Bookworm Transcripts

00:00:00

So Mike, we talked about this a little bit before we started recording, but I have a shiny new MacBook Pro, and I'm very excited about it.

00:00:11

Nice. So give us the details. What did you get?

00:00:14

So this is the 16 inch and it's large. I don't have another way to say that.

00:00:22

It is. I have never owned anything other than a 13 inch way back to the days before I owned a MacBook Pro and just had the base MacBook.

00:00:33

It was the 13 at the time as well. So this is this is quite a machine.

00:00:39

And it's like got the upgraded processor. It's got the upgraded RAM, upgraded video card. Like it's got a lot of that stuff not completely maxed out but not far off.

00:00:50

And it's phenomenal. That's all I can say. And I told you this before we started as well.

00:00:57

I've been setting up all my command line, like all my terminal stuff.

00:01:01

And I have to say the one feature I am absolutely thrilled about is the escape key.

00:01:08

That is my one feature I am absolutely thrilled to death about.

00:01:14

I don't use the escape key, but I have a 16 inch MacBook Pro myself and I am loving this keyboard. This new old keyboard.

00:01:22

Yes. It's funny how when we go back in time, it can be better. Good job, Apple. Thanks for listening.

00:01:30

So I'm going to post something in the live chat. This is an app that you need to buy for this MacBook Pro.

00:01:37

And it is called Turbo Boost Switcher Pro. And what this does if you care at all about how the fans will spin up and your MacBook may get freely warm.

00:01:51

This basically disables the Turbo Boost mode. I heard about this from Marco Arment.

00:01:57

And he's been running it on his MacBooks for a while because he complained about how the fans would spin up.

00:02:04

It would get hot and it would cause his hands to sweat when he was typing. He didn't like that.

00:02:07

So this app basically disables the Turbo Boost, which on the 16 inch MacBook Pro, for the most part, you're never ever ever going to need that.

00:02:15

Except if you are doing something that does require all of those cores. And at that point, you can disable Turbo Boost Switcher Pro and let it do its thing.

00:02:25

Sure.

00:02:26

But for the most part, just make sure that your computer is quiet and it stays cool.

00:02:30

I don't think I knew that this thing existed, but I'm really happy to know about it.

00:02:35

I will say that whenever I was doing some setup on it, I was able to get the fans to kick on pretty easy.

00:02:42

Sure. Yeah.

00:02:43

Maybe that's me. I don't know. I have learned I'm very hard on computers.

00:02:48

Well, mine does too when I have it hooked up to the dock that I use at home.

00:02:54

And it's not loud enough to affect my podcast recording.

00:03:00

But as soon as I take my headphones off, I do notice that those fans are pretty loud.

00:03:04

Sure.

00:03:05

So I'm like, "I'm not doing anything. I'm not exporting out of screen flow or anything. Why does it need to be running like this?"

00:03:12

And it just kind of automatically switches over to that Turbo Boost mode when it doesn't really need to a lot of times.

00:03:17

So Marco's got some stats. He's got a whole write up on this.

00:03:20

We can put the link to Marco's article in the show notes.

00:03:24

Sure.

00:03:25

But he did some speed tests with this on and with it off.

00:03:28

Unless you are doing something specifically designed to max out your cores, you're not going to notice any speed difference.

00:03:35

This is really good to know. Thank you for this.

00:03:37

For sure. Pro-tip.

00:03:39

I needed to get that nerd session out of the way. Thanks for indulging me.

00:03:44

Let's do some follow-up. How's the kibbit?

00:03:47

I have planned my kibbit.

00:03:51

It is going to occur right after we record the next one.

00:03:57

So I won't have done it yet by the next book we're recording, but I actually have it on my calendar right here.

00:04:03

It's scheduled for the 2nd of February.

00:04:06

Nice.

00:04:07

And it's going to happen. It is also causing me, I think, we'll see to call an audible on the next book.

00:04:16

The next book that I'm going to pick.

00:04:19

What?

00:04:20

So stay tuned.

00:04:23

Okay. There's a teaser for the end of the show.

00:04:27

Yep.

00:04:28

Great fun. Okay.

00:04:30

Interested in that? I will wait with bated breath.

00:04:33

Yeah. It's on the calendar though, and we have confirmation that people are coming.

00:04:37

So unless everybody gets sick, which has happened a couple times recently,

00:04:44

then this is going to happen.

00:04:47

Sure.

00:04:48

Well then, okay. Do you know what the plan is for what you will do during this kibbit?

00:04:54

Or do you just have the date and the people aligned up?

00:04:57

Ah, therein lies the tale of potentially the new book.

00:05:01

Okay. So wait till the end.

00:05:03

Okay. Okay. All right. All right. I'll stop trying to jump ahead and drag this out of you.

00:05:08

Okay. All right. Moving on. Have you been planning your week every week?

00:05:12

Not really. So the first week, the first week, I didn't do it at all.

00:05:17

And I got to the end of the week and I'm like, Oh, I was supposed to plan my week.

00:05:22

The next week I was like, I'm going to plan my week and Sunday came.

00:05:27

And I was like, let's do this. And then I got super sick.

00:05:31

So I spent most of Monday and Tuesday in the fucking into graphic in the bathroom.

00:05:38

I fell asleep on the bathroom floor at one point. So I plan my week starting Wednesday.

00:05:42

I don't really think that counts though. So I am going to say that this is not completed,

00:05:48

but it will be for next week.

00:05:51

I think that's fair. I think that's fair. I know that like one of the things I was trying to do as well as like doing the whole time blocking,

00:05:58

planning your week outs, I have done it the last two weeks.

00:06:01

Like I can tell you that that has been a success. So I'm not going to complain too much about that one.

00:06:09

But I do know that the concept of planning out my week ahead, I really have to have each day down to the point where like,

00:06:19

here's what I'm going to do my morning ritual. And here's when I'm going to stop doing my writing.

00:06:24

And here's what I'm going to do. Things off of my available list.

00:06:27

Like that whole process is what I have to do. It seems to work out pretty well.

00:06:32

I'm not going to argue with it, but I have done it the last two weeks. So does that mean, you know,

00:06:37

I'm going to say I get a gold star on that one. Can I give myself a gold star on that one? I like that idea.

00:06:42

Well, even if you can't, I will give you a gold star. Yes.

00:06:45

All right. My other action item was to use freedom.

00:06:49

And I did something to my phone, Mike. And most nights I'm angry that I did this.

00:06:57

But freedom, if you have the subscription for it, which I have one of the lifetime deals, I don't remember when I bought that.

00:07:06

I don't remember paying full price for it. So it must have been on a sale at one point.

00:07:11

But I have a lifetime account with freedom. And I set up one of the scheduled recurring sessions.

00:07:18

That starts every night at nine o'clock and goes till about 10 30.

00:07:24

Now, that's really important because I usually go to bed at about nine o'clock.

00:07:30

But my tendency is to want to check up on a bunch of things before I go to bed.

00:07:35

But it's also rare that I get to that point where I'm ready to start checking things quickly before I go to bed.

00:07:40

That like never happens before nine o'clock, which means that whenever I go to do that, quick check before

00:07:47

I go to sleep, it has my phone on lockdown and I can't do anything with it.

00:07:55

So it's a pretty good instigator to just shut up and go to bed. That whole thing.

00:08:03

So I get frustrated by it, but I think it's a good thing. I'm going to say it's a good thing.

00:08:09

Probably. Cool. So you aced all of your follow up this week.

00:08:14

I think so. I don't know that I'm going to be able to say that the next time we record.

00:08:18

But for now, I'm going to go with it. So.

00:08:21

All right.

00:08:22

That said, let's jump into today's book, which is one I've wanted to do for a while and I have a feeling is going to have a lot of strong opinions coming behind it.

00:08:34

But making it all work by David Allen. I think this is going to take us all the way back to episode number one,

00:08:41

where we did getting things done, which by the way is our most downloaded show of all time for Bookworm.

00:08:49

I haven't quite figured out if that's because it's episode one and a lot of people start there thinking they're going to go through them all or if it's just that popular of a book.

00:09:00

I don't know. I think it's because it's GTD. It could be. Yeah. That's very likely the case.

00:09:05

I will say that one of the frustrations I had with this book from the get go is that you don't really get to what I would say is new material until what is it page 60 or so.

00:09:21

Like the first you found new material.

00:09:24

Yeah.

00:09:26

Put a pin in that one.

00:09:28

There's.

00:09:31

It's almost twenty five twenty twenty five percent of the book is how great GTD is and how it has spread across the world.

00:09:39

I don't really care.

00:09:41

I like that it has been successful and that a lot of people like it.

00:09:46

But that's just unnecessary.

00:09:51

Just needed to get that one off my chest.

00:09:54

I did enjoy going through this one though with a lot of caveats to that of course.

00:10:00

I think that's expected.

00:10:02

Yes.

00:10:03

What's your gut reaction to it Mike?

00:10:04

If I were to summarize this book it is basically GTD 2.0.

00:10:10

Is that fair?

00:10:12

What makes it 2.0?

00:10:14

It adds a lot of additional detail and I feel like he tries to fill in a lot of holes that he noticed people were responding to GTD in specific ways.

00:10:28

Sure.

00:10:29

Basically thought through how to respond to those objections criticisms and then wrote this book with also reviewing everything that is in GTD.

00:10:39

He doesn't get into all the details of GTD to the level that he does in the getting things done book but more than enough that you could read this one and not that one in my opinion.

00:10:49

Yeah.

00:10:50

I think that's fair.

00:10:51

I can't say that I would say it's 2.0 as much as he filled in the gaps that he should have filled in on the first one.

00:10:59

Okay.

00:11:00

So 1.5.

00:11:01

All right.

00:11:02

I could get behind that.

00:11:04

It's an extension of GTD. It's not something even that is like a companion to GTD in my opinion because so much of this is based off of GTD.

00:11:14

Right.

00:11:15

Right.

00:11:16

So it's not like GTD is over on this side and making things work is over on this other side and when you put them together you get a complete picture.

00:11:23

You just get a little bit fuller picture of where GTD is coming from.

00:11:27

Right.

00:11:28

Right.

00:11:29

Which I think is probably why in my case going forward.

00:11:33

I'm probably going to reference making it all work before I reference getting things done.

00:11:40

And it seems like I'm not alone in that.

00:11:43

My perspective has been that folks who talk and write about GTD regularly have a tendency to reference this book over the original more often.

00:11:55

I hadn't noticed that but that's interesting.

00:11:57

Yeah.

00:11:58

It's kind of weird to think about that that the folks who are big into GTD actually reference the follow up book more than the original.

00:12:06

I don't know.

00:12:07

It's kind of fascinating to see that.

00:12:09

I think there might be some validity in it in that if you have been through GTD you know that process.

00:12:18

You know how it works and you're kind of and I think I fall into this category and you're kind of getting to that point where the fundamentals like keeping the.

00:12:27

Tasks and the projects in line like once you get that under control and you're trying to figure out like what.

00:12:34

Like you're obviously missing like higher levels and you're trying to get a perspective on that piece like that's.

00:12:41

Part of why I selected this because I feel like I'm at that point and that's more what this one is geared towards helping you.

00:12:49

So I think the people who once you get the runway under control and want that higher perspective they tend to go to this and then they get the clarity from this so then they tend to reference it more often.

00:13:00

I don't know how much truth there is to that.

00:13:02

That's my speculation though.

00:13:04

Sure.

00:13:05

There was the book did not start on a good note for me.

00:13:10

Page two he says making it all work is a manual for getting anything and everything on track from a bloated email inbox to a significant professional challenge where your next vacation the same principles and practices are applicable to them all.

00:13:22

When these techniques are incorporated across the spectrum of life and work a wonderful integration takes place work takes on a lighter quality life itself becomes a successful enterprise.

00:13:30

My response to that in my mind not file is the rolling eyes emoji.

00:13:35

I believe that everything that he shares in here is good and it can help deal with a lot of the pressures of the day to day stuff that a lot of people feel overwhelmed with.

00:13:50

But this introduction chapter on like from getting things getting things done to making it all work.

00:13:57

I kind of felt like he's selling us on how awesome his previous work was.

00:14:06

And I don't know maybe just my perspective coming into this book.

00:14:13

I really was not in the mood to hear about how great you are like I'm here just teach me.

00:14:20

Because he also talks about like three levels of GTD practitioners in this level in this section those who think they got it but they really didn't those who got some of it realized they didn't really apply it like they should those who really got it and really implemented it to an advanced level.

00:14:32

So basically he's like if you've tried this and it didn't work you're doing it wrong.

00:14:36

And I think there are people that fall into that category but I also think it's unfair to say that GTD is the thing that is going to work for everyone everywhere.

00:14:46

I don't think that's entirely true.

00:14:49

One of the things I did appreciate about this book we'll get into this later on is he talks about how this is not necessarily a system but it's a systematic approach and so you can kind of apply this stuff for yourself.

00:14:59

I think that kind of redeems a lot of it. If you view it as he's talking about the system at this point you have the reaction that I did in the first chapter it's like give me a break.

00:15:10

He does seem pretty excited about the success of GTD.

00:15:14

I wish he wasn't.

00:15:16

He has every right to be.

00:15:18

I mean from I don't know the whole story but from what he talks about in here and some of the details he shares later on about how he came out with this thing and it ended up being really successful and his wife had to decide like how about the next thing.

00:15:28

That's pretty cool.

00:15:30

You're very successful.

00:15:32

You have every right to toot your own horn.

00:15:34

Just maybe tone it down before page 68.

00:15:38

Sure.

00:15:40

We already bought the book.

00:15:42

I'm trying to remember when was the original GTD book released.

00:15:48

Do you remember?

00:15:50

Was it 2001?

00:15:51

Oh goodness.

00:15:57

I used to know this.

00:15:59

I don't know.

00:16:01

I think it was late 90s early aughts.

00:16:04

This one was released in 2008.

00:16:08

And by that point it had had a decent amount of success obviously.

00:16:14

I think we'll get through what the differences are.

00:16:24

If you look at the outline it's going through the five steps of GTD and then going through the six levels, the six horizons.

00:16:32

He called them at the time the 10,000, 20,000 foot view and such.

00:16:36

I do that because I feel like we can talk about the differences that he calls out between this and GTD.

00:16:43

That would potentially help folks figure out if this is worth reading.

00:16:47

That's kind of the way I'm coming at this one.

00:16:49

Sure.

00:16:50

But the first point here, this isn't until page 62.

00:16:54

So I don't have a talking point until that point because it's at that point that he explains this self-management matrix.

00:17:04

And I don't recall this out of the original.

00:17:07

I should have gone back and looked to see if he put it there.

00:17:10

But he didn't. Sorry about that.

00:17:13

But think of this as your traditional two by two squares.

00:17:18

So there's four squares.

00:17:20

On the left side there's an arrow from the bottom to the top that is perspective.

00:17:24

On the bottom from left to right is control.

00:17:27

So bottom left corner, if you have little control and little perspective you are a victim.

00:17:34

If you have a lot of control but not much perspective, you're a micromanager.

00:17:39

Bottom right.

00:17:40

Top left, a lot of perspective, little control, crazy maker.

00:17:45

And top right, a lot of perspective, a lot of control.

00:17:49

You're a captain and commander.

00:17:51

And I appreciated one thing about his explanation of all of this.

00:17:57

And that was that you can be at different points with different areas of your life.

00:18:03

And I think that's very true because there are definitely some areas in my life where I feel like I am certainly the victim.

00:18:08

But there are others that I feel like I am that captain and commander and I have it fully under control.

00:18:13

So my question to you, Mike, is that as you saw this or worked through some of it,

00:18:21

do you feel like there's one of these quadrants that you fall into most of the time?

00:18:27

Like just as your life in general, do you feel like you fit into one of these?

00:18:31

I know why.

00:18:32

Interesting.

00:18:33

Yes.

00:18:34

So are you familiar with the EOS system by Gina Wickman and Mark Winters?

00:18:40

No, I'm not.

00:18:42

EOS is basically a way to run a business.

00:18:46

I have some entrepreneur friends who are really into it.

00:18:50

There's one book that they wrote though called Rocket Fuel and it talks about, I think I read that as a gap book.

00:18:57

It talks about how successful businesses pair and they use these terms, visionary and implementer.

00:19:07

And they have a quiz to figure out which one are you.

00:19:12

And that book was interesting because they talk about how there are lots and lots of visionaries,

00:19:17

but there are not very many implementers, even though visionaries tend to be the people in the startups, the CEOs,

00:19:24

obviously who are casting the vision, but really like David Allen's talking about here,

00:19:29

they can just be crazy making unless they have somebody who can help them implement their vision.

00:19:35

And I am almost 100% an implementer.

00:19:40

So that is definitely where I fall in between one of those two.

00:19:46

This particular diagram I didn't really care for because basically it's talking about perspective and control.

00:19:53

I want both of these, you want to be captain and commander, but then he backs it up and says,

00:19:57

"Well, not all the time actually because there's times when this is bad."

00:20:00

And all the other ones he's like, "This is bad most of the time, but actually it's good in these cases."

00:20:04

So the diagram itself really isn't all that helpful.

00:20:07

Other than to locate yourself, I guess, and figure out what you tend to do.

00:20:10

Yeah, that's fair.

00:20:12

That's fair.

00:20:13

I think I definitely fall into that whole visionary, crazy-maker category.

00:20:17

I'm pretty firmly over there, thus the thousand new ideas that I always want to run with and don't always get.

00:20:27

I was going to say, from working with you on projects, I would definitely have picked you as the visionary.

00:20:34

You're just like, "Let's do this thing."

00:20:36

'Cause I'm typically the person who's like, "Well, wait, how are we going to do that?"

00:20:40

Yep.

00:20:41

Which is why whenever I come up with crazy new ideas, I run them by you and you're like, "Well, yes, but..."

00:20:47

[laughter]

00:20:48

So I always appreciate that 'cause I need those people in my life.

00:20:51

Otherwise, it gets out of control.

00:20:54

[laughter]

00:20:55

Oh, great fun.

00:20:57

Let's go into GTD and...

00:21:01

If we have to.

00:21:02

If we have to.

00:21:03

And go through these five steps.

00:21:05

Before I do that, I should ask 'cause I definitely still...

00:21:10

use the GTD methodology day to day every week.

00:21:15

Do you still do this in totality or do you just pull different pieces out of it for your day to day?

00:21:22

That's kind of getting at my big action item from going through this.

00:21:29

I recognize, and I'll tell them myself, from going through this, I found that I had tended to fall away from the GTD.

00:21:39

Model, just using my paper pen, using base camp as my justification for like, "I'm just going to figure out my work when I do it."

00:21:48

And as I was reading this, I found myself going into omni-focus and capturing things that I wouldn't have captured before.

00:21:55

I'm like, "Oh, I've been kind of lax on this."

00:21:58

[laughter]

00:21:59

So I think historically I have not been great recently at implementing GTD as it is.

00:22:06

I recognize I need a little bit more of that GTD structure in my life.

00:22:10

I don't think I am 100% on board with the GTD process that he outlines here.

00:22:17

And I don't really thought through which pieces I want to incorporate, which ones I don't necessarily.

00:22:24

The two things that I know I need to get better at are getting things into my task management system, which is omni-focus.

00:22:30

And also being more regular on my reviews.

00:22:34

I have trouble defining if I follow the rest of it or not, because I feel like I do know what I need to do.

00:22:41

I feel like I've got things organized enough that when I sit down to work on them, there's stuff there.

00:22:47

I also think that I tend not to go through all four of the steps and then finally do the work.

00:22:54

So probably if I have to say yes or no, I would say no, I don't really follow this.

00:22:59

But I probably need to do a little bit more.

00:23:01

That's fair. That's fair. I think I, being a bit of a crazy maker, I see that I need something like this.

00:23:11

And it's the only one, it's the only real system I have seen that goes from day-to-day tasks all the way up to purpose and principles.

00:23:22

It's the only system I've run across that covers that full spectrum in a way that makes sense to me.

00:23:28

So I have a tendency to lean towards it just as a result of that.

00:23:33

I can definitely join you in whenever we go to the first step here, capture.

00:23:40

When he's explaining that, I found myself capturing things like you're saying that I normally wouldn't have.

00:23:46

Writing things down like I need to resolve a relationship with one of my siblings.

00:23:51

It's nothing major that is a problem. We need to communicate more often.

00:23:56

So writing something like that down is not something I would have done before.

00:24:02

And I think that's because in making it all work, he does explicitly call out that those types of problems or ideas or things that you should be capturing,

00:24:16

which I don't really think he did that in getting things done.

00:24:19

So that was kind of the difference there.

00:24:25

Even something as interesting as what are one of the principles that you want to implement in your life,

00:24:34

it may not be something you want to capture a long term, but it could be.

00:24:39

So write it down. Explore it when you have time to think through it later.

00:24:42

I think that was a lot of what I got out of the capture piece this time as opposed to write down the tasks that you've got coming up.

00:24:50

I've been doing that for a while. That's not something new.

00:24:54

But trying to capture the higher level pieces is definitely something that I found intriguing and actually kind of difficult because I find myself admitting that some things are problematic when I normally would have just glazed over it.

00:25:09

So kind of related, I think, is something that I'll post it here in the chat for the premium club members.

00:25:18

You can see this too. This is something that was published as we record this today on the Suite Setup.

00:25:23

And as much as I reel against systems, I realized that I do actually have a system for capturing, which is what we're talking about here, but also developing ideas.

00:25:32

And this is something that doesn't really fit GTD, but I'm recognizing that this is something that allows me to do what I need to do and create the outcomes that are important to me, which is what GTD is designed to do.

00:25:47

You want to create the outcomes that are important to you.

00:25:51

I just think that the thing that I shared with you basically as I was thinking about this, there's a couple different steps.

00:25:58

I'll just walk through this. I've got this little diagram that I drew in good notes, which I kind of like where I capture things, and that's GTD.

00:26:07

From there, I put them into my test management system. I collect them. That, again, is GTD.

00:26:15

But then I develop them. And this is almost the exact opposite of clarifying because it's almost like I don't even know what this thing is going to become.

00:26:23

So I'm going to spend some time mind mapping this and see what it turns into.

00:26:28

I'm going to let my brain go. And then I'll decide from there, is this something that I should turn into an article or a video or whatever.

00:26:36

And what I've learned from this process is that that develop piece, that's really where the magic happens for me because when I mind map something and then I set down to write it, I can crank it out.

00:26:48

It almost writes itself because I know the story arc. I know all the details are right there as opposed to if I just sit down to write something, if I were following GTD specifically, you know, I've clarified that I want to write an article about X topic.

00:27:02

Okay, now it's time to do that. I sit down to write it. I might stare at that blank cursor for a while and be intimidated, hit writer's block, or I might get rolling, but then realize that there really isn't a story here like I thought maybe there was.

00:27:17

And so I got to chuck that and start over like both of those have happened to me.

00:27:21

So I've got this system to help me do the thing that I want to do.

00:27:26

But in my opinion, this is kind of very different from GTD. I'm trying to reconcile how like this fits inside of GTD and I really don't know.

00:27:35

Are you sure it's different?

00:27:37

No, I'm not, which is why I'm trying to figure out how to reconcile this.

00:27:40

And there's basically another step in the develop phase, which I don't know, maybe he would call that review.

00:27:46

I would.

00:27:47

I don't know, but it's different than just going through a list of tasks and saying is everything here.

00:27:53

Yeah.

00:27:54

It's really saying it's really spending some intentional time just letting my brain wander about a specific problem that I want to solve or a specific topic that I'm just trying to see like what all is here as opposed to everything is here.

00:28:08

Do I still want to do this?

00:28:09

Sure.

00:28:10

Well, okay. Let me just walk through the whole thing here.

00:28:14

The methodology, if you're new to GTD capture, capture the ideas, clarify, make a decision about it.

00:28:21

What is it like? Do you have to act on it? Is it something you store for a long time?

00:28:25

Organize it have some way of keeping your lists or keeping that information in an organized way.

00:28:31

Review it regularly to make sure it's up to date and then act on it.

00:28:35

So capture, clarify, organize, review, and do your thing.

00:28:41

I think you're working on, Mike, in that you're capturing the ideas, but they're not something you're going to act on.

00:28:49

You're just kind of developing those ideas and letting them grow, I guess, would be the term for it.

00:28:55

Well, the do part of it is the develop and then sure the actual writing, which is what David Allen probably would define as doing something because you're creating the article.

00:29:04

At that point, that's where that doesn't come to the very end.

00:29:09

Sure. I think it's in my mind because I do something similar with my writing.

00:29:17

I don't do it in mind maps of sorts, but I'll make a file for a new article and capture the ideas in there and continue to work on those over time.

00:29:29

I have a tendency to think of that as the review process just on a daily basis at a lower level because I think one of the pieces that I caught from this book versus GTD is that reviewing happens at different times at different levels.

00:29:46

Reviewing your runway, the stuff you actually have to act on happens daily if not five or six times a day, but reviewing your project level, that's what people think of as the weekly review.

00:29:59

You get to the higher horizons and there's different timeframes for when you need to review those and what you need to do during those.

00:30:05

I think a lot of what you're doing is a midday review of potential work to be written, but it is a work in itself in that you're developing those concepts and trying to flush them out.

00:30:19

It's a mismatch of reviewing clarifying.

00:30:22

Yeah, it is because you're kind of doing clarifying, organizing review repeatedly midday if you follow me.

00:30:30

So you're reviewing what you currently have. It gives you potential new ideas. You're capturing that right into the document where it's going to go clarifying where it needs to go in there, making sure it's organized, looking at it.

00:30:41

And then, oh, yeah, that could be this. And then you go back to the beginning and you do it all over again.

00:30:45

That's kind of how I'm seeing it, but that's me being the promoter of David Allen and saying, oh, yeah, you're doing exactly what he says.

00:30:54

Sure, just rapidly.

00:30:57

Yeah, no, that makes sense. And that's why when you asked if I was following it, I'm like, maybe?

00:31:05

I don't know. In my head, the way that my system works compared to what I understand of GTD, not really because it seems like GTD has a very specific 12345 and I kind of go one, two, three, four, two, three, four, two, three, four, two, three, four, two, three, four, five.

00:31:21

Nice.

00:31:22

But nice.

00:31:24

Yeah, I don't know.

00:31:26

I do think, though, that a big thing I got from this book later on, kind of jumping all over the place, sorry about that.

00:31:31

That's all right.

00:31:32

Was that it's a system, but also you should be able to modify it to your needs.

00:31:40

And he does talk about a systematic approach, not a system earlier in the book, I think that was like chapter three.

00:31:46

But that point towards the end of the book about figuring out how this works for you, that was kind of exciting to me because I did not get that.

00:31:55

When I read "Getting Things Done," when I read "Getting Things Done," it was kind of like, "This is what you do.

00:32:00

Don't deviate from this at all, or you will crash and burn."

00:32:04

Right or wrong, that's my impression. And I haven't read it in a while, so maybe that's completely unfair.

00:32:09

I don't know that.

00:32:10

But when I read it at the end of this book and he's basically saying, "Yeah, take these principles, apply them how you want."

00:32:16

I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I can get on board with that."

00:32:18

Yeah, I think there's...

00:32:20

He mentions this just about it.

00:32:22

If you listen to his podcast, he talks about it all the time.

00:32:25

Pick what works for you and drop the rest.

00:32:28

The one thing that he tends to push pretty hard, though, is the weekly review.

00:32:32

That one is pretty hard for him to let go, I think.

00:32:37

I know that that's one that I've kind of railed on in the past.

00:32:41

This is so important. The people who get big into it seem to do that.

00:32:46

I get it because it seems like that's what keeps all the projects and stuff I have going on up to date.

00:32:53

But at the same time, I think the flaw that I've had in the past is what to do during that weekly review.

00:33:03

My resistance to it is kind of around how much should I be doing at that.

00:33:09

I've had the tendency to throw a lot on it and thinking I need to review every horizon that I have every single week.

00:33:17

No, that was my big takeaway out of this, is that that's not actually true.

00:33:21

I don't think that's what I should be doing.

00:33:24

I should be doing those at different intervals and being okay with doing reviews at different intervals.

00:33:30

Yep, agreed.

00:33:32

It's also kind of interesting reading this book in particular.

00:33:34

I don't recall this from GTD, but it's probably in there too, is David Allen's coming from a very certain perspective.

00:33:40

And you can definitely apply GTD in pretty much any situation.

00:33:44

But he definitely comes from a corporate background.

00:33:48

And that comes through in a lot of the examples that he uses.

00:33:52

And when he tries to select examples outside of the corporate environment, like Gracie's Gardens.

00:33:59

Oh my word.

00:34:00

I kind of roll my eyes.

00:34:01

Yeah, he should have left that out.

00:34:04

Just my take on it.

00:34:07

He does have a hard time letting corporate go.

00:34:10

You could tell he wants to be an executive.

00:34:12

Which is fine.

00:34:14

I mean, you are what you are, just own it.

00:34:16

And I think he does.

00:34:17

But that is one of the weaknesses of this book in particular, I think, is for people like us who are remote workers making stuff on their own,

00:34:30

the whole gig economy sort of thing, entrepreneurs, you got to kind of figure out how to translate some of this stuff.

00:34:41

If you are a knowledge worker solo-preneur, you're not dealing with corporate drive-bys, like he's talking about somebody popping in and giving you something to do that's urgent.

00:34:54

But you are fighting to keep your attention away from your email inbox or social media or whatever.

00:35:03

And not that one of those scenarios is better than the other or one approaches right versus wrong.

00:35:12

It's just that the corporate background doesn't translate to some of the other situations that he tries to use to illustrate that JTD can be used in lots of different places.

00:35:22

I think that's fair.

00:35:23

I mean, it is a case where you have to translate quite a bit.

00:35:27

I know some of those cases, it was pretty easy for me to translate because I don't have corporate drive-bys, but I have drive-bys for sure.

00:35:37

Because, hey, Joe, can you take a look at this?

00:35:41

Like, even I was leaving the church early today in order to come home and do a little bit of testing for my audio on this.

00:35:49

And to play around with the new MacBook in the recording setup.

00:35:53

So making sure all of that was in working order.

00:35:56

I threw a scarf on, threw my coat on, grabbed my backpack and started to walk out.

00:36:02

And, hey, Joe, could you do this before you leave?

00:36:06

I'm walking out the door right now.

00:36:11

No, I can't.

00:36:13

So that does happen.

00:36:18

I see those a lot.

00:36:20

I think that might be why one of the reasons I continue to gravitate towards this.

00:36:25

Because it just means I have a lot of inboxes that I've made it easy for other people to throw things into.

00:36:32

I won't necessarily work on things right away, but there's at least a place that they know I will go look.

00:36:39

So that does help that much.

00:36:42

I know.

00:36:43

I do think...

00:36:45

And again, we're bouncing all over here.

00:36:49

I didn't really get a lot out of, say for example, to clarify and organize levels here or the do.

00:36:57

Sure, go to work.

00:37:00

Pretty straightforward.

00:37:02

But clarifying, yes, making decisions about the thing takes time, but it's not really anything different than what we've known.

00:37:10

Organize, it's... if I have anything to say on that, really, that's different, is that he does spell out, and I wasn't really expecting this.

00:37:22

He does spell out what he expects those to look like.

00:37:27

And one thing that was interesting is he did share that with the lower levels, the stuff runway, the things you're working on every day,

00:37:38

managing that in the systems that you use to manage it need to be more complex,

00:37:44

as opposed to all the way to the top, like your purpose, principles, visions, and goals.

00:37:49

Those can just be simple lists or a simple mind map.

00:37:53

It doesn't need anything complex.

00:37:55

You could just throw it on an afghan somewhere and scan it.

00:37:58

There's all kinds of ways you can do those that are all very basic.

00:38:03

But the further down you go from the top, the more complex it needs to be.

00:38:08

I had not really connected that before, but it makes perfect sense.

00:38:13

I agree, and I also think that's why connecting your purpose and your vision, your values to what you are working on is one of the most important things that you can do.

00:38:27

He recommends in this book, man, I'm blowing up your outline, sorry.

00:38:32

He talks about how you don't want to do that high top level down.

00:38:38

You want to go from what's staring at you in the face right now on the way up.

00:38:42

Again, I think that probably works ideally for somebody in a corporate environment.

00:38:47

Maybe not somebody who is struggling to be motivated as they work from home every day.

00:38:52

In that case, I would argue go ahead and figure out what your purpose and your values are

00:38:58

and let that infuse meaning into the things that you have to do.

00:39:03

But I also think that this is interesting from a perspective of somebody who maybe works with a team.

00:39:09

If you are the CEO or you are the manager of a team, it occurs to me from reading this that the more vision you can impart,

00:39:23

the more motivation that you can create for the mission, going back to the Simon Sinek book that we read, The Infinite Game.

00:39:31

If you can say this is our just cause and get everybody on board with that,

00:39:36

then that means that maybe you don't have to manage the individual tasks so much.

00:39:41

I have a friend who is kind of dealing with this right now, switched over to Basecamp and loves Basecamp,

00:39:48

but his team is kind of frustrated because they were doing full-on scrum.

00:39:53

We are talking about it and I basically told him it sounds like really what it comes down to

00:39:59

is your team needs to be able to plan their week.

00:40:03

It's not hard, but people got to take responsibility and they got to do it.

00:40:06

Maybe there are some things you can do like have a meeting on Monday morning

00:40:09

where you ask people what are the three things you are working on this week

00:40:12

and what are your potential roadblocks and stuff like that.

00:40:14

There are ways around that.

00:40:16

As I was talking about that and I was reflecting on what we read in this book,

00:40:19

it occurred to me that if you can just get people excited about where you're headed,

00:40:24

they will probably sort the rest of the details out on their own to your point about how

00:40:30

the more mundane the level you're trying to organize, the more complex your system has to be in order to manage it well.

00:40:35

If you're able to elevate the level of importance for the things that you are doing,

00:40:42

maybe the complexity of your system, there's an inverse relationship there

00:40:46

where it can actually be simpler.

00:40:48

Yes.

00:40:49

[laughter]

00:40:51

Agreed.

00:40:52

And this is why, like, when you see people's systems,

00:40:57

generally speaking, you'll see their runway, like bottom level day-to-day tasks,

00:41:03

and you'll see their projects.

00:41:05

When we build video courses around tools that GTD is used to

00:41:11

or is implemented within OmniFocus being the big one,

00:41:15

those video courses mine included are generally talking about how do you manage your next actions,

00:41:22

how do you manage your projects.

00:41:24

And sometimes you'll see folks talk about areas of focus, the third level up.

00:41:30

So those are the ones that get a lot of, you know, they get a lot of airtime.

00:41:36

Those are a lot of the discussions, and I get it.

00:41:41

I mean, that's kind of the hard piece in the midst of all this is how do you manage all of that?

00:41:46

How do you keep all of that organized?

00:41:48

And that's where a lot of people want to spend a lot of time.

00:41:50

But when you get to goals, you know, the one step above areas of focus, your goals,

00:41:56

what are you planning to do in the next year, or five years, or whatever that means to you, six weeks.

00:42:02

You know, whatever that level is, it can just be a simple list.

00:42:07

It doesn't need to be anything fancy.

00:42:10

You throw it in reminders, throw it in a note.

00:42:12

Like, it's not complicated.

00:42:14

Same thing.

00:42:15

If you go one level up from that, your vision, what is your vision for the next five years, ten years,

00:42:20

whatever you want it to be, what is that?

00:42:23

And you go one above that, your purpose and your principles, same thing.

00:42:27

And just simple lists.

00:42:28

That's all it needs to be.

00:42:30

I think with these pieces, these perspective pieces, I'm blowing up my own outline now, Mike.

00:42:37

Thanks.

00:42:38

You're welcome.

00:42:39

This is going to be an episode where we're going to jump all over the place.

00:42:42

Chapter markers are going to be difficult this time.

00:42:44

Yep.

00:42:45

Good luck with that one.

00:42:46

Those higher levels.

00:42:49

Generally speaking in my past, I have reviewed the goals, the vision, the purpose and principles.

00:42:55

So in today's GTD terms, Horizon 3, 4, and 5, I've tried to review those on a weekly basis,

00:43:02

and that just doesn't work.

00:43:04

I think the thing that was a little bit liberating to me is that, you know, I can review my goals

00:43:10

about every other every three weeks.

00:43:13

I can review that vision maybe once or twice a year, and maybe yearly on purpose and principles.

00:43:21

And that's fine.

00:43:22

Like, that's, that's okay.

00:43:24

And it, I guess there's a follow up to that in that he does, you know, as much as I didn't

00:43:32

like the story about Gracie's Gardens, you know, just to expound on that, he, he tells

00:43:38

a story of a guy who inherited a business and how he uses GTD to get it under control.

00:43:47

And it's very idealistic.

00:43:53

There's probably no way that it's actually going to happen the way he wrote it.

00:43:58

But with that particular story, it does show how if you have a struggle, if you have a

00:44:07

difficult time getting an understanding or under, like finding what it is you should be

00:44:12

doing at a certain level, that's a good time to do a review.

00:44:16

And you should be able to do a review of that.

00:44:19