2. Step 1 in GTD: Capture

Transcript

Automatically transcribed and lightly edited. Timestamps omitted for readability.

Morten: Hi, and welcome to episode number 2 of the Getting Things Done podcast from the GTD Nordic. I'm Morten Rølevik, and I'm here with my friend and colleague Lars Rothschild Henriksen. Hello, Lars.

Lars: Hi, Morten. Happy to be here again to this first real dive-in episode of the Getting Things Done from GTD Nordic podcast. About this podcast. We are doing this to support all the GTDers in the Nordics and around the world, to help you use the GTD methodology to clear your mind, to stay present with what you're doing, to achieve stress-free productivity. And we hope once again that you find these episodes valuable regardless of your GTD experience.

Morten: Okay, this first real episode is going to focus on the first step of the 5 steps of the Getting Things Done methodology. The first step is Capture, and this is a very important step. It starts off the empty head that you are trying to achieve to get into the stress-free productivity. This stress-free head is, as we mentioned in the first episode, is really important that it is actually empty. You don't have anything banging around in there. So, Lars, can you walk us through how do you capture practically and why on earth is this capture important?

Lars: Yeah. So, as you may remember from the first episode, I really did not have this habit at all. So, just simply starting to write things down, that really made a huge difference for me. I think back when I found it, I would basically use what whatever tools I had at hand. So it could have been paper that I would then later put in one of my inboxes, but it could also just have been digitally. I certainly remember sending myself a lot of emails, and I know I've come across a lot of people that did that, that would show up to work Monday morning and find 7 emails from yourself from over the weekend with various ideas that you had captured during the day. And as part of the capture step, one of the important things is really to get it all out of your head. It's so tempting to only you write down the stuff that you— the analytical part of you deems most important. But all this stuff really rolls around in your head if you don't get it out. The type of memory that you use for this is not aware of complexity or urgency or importance. It all shows up at the same shelf, as I like to say in Denmark. So whether it's buy cat food or buy a new car, it really is the same to that part of the brain. So in order to silence that part of the mind, we need to get get all that stuff out.

Morten: Yeah. And how do you practically do that, get it out of your head?

Lars: So as soon as something shows up in my world, I write it down. Anything that's potentially meaningful to me, I think is how we phrase it in English. It's stuff that I write down. So that means that I have tools for any situation that I might find myself in when I come across something that I want to remember. So I have my list manager where I write stuff down digitally. We have good old Post-it notes on the dining room table where if we come across stuff during breakfast, then we use that for writing things down. I have my Apple Watch and iPhone that I speak into stuff that I want to be reminded about, both using Siri but also some more complex workflows. For example, when I'm out running, I get a lot of ideas. It's great to have a place to capture them as well. So again, the watch is handy. Also when I'm driving, so driving for a speech, driving for a seminar, as I'm sure all the listeners can recognize, a lot of good ideas show up in these transport situations. So having tools to capture in that situation is really important. I don't want to recommend to anyone to start writing things down when you're doing 130 kilometers on the highway in Denmark. Certainly, have tools to speak things out of your head instead. So, have tools set up that you can use in that context as well. What do you use, Martin?

Morten: Well, I use different tools as you do depending on the situation. I have my reMarkable notebook which I use. It's a digital notebook. That I use when I'm in meetings with clients. I always captured both ideas but also to-dos or potential things I need to do something about or something I really commit to do in, in the reMarkable tablet. And I will then toss that, the tablet itself, into my inbox when I go to the office so that I can extract these things later. And I also use my trusted wallet with a notebook and a pad It's very fast, very easy analog way of capturing things. I also use, as you do, my phone. I use Siri some for remind me to call Bob when I leave here, which is one of my favorites. If I get a phone call or I need to do something when I leave a place, I love that feature. I also use my my list system to capture things. I use OmniFocus for this, so I, I will quick capture something in the inbox there, or I will use an app called Say&Go, which is an app devised for audio capture. So when I am in the car, not in, in Denmark but in Norway, doing 110, I can just tap this icon and I can leave a message to myself that is then packed and sent in an email to myself. This is my normal capture tools. So I have a few of them, but they work really well. And it's depending on the situation how and when I use them. I'm sure you have the same thing there, Lars. And then maybe we should then touch upon why is capture at all important. You know, we talked about in the first episode that you need a clear and empty head to be a appropriately engaged and get the right things done. But maybe we should talk a little bit about the science behind something about this. And I might start us off with a talk about George Armitage Miller, our old, old friend George, who in 1956 at Princeton University made a big scientific experiment trying to figure out How many things can you have in your brain of complex tasks or to-dos or reminders for yourself at the same time in your short-term memory? And he found that it was between 5 and 9. His magical number is 7 plus minus 2, is the name of his.

Lars: His.

Morten: Report who made this available to the world. And what happens if you really have many things in your head, like you have 9 things in your head? You are most likely a lot, you know, quite stressed because if you have 9 "I must not forget," 9 things that you must do in your head at the same time, you don't have any room to think because you don't have any, you know, there is no room for anything else. And what happens if you get something new inside, then something new comes to your head, then something falls out, and we call that to forget. Anyone who's forgot something in, in your life ever, you will know that this is not a good place to be, because if you forget things, you feel— don't feel comfortable about your— that you're actually appropriately engaged with this thing, because you're not really. You will have cognitive dissonance on that, and you will also be quite stressed. And anyone who's made a list after being stressed with too many things to think about, have felt the relief the list may give you. And when you feel relief after writing a list, it might be— you also, by the way, might feel a bit anxiety about this. So if I'm going to recommend anything for people who want to try this out, capture anything, just sit down now, pause this recording, and sit down with a piece of paper and a pencil or a pen of some kind, and then ask yourself, okay, what is in my head that I potentially need to do something about? What, what are the things that has my attention right now? Write whatever is in your mind. Don't focus on importance or, or if it's work or, you know, personal. Just write things down as it comes to your mind. Things you might want to do something about, or something you have worries about. Anything that has your attention is to be written down. And don't organize, don't analyze, but just get it out of your head because it's in the wrong place. And see if you don't feel— after this exercise, see if you don't feel a little bit better. You may feel a little bit stressed because there are too many things you've committed to, but that will vanish when you get things under control. And this is the subject for the next two episodes, would be clarify and organize. So Lars, do you have anything to add to the scientific part of GTD? Do you have any things to add here?

Lars: I think that was a very good summary. What I normally add as well is this. So let's say I'm doing a speech and people are looking and appearing to pay attention. But when you start to become more experienced at delivering these speeches. You can also tell when there's nobody home. So you can see people looking, but they're not really there. The engine is running, but there's nobody behind the wheel. And that's what I also found that GTD helped me with a lot, again, staying present with what you're doing. Because what normally happens is that some kind of thought shows up. You're reminded about something. That's great. That means you let your brain have a look around, see what you might not have captured earlier. And change that practice to then write that down. And, you know, as you get more experience with GTD, your brain will also trust that you get back to that because then that means that you don't start to think about what you just were reminded about. And people always recognize this. Normally after about 30 minutes, almost anyone in the room has had a, you know, brief mind journey somewhere outside the presentation. And that, you know, if that was a good place that they went, you know, they solved some kind of problem that they've been working on all day, then that's perhaps better than listening to me for those 10, 15 seconds. But as we all know, it's often a very negative kind of thinking that we do about these things. We're reminded about the challenges we have. We start to plan. We are concerned about all the consequences. So really maintaining your focus, and we know this also scientifically from studies, at least one that I like to refer to is that they were investigating how, you know, how long is your natural focus? So in 2003, They measured this, and we were at 12 seconds. That was how long your mind would naturally focus. They repeated it in 2013. We were down to 8 seconds. So it's not heading in the right direction. And at least one newspaper I remember that described this study, they compared it to the goldfish, which is at 9 seconds, their memory. So it's really not heading in the right direction for us. And perhaps the smartphone is one of the key things to blame for this.

Morten: Yeah, the smartphones are a blessing and a curse. I think maybe we will recognize this as the same problem we have with smoking or alcohol. Maybe alcohol is a better comparison, but because if you drink a lot, it's, it's not good for you. If you have a glass of red wine to a dinner, it could be great. And it could add to the experience of the dinner. But We need a better balance, I think, for our smartphones. This is my prediction of the future. We will look at the smartphone as a drug after a while because it's really built to— all the apps in there that has like your social media apps are built to keep your attention and/or grab your attention and keep it as long as they can because as long as they can keep your attention, the longer they— the more money they will make. And the biggest problem with that is as a knowledge worker, your attention, your ability to focus and to concentrate is what sets you apart from the competition and from the rest of the world. And if you are not able to concentrate and focus, you're not doing your job.

Lars: And I think a lot of people can have a wrong idea about how to handle that. And that was one of the first things I remember you coached me in a long time ago was to disable as many notifications as I could, as would make sense to me. Because I had taken a different approach. I was enabling additional notifications, so I would always have a clear picture of everything that was going on. And if you don't stop to think about what you're doing, then that could make sense. You know, you're always informed. There's always a ding and a buzzing when an email comes in. But really, that distracts you so much. So really disabling all that stuff I was just working with a CEO, and he disabled some— just the basic notifications that he knew he didn't really need those. And just that little thing, so that's I think a good tip for the listeners. He went from more than 200 opens of his phone on a daily basis down to I think 70 or something. It was really a huge difference, and he really could feel that in his ability to stay present and be more productive.

Morten: Yeah. I would normally say when we do our seminars is that that when you, if you have a smartphone, turn off all the notifications you can and still have a social life and still have a job. Turn off everything else and make a qualified judgment on this and don't let just under the tyranny of the default, which is everything is on. Now most apps are asking for permission to give you a notification and stop, think, really, do I really need this? Really, do I need, is this so important that it should steal my attention here? And if not, then don't let it steal your attention.

Lars: I like to visualize it pretending that it's my 3-year-old showing up next to me while I'm working and saying whatever the notification is. Would I be happy with him interrupting my work to tell me that? I think that visualizes it a bit more for me. And so now we've spoken a bit about the outside input because there are, of course, both the internal interruptions, all the stuff that your mind interrupts you about and the external ones and really paying attention to the external ones to make sure that you choose when to empty those buckets, when to handle those inboxes rather than they showing up at your phone and interrupting you. That really is a big difference for a lot of people.

Morten: Yes, yes indeed. So to round this up and get us back into capture is you should capture everything that has your attention. And you should get into the habit of doing it when things show up, not when it's getting problematic or returning. We talk about capture as if you are— if you don't capture things when they show up in your head, you are regurgitating as a cow thoughts. You know, the cow has the ability to regurgitate It's food and it's maybe good for a cow, but it's not good for you as a human being to be reminded that, well, I have this odd sound in my car, maybe I should do something about it. If you have that more than one time, you had it more than necessarily, because if you note that down the minute you realize, well, it's an odd sound, then you can do something about it. It's not in your head, it's not calling for your attention. And another thing about capture that I find fascinating is that when you are in situations where your, your, your, your brain is in what we call free gear, where you don't, you don't engage in anything, like you drive a car or something, your, your brain will then go to wherever it feels like. And the problem with most people's lives is that when they have things they need to do something about, they will rethink them and rethink them. And as David Allen says, that everything you not place in a place you trust, you will see it later. It will have a mental copy of that thing inside your head. Like if you visit your garage or your depot somewhere in your house, if you have a room or a cabinet where you have, you know, we all have these rooms and the cabinets that you really know you should clear out at some point because it's a mess. If you don't park that on somewhere, it will make a mental copy of that, and every time you walk past that place, it will yell at you and going, "Clear me out! What kind of a human being are you? Clear me out! You know, you're a bad person, you know this." And the problem with these, these mental monkeys that you allow to stay in your head is that they take up valuable place where you can, instead of having mental copies of things you need to do, you can be creative, be problem-solving in the moment. And it's a lot easier to be problem-solving in the moment if you don't have these mental copies present. Because it fills up your memory, fills up your capacity of remembering things. So get things out of your head is the most important thing we can teach you today. And every— actually, every episode out will be having this as a theme underneath. If you take the time to clear your mind, take your time to, to, to get things off your mind so you can be present and do the right things, it's going to be something we will repeat ad nauseam, I think.

Lars: No doubt, no doubt.

Morten: And we've crossed the 20-minute mark. Maybe time for a wrap-up, Lars?

Lars: Yeah, just one, one last bit from my side, because I see this a lot from, from people that they, they benefit more and more from capturing on paper. So I remember way back when we, when we started in Denmark, one very experienced GT Dyr from one of the biggest banks here in Denmark, he showed up and he proclaimed that he always went to meetings and he only had a notepad. And that was interesting for me because my background in IT, being a consultant, I always had my laptop with me. So I would always take notes there. And since then, I try to take notes on paper as much as I can. And it really is a difference for me to sit down with paper and capture things. My mind is not— you know, the challenge when you have your laptop up open is that you can do so many things. And you have these— even when you try to focus, even when you're good at it, your mind will still remind you, oh well, maybe someone responded on Facebook, maybe someone sent you an email that you could handle. And I used to be a world champion at responding to emails within 5 minutes, right, or less, around the clock. So really having that piece of paper, there is nothing else you can do. You can write things down. And that really just helps your mind focus. And that's been a good Good, um, good, uh, tweak on the system for, for me when we talk about capture.

Morten: Yeah, yeah, I can totally relate to this. Really, really. So, um, Lars, um, where can people find us, uh, after the fact if they want to get in touch with us?

Lars: Gtdnordic.Com is a good starting point. So that will lead you to the different countries, to Denmark, to Norway, to the other Scandinavian countries where, where GTD Nordic is present. And from those pages you can, can, can sign up to the newsletters. You can find the Facebook pages, various groups, various meetups, various LinkedIn groups and profiles where you can connect with, with everyone. So that's a, that's a good starting point, gtdnordic.com.

Morten: Great. And if people find these episodes valuable, if you find this valuable as a listener, please share it with a colleague. And rate us on iTunes if you find us there and help us build a community around this podcast. This is what we dream of, that we will give you value so that you feel good about your life, your, your, the universe and everything, to quote a famous book, and that you will think that it has value and share it with others. This is our, our dream. So until next time, We wish you a great two weeks if it's— we're still on 14 days schedule, we hope so. So, and I hope that you will have— find productivity interesting and that you will look into GTD and look us up, see what we can help you with. Okay, have a great two weeks. Bye everyone, take care, Loris. Bye-bye.