reminder for me
00:22:04
one week from today.
00:22:05
If I were to BCC one week at Sandbox.com,
00:22:08
when I email you, if you reply to me,
00:22:11
that reminder disappears.
00:22:12
If you do not reply to me in one week,
00:22:15
that message will appear again
00:22:17
at the top of my email inbox.
00:22:19
Does that make sense?
00:22:20
It does.
00:22:22
I use the online Gmail for all of my email.
00:22:27
And I have been heavily using the important indicators
00:22:34
that Google has built into that for a long time.
00:22:37
And maybe it's just me, maybe it's just my perception.
00:22:41
It seems like I get the same thing.
00:22:44
Like I don't see emails that show up
00:22:48
in my important inbox very regularly
00:22:52
that I didn't want to be there.
00:22:54
Like this is, maybe I've already got it trained to do that.
00:22:57
And it's for, you know, whenever you're starting out
00:23:00
with email, that could just be me.
00:23:03
But no, I think you're right.
00:23:04
I think for the main feature of Sandbox,
00:23:08
where it's cleaning up your inbox,
00:23:09
you're right, Gmail would do something similar
00:23:12
except that Sandbox would work with whatever email
00:23:15
service provider you have to use.
00:23:16
And see, I get that.
00:23:17
Yeah, if you're outside of Google's domain on that,
00:23:22
yeah, I can see where that steps in.
00:23:24
But whenever I saw the section that David Allen
00:23:28
put in about email, I just kind of chuckled.
00:23:32
Like, okay, we're gonna go through email now.
00:23:35
But if you come at it from his standpoint,
00:23:36
most of the people he works with are corporate executives.
00:23:40
And when you think about that type of role,
00:23:44
it seems like most people who, you know,
00:23:47
I've worked with some of those guys before,
00:23:48
I used to work corporate and some of my supervisors
00:23:51
were in those roles.
00:23:53
And the email was what they did all day long.
00:23:56
Like that was their work.
00:23:57
It was the process of approving things and you'd send emails
00:24:00
and let's get some more and then I'll read these
00:24:02
and I'll send these off and it's just,
00:24:03
that's what they did.
00:24:04
And then they had folder after folder after folder
00:24:07
of all kinds of things that they could never find.
00:24:11
And I tried a lot with them to kind of help them
00:24:16
find a better way to organize it.
00:24:17
I hadn't really been through GTD at that point.
00:24:20
So I didn't have good advice for the most part.
00:24:24
But he's got, like you're saying,
00:24:26
he's got the different folders that you put things into
00:24:29
in order to get to process it and put it in the right place
00:24:33
and everything.
00:24:33
For me, what I have found because I use Gmail heavily
00:24:37
is I just grabbed the link, the URL to a specific email
00:24:42
and drop it in OmniFocus if I need to reply on it
00:24:45
but I'm not gonna do it right then.
00:24:46
But most of the time when I'm going through email,
00:24:49
I just set aside a time for it.
00:24:51
And instead of dropping a task into OmniFocus
00:24:56
and then coming back to it later,
00:24:58
I just go do them all right then.
00:24:59
Like I'm just gonna bust out all of these emails
00:25:02
and just get them all done because to me,
00:25:05
if I grab that as a task and I put that in OmniFocus,
00:25:10
it's bouncing around on the back of my skull
00:25:13
and I might as well have just written it.
00:25:16
- Exactly, there's a disconnect there.
00:25:19
- It's like, so I get it, I get what he's trying to say
00:25:21
and I think that makes sense for some people
00:25:25
but for me anyway, I can't stop thinking about it
00:25:29
unless I'm done with it.
00:25:30
So I just know that I am better off either one,
00:25:34
staying away from my email inbox,
00:25:35
which is why it sometimes takes forever
00:25:37
to get an email back from me.
00:25:38
Or two, if I'm going to go open my email,
00:25:41
I better get through it right then
00:25:43
and just clear it all out as much as I can.
00:25:45
Like those are the two methods that are best for me
00:25:47
and I know that.
00:25:49
- Yeah, he talks a lot about email
00:25:52
and the new version of the book
00:25:54
and I kind of wish he wouldn't have
00:25:56
'cause I disagree, most of the stuff I disagree with
00:25:59
centers around how he proposes to use email.
00:26:02
Like he says that he recommends setting up project based
00:26:05
archive and active folders
00:26:07
and I'm thinking to myself for every project
00:26:09
you're working on, you want a separate archive
00:26:11
and active folder.
00:26:12
- It's good by rare.
00:26:14
- A little part of me died when I read that.
00:26:16
There's absolutely no need to do that
00:26:19
and he also talks about, he said,
00:26:22
"I will often print all potentially useful items
00:26:25
pertaining to the subject, spreadsheets, schedules,
00:26:27
emails, web pages, et cetera,
00:26:29
to have on hand as reference for those kinds of interactions
00:26:32
and I was like, what?
00:26:34
That is a terrible idea.
00:26:36
Why wouldn't you use something like adhesion efficiency?
00:26:38
We use Jiren Confluence, for example.
00:26:40
Like it just boggles my mind that someone would go
00:26:43
to the bother to print out all that stuff
00:26:46
so they have that information at your fingertips.
00:26:48
When you can use the technology
00:26:51
to get that in a second with the search functionality
00:26:54
and I know that he tried to kind of stay away
00:26:57
from the technology in this version of the book
00:27:01
which I actually think was a good move.
00:27:04
The old version got dated pretty quickly
00:27:07
as he's talking about, I think he references
00:27:10
like Palm Pilots or something
00:27:12
and there really aren't smartphones.
00:27:15
So a lot of the principles while they're evergreen,
00:27:17
those technical details quickly date the book
00:27:20
but in my opinion, talking about email
00:27:23
while email itself is probably gonna be around
00:27:25
for quite a while, his approach to it I think
00:27:27
is also a little bit dated.
00:27:30
- Yeah, he's got a number of places in the book
00:27:32
where he talks about, well just print this out
00:27:35
and then you'll have it when you go that,
00:27:36
it's like no, I don't even own a printer.
00:27:38
Like it's just not gonna happen.
00:27:41
But he's even got, and I understand where he's coming from.
00:27:44
He's a paper guy.
00:27:46
I might be slowly working my way back into that.
00:27:50
I don't know if that's good or bad,
00:27:51
but there was a section, he wrote a page
00:27:56
on paper versus digital
00:27:59
and he goes into how he sees paper being superior
00:28:04
to digital note taking in a lot of areas.
00:28:09
I would imagine that he is, he's the type of guy
00:28:13
that if he's gonna print off an email,
00:28:16
he's probably drawing pictures on it.
00:28:18
He's marking it up significantly when he's in that meeting.
00:28:22
I would bet that's the type of thing that he's doing
00:28:24
and he just doesn't know how to do that
00:28:27
from a digital standpoint.
00:28:28
Like there's probably something,
00:28:29
I've worked with some people that print everything
00:28:33
and it just drives me crazy.
00:28:35
So I get it, but at the same time, I was like, okay,
00:28:38
if you're gonna talk about all the different technologies
00:28:40
and all the different things that are out there
00:28:42
that enable this stuff,
00:28:44
printing's probably not a good suggestion.
00:28:48
When you come at it.
00:28:50
- And there is, I mean, paper is timeless
00:28:52
and we talked about this actually on your show,
00:28:55
the analog versus digital.
00:28:57
- Right.
00:28:58
- You can use paper to facilitate any sort of system
00:29:03
and then you could apply digital tools
00:29:05
to make it more efficient.
00:29:06
So it's very versatile, it's very timeless.
00:29:09
Like I get that and there's a lot of value there.
00:29:11
I guess I'm a little bit skewed and you maybe are too
00:29:15
because what I do for a living is I look for more
00:29:19
efficient ways to solve these problems.
00:29:22
And so for someone like me who's reading this book,
00:29:24
it's kind of smacking me in the face.
00:29:26
Like, well, why not just use this tool to solve this problem?
00:29:29
But 20 years from now, that tool probably isn't gonna be
00:29:32
around whereas that printed email very well could be
00:29:37
if you have actually a paper-based storage system
00:29:40
that allows you to find it again.
00:29:42
- Right, right.
00:29:43
Now this is a good segue here because one of the quotes
00:29:48
that I had sectioned off here that I thought was really
00:29:52
interesting because we've had this discussion before
00:29:55
about analog and digital.
00:29:58
I'm just gonna read this, it's just a quick paragraph here.
00:30:02
It's about the tools that are used within GTD.
00:30:06
Here's what he says, keep in mind though,
00:30:08
that the tool you use will not give you stress-free
00:30:10
productivity, that is something you create
00:30:13
by implementing the GTD method.
00:30:15
The structure you incorporate will be extremely important
00:30:19
in how you express and implement the process,
00:30:21
but it is not a substitute for it.
00:30:23
A great hammer doesn't make a great carpenter,
00:30:25
but a great carpenter will always wanna have a great hammer.
00:30:28
- Yeah, I agree with that 100%.
00:30:31
- Yeah, I thought that was really interesting
00:30:32
because how many times do we see arguments or discussions
00:30:36
about to do us is better than OmniFocus
00:30:39
or OmniFocus is still better than to do?
00:30:42
How many times have we seen these articles and stuff
00:30:44
come out about the best task manager out there?
00:30:48
I think it really depends on the person.
00:30:50
I don't know how many people I've had email me
00:30:53
asking for comparisons of,
00:30:55
'cause I write a lot about OmniFocus,
00:30:57
I'm a huge scriptor and I'm in it all the time.
00:31:00
And I get a lot of emails about comparing OmniFocus
00:31:05
to another app.
00:31:06
It really just depends on how you wanna operate.
00:31:09
I've recommended people just using reminders
00:31:11
on their iPhone before,
00:31:12
just 'cause that's the one they like
00:31:14
and it's the one that works for them.
00:31:15
It just really depends on how you wanna operate.
00:31:18
I even have a guy email me this morning
00:31:19
who says he does everything on note cards.
00:31:21
Like go for it.
00:31:22
If that's what works for you
00:31:23
and it's what gets it off your mind
00:31:25
and you can get stuff done, I wouldn't fight it.
00:31:28
Yeah, absolutely.
00:31:30
You gotta pick a system that works for you
00:31:33
and the objectives of your system,
00:31:36
this is, I wanna read these three bullet points basically
00:31:41
for, I think he's talking about using these specifically
00:31:45
in the review process,
00:31:47
but when I read these, it really hit me like,
00:31:50
this is the goal of GTD.
00:31:52
This is what it allows you to do.
00:31:54
Get clear, get current and get creative.
00:31:57
And really what that means to me is get clear,
00:32:01
get everything off of your mind,
00:32:03
get everything into the system and then get current,
00:32:06
get the system up to date.
00:32:09
So look at all your projects and decide,
00:32:10
is this something I still want to be doing?
00:32:13
And then lastly, get creative.
00:32:16
So that kind of ties into the whole concept of like deep work
00:32:19
or if you're a knowledge worker,
00:32:21
this is the stuff that's actually,
00:32:23
you're actually getting paid to do,
00:32:24
you're not getting paid to manage the task management system.
00:32:27
This is the goal, this is the point you wanna get to.
00:32:29
This is when the fun starts
00:32:32
and a lot of people, like it almost made me sad
00:32:35
when I was reading this 'cause I could picture people
00:32:37
in my life that I know are those creative types
00:32:41
and they just are stifled
00:32:43
because they feel overwhelmed.
00:32:46
They're exactly who David Allen is writing to in this book
00:32:50
and they never get to that third step.
00:32:53
So come in full circle back to what you were talking about
00:32:56
with the different types of systems,
00:32:57
whatever system is gonna allow you to facilitate
00:33:00
that flow is the right system for you.
00:33:04
- I'm gonna pivot on you a little bit here.
00:33:06
One of the topics that,
00:33:09
'cause part of what I was going,
00:33:11
or wanting to think about as I was rereading it,
00:33:14
was how does this version,
00:33:15
'cause this is the 2015 edition
00:33:20
that we were rereading here.
00:33:22
And I assume you also read the original version
00:33:27
when you first got into it, which is what I did.
00:33:29
One of the things I was really interested in
00:33:32
was how he approaches contexts in this version
00:33:35
as opposed to the first,
00:33:36
because that was such a big debate for a long time
00:33:40
about in the new age with mobile technology,
00:33:45
with computers that float around in our pockets,
00:33:48
wherever we go, context don't matter.
00:33:52
And that's where we saw a lot of people
00:33:54
trying energy level contexts.
00:33:56
And it just, it kind of got out of hand
00:33:59
for a long time of what are all the different versions
00:34:02
and flavors of context that can we dream up?
00:34:05
Because the tools and locations thing
00:34:07
just doesn't matter anymore.
00:34:09
And it was interesting whenever he talks about context,
00:34:12
he goes right back to the exact same set
00:34:14
of default context he had in the first book,
00:34:17
with moles list, office, computer.
00:34:20
Like it was, it was like cutting pace,
00:34:22
he didn't really change any of it.
00:34:25
- Right, he did actually, did you see,
00:34:26
he did actually address the low energy context.
00:34:29
- He did, yeah, he did at least,
00:34:32
whenever you get into,
00:34:34
'cause one of the things that's a bit confusing
00:34:36
is he does reiterate the whole process again.
00:34:39
He goes through it, I don't remember what chapter it is,
00:34:42
chapter three, I think.
00:34:44
He goes through the full steps, maybe it was chapter two.
00:34:47
He goes through all five steps,
00:34:48
and then he reiterates and goes through them all again later.
00:34:51
And when he reiterated the section on context,
00:34:55
he does explain that people have gotten creative with it,
00:34:59
and he thinks that's awesome,
00:35:01
and I would agree if that works, go for it.
00:35:04
So he at least does address it.
00:35:06
The one thing that was interesting to me
00:35:08
is that he personally doesn't really step into those at all.
00:35:12
He's pretty good about just sticking with the core,
00:35:17
and I would tend to stay in that category.
00:35:20
I have just found that for me,
00:35:22
if I stick to tools and locations,
00:35:24
that seems to work really well.
00:35:26
I did rethink a few contexts,
00:35:28
like I had one that was for writing,
00:35:32
and I recently stopped writing on the computer.
00:35:35
I've started writing with pen and paper.
00:35:37
This is why I think paper's probably coming back into my life.
00:35:40
I don't know if I want to admit that,
00:35:42
but it is something that I'm starting to do more of
00:35:46
is using pen and paper.
00:35:47
And whenever I went through that
00:35:52
and was thinking about the different contexts
00:35:53
that I was using, I had one for writing,
00:35:56
but I also had one for analog,
00:35:58
which for me was using the whiteboard,
00:36:01
using pen and paper, on the note cards,
00:36:04
anything tactile or physical is whenever I was using those tools.
00:36:09
My writing context got shifted
00:36:12
and consolidated into that analog context,
00:36:15
so it just didn't need to be there anymore.
00:36:17
Whereas before, it was a breakout off of the computer
00:36:21
so that it was a separation there.
00:36:23
- Yeah, and I guess my approach to context
00:36:28
is coming back to the code I shared earlier
00:36:31
that jumped out of me.
00:36:32
The right amount of complexity
00:36:33
is whatever creates optimal simplicity.
00:36:36
And so while I really like the idea
00:36:39
of some of those little bit different contexts,
00:36:44
like he talks about in the low energy context,
00:36:47
it could be really useful to have a list of things
00:36:50
that you can do when you don't have much energy.
00:36:53
And he actually puts a number on it.
00:36:54
He's like, when your energy level's at a 6.7 out of 10,
00:36:57
and right when I read that, I'm like,
00:36:59
I am not gonna go through all my tasks
00:37:02
and decide which ones require a 6.7 or higher
00:37:07
on the energy scale.
00:37:08
And so for me, I don't know, maybe,
00:37:13
there's probably people listening to this
00:37:15
who think differently and they're like,
00:37:17
oh yeah, that's not a big deal.
00:37:18
When I capture tasks, I can put that stuff in.
00:37:21
That takes me an extra two seconds.
00:37:23
- I'm jealous.
00:37:24
- It doesn't work for me.
00:37:25
That having to decide that would be enough for me
00:37:29
not to capture some things into my system.
00:37:32
So I'm not gonna use something like that.
00:37:35
And coming back to your context of writing and analog,
00:37:39
me personally, I would probably combine as many of them
00:37:43
as I could.
00:37:45
If writing falls into analog and analog
00:37:47
is the bigger, broader umbrella term, I'd just use that one.
00:37:53
So I don't know, as I read through this,
00:37:56
I got more ideas for context,
00:37:58
but I also, I think, decreased the number of contexts
00:38:02
that I'm currently using.
00:38:03
- I cut, I think I cut three, yeah, I cut three out of it.
00:38:08
And that brought me down to what, seven, I think.
00:38:12
And for me, I'm using tools primarily
00:38:15
as like iPhone, MacBook Pro, I guess.
00:38:18
It would probably help if I'd look at it.
00:38:20
That would tell me a lot more.
00:38:21
I've got one for read.
00:38:23
Now that we're reading on a regular basis for me,
00:38:28
I figured that would be a good idea.
00:38:29
I've got one for learn, which is,
00:38:33
that's kind of a, I guess if I'm gonna have
00:38:35
an energy level context, that would be it.
00:38:38
Because that one, it's theoretically, it's a low energy.
00:38:43
I don't really wanna think too hard context.
00:38:46
And there's something that I wanna research.
00:38:50
So it's kind of like a research, mostly distractions,
00:38:52
if you will, of things that hit me
00:38:54
while I was working on something else.
00:38:56
And I wanna go look into blacksmithing,
00:38:58
or I wanna figure out how that specific wood plane works.
00:39:01
And there's different things like that,
00:39:02
that I'll capture those and write them down.
00:39:06
And those usually land on that learn context.
00:39:10
I've got one for develop.
00:39:12
Since I do a lot of code writing,
00:39:14
that's just a different mindset that I go through.
00:39:17
And then the one of them that I really am glad that I have,
00:39:21
I just call it after hours.
00:39:23
And that's typically like my DIY projects around the house.
00:39:26
I do a lot of the whole house maintenance.
00:39:28
And I've built a deck on the back of the house,
00:39:31
that type of thing.
00:39:31
So that's where a lot of those steps land.
00:39:34
So I keep a lot of this really simple.
00:39:37
I don't want it complicated.
00:39:39
- Do you use people-based contexts at all?
00:39:42
- I do not.
00:39:42
I have, well, as far as putting a name to it, no.
00:39:47
But I've got an agendas context and a waiting context.
00:39:52
And it stops there.
00:39:54
Like I don't, some people like to do the sub level
00:39:57
and put a specific person on it.
00:39:59
I just name the task with the person at the beginning of it.
00:40:03
And that's it because I float in and out so often
00:40:06
that it's just, it's easier to do that.
00:40:08
And I never have more than like 10 or 15 of them anyway.
00:40:11
So I just don't see the point in breaking them out.
00:40:13
I mean, that's one thing that David talks about quite a bit is,
00:40:17
you know, if you've got a certain number,
00:40:19
there's no point in breaking it out.
00:40:22
So where you've got one on each list,
00:40:24
you're better off if you've got like 10 or 15s.
00:40:26
I think that was the number 20, I think is what he said.
00:40:29
If you've got 20 or less, just put them all on one list.
00:40:32
Like don't go through the trouble of breaking them all out.
00:40:34
You can just look at them and figure it out pretty quick anyway.
00:40:37
So with me, because I'm using OmniFocus,
00:40:42
I've got a perspective set up that combines agendas and waiting
00:40:47
for whenever I'm gonna meet with somebody.
00:40:50
And that allows me to see the items for both sets.
00:40:54
Does that make sense?
00:40:55
So I'm able to see the agendas that I need to bring up,
00:40:58
but I can also see the things that I'm waiting for at the same time.
00:41:01
- Yep.
00:41:02
And to be honest, people based context have never worked for me
00:41:08
inside of OmniFocus.
00:41:10
And this is exactly why I use same box.
00:41:15
Because when I am going to be communicating with someone,
00:41:18
it is going to be most likely via email,
00:41:22
or it might be on Twitter.
00:41:25
That's basically it.
00:41:27
So using the BCC feature on same box has pretty much allowed me
00:41:32
to eliminate that waiting for context,
00:41:35
at least as it pertains to people.
00:41:39
And that has made my system a lot simpler.
00:41:44
At least it brings me peace of mind anyways,
00:41:48
to know that I don't have to go back and forth
00:41:50
and keep these things current.
00:41:52
I only have to manage it in one place.
00:41:55
- Yeah, and that makes sense.
00:41:57
I mean, if you've got it just in one spot, go for it.
00:42:01
I just find that if I've got an email that pertains
00:42:05
to a specific person that I'm waiting on a response on,
00:42:09
again, I just grab the URL and Google
00:42:11
and drop it onto a waiting list inside of OmniFocus.
00:42:15
Like that's as simple as it is for me.
00:42:17
I found, like, that I'm not so smart when it comes to this stuff.
00:42:22
So I just need to make it really, really simple.
00:42:26
I just have to grab a link, drop it and be done.
00:42:29
Like, that's all it is.
00:42:31
- Can I ask you your thoughts about the chapter
00:42:35
on the supporting science?
00:42:37
- Yeah, so Mike, I--
00:42:41
- I'm gonna let you go first
00:42:42
and then I'm gonna give you my perspective on this.
00:42:45
Okay, I read it.
00:42:48
I get it.
00:42:49
He had a lot of good points.
00:42:52
He's got a lot of science there
00:42:54
that seems to support it.
00:42:58
I was a bit caught off guard by some of his choices there.
00:43:04
Maybe it's just me and the way I was seeing it.
00:43:07
I used to help a bunch of scientists develop
00:43:12
these types of studies in some form.
00:43:14
So I tend to pick at the exact study itself
00:43:17
and try to tear it apart so that I can tell
00:43:19
if it's legit or not.
00:43:21
You don't wanna get me on a rant about trusting science.
00:43:24
But I was just a bit caught off guard
00:43:28
with the specific studies that he caught.
00:43:29
Now, to contrast that,
00:43:32
David Allen has also mentioned a couple other books
00:43:37
about the science of how your brain operates.
00:43:40
And I've only read one of those,
00:43:43
the organized mind by Daniel Leviden.
00:43:47
I really enjoyed that.
00:43:50
It's crazy scientific and there's a lot of terms
00:43:53
that are hard to understand in there.
00:43:55
But it was very helpful to see how our brains operate
00:44:00
and how do we go about storing information?
00:44:03
And he's very good, Daniel Leviden,
00:44:05
is very good about explaining how we're not good
00:44:09
at storing things in our mind
00:44:11
and how an external system is so helpful.
00:44:14
Now, I really wish that David Allen
00:44:18
had pulled some of Daniel Leviden's research into this
00:44:22
because I feel like that would have supported
00:44:23
what he was trying to say a lot better
00:44:26
than what he put into it.
00:44:28
And that's just my perspective.
00:44:29
I'm sure there's a lot of benefit in it,
00:44:32
but I liked that he put in the section about it
00:44:35
that shows there actually is some science behind this
00:44:38
and he does mention a couple of books
00:44:39
that you can go to to get more about it.
00:44:42
But I really wanted him to dive into it
00:44:45
a little bit more than what he did.
00:44:47
- So you mean you wish he would have dove into it at all?
00:44:51
(laughs)
00:44:53
- Maybe, maybe.
00:44:54
- I was very disappointed in this part of the book.
00:44:58
And to be honest, this was the thing
00:45:00
that I was most looking forward to.
00:45:02
I heard him talk about how, yeah, we've revised it.
00:45:05
We've taken out the technology-based references,
00:45:07
which made sense.
00:45:09
And we've added a section on the science behind why GTD works.
00:45:13
And I thought, great, this is perfect.
00:45:16
But what he did is he basically identified
00:45:21
six different areas that GTD would kind of broadly apply to.
00:45:26
And then he would cite that this person did a study,
00:45:33
but there were no specific findings.
00:45:36
And I am not, Joe Buleg,
00:45:38
I am not gonna go dig up those research reports
00:45:41
and read them for myself.
00:45:42
But what I was expecting was some specific numbers.
00:45:47
I think there was one number in that whole last section
00:45:51
of the book.
00:45:52
I really like the approach that Cal Newport uses
00:45:56
in deep work, for example.
00:45:58
And it sounds like that's what Daniel Levitt
00:45:59
and uses in the organized mind,
00:46:01
where he'll take the research.
00:46:03
Maybe he's not doing the research,
00:46:05
but actually articulate how this applies,
00:46:08
don't just say, oh, this falls under this category of science,
00:46:11
and here's a research report if you wanna dig into it more.
00:46:14
And he talks about like, there's hundreds of studies
00:46:17
that apply and every time you go through GTD,
00:46:20
you're reinforcing it because look, science,
00:46:22
but he never really explains how.
00:46:25
I was really, really let down by that section of the book.
00:46:28
- The part that's funny to me about that
00:46:31
is the three chapters prior to that one.
00:46:35
So he's got, what's he called, GTD and cognitive science.
00:46:40
So that's the name of the chapter
00:46:43
that we're talking about.
00:46:45
Previous to that, he has the power of capturing habit,
00:46:49
the power of the next action decision
00:46:52
and the power of outcome focusing.
00:46:55
And to me, those three chapters explain
00:47:00
what he's attempting to explain in the science chapter,
00:47:04
because those go through why some of the processes in GTD work.
00:47:09
Why is it helpful to get things off your mind?
00:47:13
Why is it a good thing to ask, what's the next action?
00:47:17
Why is it good to visualize the end of a project
00:47:22
and how to plan to get to there?
00:47:24
And he goes through a lot of the benefits for each of those.
00:47:29
- Yes.
00:47:29
- It would have been very easy to just say,
00:47:33
and this study supports this and just be done.
00:47:36
Like just drop it in and say,
00:47:40
"Here's a study that Daniel Levittin and his team did
00:47:44
that shows that pulling things off your mind
00:47:47
frees it up for more creative thoughts."
00:47:49
Like, "Right, he can do that."
00:47:50
And there are those studies that exist,
00:47:53
and he just didn't do it.
00:47:54
And he preferred to put a whole chapter on it,
00:47:57
which came up severely lacking both in numbers
00:48:02
and it really wasn't that long either.
00:48:05
- Right.
00:48:06
- It just didn't, it wasn't real helpful,
00:48:09
I guess is what I'm trying to say.
00:48:10
- Exactly.
00:48:11
This book is already about three times longer
00:48:15
than it needs to be.
00:48:16
Once you identify the five steps,
00:48:19
you can pick out some additional details
00:48:21
and things that might refine some things in your system.
00:48:25
But if you were reading this for the first time,
00:48:28
if you read like the first 50 pages,
00:48:30
you could probably just stop there.
00:48:32
So I think this is a huge missed opportunity
00:48:35
because the book is already droning on
00:48:38
and he's saying the same things over and over again.
00:48:40
He's saying them different ways and that's standard.
00:48:42
Like I get that and I'm okay with that.
00:48:45
But then don't take the opposite approach
00:48:47
when it actually comes to the science and the research.
00:48:50
Don't just gloss over it,
00:48:51
which is really what it felt like.
00:48:54
It's like, "Yeah, there's this study.
00:48:55
Oh, there's that study.
00:48:56
Oh, there's that study."
00:48:57
If you would have taken that approach
00:48:58
through the rest of the book,
00:48:59
there wouldn't have been individual chapters
00:49:02
for each of the five steps.
00:49:04
Now, I don't know because the chapter following
00:49:08
the science chapter, is that a new one as well?
00:49:11
The path of GTD mastery, is that a new one?
00:49:15
It seemed to be new to me.
00:49:19
I was reading it on my Kindle
00:49:20
and I wasn't comparing it side by side
00:49:22
with the original version.
00:49:23
So I couldn't tell you.
00:49:25
I didn't have the original with me either.
00:49:26
So if you're listening to this
00:49:29
and you know the answer to that, I'd love to know.
00:49:31
But it's called the path of GTD mastery.
00:49:35
And I don't recall this at all,
00:49:38
where he talks about the three different tiers
00:49:41
of mastering the GTD methodology.
00:49:43
I didn't even know that this was a thing
00:49:45
of trying to quote unquote master it.
00:49:49
At the same time, he also talks about mastering
00:49:52
in the sense of just falling into the grooves
00:49:57
and understanding the concepts.
00:49:58
And that's what he's calling mastery.
00:50:00
It's not that you get to point and you're done
00:50:02
and you've got it all figured out.
00:50:03
You don't really get to that point.
00:50:04
It's more of a, this is a journey that you're on.
00:50:07
As long as you're on it and you understand it
00:50:09
and you're willing to continue on that adventure,
00:50:12
it will continue to get better.
00:50:14
And that's what he's calling mastery.
00:50:17
And I thought it was interesting.
00:50:19
So he's got the, what is it?
00:50:23
The beginner level, the graduate level,
00:50:26
and then what's he called the last one, post doctorate.
00:50:28
I think it's what he called it, post graduate.
00:50:30
- Something like that.
00:50:31
- And essentially what he's getting at
00:50:35
with those different levels is that
00:50:37
when you're at that beginner level,
00:50:40
that's when you're quote unquote mastering your runway
00:50:44
or he's calling it ground zero, I think now.
00:50:48
He talks about whenever you get your projects
00:50:51
and your tasks under control, mostly your tasks
00:50:55
where you have, you've got things broken out by context.
00:50:59
You have them by project and you're able to get your tasks
00:51:03
under control, your day and your hours.
00:51:06
You're able to stay on task and you can get things done.
00:51:08
Like that's, that's why he's calling
00:51:10
the beginner level mastery.
00:51:12
You get up to the graduate level
00:51:15
and that's when you're starting to get a feel for
00:51:19
and you know, the beginner level's just kind of
00:51:21
on autopilot at that point.
00:51:23
And now you're starting to make sure
00:51:25
that you're working on the right projects
00:51:27
and that you are selecting and working on things
00:51:30
that take you where you wanna go at that level.
00:51:33
So it's, I guess it was previously,
00:51:35
he'd call it about the 20,000 foot view.
00:51:38
I don't know what he's calling that one now
00:51:40
but he gets story, he talks about Horizons three, four and five.
00:51:43
And when you master those, that's when he's calling
00:51:46
the post graduate level.
00:51:47
I thought it was interesting that there,
00:51:49
'cause I really hadn't thought about different levels
00:51:53
of getting GTD under control, if you will.
00:51:57
'Cause I don't know if it's really getting GTD under control
00:51:59
as much as it would be getting your life under control
00:52:02
at those different levels.
00:52:03
- Right.
00:52:04
- And it hadn't occurred to me that you can get one level done
00:52:08
and under control and not the other.
00:52:10
I've always kind of thought about it as a holistic,
00:52:12
let's get this whole thing under control.
00:52:15
And whenever he brought up these different levels,
00:52:18
I was like, okay, so I feel like I've got tasks down.
00:52:22
But personally, I feel like I'm just now
00:52:25
getting a feel for him.
00:52:26
I'm on the right project saying yes or no
00:52:28
to the right ones and making sure that I'm getting that
00:52:31
underway.
00:52:32
So it's interesting to me because that would mean
00:52:35
that there's another level that I haven't even considered
00:52:39
getting completely under control.
00:52:41
I mean, I've got those Horizons three through five defined
00:52:44
but I don't really spend a whole lot of time
00:52:46
trying to make sure that those are correct.
00:52:48
I don't know if any of this makes any sense,
00:52:50
but it was interesting to me.
00:52:51
- Yeah, I think the way that he articulates it
00:52:57
with the three different levels, basically, of mastery,
00:53:01
it forces you to locate yourself.
00:53:06
And it's pretty much on like a zero to a 100 scale,
00:53:11
which again, I'm not 100% in agreement with that.
00:53:15
I think that there's some stuff in the top level
00:53:19
that I do fine.
00:53:22
And then I also think that there's some stuff
00:53:24
from the first level that I need to do better on.
00:53:27
So that didn't really resonate with me.
00:53:32
I get what he's saying.
00:53:34
Basically, he's trying to say that you've never,
00:53:37
like you can think that you've got this stuff down,
00:53:40
but there's always room to improve.
00:53:41
I think is the major takeaway.
00:53:44
And then he tries to give some examples
00:53:45
of what that looks like.
00:53:48
But it didn't, I don't think it had the intended effect
00:53:53
on me that he wanted it to have, I guess,
00:53:59
is the best way to say it.
00:54:00
- Yeah, I think that's interesting,
00:54:02
'cause I, again, I just really hadn't thought about it
00:54:05
that way.
00:54:06
It was more like getting the,
00:54:09
it's the same way that he comes out the whole system.
00:54:11
He tells you to get your day-to-day tasks
00:54:15
and your day-to-day work under control first.
00:54:19
And I think that makes sense,
00:54:20
because if you don't get the fires put out
00:54:24
and you don't get the craziness under control,
00:54:28
there's no way that you can sit down
00:54:29
and have a discussion about what's your life mission?
00:54:32
Like you can't have that conversation with yourself
00:54:34
unless you've got the dog fed.
00:54:37
Like it's just the way it works.
00:54:39
And he comes at this whole framework of,
00:54:43
let's get the dog fed.
00:54:45
Then once we've got the dog fed,
00:54:46
we can make sure that we should even have a dog.
00:54:49
And then we can consider should we bring in more dogs.
00:54:52
Like you get the idea here is like,
00:54:53
you've got to start working your way up, not coming down.
00:54:57
But theoretically, you would want to come from top down
00:55:00
to make sure that all the runway stuff is under,
00:55:03
is the right runway stuff.
00:55:06
And instead of just, okay,
00:55:08
I'm just going to deal with these calls.
00:55:09
I don't know if they should be the calls I need to do or not.
00:55:12
You've still got to get those taken care of.
00:55:15
Otherwise, you'll never accomplish any of it because you--
00:55:19
Yeah, exactly.
00:55:21
It's a lot of people who need to implement GTD
00:55:26
aren't going to do it
00:55:27
because they have a bunch of urgent things on their plate.
00:55:30
And they're not going to even think about it
00:55:32
until they've checked all the boxes.
00:55:34
It's quantitative at that point,
00:55:35
even though if you look at it
00:55:37
through a qualitative perspective, you're like,
00:55:39
yeah, you absolutely need to just forget all that stuff
00:55:42
and start thinking big picture.
00:55:44
But then that whole section of the book
00:55:46
is going back to that quantitative versus qualitative
00:55:49
approach. And in my mind, that's how I read it anyways,
00:55:52
is you check all these boxes,
00:55:54
then you go to the next level.
00:55:56
And like you're saying, the life vision,
00:55:58
that should be in the equation, maybe not right away.
00:56:01
You do have to feed the dog first,
00:56:03
so you're not going to have a dog very long.
00:56:05
But once you do that,
00:56:07
I think it's totally fine to think big picture.
00:56:10
Yeah, I just don't know,
00:56:13
because again, I've got,
00:56:16
personally, I've got some of those things defined.
00:56:19
And I guess I just haven't spent enough time
00:56:24
reflecting on those to know if they're the right ones or not.
00:56:27
That's the part that was interesting to me
00:56:30
with the mastery levels.
00:56:31
It wasn't so much that,
00:56:33
oh, he defined these now.
00:56:34
It wasn't so much of that as much as
00:56:37
you do have to start at the bottom and work your way up.
00:56:40
And it's just kind of depending on how long you've been at this
00:56:44
and how much time you've spent with it
00:56:47
as to how comfortable and how,
00:56:50
I guess, energetic you are at getting
00:56:52
each one of those levels done.
00:56:55
I know that I did have someone ask me at one point about
00:57:00
how do I trust this system?
00:57:02
Because David Allen talks about that a lot
00:57:04
is you have to do this and trust it.
00:57:06
You have to put it into the system,
00:57:07
keep it up to date,
00:57:08
constantly be doing the mind sweep
00:57:10
and dumping things out of your brain
00:57:13
so that you trust the system.
00:57:14
Well, the question is,
00:57:15
how do you trust the system?
00:57:17
Because that's a lot more difficult than it sounds.
00:57:20
You don't just magically trust it one day.
00:57:23
And personally, I don't think I fully trusted my system
00:57:27
for probably a good year whenever I first put it in place.
00:57:31
And I had originally put my Allen Evernote
00:57:34
because I was big into Evernote
00:57:35
and I'm a big fan of if you're gonna start doing something new,
00:57:38
don't buy a new tool to do it, use it when you already got.
00:57:41
So that way I'm not learning a tool
00:57:44
and a system at the same time.
00:57:46
And what I've come to is whenever you wanna trust that system,
00:57:50
like how do you do that?
00:57:52
For me, the thing that I always come back to is
00:57:56
it takes time and it takes that review process.
00:58:00
As much as people hate doing the weekly review,
00:58:02
I'm a review Nazi.
00:58:04
Like I just continually say review review review review.
00:58:08
Like I just come back at it over and over and over again.
00:58:10
I do it daily, a weekly, a monthly and an annual review.
00:58:14
And I'm always, let's go through this thing again.
00:58:17
And for daily, I'm just trying to get inboxes cleared.
00:58:20
And weekly is where David Allen spends most of his efforts.
00:58:25
And I would resonate with that
00:58:27
because unless you are continually dumping your brain
00:58:32
of all these things that are bouncing around your skull,
00:58:35
unless you're continually getting things out of your mind
00:58:37
and into the system and then working off of that system,
00:58:42
which is what he's talking about,
00:58:45
I don't think it's until you do that
00:58:47
for an extended amount of time
00:58:49
that you can get to a point
00:58:51
where you just know that everything's there.
00:58:53
'Cause like for me, I know that I've been doing this long enough
00:58:56
that whenever I sit down to work
00:59:00
at the first of the day,
00:59:02
I really, like I know if there's something on my calendar
00:59:04
'cause I've looked at that,
00:59:06
but as far as what the exact thing is
00:59:08
that I'm gonna be working on in the afternoon,
00:59:10
I really couldn't tell you until I get there.
00:59:13
I can pretty much tell you what my morning's gonna look like
00:59:16
and then I reset after lunch
00:59:17
and then I can tell you what's going on after that.
00:59:20
But it's not until I get there
00:59:22
that I could really tell you what that is.
00:59:24
And I think you don't get that trust
00:59:27
and you don't begin to rely on it at that level
00:59:30
until you've been pretty persistent
00:59:34
at making sure it's completely up to date
00:59:37
for some amount of time.
00:59:38
And I think that amount of time
00:59:39
is probably different for most.
00:59:41
- Yep, I agree that the weekly review is vitally important,
00:59:47
but for someone who wants to start implementing this now,
00:59:54
let me just kind of break down some of my big takeaways
00:59:58
from the book because the things that really stood out to me
01:00:01
were the things that I sometimes don't do
01:00:04
that caused my system to break occasionally.
01:00:08
And one thing he said,
01:00:10
which I really, really liked was there are two essential elements.
01:00:15
You need to define what done means
01:00:18
and you need to define what doing looks like.
01:00:22
And he refines that a little bit more,
01:00:23
he talks about the key question being,
01:00:25
what's the next action to move this forward?
01:00:28
I think if all people did was start looking at there
01:00:32
to do list and applying those principles,
01:00:34
what's the next action to move this forward?
01:00:37
And then what does it look like
01:00:39
when this thing is actually done?
01:00:42
Then you would make a lot more progress on your goals.
01:00:46
You'd finish a lot more of your projects.
01:00:49
And the thinking component that goes with that
01:00:53
to identify that stuff, the thinking and the deciding,
01:00:56
that requires energy that most people don't realize.
01:01:00
And I'll just speak from my own experience, I guess,
01:01:04
the times that I haven't put stuff in my system
01:01:08
or I've put stuff in my system and I haven't clarified that
01:01:10
and then it comes time to do that.
01:01:12
Having to sit down and figure those things out
01:01:15
when I'm looking to do that task
01:01:18
is sometimes enough for me not to do it.
01:01:21
He has a quote or a kind of a story in there.
01:01:27
He says it will probably be true
01:01:29
that the person who needs tires on his car
01:01:33
has had that on his radar for quite a while.
01:01:35
It's also likely he's been at the computer hundreds of times
01:01:38
often with just enough time and energy to take that action,
01:01:42
meaning find the number of the garage I've got to take it to.
01:01:47
Why didn't he do it?
01:01:47
Because in that state of mind,
01:01:49
the last thing in the world he felt like doing
01:01:51
was considering all his projects,
01:01:52
including getting tires and what their actions were.
01:01:55
In those moments, he didn't feel like thinking at all.
01:01:58
- I know.
01:01:59
And that was my big takeaway here
01:02:01
because that is easily my failure in all of this
01:02:05
is that I, and I don't build,
01:02:08
'cause I would call that a trigger list
01:02:09
where it's not a task list.
01:02:12
It's a list of things that trigger the memory of a task.
01:02:15
And you still have a little bit of work to do.
01:02:17
So because you've still got work to do,
01:02:20
in your mind, not everything is out of your mind,
01:02:23
which is counter all of this,
01:02:26
because you still have that little bit of thought,
01:02:28
like you're saying, that's just the little minuscule amount
01:02:31
of resistance that it takes to procrastinate
01:02:35
over being productive.
01:02:37
And that's easily the thing that just jumped off
01:02:41
the page at me here is that I really need to,
01:02:45
if I'm gonna clarify and I'm gonna get things out of my mind,
01:02:48
then I've gotta do that.
01:02:50
Like I've gotta spell out my tasks with enough detail
01:02:54
that I can look at it and know exactly what to do.
01:02:56
I have got a few bigger projects, important projects
01:03:00
that I've been dedicating my time to.
01:03:02
And there's certain pieces of those
01:03:03
that I just can't get done.
01:03:06
And the primary reason is that the thing on the list
01:03:10
is either one, too big, and it needs to be broken down
01:03:14
into smaller pieces, or it isn't actually a thing I can do.
01:03:19
Like I can look at it and it says, finish this project.
01:03:23
Like, okay, cool, what's that mean?
01:03:25
Like, I don't know, I don't wanna figure that out right now,
01:03:27
so I'm not gonna do anything about it.
01:03:28
Like that's just, that's the mentality
01:03:31
that I've been coming at with this.
01:03:33
And rereading the book has easily been the catalyst
01:03:38
it takes to get through that.
01:03:39
Enough that, you know, as we're recording this,
01:03:41
I just did my weekly review this morning.
01:03:43
And it took forever because it was a process
01:03:47
of going through every single project and every task.
01:03:50
And I think I renamed probably a good 75% of all of them.
01:03:55
So it took a long time, but it was sorely needed
01:03:59
because one of the primary results of all of this
01:04:03
that David talks about is the clarity of mine
01:04:07
and the lack of stress that comes from,
01:04:11
I mean, the subtitle here is the Art of Stress Free productivity.
01:04:15
So it's so true that whenever you get it out of your head
01:04:19
and you trust that system, I've already trusted the system,
01:04:23
thankfully, and now that I'm able to clarify things
01:04:27
with enough detail that I can just look at it and know
01:04:29
what to do and not feel any resistance to getting it done,
01:04:32
that's the power that comes out of this.
01:04:35
- So should we wrap up and give our action steps, I guess?
01:04:41
- I would kind of did that already.
01:04:42
And then the, our five star rating of the book itself.
01:04:47
- Sure, so how would you rate this?
01:04:49
- I would rate it four out of five stars.
01:04:51
It's a great book.
01:04:52
The information in it has made a huge difference in my life.
01:04:57
I'm only gonna give it four stars
01:04:59
because in this revised version,
01:05:02
I believe that he missed a huge opportunity
01:05:05
with the research chapter.
01:05:07
And I do believe that it is a bit longer
01:05:10
than it needs to be.
01:05:12
- That's fair, that's fair.
01:05:13
I think I'm a bit torn on the four or five thing here
01:05:18
because yes, we're nitpicking with the science piece
01:05:22
and it is a bit longer.
01:05:24
But I'm trying to come at this,
01:05:26
that if you were reading this and not the first version,
01:05:31
I would probably give this a five
01:05:33
just because the content that's in here,
01:05:37
yes, it's long and it goes through a lot of that.
01:05:39
But I think if you're someone who hasn't,
01:05:43
like what is GTD, if I said GTD
01:05:45
and you don't know what that is,
01:05:47
and I have to explain that it's getting things done
01:05:49
and that it's from a book,
01:05:51
I think if that's the type of knowledge that you have
01:05:55
or lack of knowledge in this case of this book,
01:05:57
this thing will change your life.
01:05:59
Like it literally will, at least it has for me.
01:06:02
I mean, I'm recently coming to grips with the fact
01:06:05
that I'm ADHD and this whole framework
01:06:08
in and of itself has made so many things possible for me
01:06:13
that I never would have been able to do before.
01:06:16
So just on that alone, I would give it the five out of five.
01:06:21
All right, yeah, and I definitely see the value
01:06:24
of the material, but I guess looking at it
01:06:27
through the eyes of someone like my wife, for example,
01:06:31
she is much more likely to watch the 45bitatlinda.com course
01:06:36
than read this book, which is, I think,
01:06:39
probably six and a half hours, my Kindle said.
01:06:41
Nice.
01:06:42
Yeah, I get that.
01:06:43
It's hard because this thing is,
01:06:47
there's a lot of good stuff here,
01:06:49
but you have to be somebody that reads business books.
01:06:51
Like you have to be someone that reads this type of material
01:06:54
and like it.
01:06:55
Like my wife would not read this ever.
01:06:57
She would not even watch the course on it,
01:07:00
but she practices the stuff that's in it,
01:07:02
which is hilarious to me, but she,
01:07:05
yeah, there's no way she would read this.
01:07:07
She'd give it a zero out of five.
01:07:09
So this is interesting, Mike.
01:07:14
So what's coming next?
01:07:16
Like what are the next books we're gonna jump into?
01:07:19
I think the next one will be The Willpower Instinct
01:07:23
by Kelly McConaugill.
01:07:25
And then we've got a few other ones on the docket.
01:07:29
I believe you've got one on here, The War of Art
01:07:31
by Steven Pressfield, which is a great book.
01:07:33
Everyone should definitely read that one.
01:07:35
So I'd be definitely okay doing that one
01:07:38
in the near future as well.
01:07:39
But we're gonna try and do one of these every couple of weeks.
01:07:43
And basically just pick it apart,
01:07:47
talk about what we got out of it.
01:07:49
And then hopefully other people who are listening to this
01:07:52
can kind of glean some of the knowledge and the value
01:07:56
out of the books and decide if it's worth diving into themselves.
01:08:00
Yeah, I think it's interesting to,
01:08:02
and hopefully I know whenever someone else talks about
01:08:06
a book that you've read.
01:08:08
And part of the reason I wanted to bring up
01:08:11
the books that we have in the pipeline is that,
01:08:15
I'm sure some of our listeners would love
01:08:17
to just read along with us and see what our thoughts are
01:08:20
on it as well after they've read it.
01:08:23
So if that's for you, go ahead and pick them up.
01:08:26
And we'll get to them, I'm sure at some point,
01:08:28
if not right away.
01:08:29
But like Mike said, we're gonna do it every other week.
01:08:32
And we'll keep going from there.
01:08:34
Thanks guys for taking the time to listen in today.
01:08:37
And we will catch you next time.