Episode 105 of the Getting Things Done® podcast. Listen above, or read the full transcript below.
Transcript
Automatically transcribed and lightly edited. Timestamps omitted for readability.
Morten: Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Getting Things Done podcast from Vital Learning. I am Morten Røvik, and I'm here as always with my super duper, very good colleague and good friend, Lars Røtskjild Hendricks.
Lars: Almost missed friend.
Morten: Lars.
Lars: Good to see you as always, colleague, friend, and everything. Good to be with everyone out there listening and watching. We always start off with a quick reminder of the purpose of this podcast, which is to help you learn GTD or become even better GTDers. If you're new to GTD, we always recommend you go back and listen to episodes 1 through 6 to get an introduction to the basics of GTD, the 5 steps. Today's episode number is number 105, and today's topic is why is GTD still relevant? Even in 2023.
Morten: Is it really? I think it's updated. Probably not. So we have a couple of things we would like to say about that. Because, not to give away what I think in the early stages of this podcast, but yes, it is very relevant, even more relevant than ever.
Lars: I totally agree. It's no surprise based on the name of the podcast. I think people can probably recognize that we still think it's a good idea and perhaps even more crucial. To be aware of DTD and use the skills in 2024.
Morten: Exactly. And then, you know, we talked initially, I'm not going to walk through that list that we made, but we talked about the number of inboxes or the number of input, just the share volume and the different channels we have. That in itself is, you know, chaotic and you need to trying to make some sense in that. And the sheer volume of potentially important information that life is hosing your face down with every day. How do you make sense of that? Make sure that you make the right decisions on what you should focus on. So, yes. Where would you like to start, Loris?
Lars: Well, I think this, a good place to start was just to recap. Long-time listeners will probably perhaps remember the different stories on how we came across GTD, but I thought it might be a good place to start just to give a bit of context as to when we talk about, so what do we think of the, you know, GTD in 2024 and where are we coming from? So I thought that might be a good place for us to start just to, you know, how did we actually come across GTD back then? Not to give the full story. I'm sure we've done that in the previous episode, but just, you know, lead into the topic of the day. Yeah.
Morten: Should I go first or?
Lars: Yeah, go right ahead.
Morten: Well, I met Getting Things Done back in 2006. I just got a new role in a new company. I got hired as the managing director of an IT consultancy here in Norway. And it was like Morten do things, does things he doesn't know how to do. And a lot of more complex projects than ever. And technology I didn't know how it worked and I had to understand everything to lead the other people in this company. And I had been hired because people found me to be structured. The founder of the company found me to be that and he says, why don't you come and teach us, you know, how we can be more structured, help me structure the company. And Then when I started, it was like, I understand I have a system, but it's not a perfect one. It's not good enough because things slipped for me back in the day. I forgot things, and my system had cracks. And I'm not going to go into detail on how it looked, but it wasn't a good one. But I understood that structure helped me. When I was able to be a little bit more structured, it helped me to be more present and to be more stress-free. When I then suddenly bumped into Getting Things Done in a podcast called This Week in Tech, a guy called Merlin Mann talked about OmniFocus and Getting Things Done. My ears picked up. And I decided to buy the audiobook because I'm an audiobook person. So I listened to it and that was the start of everything. And after that, there was no going back. And it leads us to you and I, you and I are here in this format. So, so anything else I should mention, Lars?
Lars: No, I think that, yeah, that's, that's, that's the story I seem to remember as well. From my own perspective and my story. So I had graduated from the university as a graduate engineer in software systems engineering back in 2008 and started working as an SAP consultant, the enterprise resource planning system. And yeah, just started working and had really been looking forward to it, you know, getting away from the university, all of the tasks that were seemingly never-ending, and now finally getting out there to just work, you know, go to work from 9 to 5 and just, you know, here's a set of tasks, get them done, and then you can go home for the day and everything seems so, so much easier when you were still, still studying. Things look so much better at the other side. Um, and, um, that was not the case as, as, uh, so many people since have, have also experienced. Um, getting out there, trying to, you know, staying on top of your inbox, staying on top of meeting notes, prioritizing your tasks, getting ready and, you know, getting things done before the deadline arrives, things like that. Um, and I really struggled also to, um, to get everything out of my head and actually be present. I would leave the office as anyone else, but I would keep thinking about the different challenges and problems that we had that we still needed to solve for the different clients. So, I came across GTD. I'd been working for 8 months, I think, and I found GTD by searching because I figured someone else has figured this out before me and listened to the audio series, the GTD Live. The disc set back then, I think, was the way to get it. 8, 9 discs and listening through those.
Morten: But that was a really good one. I don't know if you've— It was.
Lars: It really was. And David on stage and, you know, just all the good jokes and everything. And I think we spoke about this before, that these are actually available now in the official GTD podcast feed that you can go back and listen. But I just, you know, listening through those and just Just starting off by becoming better at writing things down. I'm really trying to keep everything in my head. Just starting to write things down made a big difference for me. So I read through the book, got a hang of it. And I think one of the things that it leads us back to today's topic is that I really struggled with email back then. And that was really, you know, much of it was really just that single inbox. And I thought that was a challenge. I thought that I got a lot of emails. I thought that was a big challenge. And, you know, A lot of things has changed since, and that's part of the reason why we're here talking about why GTD is still relevant in 2024.
Morten: Exactly. And by the sheer number of places where input comes, it's, you know, when I give my courses, I gave one last week, I ask people, how many do you have? And what was, you know, the I think the minimum was 6 and somebody ended up in, I think, 12 or 13 different places where relevant, important information that they can slip is where they arrive. Like before you had, as you said, maybe you had an SMS, maybe you had a missed call and maybe email, which is so relevant, but In addition, you might have WhatsApp or Messenger or Signal or Telegram or LinkedIn and Twitter. And if you have people in the— your children in sports, we have some specific apps that's originating from Norway, but worldwide now is called Spond. And then suddenly you have, you know, a lot of input. And how would you recommend somebody relating to that? And what would be your— well, I know the answer, but I'm playing the ball to you. What would you recommend people do when they find themselves having 6, 7 different places or more?
Lars: Yeah, and I think, you know, just following up on that, we did in the former version of the GTD seminar, we would, we would have a list where people could check off. So how many places does stuff show up that you might need to deal with? And you're probably focusing on the ones that people would deem important or where critical stuff shows up. I would often find that, that some people would say, well, if I make the full list, 15 is not a strange number. 20 might be between, you know, 15 and 20 was often the case. I think then the biggest one in, in some of my seminars When I was a lady that worked in social media, she had 33 inboxes, right? And I had this discussion with people so many times over the years, uh, when delivering GTD speeches, for example, where people would say, ah, things are so much better now because we have these different inboxes. We have these highly specialized tools where all the stuff goes into much better than email. And you know, from some perspectives, yes, that will certainly be a help. And we have these specialized locations for different important information, but again, if you don't, then put all that in a trusted system that you yourself can then work with, then we have a problem because that is really a challenge. So I'm gonna sit down and work and I'm gonna look in 13 different inboxes to figure out what I'm gonna do. That's just not gonna work. So it's, yeah, it's been a challenge and that's really one of the big challenges now is the amount of inboxes that just show up in people's working lives.
Morten: So, What I would recommend someone to do if you recommend— sorry, if you find yourself having a lot of inboxes, is that just first and foremost decide which one is the most important ones for you to maintain your social life and maintaining a job, continue working somewhere, and then identify them and give them high priority when you clarify and organize them. In Getting Things Done, the second step is called Capture. And you— sorry, Capture— Clarify is the second step where you clarify all your inboxes. And then I suggest that you, if you haven't done this already, or if you're learning GTD, to identify those and make a shortlist so that you can then check them off as I have done this. So we say that in Clarify, you should clarify all your ins every 24 to 48 hours. So every, every day or every second day. I would recommend every day, but if you can't, something like sometimes life happens. But to clarify them and then make sure that you're clarifying the most important ones. And then the second strategy would be to then, for whatever you have rest of in places or places where potential relevant and important information flows to you, is to set aside either funnel, like say if you have two different emails, funnel them into one, or copy them or forward them into one so that you have one system at the end, or copy and paste it into your system. So if you have an SMS you want to put that into your system, copy that and put it into your list manager, copy it in, and then, you know, deal with it from there. And then what I found is beneficial for my coaching clients— I don't know if you've found that— but if you have a lot of inboxes that you really need to check but it's not urgent, like 24 to 48 hours, you can do them every 3 days or once a week where you have a checklist where you walk through them as maybe part of your the day before your weekly review, for instance, you do a clarify where you clarify all the other inboxes. So I found some people find that beneficial. So if it's not urgent that you reply or get back to people there, maybe not necessary to do it every day or every 48 hours. So any comments on that, Loris? Do you have something to add?
Lars: Yeah, no, I think this builds on what we spoke about last time with having these daily GTD checklists. That list of inboxes for me to go through, that is just so helpful. I just, I really, really enjoy checking them off every day. It's so simple to uncheck them. And then I look at my physical inbox, it's empty, checkmark, already done. Right. So that was the case this morning. Nice and easy. The Memos app, yep, all cleared out. No, I think there was one in there and now it's done. It's so nice to really just walk through these. But the challenge, of course, is that these exist. And yeah, every 24 to 48 8 hours. That's the standard recommendation. Some will be quicker, some will be less urgent, like you say. So my mailbox at home, I check that once a week probably because nothing critical urgent shows up there. So I'll just at random times when I think, oh, now it's time, or I can get the boys to do it just to give them some activities as we walk home, then that's how we proceed with them. But of course, If we look at, so why is this now more challenging than ever? I think, when the book came out, the complexity was really for people at higher levels in organizations. And today there's just so much complexity for all of us and it's just moving so fast. So we have this number of specialized inboxes and separate systems, could be CRM systems, sales systems, whatever it might be that are maintained for a shared overview for people that working across clients or across projects that we need to have some kind of shared over you. So, of course, it's helpful in that respect, but the complexity just grows for that personal productivity system because there are so many different places. So, I think one being the number of inboxes and the other one being the higher volume in each of these inboxes. For example, email can still be really a big challenge, especially in cultures where people have this itch to just CC everyone every time they send an email. And people don't take people off that CC list. So, it just grows and grows and grows. And we're fortunate to You know, we're a small company in the Nordics, so we don't really, we're not impacted by that as much as I know many coaching clients are. But really, you know, being much more aware of that and having a really efficient way to then manage these inboxes is just so critical in 2024.
Morten: I'm totally agreeing with you. When I, this, client that I did training for last week, they were telling me stories about CC and BCC and.
Lars: It'S kind of like— That's our lives, people. They were telling stories about CC.
Morten: And BCC. You know, my neck hairs stood up. It's like, and I can't escape the feeling that a lot of that culture is about I need to cover my back. So if I send this to CC to everybody, they that I'm not leaving anybody out, and which is talk to each other, people, discuss this internally in your company or your department. How are we going to relate to this?
Lars: Absolutely. Make it, make it really clear. I'm always reminded by an IT project that I worked on. Yeah, that must be about 10 years ago now where I was a project manager on part of a big, big IT project. And I would encourage people to put me CC because I had my GTD system up and running and I would love to just stay on top of things. So I knew what was going on. Then I stopped and someone else took over my role and he had a completely different approach. He said, if you CC me, that is an escalation. So that means that I need to be aware of it and we will bring that up in meetings with different stakeholders and everything. So it was very different. And you know, each, each of those can be correct. It really depends on how you want to structure that. So, so like you said, make some, some clear standards for this communication.
Morten: Yeah. And just to get, be in agreement with what, what we are in agreement of, because if you are, if you're not, but if you're not making agreements about how you're going to relate to this, everybody's going to use their own standards. It's going to be a mishmash. So I don't really care how you solve that, but just make it uniform and try and make it company culture that this is how our company policy, this is how we are, you know, in my book, CC email for me is for my information. I don't have to read it. It's not, no actions for me. It's just for my information. But somebody have different, you know, ways of doing that. But just agree upon what you want to agree upon and then write it down and make it policy.
Lars: But I just had a meeting with a potential new client last week. I met with them and they had had an Outlook seminar, I would say, internally where someone had taught them some different tips and tricks, It certainly sounds like someone had read the GTD book as well. And there's some of them were very GTD-related. But one of the challenges that they then had, I spoke to the IT department, the head of IT, and they said they had gotten so many calls afterwards because they had been taught to set up different rules. They had not understood the different impacts of them, and now they were missing emails. And, you know, one of the things was that she had told them to set up CC emails, let them move to this folder. But people hadn't really understood what was happening. And now people were getting calls saying, hey, well, why aren't you reacting to this? Well, it's in that folder. I didn't know there were any emails in there, right? So certainly it can be helpful if you had these standards set up, then you can set up these rules. But yeah, be aware. And as we always say, you know, you got to understand the process as well, then the tools become important. And GTD, you know, these rules in Outlook can certainly help for Gmail or wherever your emails are.
Morten: Yeah. No, and I totally agree with you. I haven't heard that before, because I teach people how to do the CC sometimes when I do a seminar. And just create a folder where your CC emails come in and they are just skipping the inbox and you will have a growing number of unread emails in that folder, which then should be on a checklist for check, read through FYI emails on CC. So this is not lost for you. So I haven't heard that from in the wild before.
Lars: So it was very, you know, much of a challenge. You know, they were a fairly small IT team supporting a pretty big company. They were pretty impressive, the volume of people, the number of people they could support across all the different tools and apps that they they were using. But then that one had sort of stood out to them that, yeah, maybe we should have approached this differently. And that's where GTD came into play. The other thing that I wanted to touch on when it comes to capturing— so we talk about this number of email inboxes or other inboxes that just show up and, you know, try to limit it, like you mentioned, as a really good suggestion. But, you know, some you're just stuck with as part of your job. And then, of course, And that's where the GTD practice comes into play. The other one was that, you know, searching out information. It's just so easy to overload yourself as well with all of your good ideas and ideas to research as well. There's so much information out there. And with the internet, there's so many good things about the internet, not trying to avoid that, but you can just always do better. There's always more information, always more information you can seek out or read more news or read more whatever you're reading. It can be difficult for some people to kind of stop or at least slow down that process of trying to capture too many things. At least that's what I often come across when I come across those people that just, you know, are asking, how do we set up this really complex organizational systems for reference information? And that is often, you know, for me, that is at least often a trigger to maybe look into how much are you capturing? What is actually going on here? Why are we, Retrieving so much information that we then need to figure out how to organize.
Morten: Yeah, I shared this is, you know, there are some tips and tricks that can make your life a lot easier. A good structure from the company side when it comes to files and, you know, what goes where. We had a big discussion in that seminar I had last week where people, they use Teams. And then, and they used a folder structure on a shared drive and then a personal structure and then some department structure for files. And it's kind of like a big mess. And we discussed where do the files live and how do I find them again. And I shared with them my file naming convention. The nomenclature of what I suggest you use. And 3 or 4 people, and before the end of the first day, they installed, you know, a text expander version for PC where they can expand and create this structure when you create. Because the idea here in my suggestion here is just make it easy for you to find something. So give it a date, give it a What is it? Who— what is it about? And, you know, the format. Is it a PDF? Is it a Word document? Is it a screen dump? Who is it from, or who are you sending to? And then this, what I call the status of, of that thing. Like, if it is a contract, is it signed? Is it final? Is it, you know— and then just to do that and help yourself, and then It really, I found you don't need folders, you just need search. It was something about contract with Lars. Okay, I think all contracts with Lars or something that has to do with, you know, I sent a screen dump to Lars regarding OmniFocus sometime last year. So it's 2023 OmniFocus Lars, super fast, super.
Lars: Easy. But that's really required with the amount of information that then shows up. So, so the amount of information is one thing, the complexity of the information is one thing, and then how quickly things change. And that also really sets requirements and standards for your system. How quickly do you then need to be able to respond to different things, right?
Morten: Yeah, indeed. Another thing that I find, I don't know if you are ready to leave reference material?
Lars: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I think this sort of, uh, the way I thought about it was more of a sort of generic overview because, for example, the, the impact of the volume then impacts how you're then going to clarify and organize, as you already touched on. But you were heading in one direction. Let me, let me go back to that.
Morten: Yeah, so, so I just wanted to, to head on to contexts, and for those of you who fresh with Getting Things Done, context is the way to group tasks, or Next Actions as we call them in Getting Things Done. You group them by where are you going to do them, or what tool or situation do you need to be in. So for instance, you know, and then the context could be at the office, at my PC, at my accounting software, at— could be at Agenda for Lars. When I'm with Lars, Lars is a context. So I can then group them together so it makes sense, so that when I'm doing things that are within that context, I can then and just do them, crank widgets as David would say. And a lot of people then said, well, before, you know, everybody, this is normal. I'm sure you are having this, you know, I don't need one for the office. No, maybe, except if you do physically need to be at the office to do that, then it shouldn't go in on a PC list or something. So if it's physically something like knock on someone's door, talking to them, Empty the trash, water the flowers, clean your desk, install a new monitor on your desk in the office. So you still need Office, but a lot of people tell me, and I'm sure you see the same, is that, ah, well, I don't need a lot of context. I need just me PC. And then my PC list is growing and growing and growing, and I have too many next actions there. And first, I just want to point out the more or less obvious fact, at least for you and me, is that you should only have one Next Action per context, per project, as long as they are in parallel. You can have more than one, but then on a different context. Does that make sense? Did I explain it correctly?
Lars: I think so. I think I know what you mean.
Morten: Yeah, okay, let's hope that everybody understands this because a lot of people say, well, I know the next 5 actions on this project, let me just note them down and all in next actions list on PC, for example. And then you will— your brain will look at that list and you will see 5 different things connected to the same project and you will look at it and your brain then has to choose which one goes first and that not a good way of handling it. It should be just one next action visible on your next actions list in the same context. The reason being is that you shouldn't need to think. You should just choose without thinking very a lot. So, but I'm sure you come into the same. What do you, what would you answer someone say that, well, my PC list is out of order, is too much on, and I feel overwhelmed. I feel it repels me more attracts me. What would you say, Lars?
Lars: Yeah, that, that sounds familiar. I actually had this reflection in my own system on Friday last week. So we do these shared weekly reviews with part of the community in Denmark, community.vitallearning.dk. If you're in Denmark, you can join us there and we just hang out. For an hour virtually and do the weekly review together and then just share some reflections at the end. And one of my reflections was that my list had grown too long. That was not work-related. I was at home and I had 16 items on my home list. 16 items for some people, that's no problem. 16 items for me, that felt like a lot and difficult for me to choose. So I went in and looked through the list and made some new lists. And I think I actually split into 4. 4 different ones, one being Mac, one being outside, one being inside, and one being with the boys. Stuff I had to do with them, wanted to do with them. So making sure that you have the right lists and coming back to the topic of the day, I think that's even more critical. Clarifying can be a lot more complex because the volume is so high. Work perhaps is even more complex than before and things are changing so quickly. And then that also sets new standards for how flexible you need to be with your system. So, you really need to be much more aware of the list that you want to see in there. And, you know, we try to limit the amount of information that goes in really being critical, the seriously part of the what's the next action, is this actionable question that you have appended over the years, Morten. Really being much more aware of then, so, the stuff that does go on the list. And sometimes there'll be more busy times than others. So, those lists will grow longer than you would normally expect and really be much more aware of the flexibility of the system that you need to apply to your own practice and your own system.
Morten: Yeah. One of the things that I would like to, if we just zoom out a little and see this from like a bird's-eye view, when it comes to, because clarifying is just make decisions. Am I going to do something about this? Yes or no? And then seriously, yes. Am I going to do something? And if you say, Yes, you are committing to something. And then how do you make that decision to what to commit to do something about? And if you then zoom out really big, it is the horizons of focus model where you need to understand what's your purpose of— why are you on the planet? What's your values? What's your principles? And what is your vision for when you live that life where purpose and values and principles are in harmony with what you are doing? How does that look and how does it feel? And what are your goals, your long-term goals to 12 to 24 months in the future-ish? And then what's my areas of responsibility and accountability? So what am I accountable for delivering on and what's my responsibilities? And to get down to at least the— or you don't have to start on the top and know your life purpose, Of course, that's not a very easy thing to do. It becomes clearer, though, the older you get, especially if you work with getting things done and use the horizons of focus model. But when you are in, if you know what your responsibilities are, so areas of accountability and responsibility, if those are clear for you, it's easy for you to see, is this maintained at the level I am feeling comfortable with? It? And is this really my responsibility to do something about it? And if not, if it's not, you should say, "No, I'm sorry, this is not my responsibility. My plate is full. I can't say yes." So use that as the first level of defense for whatever you let into your system. And I just want to be clear for everyone who wants to learn Getting Things Done, it is so easy just to say yes. Yes to everything, and you end up with too much to do. Even if you get more efficient, you are not more productive. And I will explain a little bit what I mean with that. If you are efficient, you get a lot of things done. But if you're productive, you're doing the right things, and you get a lot of the right things done. And not necessarily all, because that's not possible, but because there's always more to do than there is time. As David would say. And, but you have to really, it's the way of scaling things down and then just making sure that you're not committing to something that's not in accordance, at least with your areas of accountability and responsibilities. And then, but still, there can be too much. So what do you do then.
Lars: Lars? That was an easy question. Thanks, Morten. You, you, you made the transition exactly like I wanted to do. And one of the key things that I did want to make sure that we covered in this episode, which is, you know, clarifying is critical and so important. And then also, you know, being more aware of your higher horizons, the horizons of focus, especially the areas of focus and accountability, making sure that you have set the right standards for yourself. That you are maintaining things at the right level that you want to maintain them at, that you're living up to your own standards, that you're not trying to achieve standards that are too high, all things considered. And I think this should be, you know, more frequent than yearly, that you're really, you know, reestablishing those standards for yourself for each of these areas of focus and accountability, because things change over the year. And there are so many things that we want to get done. And the way to overwhelm your system and your list is just to maintain way too high standards for yourself in each of the different areas. It could be at home, it could be at work. In both places, it's easy to overwhelm yourself. And that leads back to the amount of information out there that you can just search out at any given time because your presentation can always be better. That meeting could always be run better. There are so many I mean, you know, there are always ways to make these things better. And it's since all of that information now is out there, it can be tempting, at least I'm speaking from personal experience here, that it's, you know, I wonder how we could do that differently. How could I tweak it? How can I make that better? And that is just a way to, yeah, your to-do list is already never going to get done. So you can really throw away too much stuff at it as well if you don't restrain yourself with having the right standards for each of these. So just echoing what you said, that is so critical to be more aware of in 2024 and beyond.
Morten: Yeah. And it is, I don't remember, I can't recall who used this analogy before, but you're getting things done. Lists are like a menu. And if you go to a restaurant, you just, you don't order the whole restaurant and eat everything at the same time, but you choose choose a meal depending on how hungry you are and what would you like to happen, and then you eat it. And then the problem that I think is when we talk about context is that, for instance, the PC context is like the menu of that restaurant, that your PC restaurant is super long. How do you pick? How do I know how to pick? And the key is in two things: to make sure you clarify and organize in clear next actions where you have everything you need, physical visible action where you have everything you need, and under desired outcomes. So you have this, what does done look like when this is successfully finished? What does done look like? So, and just to be aware of that is, you know, Lars and I come back to this and come back to this and come back to this. 99% of the people we meet ask after a course or coaching are still struggling with, you know, to understand and create good next actions for themselves. I can't— this is like, if this was possible to write, I would write this as important with big capital letters, 3 underlines, and 3 exclamation marks in red and blinking. So I don't know if if that will ever, but if you want to get good at getting things done, clarifying is the key. And the weekly review is the key. So get good at those and the rest of the things will fall into place.
Lars: But that is really, again, one of the challenges, right? Because with so much information coming in, that means you need to clarify more and clarifying takes mental horsepower and it is complex and it's hard to do and it's hard to to take time out because that can feel like it's, you know, for some people it'll feel like wasted time that you're just sitting there and thinking of next actions and writing things down. Next email, thinking of next actions, writing things down. And that is just so, yeah, exactly. So it's just so critical to keep doing that. And again, with the complexity and the volume coming in, it is even more important and it can feel like more of a struggle to actually find time to do And just building on that, the someday maybe list. We have to, I think, you know, with more stuff showing up, if there is more actionable stuff than there is time available, be sure to park those, be sure to be much more diligent about parking things on that someday maybe list because that's, and again, it sounds like sometimes when we're recording these, I'm recording these for myself. I'm saying this out loud and then I should listen. Exactly. That is, this is my therapy session, right? So I have to remind myself, you know, put that on the someday maybe list, make those actionable lists actually manageable to work with. So that someday maybe list really, yeah, seriously make use of that one as well.
Morten: Yes. And how does that make you feel.
Lars: Lars?
Morten: Says Dr.
Lars: Revik. Thank you, Dr. Revik.
Morten: Okay. No, I'm, but yes, I'm, well, I'm, one of the things that I'm always coming back to for myself is that, and I've added this to my checklist for weekly review, is that I created, I just want to mention this for those of you who've been doing Getting Things Done for a little while and you understand that you're, you know, someday, maybe list always, you know, someday I will do this or maybe. So, It is less, let me put it this way, so you have your next actions list, those are things you're committed to do, and the someday maybes are you're not committed to do them now, but someday maybe you will do something about them. And for a lot of people that is good. But if you understand your someday maybes are big and then your next actions lists are growing and getting, you know, you're not attracted to them anymore, you're more repelled by them, them, then I would suggest that you might want to look into creating another category called "Decide outcomes and next actions on hold" or "paused" or something like that. You call it whatever you want, because those would keep both next actions and decide outcomes that are going to happen but not right now. And the reason for this is that if you feel overwhelmed by everything you're committed to do, You need to un-overwhelm yourself, and the only thing to do that is to remove something. And for a lot of people that have been doing GTD for a while, then that in the past, the Side Actions and Next Action List is heaven-sent. It's kind of the yin and yang where you create the balance. In my sense, look over my— and I'm translating on the fly— look over my my past desired outcomes and next actions create balance. So what I'm doing there when I'm looking at this item, I'm going in, I'm looking at my desired outcomes, and I'm looking at this list, and I say, is it balanced there? Do I feel attracted to my next actions list or repelled by them? Am I attracted to my desired outcomes? Do I want to fulfill them and make them done? Finished them? Yes or no? And if not, I have to ask myself why, what is wrong here? And often it is the balance that's wrong. If you're good at creating next actions and desired outcomes, that kind of like, then you don't have an excuse for not being doing things unless you have too many things to do and the sheer number of things overwhelm you.
Lars: So absolutely. No, and I think that is, that is a good tip and we've mentioned it a couple of times, the hold list from that we, I think, share in the Level 2 seminars as well. It was a very helpful category for me to establish. I will still use my someday/maybe list for the majority of things. And if I, if there's a part of me that feels bad about putting it on the someday/maybe list, then I have that sort of, it's pretty close, don't worry, it's still there and you can just enable it and activate it when you feel that the time is right. But it was really helpful for me to make sure that we that I move these things around in my system because on my list right now, I have 10 next actions to do at the office and all of them are pretty straightforward. So, it's just nice and it's so much more productive in getting them done. And it's so much more productive in feeling good about all the stuff that I'm not doing that I'm able to park those on those lists. So, for me, I think I've mentioned this now, it must be 4 years, I think that has been my project to limit the amount of projects and actionable things on my this. And now I'm actually getting to that place where it is starting to really feel good.
Morten: The therapy is working. The therapy is working.
Lars: Yeah. We started this podcast in 2019. That's 4 years ago. So, yeah, it lines up.
Morten: It does. I'm happy for you. And I'm also— well, I'm happy for me too, because as we've been talking about this, of course, it is a little bit. You learn when you teach people. That's what we tell everyone who wants to become a trainer, by the way, is that you learn getting things done by teaching it to others. And that's what we are doing here. We're trying to teach you listeners and viewers on YouTube what we know and give this methodology to you so that you can get better lives or at least get in control of what you can get in control and try and lower your stress levels. So I just want to come back for a little. You mentioned something that, you know, the reflection. And when people say, I don't have time for, you know, reflect and decide. And you know that the biggest problem in the modern world for anyone that that's, you know, like a potential client of ours, they have too much to do. There are too many things that potentially they can do something about. And if you just, if you just, you know, the Thinking Fast and Slow is a famous book, read it. Thinking Fast and Slow by who is that again? I don't know. Yeah, Nettop. I think it is a Nobel Prize winner in mathematics or something like that. Chemistry? Not at least for Thinking Fast and Slow. He's not an author. That's not his authorship. He didn't get a Nobel Prize for that in literature. But he is a very noble and fine gentleman, I'm sure. I never met him. But Mr. Kahneman, he tells us very clearly in that book, you need to slow down to speed up. That's, by the way, a quote from David Allen, is that you can't make decisions with your gut all the time. Many of the decisions that we do these days in this modern fast-paced world needs reflection. You need to just slow your processor down and, you know, slow your brain down and take time to think something through until the extent of, you know, as much as you think you should to create desired outcomes. And for instance, a lot of people that I know is going just saying yes to everything that's in front of them and anything that receives their email in their email inbox and says, yes, okay, of course I will do this, and do not do any kind of reflection. Is this actually something I should do? To do according to my areas of focus and responsibility. And if you don't do that, your list will grow. If you're always a yes person, or if you then on the top of that is a time optimist and forget to time the— you take it, it takes 10 minutes times 3.14, you know, time it with pi, it's always a good idea. If you're on top of that, you end up getting too much to do. And without that reflection, that little step back and say, okay, what is this? Am I going to do something about it? Yes or no? Seriously, am I going to do something about this? Is it so important? And without that reflection, you are committing to things you maybe you shouldn't commit to. Any other reflections from your part on reflection?
Lars: No. And again, it all comes back to completely agree. And it all comes back to the amount of information coming at us and trying to slow down and actually managing what shows up and being highly critical of what you're allowed to show up. And then at least if it does show and you do need to deal with it, then reflect to make sure that you end up working on the right things at the right time. We've spoken about that clarifying takes time, but then again, the weekly review is also such a critical habit. And again, can, can be a challenge to, to actually get, get done. With all the stuff coming at us.
Morten: Yeah. My notes is that the very end, I noted that we talked in the pre-show a little bit addiction to stress. You mentioned something that I wrote down as addiction to stress, something you would like to mention here, Lars?
Lars: Yeah. Yeah. I think that was, that came from my experience in working with individuals in high sort of complex information environments, it, that it, there just seems to be sort of a, a level that your brain gets stuck at, so to speak. So what I mean, so when, when you work in really complex environments with a lot of complex information, it just seems that your brain sort of gets into the habit and that's, that's how complex the, the world is. That means that when simpler times show up, meaning when I disconnect from work, my brain is still looking for that complex amount of information. Uh, and that is when I will then reach to, to Google News or the same level of stress. Yeah, exactly. And, and, and I didn't take the stress perspective on it, but, but, but perhaps there is something to that in, in that you're just, you know, searching out for, there must be some information here to, to feed my brain because that is what I do 9 to 5. So I will continue to look for a certain amount of complexity in how I experience the world. Outside of the working hours as well. So I think that's where it came from. Does that sound, sound right?
Morten: That sounds right. And that's just one of the things I would, you know, there has done a lot of research on stress and, and there is some very good illustrations. I think we will, do you have that on yours, on the, on your site, Lars? Where's the stress curve?
Lars: I don't remember off the top of my head, but I know which one you mean.
Morten: Yeah. So if you can make a note of that.
Lars: We've linked to it before. Yeah.
Morten: I'll link to it again. Just link it because it is a curve where it tells you a little bit about what is positive stress, because it is something actually that is positive. Not all stress is negative. If you don't have any expectations of yourself or anyone else has any expectations of you, you don't get out of bed in the morning. Expectations and commitments are what drives us to achieve something. And if nobody expects anything of you or you don't expect anything of yourself, you are— well, you don't have stress, you sleep. And if you do that too much, you will get depressed. So don't do that. But to have, you know, you get up, you get to do something, and then the stress level rises throughout the day. And in the morning, maybe you will get more positive stress because it's like, you know, I used the analogy of the Ferrari where when you don't know getting things done, you don't know you actually have a Ferrari. Which is your brain, and you're not using it optimally. So when you apply Getting Things Done, it's like applying a good wholesome service for your car where they oil up everything and everything can move smooth and fast. And then you come to what I call the optimal experience of Getting Things Done, is that you can drive that car at the right level of speed with the right level of excitement. Because you can be excited by being stressed, you know, I'm doing this and this wind in my hair and it's a little too fast through that curve, but I managed. And you feel a mastery of your work and your life and you feel that, well, I'm doing well here. But if you drive too fast, that's if you say yes to too many things, you try to do fast, it's like, okay, the tires are not gripping as they should in the curves. Now I feel that my system is not working and I'm getting a little scared. And that emotion is when you have too much stress. If you have too much stress for too long time, you will be burned out. And we have an episode on how you can get there if you'd like. You can look at that or listen to that. But to have the right amount of stress is not bad. But as Lars says, it can be difficult even if you are long-term G2Gers just to shut that off. And I don't know if it's because I'm older than you, Lars. I'm at the age where, well, okay, when I finish my work, I don't have to think about it. It's not But I read emails, not emails, but I read news with the same intensity as I do my work. So I just want to follow the world. And maybe I also have some part of me going, I need a little, maybe I'm also addicted a little to stress. Okay, it's confession time here now.
Lars: I'm on your couch now, Lars. Exactly. Welcome to Dr. Lars.
Morten: Yeah, no, but it is, and it is, you know, you the listener who's been listening to this, you understand Lars and I are not perfect. We are not. We are human beings. All we, all we want from getting things done is to help us and achieve a stress-free productivity, which leads again to the freedom that want to do what we want in our lives. And we are on the road with you, and we are your companions through that journey of learning, getting things done. So perfection is not what we're looking for.
Lars: Exactly.
Morten: Exactly. Yeah. Are you— what do you think? Are we at the end of this episode?
Lars: I think so. I think the sun is— it looks like the sun is setting. On your end. So that's perfect timing as well. Part of the reason why I also was hoping we could do this episode today was that there was— oh yeah, that's a nice view. For those of you not on YouTube, now you have to go and check out Morten's or my channel to see the view outside Morten's window. No, part of the reason why I wanted to also do this episode was that I think I mentioned it last time, but the last 6 months I've seen more people on sick leave with stress than I have since I started with GTD. So I don't know what the specific reasons are, but hopefully this will help more people to pick up GTD or improve their GTD practice or pick up just some things that will hopefully help them in all this. Because things are moving faster and faster. It's not going to slow down. AI is not going to give you that peace of mind. It might help and curious to see how that evolves this year. But, you know, limiting your inputs and, and, and, you know, restraining yourself if you're in that, that boat of perhaps taking in too much information, being very critical of those and, and making sure that what goes on your list actually has to go on your list and throw their stuff out or put it on someday maybe or whatever it might be. And then make sure to reflect on that system day to day, but also the higher horizons. I think that's sort of my summary of what we've been going through, really being much more aware of this because 2024 and beyond really requires it.
Morten: Yeah. And I just want to, at the end of this, just tag along with, when we do the capture, when you write things down, and I suggest people doing that in these three categories, don't categorize them, but if you have things in these 3 categories roaming around in your head, that might be a good way of, you know, moving from stressed to stress-free. Things you are going to do something about, some things that you might want to do something about but haven't decided yet, and things you are worrying about. So just get it out of your head and into your system, and just doing that Creating a worry, my worries list, where you get to, can I do something about this? No, I can't. But it's not leaving my head. It's worrying me. Then create a worry list. When, if you can't do something about it, but it doesn't leave your head, then the worry list is a good place. By the way, introduced by our good friend and colleague Jukka Bachmann in Finland. This list has been with me since he talked about the first time, and it is a lifesaver. When I get my weekly review, I swim in that list. I swim in my worries. And I said, come on, I need you to attack me now. I will give you 10 minutes to make me feel down and out of— I'm powerless. Ukraine war, and, you know, election in the.
Lars: US.
Morten: War in Israel. Israel and Gaza and, you know, whatnot, the downturn in the economy, the electric prices, the prices of gasoline, you know, there's a lot of things to worry about. So write them down, get them out of your head. And the things you can't do something about, if you let them worry you, you worry about something you can't do something about, then that's not very productive. So I suggest to stop doing that. And the best way is to get it out of your head. Okay, Loris. And will you take us out?
Lars: Happy to. And we always do that with a quick reminder of the GTD Summer Camp 2024. Still really excited about that. I just checked and as of this recording, half of the tickets are now sold. So that is a nice milestone already now.— as of recording time, 5 months out. So June 15th to 16th, that is when we will meet in Denmark. As we mentioned last time, people from Europe have signed up, North America, South America, Asia. It's so cool that it is really truly becoming a global event, and we, we really hope to see you there and hang out. You know, it's a great weekend, very cheap, nicest people are GTDers. So I'm sure you'll have a great weekend if you can find the time and the resources to come and join us there. ttdsummercamp.com is the place to go to find more information about this.
Morten: And just one little tagline on top of that is that I think a lot of, I think maybe people that comes from abroad think that, well, I don't know what I, how will I get to this place? And I can buy a ticket to Copenhagen, but how do I get there? And then do I need a car? Do I need transportation? And you can indicate I need transportation. In the signup and someone will help you with that. So don't worry, just enlist. You will be positively surprised how easy.
Lars: It is to get there. I agree. I agree. That's been the experience in previous years. Another reminder, vitallearning.eu. Have you been there? Because that is the website to go to, to find all of the different country websites where we operate, we teach GTD, teach Crucial Conversations for mastering dialogue, all of the different offerings you will find at vitallearning.eu, newsletters and everything, how to reach Morten and I, all of that you will find on each of those country websites. And if you're outside the Nordics, cruciallearning.com is the place to go to find your local partners.
Morten: Indeed. And, I hope that this episode has been beneficial for you and that you've learned something and that you do still think Getting Things Done is relevant even if it's 2024. I think it is more relevant than ever. So I hope that you will agree with us. And we wish you good luck continuing learning Getting Things Done. And until next time, stay safe and stay productive. Bye-bye. Bye.
