Episode 123 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 as always, I'm here with my good friend and colleague Lars Rothschild Henriksen. Privet, Lars.
Lars: Privet, Morten. Good to see you as always, and good to 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're new to GTD, we always recommend you go back and listen to the first episodes of the podcast, the audio versions that you will find in your podcast player. They give you an introduction to the basics of GTD, the 5 steps. Today's episode number is number 123. Of this podcast, and the topic of today is called Project Blindness.
Morten: Yes, or maybe how to avoid project blindness.
Lars: Even better.
Morten: Yeah, so when we did this introduction to the, you know, we had a pre-meeting, we talked about what is this, and that is something I think all GTDers that's been seasoned for a while while it's going to suddenly understand that, well, I have project blindness now. So let's define this. So the project blindness, as I see it, and Lars will supplement after, but the way that I see it is that you go blind on the projects you have on your project list. So the idea here is that when you are looking through your Next actions and your desired outcomes lists. If you are looking at your desired outcomes and you do not quite understand what you wrote down, or why is this relevant, or it's just an unclear something and it's getting procrastinated more or less, you know, more or less something that you're doing with an open mind. Lars, how would you talk about project blindness? What would your definition be?
Lars: Yeah, I think, you know, looking back and perhaps reflecting on my own experience with what it might look like, it's that it's something that I worked with quite a bit actually. And it's, you know, when you just run through that project list, you have your, perhaps it's a daily review or just a quick check-in on your projects list, or perhaps it's part of the weekly review. That's perhaps where it's most visible for me is that you open up that list and you run through it.
Morten: Or maybe not visible because you're blind.
Lars: Yes. Well, blindness for me in the sense that I would just read through it and then move on to the next step and not think. So that would be my sort of practical experience with it.
Morten: Okay. I will suggest that we take a little step back and look at what is GTD's system. So for those of you who are seasoned GTDs, you, you, of course, you, you understand this, but, but just to, to go back to the basics there is that the GTD system is comprised of two main things. It is your practice, and the practice is going to be how do you capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage. So there are the five steps of GTD. And then if you add on top your Horizons of Focus so that you can take that into account when you are reflecting and reviewing your system. But, and that's one part, the practice of GTD. And then you have the outsourced brain, which might then be your calendar, your list system, and maybe some reference material system somewhere that you will put, you know, outsource everything that's not supposed to be in your brain. So, and, but if either of them fail, your GTD system will fail. And this is, I will.
Lars: Probably.
Morten: Blame this on the practice. I don't know. I've not seen, you can't blame your outsourced brain for being unclear because you, did it. So do you agree, Lars?
Lars: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Morten: So, and that is, you know, if you go back to the, again, the basics of Getting Things Done is that when you capture things, you are supposed to capture anything that has your attention. And it doesn't have to be very, you know, it can be very basic, very simple, and it doesn't have to even be good. It's just in your brain. For some reason. And the idea is that you should not let that roam around in your head, just get it out. And then you can decide if it is something. And it is, you can allow yourself to capture what I call crap. Just a random idea that showed up and you just capture it. So you can have crap in, but when it goes into your system, if you don't clarify well, it will be stale crap. And that's all I'm talking about. Or you look at something and you go blind because it's, hmm, maybe a little unclear. I don't know. Have you ever captured crap, Lars?
Lars: I hope this isn't taken out of context at some point. But yes, obviously.
Morten: You're a father first. Small children. So.
Lars: Let us move on. No, obviously we haven't. And then, like you said, it's, uh, that's fine, you know, capture whatever has your attention and grab it and then clarify and see what might show up from it. And maybe you'll throw it out again and delete it, or maybe you can clarify. And especially when it comes to projects, that was, you know, one of the key things that I I, you know, I've been, I think from my personal practice, it's, it's gone. That's one of the things that's worked well for me. But I see this all the time in the trainings that we do where people capture something. All right, would you have any projects? So, you know, we'll do an extended mind sweep and we'll do the trigger list from the book and all right, so which projects do you have ongoing at work? And then they come from a big company ABC and they have project XYZ1 and XYZ2 and that, that will then become their projects. And it's just, you know, some of them might be multiple projects. Some of them might have, you know, they might be in different stages. It might be, you know, one is to be approved, one is to be, you know, publicized or go live or whatever it might be in their world. So there might be some— they might think they have clarity when it comes to their projects list, but a lot of what I see, especially from new GTDers, will be unclear projects list, I would say. So, so that might be one of the challenges that you would face then with the, the project blindness, because they would then require a lot of thinking as you go through them, either on a quick check-in on your projects list or perhaps a weekly review.
Morten: Yeah, and one of the things that I've been thinking about now while you were talking is that, you know, the clarify, clarify the desired outcome here is so important instead of just ending on project X or, you know, car. You define exactly what you mean with car, you know. The car tires are changed, or, or, you know, the, the squeaking, squeaking the car is fixed. So, so just focus on how does done look like. And, uh, and if you, if you— and, and it is, it is some of the things that I found that my own project blindness, because we are talking out of our own experience here as well as the people that we've been coaching. And because Lars and I are fellow GTDers just like you, we are fumbling around, but we are on a higher level than most, I think. But, you know, we are still confused sometimes. So clarify with that really clear, decided outcome and make sure that you are not— and this is where the hiccup might come. So you clarify the good, decided outcome, but then something happens that changed the objective of your desired outcome. So you might want to change the desired outcome, but you don't. And that's when it might become stale. I don't know. Does that make sense to you, Lars?
Lars: Have you ever— No, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, because they change. And, you know, that's, that's a bit of what I also reflected on when we were preparing for this, this episode is, you know, what are we really trying to do? So if we're talking about the weekly review, we're stopping, we are running through the projects list. We want to get things out of our heads, but this is also the opportunity to really, you know, think through these things and, and reflect on where we are with this. How, how's it going? Did new stuff show up? Did something change? Do we need to rethink the plan that we have perhaps externalized, or perhaps we know intuitively the steps to get to the goal, the, the finish line. Well, that stuff might have changed. So, so you need to stop and think through that. And it, that might be the steps within, you know, how do we get to the finish line, or it might be the finish line itself. I mean, the, the, the project title. Um, so we need to address that. Absolutely.
Morten: Yeah. And, and I think that one of the things that we might, um, give you, the listener or viewer, um, a tip is that you have a little voice in your head. Um, in GTD and in psychology, that's called cognitive dissonance. If something is not quite right with something like a project, you look at your project and you understand, hmm, something is not quite right here, doesn't sit. That little voice is, you know, that's David Allen on your shoulder whispering in your ear, "You're not clarified well, my friend, so let's do that." And I think that is, you know, one of the things that you need to do on a regular basis, clarify even your already made projects. I did that last Friday when I did my last weekly review, I did walk through my projects slowly and do I have some cognitive dissonance here? And that helped a lot because I had a couple of projects that become stale, crappy and stale crap. And it's not the crappy, but it was a project that's become stale. And then I had to look at it and I understood that I have given it the wrong name. It's not a design outcome what I wanted. And also my next action was not correct. Because the desired outcome had changed, so I had to change the next action as well. But then after that, it felt better. The cognitive dissonance disappeared and I felt better about it. So I don't know, have you experienced something like that?
Lars: Well, I think if we're talking from, you know, the personal experience, I think it's something that I've really worked with for a long time. I think it was the, one of the triggers for me was with the projects list. And part of the reason why I switched away from Todoist was that the projects list was not working well for me. I didn't, you know, it was always present on the left-hand side of the screen. And it just, you know, it wasn't, it didn't work well for me to walk through that projects list as a projects list, meaning to reflect through it when you do the weekly review. So I've played around with this a lot. I spoke to Ana-Maria about it. Was, what is she, a senior master coach, something like that. You know, very, very, very experienced coach who, by the way, I love the flexibility when you talk to coaches who've been doing this for a long time because they just come up with ideas. All right. So let's try this. Let's try that. One of the things she said was, well, if you're struggling to actually stop and focus on one project and stick with that project and think it through before you move on to the next one, perhaps we need to split them into separate pages. So actually I just took my projects list, copied the title of each of them, made a white PowerPoint, very inspiring, and simply added the project title, one slide per project. And I did that for a while and it actually, you know, worked well. It, you know, I got to see that on the screen. My, because I, you know, my eyes will tend to read really fast and really quickly down to the next line, next line, next line, which means that I won't stop and think because I will already be distracted by the next project on the list. So for a while I did that and that actually worked really well. I think for today I can, you know, I have a better practice of being able to stop and really hang on to that specific project before I move on to the next one. But for a time that seemed to be the best one for me. I've done Gantt charts as well, big project planning style, you know, having them show up that way. Today they're in reminders. It's a plain and simple list and it works well. But it's, you know, it's something I think for me, one of the points that I wanted to share with the listeners in this episode is for, you know, try something out, try something different. If you think there is something here that is not working well for you, then try something, try something different. Put it somewhere else, create a new list, make it on, you know, print it on paper, hang it on your wall. I don't know, whatever works for you. I remember Jukka, right? Jukka, he shared one time where he had a coaching client. Well, they drew projects. They, it was a stick figure, right? So, you know, keeping that flexibility in mind and then, you know, for people listening, if you feel there's something missing, then, you know, try, try something, whatever might work for you. Just try something and see if it works. If it doesn't, move on to the next thing. See if that works better. That's, um, at least something to try because it really actually made a big difference for me and a good quality review of your projects list is just, yeah, it's the best. Yeah.
Morten: One thing that I find interesting is that both you and I have had similar paths when it comes to, you know, the tools that we use to, you know, the list tools is that we have gone from fairly complex text systems like you with Todoist and me with OmniFocus, which is, you know, a lot of bells and whistles and a lot of functionality that we might not use. And then we are now back at at Apple Reminders, and I know that Microsoft To Do has more or less the same functionality as Apple Reminders. So don't fret there, listener, if you want to try it out, you can do Microsoft To Do, which is probably the closest in the Microsoft and PC world. But it is, go simple, just because it's faster, it's easier to move around. And yeah. And one thing that I I wanted to look at is that why does the project blindness happen? What happened in your brain when this happens? And I have some ideas. And I think that is one of the things that we all can end up with is that we become complacent. That is that you are happy with your GTD practice. You get a little— I wrote down, little too smug with your GTD practice. A little too relaxed. You know, you're lulled into a sense of security and false relaxed state. I don't know. Can you relate to that, Lars? Has that ever happened to you? I know what happened to me, so I'll go first.
Lars: I'll let you go first.
Morten: Yeah, no, no, well, it did happen to me, and it has happened to me, is that I've become a little too relaxed, a little too laid back when it comes to my own GTD practice, and then suddenly I have thrown myself off the control. I understand that I've, you know, And part of this I've done, you know, with meaning to, and sometimes it just drifts. When I mean to is that I've thrown myself out of control just to feel how it is. So like, don't do your weekly review 2 weeks in a row and the panic level rises fairly quickly for most people. But it also has been, I've done, I avoided doing a weekly review when I really needed to do one. And that's been really not good. But just because, well, I know GTD, this is not a problem for me. That's, I think that's a two-letter combination with starting with a B and an S. I think that is self, you trick yourself. So Lars, now it's your turn.
Lars: Well, no. So, so what came to mind when you were sharing that was more the, the projects that I have in our old summer house because they were sort of, those are the ones where I see them and I, you know, intuitively know there has been no progress because we don't go there every week. There's not, you know, the weather might not be the right, right weather to paint the fence, whatever it might be.. So those are the kind of projects that can be triggering me to move quickly past the projects list, for example. So I think those are the ones that, that, you know, trigger the blindness for me, are things where I'm, they're, they're not moving forward and maybe I should have them on a, on a separate list or maybe I need to treat them differently. But at least they could, for example, interfere with my review of the projects list because I have these 4 projects in the summer house and if there is no progress, that it doesn't trigger the right kind of thinking for me. So I will be moving too quickly through the other projects on my list.
Morten: Does that make sense? Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the things that, that comes to mind now is, for me, is that it has happened, not very often now nowadays, but it has happened that I have had projects that I didn't capture and I didn't clarify them. And they kind of like roamed around in my, you know, the back of my head. I need to do something about X, Y, and Z. And then that is number one, to capture everything, even though it's maybe you will never do something about it, but it feels really, you know, I don't know if you have, I'm sure you have the same idea, Loris, but sometimes when you capture just a a small little tiny project, like you create a— or not even maybe a project, but an extension. Like you're waiting for a package, just capture that, have it on the waiting for, then when that package arrives, you can tick something off, it's done. And you don't have to think about it until it arrives, or when you next time you see your waiting for list. And just to, you know, Yeah, it is a way to make sure that whatever is in your head gets out and it gives you a feeling of ticking things off. But if you don't capture projects that you need to do something about more than one next session, you can actually forget that you have a project and that you might want to do something.
Lars: About.
Morten: And have you ever not captured a project.
Lars: Lars? That sounds like a leading question.
Morten: It does. It does. But because I I'll go first again. I have not captured a project.
Lars: I've already admitted to that. Yeah, I know when that happens. And I think the most, one of the more common ways to spot those is when you have, you know, a next action that you look at and you sort of think there's more to this than intuitively I know the next steps. There is actually a longer term goal here that I want to capture. And again, coming back to the level 1 training that we do today, The Crucial Learning version where the starting point is for people to reflect on, is there something I want to be reminded about here? Because I'd like the switch that it's now not something I have to do to follow the process, but it's something that I want to do to give me a table of contents for the things that I'm working on longer term. Yeah. And that kind of thinking. I, I, I still really like that, that perspective on it and makes, makes my projects list more attractive when I look at it that way. I don't know if you had the same.
Morten: Experience. My last idea for why projects become stale and you glance over them, you become blind, is that sometimes I.
Lars: See—.
Morten: This I'm fairly good at, I can say with confidence— is that But I see this by my coaching clients, I'm sure you see as well, is that some people are capturing areas of focus and responsibility. Oh yeah. Projects, exactly. And when you do that, that doesn't have an end. It doesn't have a beginning. It's just an area of responsibility and something you want to focus on. And if you then are not taking time to make sure that you know what your desired outcome is, you will never get started. And of course, that becomes stale. And so just to be clear, I don't know if you agree with this, my definition of an area of focus, but it is an area of focus or responsibility that you want to focus on or are responsible for at work or personal. And that doesn't have a beginning, it doesn't have an end. It's just a focus, an area that needs to be maintained. And when you maintain that area, it will what I call birth projects. So let's say that you are responsible for the family cars or for the maintenance of the house or your department, then whatever responsibility you have, that might trigger a project that could be like, you know, do what we call here in Europe, EU control of the car. It needs to be checked every, how much is it, every fourth year, something like that, for security. Yeah, so something like that. Yeah, and then it will be EU control finalized 2025. That might be the desired outcome project name. And the idea here is that If you have the area of focus on your, on your project list, of course it will become stale because you can't move. You can't do, you can't do an area of focus, but you can do and fulfill and complete desired outcomes. Anything to add, Loris?
Lars: Yeah, no, but it's just, yeah, it's very common and you know, it makes sense because most people will start off also with the training that we do. We focused on next actions and we focus on projects, the lower two horizons of focus. And then obviously when people people are not aware there is more to GTD and there are more levels, there are more lists or however they want to maintain those, then obviously they'll put them with the things that they know from GTD. So it's very common that I see them, especially with coaching clients and also when people start off with GTD. For some people, not all, if people have a lot of small moving parts and things going on, if that's their work, then typically it won't rise to that level, but managers and things like that will often spot those. And like you said, it'll just be on their list forever and ever. So yeah, it's a good one to look out for.
Morten: Absolutely. One of the things that I found that some of my clients have had problems with or struggled with is what do I do with recurring projects? It's in the tail of what we're talking about is that you can have a recurring project on your projects list and you don't have time to do it. It could be like you have an end of month routine that you have to do, gather some numbers, I don't know, create a small presentation, what do I know, but you have recurring projects. That's the way to solve that is of course to put it in your calendar and If it is movable, then move it around if it doesn't fit that day, but set aside time to do that. You know, finalize the— and create a checklist inside the calendar. So, you know, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do this and this. And when I've done that, I'm finished with my project for this month. So does that resonate with you? Do you recommend the same thing? For your clients?
Lars: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a topic that, that relatively frequently comes up and it's, you know, it depends on, I would say, the type of recurrence that we see, whether it's, you know, do you want to trigger new projects? Do you want to let the areas of focus trigger it? And how have you built that into your process to make sure that you then see it? Do you block time? Do you put it in the calendar like you said, which I think for most people would be the, the best approach. But again, how would you then add it? Is it a full day event? Do you block specific time? Do you have any sort of syntax to signal to yourself this is not fixed here, but I, I need to do it within these days? So typically it's, it's, you know, personal preference in my experience. How do people want that to be showing up for them? I would say.
Morten: Yeah. And yeah, exactly. And you need to decide, you need to decide what, what works for you, but to put it in the calendar in some sort of way, it makes it easier to not Because I've seen people who had this project, you know, in your list system and not put it in the calendar, and then the date comes and you don't have time because you didn't plan to do it. So just plan in advance and have a flexible way to handle it, either as a full-day event or just block the time in your calendar and be flexible of moving it if need be.
Lars: Yeah, yeah, for me it shows up as the last weekly review of the month. So I have, I think, 4 or 5 things that go on my list when I do the last weekly review of the month, and they will be set to the due date of the first working day of the following month. So that's where they will show up to report the, the, you know, activities that we have had throughout the month when it comes to trainings. There's a photo album that I want to keep current with the boys and that kind of work shows up in that sense for me.
Morten: Yeah, cool. I'm ready to move on to remedy. How do you avoid project blindness? I don't know if you are— something you want to add before we go there? Let's try moving on. Yeah, my first recommendation for you who think you might be having project blindness is wake up. And then after you're woken up, do a thorough weekly review, an extended one. And the way that I would think about this is that, well, we've met digital hoarders that has a lot of that actually do have crap in their system, like an endless someday-maybe list and, you know, an endless project list and endless next actions list. And they, if you're not cleaning house and you don't understand why GTD don't work, I have news for you. It's because you've become blind to the things inside there. And hi, I'm Morten. This has happened to me. So you're not alone. But to wake up and do a thorough weekly review and add what I, you know, I've been presenting this as something I learned from my son back then when he was 13. He says, seriously, Dad? And say to yourself, seriously, am I ever going to do something about this someday? Maybe. Am I ever going to move this project forward? Or is it just a good idea that I captured and sounds like a cool thing to do sometime? That I'm never going to get around to doing. And it is adding to that is that for most people, there is always more to do than there is time. So think about it. What would you like to feel when you look at your system? If it is overfilled with a lot of things you're not doing that you never will do, you overwhelming yourself. You're taxing your brain with things that you're never going to look at and do something about. So, so, so Stop doing that. Clean up, clean house. And one of the keys there I would suggest is that you look at all the things that you have in your system and ask yourself seriously, is this necessary here? Is it really something that adds value to my system? Is this something that— and consider everything that, you know, consider throwing everything out. Like you're seeing it for the first time. Just think about it. How does that resonate with you, John?
Lars: Yeah, no, absolutely. I think there are two things that showed up for me. First, I was just reminded about a while back, this is, this is, you know, maybe 10 years back, but then I had that someday maybe list that you just spoke about that was just long and very long and even longer. With all the good ideas. That was never going to happen. But, but what I did was, for me, it was really hard to throw out. And perhaps it would be helpful for others to take the same approach that I did, which was to then sort of ease the pain of saying, all right, I have my someday maybe list. I will look at that as part of my weekly review. But I will also create a someday maybe monthly and a someday maybe yearly. And then I will move a lot of them to the yearly part because that's, that was really the frequency that I need to revisit them with. It just, it didn't make sense for me to review them on a weekly basis. And, you know, in reality, most of them should just be thrown out, but I didn't feel comfortable throwing them out. So that was sort of the step for me to take to sort of, you know, give me sort of that peace with, yeah, I'm not going to do it. And now they're just going to sit there and doesn't bog me down, doesn't slow me down that I have those lists because I don't revisit them very frequently. So that was the one thing that showed up. The other one was, yes, absolutely, the weekly review. Of course, that would be the place to start. I might even say if that feels like a lot, then just focus on the projects list since, you know, this blindness part, of course, we could be talking about any list because that can happen to any list. But specifically since we spoke about projects, then maybe the the projects list and just really, because that's what I felt like doing. Like I'm really going to sit down now and I'm just going to look at it and I'm going to, you know, make sure that it's exactly what I want there. So if that's, you know, if it felt like a lot to do the whole weekly review, then perhaps just pick up the projects list and go through it and see if you can make sure that it's clean and crisp and everything you want in there.
Morten: Yeah, exactly. I have one last question. That I would like us to answer because how, if you have project blindness and you have a lot on your lists and you have long next action lists and in a long, you know, someday maybe lists, how long should the list be?
Lars: Lars?
Morten: 4. 42.
Lars: No. Yeah. It's, it's, yeah, that's a common question as well. How, how long do you feel comfortable that the list is? How long does it have to be to actually reflect reality? Because if it doesn't reflect reality, then obviously things are gonna creep back into your head. It's, it, that in itself is a journey, I would say, to figure out what works well for you. I mentioned on the podcast many times It's been a focus for me for probably 4 years now to make sure that I have the short lists that work for me. But, you know, it'll be different from, from one person to the next. We were talking, I was on a skiing vacation last week in Norway. We were talking about emails because that's how fun my family is. And we, I was mentioning, you know, the number of emails that I would get and they were falling off their chairs and I don't even get that many compared to, you know, let's say I get 50 emails per day. They were, you know, how do you manage that? And, you know, we have people in the seminars and in coaching that received, you know, 300 emails per day. So it's just, it's fun to hear how many is a common number for you. How many is too much? Yeah, it can really vary. I don't know, what would you say?
Morten: No, I would quote David Allen, who is saying that your system is either attracting you or repelling you. So if you look at your system and you're attracted to something and you go, oh, when can I check this off? And this is a direct David Allen quote. How can I check this out? Or when can I check this off? Or when you look at it and you go, I don't want to look at this. This is a lot of undone things, unclear. I can't It's not attractive. So when you have— that can also happen when you have unclear stuff. You have not clarified well your desired outcome, next actions, and your system is a mess. Then clean up, and then when you have something after, it might still be too long. So what I am suggesting is that, you know, clean house. Don't be a hoarder. Throw out anything seriously that you're not going to do. And then when you're left with that, you should have a what I call a number of projects that are active now on your Decide Outcome list and that you feel comfortable moving forward the next week or two or maybe three, depending on how many projects you have. And the rest of the projects should then be parked on the On Hold list, which is projects that you will do but not right now. They're not active today and tomorrow or this week or whatever time span you feel comfortable with. And then, because then you create a system where you look at it and you said, well, I can do this. And you can do something and you can clap yourself on the back and say, well done. And that is what we want to feel. We want to feel that we are accomplishing things. We have mastery of our own. We have mastery of our own work. And we feel that we are, you know, the lists are supporting us, not hindering us. You know, I think a lot of people might find that the project blindness will hinder you because you can't see your system clearly because you don't see your projects clearly.
Lars: So, yeah. Yeah. And feeling good about it. I think that was a good point to underline as well that, you know, if things are just stale, things are just on that list, you don't really reflect on it. Things aren't really moving forward, or at least you don't feel like you're moving forward. Yeah. That's not going to be very, very motivating.
Morten: Absolutely. And it is when you do your reviews, look at your lists, your project lists, personal and work, and look at them and see if they are attracting you. And ask yourself, if they are not, why? Are they unclear? They're not desired outcomes? They're, you know, crap, not clarified crap. And the second is that when I found that if it is unclear, is it really the right number of projects that's on active list now. So if you create a list called on hold, projects on hold, and then move everything that's not active right now down there, and then you can, when you do your weekly review, you can look at the week and the weeks to come and you can say, okay, how does my week look or the weeks look and do I have time to add something more to my active list or.
Lars: Not. Yeah, exactly.
Morten: And to create that balance, I call it, you know, that you need to find that inner balance yourself and your emotions will tell you. You know that if you empty your head, your brain will give you a reward going, I can breathe again. And then when you clarify and organize into your system, you feel that, okay, I have now a little control. And when you do weekly review, you feel more control, even feel more overview, you feel more in mastery of your life. And, and it is getting things done is about having good emotions of what you're doing and what you're not doing in the moment. That balance, you, dear listener and practitioner of GTD, you must find that balance yourself. Good.
Lars: Luck.
Morten: I hope that we help you here. Find that.
Lars: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
Morten: I'm at the end of my notes. Do you have anything you want to add?
Lars: Yeah. No, I think, you know, when it comes to tips, I think we, you know, I already shared some of the things that worked well for me and the things to try out, and hopefully that will help some people out there. The last thing that I did not yet grab from my brainstorm that we did before we started the show was just, you know, reflecting back on my practice in Todoist and my practice in Reminders, because there is a lot of differences. One being that in Todoist, my project was linked to my next action. So I could click on my project, I could see my next action. You can do the same in Reminders if you have your hashtags, as I think you were doing, maybe still are doing. I don't know, I haven't thought this through, so I don't know if it, if if I agree with myself on this. But I had the idea that I am— yes, there's a whole committee, you know, discussing this right now. And then maybe I'll be wiser next time. But the fact that I have this as a separate list, I think maybe actually helps my brain. That I have my projects list, I don't see the link to the next action. I think that might actually be helping me focus on that project and be better at thinking it through. Not a a big deal, but I think it actually might be helping. But again, just as an idea for people out there to maybe reflect on how they can focus and think through their projects is what we're coming back to, right?
Morten: Okay. So, but do you have a connection to a Next Action? So if you wanted to see a Next Action connected to that project, is that possible? You're not using hashtags at all?
Lars: No.
Morten: Correct. That would make me anxious.
Lars: So, yeah. And I love it.
Morten: You like being anxious. Okay. No, but it gives you different emotions than mine. So, okay, I respect that. And but for those of you who feel that that would be not a good thing to do in Reminders, both in, in, in Reminders and Microsoft To Do, you can add hashtags. That is, you know, the hash sign and then give the, the project a name which contains that hashtag, like car could be EU Control 25 could be a hashtag. And then you can click that hashtag and you can find whatever else is connected to that, like can be a waiting for, can be a, you know, a next action you should do, the errands you should do. So just connect that. That is possible. That does not give me anxiety. That gives me a calm feeling. I know Lars, he likes different things. So try it out, see what works for.
Lars: You. Old school GCD.
Morten: That's what I'm doing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Okay. Yes. Okay. You're probably right. That's the really old school, the paper version.
Lars: Yes. Exactly.
Morten: Yes. Yes. Okay. So I think we exhausted this topic and it's always fun to roam around different practices, see how it works.
Lars: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And hopefully this was helpful to people. As always, you know, we'd love to hear from you. If this was something that triggered something for you, then let us know podcast@vitalearning.dk. If you have any questions that you want us to pick up, or if this, you know, any reflections that follows this episode, we'd love to hear from you there or on LinkedIn. We have the QR codes on YouTube. You can find us there. You know, reach out to us wherever it makes sense. But Hopefully, I really like this. You came up with this idea, Morten, about Project Blindness, and I really like that we were able to do an episode about it. And hopefully this helps people out there that might have gone a bit blind when it comes to their projects list.
Morten: Yeah. And being blind is, when it's physical, it's bad, of course. Not a, well, it is a state. The project blindness is something that you can avoid. And we're giving you a couple of remedies, suggestions here, and why we think that it happens. So we hope that helps you. And at the end of this episode, I would like to ask Lars, like I am always asking him, can you take us out, Lars?
Lars: Yes, because don't leave yet, don't skip forward, because we just want to tell you about a few things.
Morten: Important information to follow.
Lars: One being the GTD Summer Camp 2025, which we are very excited about. Again, participants from all over the world, North America, South America, Asia. We hope to see you there. It's in Denmark. It's in a very small, it's a small country in a small city in a small country. June 14th to 15th, 2025. Seats are filling up. Quicker this year. We have a lot more participants this year already than, you know, I think we'll, we'll set a new record, perhaps because the author of GTD, David Allen, is joining us this year as well. So it's a chance to both hang out with us, hang out with all the other nice GTDers out there, and of course also David will be joining us. So gtdsommercamp.com is the place to go and sign up. The other place to point you to is vitallearning.eu because that is where you'll find all of the information about what Morten and I do. You can find links to the different country websites. You can learn more about all the GTD stuff we do with different trainings, coaching, speeches in the different countries. We also do Crucial Conversations, Crucial Influence, many good courses. So go over there and have a look around. If you're outside the Nordics plus, then cruciallearning.com is the place to go to find your local.
Morten: Partners. And gettingthingsdone.com for those who want to dive into more about Getting Things Done and GTD Focus, if you're in the North America region and want to have coaching. So gtdfocus.com. I think it's about time that I say, as I always do, and we really are at the end And these days with all that's happening in the world, please people, stay safe and stay productive in the middle of all the chaos. Take care. Until next time.
Lars: Bye everyone.
