Episode 118 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 as always, and as always, I'm here with my good friend and colleague Lars Rothschild Henriksen. Prævit Lars. Prævit.
Lars: Morten. Good to see you as always, and it's always good to be with our listeners and viewers out there. 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. We hope that today's episode supports you in that. If you are new to GTD, we always recommend you go back and listen to the first episodes, episodes 1 through 6, to get an introduction to the basics of GTD, the 5 steps. Today's episode number is number 118, and today's episode is our yearly Tools Check-in episode.
Morten: It is, it is. And I am sure that's going to be a very good one. And as always, we are not going to talk about tools we are not using, but what we are using and that we can recommend to you as something Lars and I both like. But we have some more to say in the intro, Lars, about some things that we are going to mention to you. So can you tell me what that is? These teasers.
Lars: Yeah, exactly. So, so we have the, you know, we've been working behind the scenes. We spoke a bit about this at the summer camp, and Morten and I have been talking about this for, for quite a while. We have the GTD Masterclass Retreat being planned right now. So this is a weekend with Morten, with me, and we have David Allen joining us as well. It will be a fantastic weekend. We don't have the location set yet, but we are looking at some very, very nice locations in Denmark to spend a fantastic weekend in the name of GTD. We'll We'll be working with people individually. We'll be talking together. We'll be looking at the higher horizons. We'll be, yeah, we have so many great ideas and we have a fantastic weekend being planned right now. It's not open yet for signups. We're not ready yet to commit to anything, but we wanted to share that with you out there.
Morten: Yes, indeed. What we are looking at is an exclusive event for people who want to learn Getting Things Done. Who want to specifically work on their higher horizons so that you can make sure that you are on track with your purpose, values, and principles for your life and your work. And we want this to be, you know, something that's going to help you change or maintain correct direction in your life and work and to help you up your game in getting things done. And there will be ample opportunity to be coached by either Lars, me, or David, all three of us during that weekend. So yeah, we are looking at some very nice places now, so stay tuned, more information to follow. If you want to already now— that's some people that we talk to says, I don't care what it costs, I don't care when it is, sign me up. If you are interested in this, please send us an email at podcast@vitallearning.dk so that we can put you in our list of people to be contacted when we have some real information about this. So podcast@vitallearning.dk for information when it, when it arrives, and follow the podcast. We will talk about this more later.
Lars: Yeah, absolutely.
Morten: Good. Lars, What do we have on our agenda more than today? I, you see, I use Lars as my system.
Lars: Yeah, no, I'm happy to take on that, that role today. It's just reflecting on, you know, the, the podcasts as we decreased the, the frequency of the podcast. It's, it's even more of a treat because we always, not because we didn't enjoy doing these, these episodes. We spoke about that last time we recorded the latest episode and we're, I'm sure we'll do the same today, is that they're a lot of fun. So it's kind of that, that special chocolate. Now you only get it once a month, so it's even more special now. So I'm just, you know, enjoying, enjoying recording these as we, as we go along. No, like we said in the beginning, it's, it's tools check-in time. We did this in 2021. We did it in 2022. We did it in 2023 around October, I think. So it makes sense to do it now in 2024. And yeah, at least I did sort of a quick brainstorm earlier today on what does it look like today? And just also reflecting back how, how much has changed, which perhaps that's our starting point. Not much has changed, I think, since last time, at least for me. We'll go through all of the different things that we, that we use, but I'm just curious, Morten, if, you know, has your setup changed a lot since last time, or is it close to the same as last year?
Morten: It's fairly close to the same, but it has evolved. So, and maybe encompass some new ways of doing things that has been good. So, and you have a kind of like an agenda for us, haven't you, that we will walk through?
Lars: Yeah. So, well, the place I started was on the, I called it hardware. I don't know if it really captures everything, but when I look at the physical objects. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, because it started off being very hardware computer-centric, but really also the, the physical tools are very much the same. I have my good old capture wallet still, still being used less than less, but I still have it in my bag and it's not going anywhere because there are just those times. And perhaps, you know, a few years ago it was on a weekly basis and now it's more every month, every quarter that I use it, but it's still for those specific moments where I need it, when I'm in a, you know, delivering a seminar and I just, ooh, I, I'm just reminded of something while someone's doing an exercise. I have to capture this. That's just still the perfect tool. So that's when I go to my bag, I'll find my good old Capture Wallet. I'll write something down and put it in my, my good old, uh, you know, portable in tray. I think we used to, used to call it when we had it in the seminar. Um, so we still have that in my bag as well as my support material one. And I have a to-home, you tray as well that I— for stuff that I need to bring to home and drop off there. But otherwise, here at the desk, it's my— I still have the one from GTD Summer Camp 2022. We made— I don't think the white balance caught it, but it's the pad that we gave to participants back then. Still Capture, still use that on a daily basis. It's fun to see. I had a seminar recently with a lot of younger participants. I was definitely the oldest one there, and it was fun for me to hear how they would use GCD and how it would differ where I'm still used to this. They were very digital, no surprise there, but I'm still happy with my paper here. We have the same at home, these just basic A6 pads that we use. We have the wooden in-trays here, both, you know, inbox support material. I have the same ones at home, the ones from Muji, I think they're the name is called. Really, really like that. But on that note, one of the changes that has changed since— has happened since last time was my greater awareness of pens. And I know there will be some summer camp participants out there, they will be very eager and will he join the fountain pen group? And I'm not there yet, but I'm starting to get it now because I had this experience at home where I was writing something down and it was an old pen and it didn't work very well and it it just annoyed me as I was writing it down. So I just, you know, threw it out, picked up a new one, and it was just so much better. And I noticed that change in feeling in how I, you know, how easy it was to actually capture something. So that's, you know, that is now on my radar. I'm starting to learn, fountain pen lovers. Don't expect me to show up at Summer Camp 2025 with, you know, my own set and the right one and the favorite one and all that. But I'm working on it, you know. Someday, someday maybe I'll join the club., but at least I understand now the perspective and it really does have an impact. So I think that's probably the biggest change for me when it comes to physical capture.
Morten: What about you? No, I have, because of the capture wallet has been discontinued from our part and that it's the wallet itself for many is still something they use. I have found. You know, a mini version of this. It is a wallet. It's called— it's from— where is it from really? It's from D. Bramante, 1928. D. Bramante, 1928. It is a double wallet where you can have some cash. It's good when you travel. If you need the cash. And it has an inside part as well where I have my trusted AirTag. No, what's it, what is it called again? Is it an AirTag? Yeah, AirTag.
Lars: Couldn't see your credit card number, Morten, if you.
Morten: Could. Do you want to see my credit card number? Yes, I will not give you that. But what I will show is that I have this very, very small pen. That I found. It's yay big, which is more like the length of your index finger, and it's, you know, maybe 2mm thick. And it has a— you can push and you can write. And what I've done is I put small cards that I found that fits into the wallet. I ran out of them now, I can't show you, but there's some more small cards that goes into one of the credit card slots. And that's enough for me to maintain, you know, emergency notes when something occurs to me, because I am one of those digital persons who I use Siri a lot to capture into the reminders. And I use Siri for both on my watch and my iPhone for this. So that's also part of my hardware. But for capturing, I use Talk about going old school. I have gone pencil, a real old school pencil with an eraser. It's a Faber-Castell Grip 2001, 2.5 HB. This is the— I'm sure people will ask, what is this? And I then use one of the the gifts that we got from David Allen Company many years back. It's an Exacumpta Block Faf. B-L-O-C Faf Exacumpta. I'm sure you can, you have this from the last episodes.
Lars: Yeah, I think we have from earlier.
Morten: Yeah. And this is the reason I like this is it's, you don't have to, one of the things I don't like with the paper notepads is that they are too thick for me. The first time you write on it, it's like you write on the Eiffel Tower. When it's at the end, it becomes more comfortable. And as you can see, I can put as many or as few as I like to the right height of the writing instrument pad. So a physical— what, I'm sorry, and capture, sorry, I have a physical in-tray in the office. I do not have a physical in-tray at home, but I have where I normally would sit. My wife puts right in front of me things I need to see. And I do too. So if there's something I need to do something about, it goes there to be captured. So it doesn't have to be a physical place that you use as an in-tray, as long as you have a dedicated place for that, where it happens and where you will process it.
Lars: So I had a coaching client where there was so much paper in his office that the staff around him knew to put it on his chair. So he just could not sit down without seeing it. And so that was his inbox, at.
Morten: Least when we spoke. Yeah. And he will, you know, the stacks of harm then becomes evident because he will look at it and they will say, huh, what is this? I need maybe to do something about, let me put it here so it doesn't go away. I don't lose it. Yeah. Yes. And are we at capture tools now or just physical objects? I'm not sure where to— Well, no.
Lars: I was just curious about the physical, physical up and just wanted to get back to the writing tools. Like I said, I am, you know, not at sort of anywhere near— I'm still very much of a novice level, but the bad pens don't stay. They go out quickly. No, the one I'm writing with is actually a Crucial Learning pen. But the reason I have that is why I wanted to mention it, because I don't think we mentioned it last time, but I was in Berlin, I think, since our last recording, or did we already mention? That I am now a master trainer in Crucial Conversations as well. So we are both TCD master trainers. We can certify trainers in Getting Things Done. Now I can do the same in Crucial Conversations. So really, really fun and looking forward to training more trainers in Denmark. So that was an easy way to sneak that in. That's why I wanted to give it a try. If we stick to, if we stick to the hardware and perhaps go to the computer side of things, Not much has changed. I have the same Mac Mini at the office, the old Intel box. I haven't updated it because the next version, the M1 Mac Mini that I bought afterwards, doesn't support the dual screen setup that I have here at the office. So had to, had to leave that at home where I have just a single screen here at the office. Still have my Canon DSLR, still have my Elgato Lite, basic Apple setup here. I'm very happy with my MacBook Air, I think the M2. I have that since my wife is still on maternity leave. That was her sort of computer that we bought. I don't know if I can give that back to her because it is—.
Morten: Does she know.
Lars: That? She— I don't think— we'll figure out now she listens. You know, and these are really the famous words, I'll never need anything faster than this. Of course we will, but, but it's, you know, in reality it's It's so fast. It's so nice. You just click on a program and an app and it just opens. It's just there. And it's just such a pleasure to work with. Same watch, good old Apple Watch Ultra. Although I'm not too happy with Siri. It's too slow for me. So I've actually set up and used the Memos app just to capture things. Seems to work better for me. But that actually leads me to the one thing I think that has changed, which is that I have the new iPhone 16 Pro. But it hasn't impacted my workflow. It is basically the same as the 14 with all of the limitations that are there for, you know, what we can get in the EU when it comes to Apple intelligence and things like that. There is not, not much that has changed. It has an action button. I can connect that to the Memos app. Really nice that I can easily capture without even, even looking. So that's a help. I think that the biggest change was that I set it up— just a tip, I don't know if it's even a tip, but it's a helpful thing for me to set it up as a new phone. Normally I would just transfer the old settings, everything set up, but setting it up as a new phone, it really was a pain, setting everything up with all the digital ID stuff that you have, driver's license, health insurance, and all the ID stuff happening. It really took a long time to set up, much longer than I thought, but it was helpful to visit and sort of start from a clean sheet and, you know, set up the screen, set up the widgets, set up everything the way that I wanted with different focus modes, who can get through, what works, etc. Um, set a lot of things up with, with widgets now, shortcut setup, Control Center for, you know, warming up the car and, you know, preparing for meetings and all that stuff. It was nice to revisit and make sure that I have things set up the way that I, that I want. So Didn't really, again, change much about my workflow, but it was, that was a good way to revisit all of those decisions. How are you doing on the hardware side of things?
Morten: Well, I also have the Apple Watch Ultra, the first generation. I'm super happy with it. And I don't understand why you think it is slow because for me it is not. So maybe you have slow data connection or something.
Lars: I don't know. I'm just impatient.
Morten: That's just— Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No, but to capture it, it's just the hold in the side button and send remind me of, and then what you wanted to remind of. And if you have a location or a time you need to be reminded of this, you just say that. And I'm reminded. So that's cool. Hardware-wise, I'm still on the iPhone 14 Pro. I decided the 16 Pro didn't have anything that I felt I needed at the moment. So what I did need was a better battery. So I did, by some happenchance, the battery of the 14 Pro was deprecated faster than I thought possible, but it was like 70-something percent battery, which is after 2 years is a little surprising. My wife has the 13 Pro, and she has more battery juice in that old phone compared to the younger 14 Pro. So I changed the battery at, what do you call it, Apple premium reseller or something like that, some official, so I get a good battery. And when I went through the same pain that you did, but I did just backup to iCloud and then download everything again, but you have to go through the logins for everything. And I do understand, I have too many apps on my phone. I have a project to clean out the phone of apps I don't need, but it is, it is a little difficult. I, I do agree, and it is a pain, but I like my setup, so I didn't go blank and then install one by one. I maybe I should, that would be probably a better, if not, it will not be faster, but it will be a better way to clean all the old cruft out of the phone. Yeah. Yeah. So that's my hardware in the phone and the watch part, whatever. And then in the hardware, oh yeah, Macs. Sorry. Well, I have an M1. MacBook Air, which I love. It's fast. It's probably not as fast as the M2, but it is more or less instantaneously. And a big leap up from the Intel Macs when it comes to speed and convenience. And I have an M2 Apple Mac Mini. I did that step before, and that has also been a really nice leap into the future. The M2 is fast, and that is really, you know, the time you save from you start it or you take it out of sleep. It's just, and when you want to open an app, it's super fast. So I feel blessed hardware-wise when it comes to Macs. So, yes, I can't remember. You talked about Macs and watch and phone.
Lars: Yeah, I think that's about it. That's about all I use. You know, I use the MacBook Air for presentations and seminars and just works nicely.
Morten: Yeah. And I remember one thing. I have an anniversary. To celebrate. Yeah, because back in 2014, 10 years ago, I bought a Microsoft Surface Pro. I think it is Surface Pro 3. It's still with us and it's still working. And that is my presentation PC. And when I give my courses and when we give both GTD and Crucial Conversations, I use that. For those presentations. And I use it also for when we do— I do my workshops in the GTD courses when we sell a workshop included in Microsoft To Do, Calendar, and Outlook. And it works perfectly. It's still fast and it's not bogged down. And I'm super happy because it's— the price now is into, you know, if you take 10 years, the price and divide in 10 years, and then every month, and then every week is like next to nothing. Every, every, and it is good for nature, you know, that longer you can keep your tech without changing it or handing it down to someone. Well, handing it down, it's not a bad thing. But buying new tech is, of course, something you and I have had a past on. I know we are both, you know, techno, techno, what do you call it, technoholic. Holics. It's, but it is good to have something that really lasts, and I'm super happy with that. Yeah, that's hardware-wise.
Lars: Yeah, no, and I should add that as well. I still have that. Obviously, we do the, we do the same kind of setup activities, so, so I'll frequently bring my, my Surface. I don't think it's as old as, as yours, but yeah, absolutely works, works well. It's, uh, it's quite impressive for all the Apple stuff that we talk about using it. So yeah, it works well.
Morten: The one thing that I really like about it is it doesn't have any bloatware. It doesn't have any, you know, that's when you buy a PC, uh, non-Microsoft PC, they all bundle it with a lot of crap. I'm sorry, but it's like things you don't need that slows the machine down over time. And I don't know why people put up with that, like antivirus and yeah. Being an old IT guy is kind of like a mystery to me why people put up with that.
Lars: I can kind of feel that old IT guy putting his head up. You know why, do you?
Morten: Yeah. Grumpy, grumpy.
Lars: Yeah. I don't know what the status is today. It's been, it's been too long since I, since I saw those new PCs. But what I did install on my machines, if we transition now to, to different capture tools or, you know, ways to, ways to reach you, um, of course we have our internal platforms where we use the Google Suite and we have the, the rooms and the direct chat. For, for mail, I still use my Apple Mail client. On my Mac. It's fine. It's good. I think it's pretty quick, which is something that is critical to me and the integration with Apple Reminders list that we spoken about last year as well. So the ability to send that email, I need a waiting for, I can drag that email over to my list and just, you know, specify just if the subject of the email is not sufficiently a reminder. So it has that link back to the email. I still really, really like that. I don't use it for everything. You know, some else, I don't need to have that email with me on my list. I just go ahead and write it directly on the list. But it's nice to have that, that ability. I think for the most part it searches fine. I like the way it groups the threads of emails in there. So, so for the most part I'm fine. But I've also been playing around with other email clients, the reason being that I'm about one day a week helping my office neighbor to, to with some work on his businesses. And he is on the Outlook side of things, the Microsoft 365. So, it's given me a chance to also get some more in-depth practical, you know, experience with these because it's been a while, which is both interesting for myself but also good for having that awareness when we talk to clients and do the setup workshops that you mentioned before in GCD seminars. So, I've been playing with Outlook on the Mac, still not a fan. I think many people are really, they used to be very happy with it at least on the iOS side, but on the Mac it's just, it's an old thing that can only do half of what you can do on Windows. I had one person in the seminar where everyone had Windows and she was on her MacBook and she could clearly see that, you know, there were a lot of things that you just couldn't do on the Outlook side of things. So it works fine for the things that it can do, but it's still slow. And the reason I'm saying that is also because the third email client that I'm using for a separate project is Spark. I think it was one of our trainers, Carsten, that mentioned this to me, you know, a while back, and I figured I'd give this a try, and it works very well. It's even faster than Mail. Doesn't do the nice threading that I'm looking for, so from that perspective, I think Apple Mail is still better. But otherwise, Spark is really nice, very quick to work with. What's it about Spark? It's just the, I think, the nice plain UI. It's very much focused on efficiency and it has some basic functionality. The things that I need there, I think that that's the free version and you can get the fancy version with AI and all that. I just use the basic email client and it works. Works very nicely. Other than that, on the, you know, I mentioned Reminders already. Of course, that's where I have my list as well. We'll get to that. But that's an inbox for me as well. Same goes for Memos, the Memos app, standard app that you have on your iPhone if you have an iPhone. I have on my Mac and my iPad as well.
Morten: When you say Memos, it's the voice recorder, right?
Lars: Yes, yes. So it's called the Memos app. But yes, it's the voice recorder exactly. So I have that integrated again with my Action Button. And lastly, I have my, the Notes app. So again, the standard default Notes app on iOS and all Apple devices. I still use that for capturing. So if we were, you know, we were, we had some agenda items to discuss before we started this podcast. Where did I capture that? Well, I created a new note and just made some quick notes in there. So that's an inbox for me as well. I have a separate area in the Notes app, which is my inbox. I'm still really a big fan of that. It's a simple thing, but I, you know, something I can capture in my— you know, most things I can capture in my Reminders app, just one line of text, or I can speak to Siri. Sometimes we're friends and, you know, we can make that work. But sometimes you just need more space. I need to draw something. I need to, you know, write some longer text. I need to create some bullets. I need to brainstorm some things. Notes really works really well for that. For that. I think those are sort of the overall digital capture tools that I use. What are you using these days?
Morten: Well, I'm trying to get, become good friends with the Mail app, but because a lot of the things that I do when it comes to potential clients and sales leads and anything that has to do with sales and follow-up of seminars and webinars and what we do towards clients, we use Pipedrive. And that's an online, you know, it's a web app inside your browser. So I use that a lot. The reason being is that because it has a waterproof GTD-esque system, when it's, you know, you, you're finished the meeting, you tick it off as done, because you need to tick it off as done or it becomes red. So then before you tick it off, when you tick it off, it comes up a new box where what activities do you need to do after this? So do you need to make a follow-up mail? You need to write, you know, do you have a to-do to yourself or etc.? So it's a really good system that way. And just a little update on that front, I've had a meeting with Pipedrive regarding creating— there is something called activities inside Pipedrive. For those of you who know what that is, I'm talking to them that I suggested that when you do your setup of Pipedrive, you are walking through, you're going through a wizard, a setup wizard, and one of the questions could be, in Pipedrive you have activities, are you familiar with Getting Things Done methodology? You can just you know, tick this box and click OK, then they will be very GTD-esque. So automatically it will be the default one, be— it will be a Waiting For, and then you have an Agenda For, etc., etc. So you can use that as a way to, to create a more GTD-esque version of, of Pipedrive out the box. We've done this manually, so we do have that in, in Pipedrive in you know, the people who use it in the Nordic region. So, but I, I'm, I, a lot of my time is inside Pipedrive when it comes to email, but I do have some emails that is, you know, personal and also something I would like to follow up outside that's nothing to do with the clients. Then it becomes, then I use the Mail app for that as you do. So you can drag and drop an email or you can just go in Siri, go say, Remind me of this, and it becomes automatically, that email becomes a part of the, in your inbox, in your reminders app, which is my GTD task lists at the moment. So did I forget something?
Lars: Yeah. So you have your Apple Mail, you have your PopDrive. I guess you use reminders as well, like me, because you said you used Siri that. So it's, yeah, no, I think we, yeah, I think we covered it. We can move on.
Morten: Calendar, what do you use? Did you say that?
Lars: Uh, yeah, so we have the calendar set up as well. Um, so I, in, in, in my setup, I also like to stick to the plain Apple Calendar. Yeah, it really is much of the same as last year. Um, no, one thing that I would highlight in changing and using that, sometimes I still go in and use the Google Web Interface because If I need to move a meeting, I get the option to actually add a note to why am I moving this meeting, or if I'm canceling one, I can add that note. I'd lose that functionality when I'm using an external client like we have in the Apple Calendar client. So sometimes I'll still use that, but for the most part, I will go in and just use the standard one. I have everything set up with my work calendar, home calendar. I have access to my wife's calendar, the kids' calendar. One thing that has really been nice with the latest updates that have shown up is the is the focus modes and how that impacts what calendars you see. So, when I'm at work, I see my work calendars. When I'm at home, I see my home calendars. And that is actually a very helpful thing that has happened. So, you can enable that and disable that. And I actually, I really find value in.
Morten: That. But, but how do you make sure that they don't collide?
Lars: So, if you disable it, if I need to. Yeah, so there's an option at the top, so you can always disable and enable it. So it'll say, you know, your, you know, focus mode enabled, and then you can disable that to see all calendars. So, okay, so if I'm at, you know, over the weekend, I'll focus on the personal ones, of course. But, you know, if I'm planning something for next weekend and I'm sitting at work, obviously I need to be able to see what's in my personal calendar.
Morten: Yeah, I haven't tried that. That sounds, um, But it is a good thing if you really want to make it, you know, the watertight seal between those two spheres of your life.
Lars: So, personal and work. Watertight, but still easily accessible.
Morten: Yeah, but it is watertight. You will not see your work calendar unless you distinctly go in and say, yes, I want to see my work calendar. My only, I don't know, I know that as a GTDer, I do not need to remember what's on my calendar. I just need to look through it on a regular basis to see what comes, what is coming towards me. But one of the things that I would feel uncomfortable with is to do what you've done, and I'll explain why. Maybe other people there who feel like me will not feel normal, but that is, I need to see both to make sure that I'm not planning something on top of the other. Like if I need to take in the week, I I need to go to a dentist or I have to take my car to the shop for repair, then that will be on my personal calendar. But it has to ensure that nobody— I have to see, can I do that 2 weeks from now? Can I put something on my personal calendar in the weekday? And not being able to see both makes it a little Hmm. Yes. I, it doesn't sit well with me. I just want to tell you, somebody else feel the same now. So, okay.
Lars: You're not alone. No, but I recognize that from, you know, so where, if you look back a few years when Google came out with their, I don't even remember the name anymore, but they had those that they took their inbox and they split it into, you know, promotions and social things and newsletters. Yeah. And they, they sort of tried to help you with that. I disabled that right away. So, you know, it sounds like kind of that same reaction. From this perspective, I don't need to, you know, I see my wife's calendar. I don't need to see that she, you know, I see it actually in the widget now, so it doesn't affect the widget. She has to pick up some packages that were sent to her. It's not adding value for me to see that. So, from that perspective, those are the kinds of things that I don't need. To see play dates that the kids have. I would see them in my calendar if I did not have this filter set up. So that is why I need to sort of, you know, filter them out, or it's helpful for me to filter them out. The other thing that is helpful is that they have integrated it with reminders now. So I can see the reminders that are due on a specific day or specific time. They show up in the calendar as well. And I was very, very sort of, when they first announced it, I was very, I'm not sure I'm going to like this. But I really do. That's the result for me. It's really helpful. I like seeing it in the calendar that I have a reminder at 5 o'clock today or tomorrow. I have, you know, thought that I could do these 8 things and I'm not going to be able to do 8 things. So it gives me sort of a chance to move things around and work with it. So it's something that I really like and it's made me actually stick even more to the, to the, just the Apple Calendar part. Good, good, good catch. What do you What do you use then?
Morten: No, well, I use— what I use and what I prefer to use is in a transition now because I've been trying to— the more I've gone into the Apple's world with my, you know, the reminders, then you are dragged into Notes, which is integrating, you know, good with reminders. And then you have the calendar where you can drag and drop from reminders onto the Apple Calendar, things that you need to promote up. But I'm in limbo between Google Calendar created as a— I use Safari, create like you can create an app from Safari and I put Google inside that. So I have a separate app as a you know, as calendar would be an app, the Google Calendar will be an app. And I like the interface better in the Google Calendar, but I don't know how well that works with— and we know the integration are not as tight. You can't drag and drop things there. So, but it is The reason I'm using— I'm liking that better is because I interact with a lot of Outlook users, PC people, Outlook users. And if I use my calendar, Apple Calendar, if you want to share a link somewhere, you must be very specific where you put it because you have a URL field in the Apple Calendar that doesn't exist anywhere else outside Apple. If you create a URL there, people in the Outlook world will not see your link, and not even in the Google Calendar it's visible. So, you have to put it as a link in either the notes field or the place field, and that's kind of like, what's going on there, Apple? And this URL field does not sit well with me. So, that's That's kind of my gripe. And I have found a very peculiar bug and it involves you, Loris, and Aspen. I don't know why, but we are on the same Google system in the Vital Learning Group and your calendar events pops up on my phone.
Lars: So I know what you are doing. Yeah, you need to stay on top of what I'm.
Morten: Doing. I really don't need to do that. I really don't need to feel that. That's extra stress for me. But I understand you had a crucial conversation on Mastering Dialogue course and it pops up on my phone as, ah, now it starts. You're getting close.
Lars: I go, what? There was a certain medical company in Denmark where I was last week.
Morten: That is correct. Yes. And that's, and that is a bug I don't like. And I don't know if I solved it now, but You may want to check if I— because I think I'm an administrator in this and I turned off from my phone, do not receive reminders about activities from this calendar. And I just want to make sure that you try make that because I just recently did that because it annoyed me a lot. So if I did that, did it turn it off for you? Because you need notifications.
Lars: I'm good.
Morten: You're good.
Lars: Okay, I'm good. But maybe I came across your bug earlier. Yeah, maybe I can, because I also have that, and I— for me, it showed up as a shared calendar, a calendar that was shared with my Gmail account, which would then show up on my iPhone because it was shared that way. So by just not seeing it in the web app, that actually disabled it for me. So if you had, you know, if I go into Google Calendar with your login, if you're seeing my calendar, you know, at the same time that you're seeing your own, I just disabled that, and I think that actually fixed it.
Morten: But It was— I didn't do that for me. I turned it off there. And I, you know, it kind of looks like it is frustrating because you and Espen's calendar are the worst for me. Because what happened is that I would receive on my phone. I don't subscribe to— I can't— when I open the app, I don't see your calendar. I can see it in the list of calendars I can choose to see, because if I want to make a meeting with you, that's a good idea. And we share calendars just because of that. And then, but what happened is that I don't see your calendar. I see your calendar in the list. I deselect it so it's not selected. I don't see the calendar in the calendar view, but notification still shows up on my phone and it bugs me. So, but I think I found that just into the calendar and turn off notification for all activities in this calendar. I'm not sure if that turned it off for you, but If you're telling me it did not, I'm happy. And we can both be in the Zen moment again.
Lars: And our listeners learned a new thing. Yeah.
Morten: Yeah.
Lars: Yeah. I think on my list, we have two things left. We have the, you know, the list setup and reference and support materials. I think those were sort of the key things still missing on my checklist here. But I think we already touched on much of it. Reminders. Still the system that I use, very happy with it. Still have much of the same setup as last year where I have a group now for home-related lists, group for work-related lists. I have a group for errands list and a group for some other lists that I, that I need. I'm very straightforward. Still don't use tags. I have my projects list. I have my next actions list. They're not linked. Still works fine for me.
Morten: I will take some counseling after.
Lars: Get ready. I know that you'll want to have your hashtag set up or tag set up. Works fine. I have made some adjustments. I think I might have made them already last year, but at the top where I think it defaults to 6 sort of big tiles at the top left where you have today and planned and completed and all that, customizing those, but also customizing that I made my own smart list for what I want to see today because What I want to see on the today list is, is overdue things and things that are due today. I don't want to see things that are due today and location specific because I have some reminders when I come home. I need to remember to do this on, you know, 2 days a week. That shouldn't show up there. And I also don't want to see if I'm reminded about something at 3 o'clock today. I don't want to see that.
Morten: Are you telling me that you are easily distracted, Loris?
Lars: I'm saying that I'm very particular, uh, just like I'm, you know, hinting at with the pens and all that. Um, this is actually something for me. I really want to just, just see the stuff that I said, you know, last revisited this today. Uh, so, so I actually had to make my own today list, um, and that is then pinned to the top. So it's one of those tiles. Now you can— I— it wasn't obvious to me when I, when I first came across it, but you can have your own lists at those at the top there. So, um, that's something that I have. And the remaining thing in lists is the agendas list. I still have that actually in Notes. I don't have that in Reminders. For me, I want to have that historical information. I want to, you know, what we discuss when. I want to be able to track that stuff that's ongoing. You know, we spoke about the masterclass retreat. I have that as an ongoing thing on the agenda list for you and me. What's the status for today? Well, we're recording this October 14th. So I would say on October 14th, we discussed this and this and this, just so I have that. And I don't need to add it to the agenda list again. And I don't need to remember what we spoke about last time. So for me, it's sort of that holacracy perspective on tactical meetings. I still use that. And that just doesn't work with, for me, at least with having lists in Reminders. So I think that's, that's the reminders and notes. And then, then I have, like I.
Morten: Said, reference material, right?
Lars: Notes is reference as well. Yes, yes. So for my agenda list, support material and reference. But then I have my, my settlement planner as well. That's been a lot of fun to actually play around with and try to set up. You know, like I said, I'm working one day a week now in a Microsoft environment. Set up a new business area, setting up a process. Yes, and it's a lot of fun to set that up. It was kind of a, you know, setting up a shared overview, looking into how should we then set it up, what makes sense for these different buckets or different stages in the process, using the assignment, using that as a collaboration tool. We have the labels, we had the due dates. It was nice experience. And it's very solid, very good tool, and they keep improving it. So I'm very happy with it, and it was fun to work with. And yeah, lastly, if I should wrap up, then my stuff in Notes for reference and support. Notes, still great. If I have a client meeting, I go to Notes. If we do a podcast, I have a template in Notes that I will set up if we are going traveling. We went to Cyprus a few weeks ago. I have a checklist for the travel. So if I do my weekly review, I have my checklist in there. I have my daily checklist in there, which I'm still loving. It's completely dependent on this now. I tweak it frequently. It's a widget on my desktop and it's the first thing I click in the morning, uncheck everything. Okay, starting off with the calendar. Going through that. Okay, next, which of the inboxes do you want to empty first, or should I go to the lists? And yeah, still, you know, big fan of that daily checklist. It just helps me so much. And yeah, lastly, I still use a bit of OneNote, again, being in the Microsoft world, also for some of the meeting, earlier meeting notes on the meetings that we have in that business, again, using the Holacracy template. Works really well as well for me. But overall, still very much in notes and happy with it. I think that's about it. What about you?
Morten: Yeah, just before we go to me, maybe for those of you who heard the word holacracy and wonder what that is, there is an episode for that. I'm sure if I ask Lars now, he can put it in the notes that he will create a link to that episode or at least mention that.
Lars: I'll pitch a point to you in that actually. We have that interview. It's episode 101.
Morten: 101. Okay. So 101. So no, I use Apple Reminders as you do. I'm not, I'm trying to keep it as simple as I can. And when I hear you talk about Planner, I Tags, yeah, tags are, but they are as simple as I can get them. No, and when you talk about Planner, Microsoft Planner, I hear in your voice there is a, oh, like a small child get new toy. Absolutely. I must admit that when you first start talking about it, I smelled, is it something 'Is some productivity pornography going on here?' Or is it really? But I understand that it is not now. It's genuine. You know, you are excited about technology, which is quite okay as long as it doesn't hinder you from doing your work, which is some people I know, myself included before, have been doing. You're more interested in fiddling with your new toy than doing the.
Lars: Work.
Morten: And then if that's you, then that's productivity pornography for you. No, I use the Apple Reminders as vanilla as I can without, but I use my tags for connecting active, desired outcomes, work, and personal to the next actions that I have and waiting for some agenda items.. I keep my Agenda for inside reminders. That works for me. I don't miss the archive bit that you feel you need. I don't feel the need for that. Something that I don't know if I told about— I talked about before, but I'm using now something I just call repeating tasks. Like, I need to water my orchids every Sunday and reminder to fertilize them when that's appropriate. And that is showing up every Sunday. So it's repeating tasks that just show up at the specific time. And I have a specific list for those, so it doesn't bother me. And I also use— Yeah, okay. So the repeating task list is also my ticklers. So if I I need to be reminded of something on a regular basis, that shows up as well. Something I need to consider, like, see if I have something I can talk about. Yeah, we have, we are selling the team book now in our, in our webshop. I have, are we, or I have a tickler saying, are we sold out of the team book? Because then we need to, because we have only one copy left, as speaking of the team book signed by both David and Ed Lamont. So, but after that, I have maybe 15 books left for that's only signed by David, but I need to have that show up on my radar on a regular basis because I need them to start the project on, you know, changing that. Product in the, in our web pages. Yeah, and some, some other ticklers also as well that, that comes back and comes back to me on a regular basis. So yeah, when it comes to notes, I have two levels of notes. We have active notes, notes that are being used at the moment, something I need to take and use, I need on a recurring basis, I come back to it. That lives in notes. But things that are finished, like finished project notes or some information that I think, well, this is not going to be— it's going to be valuable information I might need in the future, but it's not active now. It will become— go into DEVONthink, which is my database for that. It's easily searchable and it's easy for me to find that. And the reason I'm using that is the searchability. It is really good. So I can find and retrieve things there. And it has an extra layer of, I feel like, security when it comes to documents and notes I've taken on my Remarkable, that it is on my local machine here, not in the cloud. Which makes me feel more comfortable if somebody should— because I have client-sensitive materials there, so, and if you can break into, what do you call it, encrypted database on an encrypted disk on an encrypted software— sorry, operating system— good luck. So I feel more comfortable with that. And yeah, so when things are finished, I will export them as PDFs and put put them into Devonthink for more long-term retrieval. So because the Notes app can get really clogged down with a lot of notes that's, you know, not, well, they're not active at the moment. If you are not cleaning, I don't know, how often do you clean? I don't. Okay. You're one of those guys.
Lars: Yeah. Lars. No, that's why I put them there because I want to keep them. So I have, I'm just looking now. I have 465 notes.
Morten: They're not going anywhere. Okay. I probably do have a little less than yours. How do you see that? In the size. Okay. So I have 260. So, but I, that's, I haven't cleaned for a while. So, but it is, there is something there that is ongoing updated notes that I need for things and some things that can be cleaned away. So I will do that.
Lars: And that's, I'm not sure I understand what do you clean away? Because none of that is something that I want to. I delete it.
Morten: Okay. Because it is, it is, it is every time you open it, it has to open a bigger and bigger database. At some point it's going to go, it's going to be a little slow. And I don't have that happen to me, but I think it is around 1,000 or more notes, at least what I've heard in other, in podcasts, they talk about notes that it starts to slow down when it gets big database. And there are things that you might not want to keep forever. Like I do some translation notes I want to share with my wife. And when I share that, then kind of like, okay, been there, done that, has no future value. It can be deleted. So yeah, that's me. Where are we at the end? Or have you got some more?
Lars: I think we are. I think that the last thing I want is perhaps to do now because you started talking about different tools. And I think one of the reasons also why I'm sticking to so many of the plain tools is, is what will hopefully happen going forward with all the, the AI stuff. And again, being in the EU, um, the, I don't know if, what we'll ever get and what, yeah, exactly. What, what we'll get and when it will work and all that. Exactly, exactly. So, but I'm, you know, that is also part of the reason why if I stay within the ecosystem, then I know that the AI will have access to it. I don't have high hopes as to how helpful it will be. But, you know, I'm imagining that there will be a few cases where there will be some suggestions, or I will search for something and say, oh, actually, you spoke about it in this meeting. So again, that's part of the reason why I like the history as well. That it could perhaps go in and grab that. But other than that, you know, looking forward, I don't see many changes. I'm incorporating some AI into my work, but not very much. Less than— no, probably as little as I would have thought. Let's see if it changes in the future. But I don't really see much changing going forward. I'm happy with the setup that I have. If AI can do some cool things, then I'll incorporate that. But otherwise, I don't see any major changes going forward. I don't know, what about, what about you?
Morten: No, when it comes to AI, I am using more and more ChatGPT, and that is just to, as an idea generator for me. I'm, you know, I want to do this, and I'm trying to sit down and be creative. Sometimes I'm a little too tired, and I ask ChatGPT to come up with some starting points, and that's been really fulfill for me. I'm reminded of one of the things that I would like to— maybe we will create a future episode on this topic because one of the things that I'm reminded of is that I had a few years back meeting with some of the developer or part of the developer team of the Microsoft To Do app at the time. And one of the first things they asked me, what do you think about to do an AI. And I said, well, this is all it is, long before we started hearing about ChatGPT and OpenAI and all the others. And I said, well, and I think this is valid still, is that I do not trust an AI to make decision for me. It can advise me based on history, but I want to make the decision myself. For what I need to get done, like the clarifying, organizing, getting things done should always be left to a human. If not, if it is left to an AI, it might, and let me put it this way, the AI don't have access yet, maybe in the future, to how you feel, how are you today, how's your physical and mental well-being. Are you slightly depressed or are you happy? Are you, you know, and to have AI decide what you should do, it might not take into account all the things that, all the variables that goes into the choosing as we do in that the trifold nature of, sorry, not the trifold nature of work, it's called, now it eludes me again. What's the name of the context, time, energy, and priority? Limiting criteria, thank you. So when you do that, that is a way to prioritize or choose what you need to do and feel good about it. And those 4, I mean, you know, where I am, AI can know how much time I have. The AI can know how much energy I have, at least for now. Don't know this, and then what has priority now is— but maybe something in the future it can give an idea that you should probably work on this. But at the moment I don't think so. But AI is interesting. I find it very interesting. It is, and it is, you know, people are trying to do different AI solutions that I find intriguing, but I'm, it's like we are waiting to see the results. But with ChatGPT 4.0, I've found it to be, I can ask fact-based questions and I've instructed it to be precise. I think twice before you answer. So it sometimes takes a little while before you can do that on ChatGPT. You can say what is always going to be underlying. And when you do that, it takes a little longer time to get the answer. But it's like this, before it was, you know, this, and I'm not trying to offend someone, but I'm sure someone has an uncle that is very set in his ways and knows everything, all-knowing uncle. I don't know if anyone have that. And before, this all-knowing uncle was a bit, has a bit of mental problems and was drinking at the same time, so it was hallucinating a bit. And that was ChatGPT a year ago. You can ask questions, but you can't trust the answers to be absolutely correct, and it can make up things. But now it becomes more like the all-knowing uncle, but doesn't hallucinate as much. I always, when it is information that I need to make sure is correct, I always double-check the facts and for where did you find that, why do you think this question, so I get the answers. But I find it useful. So, but what do you think, Lars? Do you think that AI can take over thinking?
Lars: No, I'm with you part of the way, but I'm curious to see. So right now, my watch knows how well my sleep was. If we can start getting those those blood sugar readings in there, it'll have a pretty good idea of how things are going. It won't know everything, and I'll still want to decide myself. But like you said, for help and inspiration, and the more I see people, you know, connecting things and making it actually do things as opposed to just providing information, that's when it starts to become helpful. That, you know, draft those, you know, here's my— here are my thoughts on how to capture in GTD, create a blog post and 5 LinkedIn posts with images and make them ready to post at these times. You know, when it starts to make it easy, I think you can, you can do much of those already. But, but when that takes the next step and starts to become actions, then, then I think we'll, we'll have some fun. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see when that shows up.
Morten: Yeah. I, I, I have 2 things more to say about AI. And one thing is that when it gets access to everything that you have on device on the iPhone, which you can have basically fill it up with almost anything that you have of information, and then it can retrieve, "I talked to Lars sometime last year about this and that. What did we talk about?" And it can then retrieve all the emails, all my next actions, all my notes from that, and show me a resume of that topic. That is hugely beneficial. But when it's— and the second thing is that I think AI can be beneficial to coach you into creating good next actions, to make decisions on your own on what's your next actions going to be by just asking questions. So what's on your mind today? Well, my car. Okay, can you be more specific? What about the car? I need to change tires. Okay, do you have everything you need for doing that? Then you can continue and then You will at some point get some small project maybe, and I decided, sorry, with a desired outcome and then a next action connected to that. But I think it could help you think. It could be replacing you and me, but it won't be so nice as you and me.
Lars: You'll miss the accents, right?
Morten: Yeah, you'll miss the accents. And yeah. No, but, and of course we will not be with you, so maybe we shouldn't create an AI version of ourselves coaching you.
Lars: And you have 118 episodes to create Morten and Lars AI and see what it recommends. We'll have to try that maybe sometime next year.
Morten: Yeah, yeah. And we will see. Okay, this is probably the longest running episode ever. It's at 105 minutes.
Lars: Now. So let's, uh, let's, let's wrap up. Um, and, um, I always start that part with a quick reminder that we talk about something that happens on a yearly basis, which is called GTD Summer Camp. We don't have a place to point yet. It's always gtdsommercamp.com, but that will point you to the 2024 event. We are working on the 2025 event. We have some ideas already. The organizing group has convened and we have some ideas that we are, are working going on when it comes to dates. We already have mentioned these dates earlier, but we don't know, we haven't confirmed them yet, so I don't want to throw them out there just yet. I'm in touch with the venue right now to make sure that we have the right place and the right dates. But it's hanging out with GCDeers, hanging out with Morten, hanging out with myself. It's a lot of fun, just an inspirational weekend. So hope to see you there. And again, as soon as we have have some finalized dates and some more content to share, then of course we'll mention that in a future episode. We also always remind you to head on over to visalearning.eu because that is where you'll find all the information about what we do on a daily basis when it comes to getting things done, the different levels of seminars, Crucial Conversations for Accountability, for Mastering Dialogue, Influence, or everything. Go over there, have a look. You'll find your way to the different country websites where you can also reach Martin and myself. If you don't find our information there, podcast@biterlearning.dk will reach both of our email inboxes. And lastly, if you are outside the Nordics, plus then head on over to cruciallearning.com to find your local partners.
Morten: Or gettingthingsdone.com. True. And gtdfocus.com if you want to have a coach in the Americas. US and Canada. So, and just a little reminder for people, some of you have already done that, which is highly appreciated. If you would like to connect with us on LinkedIn, you may just send us a message when you, when you connect and mention just the word GTD, and that's enough for me if you are GTD interested, I will accept your request. So find us on LinkedIn with Lars Rothschild Henriksen and Morten Røvik. You will find us. I'm sure you are intelligent beings, so connect.
Lars: Or you can just use the links in the show notes.
Morten: That is also not a stupid idea. You are absolutely correct, Lars. And the reason you should connect with us is just, it's cool to hang out and get to know people and follow each other. If you post something, we will probably see it. And if we like what you post, we will probably like it. And maybe you will, we will post or not, maybe we will post things about getting things done that you might like. So it's a win-win for all. So connect with us on LinkedIn. And we are at the end, aren't we, Loris?
Lars: I think so.
Morten: Yeah, so this is a place where I will say stay safe and stay productive.
Lars: Bye-bye, everyone.
