21. How to approach the Corona virus as a GTD’er

Transcript

Automatically transcribed and lightly edited. Timestamps omitted for readability.

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

Lars: Hi, Morten. Happy to be back once again and very much looking forward to doing this episode with you. Hope this will be really valuable for our listeners. And if you're new to this podcast, if this is your first time listening, our goal with the podcast is to really help you become a better GTDer, understand what it's about, improve your ways of working and methodology, and in the end, experience more of the value with GTD to clear your mind, stay more present with whatever you're doing, and achieving that stress-free productivity. We really hope that you find these episodes valuable regardless of your experience with GTD and As you may have heard before, if this isn't your first time listening, but if it is your first time listening, then you can go back and listen to more of the basics of GTD. Listen through episodes 1 through 6 where we cover the initial 5 steps of the Getting Things Done methodology.

Morten: Yeah, great. And the reason I use still is because we are in the— are you still in the intro? We are still here. I'm still Morten Røvik and you're still Lars, and we are still doing our podcast even in this times of Corona, because today's topic is how to approach the coronavirus as a GTDer, is it not?

Lars: That's right. So it really impacts, you know, the whole world. It's been, you know, very historical to see how it has affected the world over these last month or two now as we record this. And what we spoke about was it would be really valuable to share with other GTDers or other people looking to gain control control gain perspective, how could we then handle this coming from a GTD perspective? So that's the topic of today.

Morten: Yeah, indeed, indeed. And we are going to attack this both on a general level but also try and make it a little personal, talk about how we have done this, how we've approached the coronavirus and the changes it has given us all, our lives are changed, maybe forever in this, but at least for now, we have a changed world. So where to start? I suggest that we will start this discussion or walk you through what you might want to look at. I would start reviewing your horizons of focus. And for those of you who are familiar with Horizons of Focus, or if you're not, this is a model for trying to find out, uncover in your life what is your purpose of living and what is your values, what are your values, and what is your principles that you will not break no matter what. And then how does it look when you do this? What's your vision for this? You go down to your areas of focus and areas of— sorry, I jumped past goals, which is before areas of focus. One should think I knew these things, but okay. So after you come for vision, you will then go down to your goals, your long-term goals, 12 to 24 months-ish goals, and then down to your areas of focus and areas of accountability, where you are in responsibility, where you will look at what you're responsible for. And then down on your project level, what projects are on your lists and what are your next actions, what's on your calendar. And the reason this model exists is because you might want to make sure there is coherence between what you're doing in your everyday life and what you really want to do on a long-term basis. Like, where do I want to be at the end of my life? What would I like to be true in the world when I reach the end of my life? So to look at that in this tumultuous and fairly scary new reality we are in with eyes of looking to the future where you can't see the future clearly, you at least can focus on your values and your principles. I would suggest that you do that and recalibrate seperate those and try and figure out if you haven't done it already or refigure it out. What is important to me? What is really important in my life? What's my core values here? What is, who and what is important in my life? And then take yourself a step down the ladder and make sure that the map you're using, we call it the horizons of focus. Model is a map of where you want to go in the future. And if you start there, it will be a lot easier to do what we are going to cover a little later, is review your system and renegotiate your commitments. So I've done that on a personal level. I've walked through it, and I still find that most of what's on my Horizons of Focus document is still true. Was still true. And there's some minor adjustments on how we handle things. But my values haven't changed. My principles haven't changed. My perceived purpose in life has not changed. So, but it was good to walk through it with the eyes, sorry, with the corona situation. I don't know, how have you looked through your horizons of focus, Lars?

Lars: Yeah. And it's, you know, also coming down even one step, looking at the vision. The vision is also pretty much unchanged because how we then reach that vision. So in our case, for example, helping the most number of people experience the value of GTD and leading a better life, that is also still a really relevant vision. How we then achieve that might have been impacted at least on a short-term basis. And like, as you hinted to, probably also on a longer-term basis. So how do we then prepare and set up so we can still help the biggest number of people? So that will then impact your system on a lower level, further down in the horizons of focus. But when we look at the higher levels, like you just said, that to some extent remains unchanged.

Morten: Indeed, indeed. So what if you now renegotiated and looked at your horizons of focus, recalibrated your map, where would you go next?

Lars: So where I also went was certainly the active projects. And that is also certainly an area I could expect that most of our listeners would find a lot of value in reviewing and renegotiating. So there will likely be specific aspects of your job, of your current projects, where you can simply park them or renegotiate them, align with the stakeholders that you need to park these. So in Morten's world and in my world, that means that we, we had a booked calendar full of seminars and speeches and coaching, and a lot of that has been postponed now to later. So some of those have come back, and that means that I then have to re- calibrate my system to align with that. And it's really interesting to see as that number goes down, then it did, you know, the other remaining projects stand out more clearly and some other ones I had to park or wanted to park on my own because now it felt like the right thing to do to postpone that to later. But also, especially now, my someday maybe list, for example, became really valuable because some of the stuff that I had parked because I didn't have the bandwidth to take it on at that time, now I could go in there, pick some things out some really cool things that I had been waiting to do that I didn't have time for before. Now I can set those up and get those up and running. So it's really, in the end, of course, it's a challenge and it impacts us a lot and it's scary, like you said, but it can also be inspirational once you recalibrate that system and review your projects and see where you can now be heading instead, as opposed to where you were before.

Morten: Yeah, and then one thing that I'm really happy for is that we are, as you said, we have our livelihood is to meet people either one-to-many or one-to-one, either in a seminar or a keynote or one-to-one coaching. And that we now found because of your, you know, it's either sheer luck or providence or the universe was listening. David Allen Company and David Allen Academy has made a new product for us that was available last week. We've been working very hard to make that available for our clients here in the Nordic region. It's called Virtual Instructor-Led Training, which is basically the GTD seminar delivered virtually. And you will probably hear something about this if you're listening to us, not listening to, but if you're subscribing to some of our newsletters, which I would suggest you do, go to the local sites and sign up for our newsletters for hearing more about this one when we have a viable option for you. But, and then also that we can then take our projects like Park Hall, the seminars we've done, but also all the coachings and then do them as virtual coaching because certification as a virtual coach opens for that so we can help people virtually as well. And I wrote down something here that I might want to share. This is two words, what I call fearless renegotiation. And I'm sure you can fill that with something. This is like a trigger word for Lars now. How would you fearlessly renegotiate your commitments?

Lars: To be honest, I'm not sure where you're going with the fearless. So maybe we need to edit this part out.

Morten: Okay. No, we don't have to, because what I'm looking at is with fearless renegotiation, I think that where, when you're, because of the coronavirus, we have had our priorities shift. It's not possible to do a lot of the things we used to do before. Therefore, you have to renegotiate. Without fear, you can— fear does not enter, for instance, a project you can't do something about. You can just take it off your list. It's fairly easy. If you have something on your list you would prefer not having on the list because you don't find it pressing or it's not it's not of high value, it's not urgent, then you can fearlessly renegotiate that, put it on a someday maybe. But just to try and both with vigor and without fear renegotiate your commitments. And a lot of people will find that freeing because a lot of the things when you have too much to do, For some people who have problems saying no, like me, I have to teach myself every time, no, it's a very good thing to say when you can say no to the right things, to say yes to the right things. But if you have overcommitted yourself, you need to renegotiate commitments and you have to let some people down. But some of the projects we had before are now automatically been renegotiated for us because it's either they can't be done because it's physically impossible or it's not feasible. It's not either urgent or possible to make them. So that's what I mean with fearless renegotiation. I don't know if that makes sense.

Lars: But there you go. No, I think it does. I think it does. Yeah. A good next step for me after this was also to do a good solid mind sweep, really give yourself the time to think things through, especially after coming through a review of the horizons of focus. You have a clear view of your system right now. What are you currently working on? Take a walk and sit down and look at something nice. Look at the forest, look at the water, whatever works for you. But really give your brain the space to come up with these really cool ideas and figure out what has your attention, what has changed, what do you need to adapt to, and how will you then do that? So be sure to do a good solid mind sweep as part of this recalibration of your life.

Morten: Indeed. And then walk through your house and see if there is some project you've been not grabbing for your someday, maybe even you haven't grabbed it at all. I found a couple in our apartment going through for, just looking at what What do I want to be different in our apartment? And a few of the projects are already finished, so that's good. And it feels good to have done something you've been more or less putting on a shit I don't want to care about list mentally. But now you can just put it on a, in a minesweep, get it out of your head and then process it. Clarify and organize it so you can get to move on them. So I don't know.

Lars: And at the end of that, then obviously weekly review will still always help you. So maybe you've done a bigger review, but then recalibrate and review that list again. So now you have a clear picture of what does your world look like now, where are you heading now. And that is certainly valuable. And for me, just as an example as well, like I said, a lot of projects relating to seminars, coaching, and speeches were postponed. That then opened up for me to get some other stuff done. Suddenly, I found some extra time, which meant that I got a lot of actions done. I really got a lot of stuff done because suddenly my calendar was wide open, nothing interrupting me. And what I noticed reflecting on my own practice was that I picked some of the actions off my list that had been there for a while that were annoying me. So not the most important, not the most urgent ones, but now because so many things were put on hold or postponed, I was able to get those off my list. And they, like I said, they might not have been the most important ones, they might not have been the most urgent ones, but it was just so nice to get them out of the way. And it was things that I don't, you know, normally I'm not good enough at setting aside time to get those in quotes annoying ones out of the way. But this change in my life then gave me the opportunity to get rid of those. So I hope that others will notice that as well because that was really— that got my list down to a much nicer number and much more clear and clean and clear edges, knew exactly where I was heading, what are we working on right now, let's go.

Morten: Yeah. And just to quote David Allen here, he has said many times that If you don't know what to do, look to your lists and clean up. And just for the sake of cleaning up your calendar, cleaning up your lists, cleaning up your Horizons of Focus document, it feels good. It's like spring cleaning. And it feels like you are more in control of your situation afterwards. And GTD is all about giving you freedom to focus on what you want to to focus on and clearing out all the mundane craft from your system, washing it, cleaning it. If you have a squeaky clean, newly polished car, it's really nice to drive that car after, isn't it? So clean your system and you will feel better using it.

Lars: Yeah, exactly. The last one that we put on the list on what might be a good approach as GTD or to life-changing situations such as the coronavirus was also to fall back on the natural planning model for new ideas. How will we manage this? What can you come up with? Where do we want to go? We've covered the natural planning model in one of the first 10 episodes. I forget which one it was. But if you're not familiar with it, then go back and re-listen to that one because creativity is really scarce resource in these times, especially if you're stressed and worried, then your creativity will take an even harder hit. So once you have that system set up, once you have everything out of your head, be sure to also fall back on the natural planning model to come up with new ideas, to find the best path for you through this crisis. And I see for myself again, I use— like I believe I mentioned back then in that episode— I use MindNode as a mind mapping tool. I find that I've used this more this month than I have for the last 6 months. And that may just be a coincidence, but I find that for me it's really helpful now to really have a good model to work from and also have a good tool to do the brainstorming. Some of you will prefer paper, some of you will prefer other tools. This one works well for me and really to think things through, come up with good ideas. Let it, you know, I'll save it, I'll keep it on my, you know, my shared drive. I will open it again the day after because during the night I came up with another good idea for it. It really has helped me also a lot in these, in these times to really get the best ideas on how to move forward.

Morten: Yeah, me too. I also used the mind mapping, mind mapping tool, and it helps free up and structure information in a very visual way. And for most of these tools, after you've done that, which I found very, it's a very good structuring tool to get things out and get it organized in a, in a, in a fashion that makes it easy to understand after. And then you can make an export as a list with indented lists to share it with others who haven't been through the same process, or maybe not as visually inclined as you you might be. And that's also a good idea. But natural planning model, absolutely. Why are we doing this? What is our framework? When does it need to be finished? How does it look when it's successfully, wildly successfully done? And these two first steps of the natural planning model helps you birth your project in a good way and combine that with some brainstorming, some, you know, organizing, and then who's responsible, what are we doing next, which is really, really a good model to help you, especially if you are a little confused. I'm a little confused about this project. What's, what's, what, what is my next step here? And take a step back and do the natural planning model on it. And it will help you a lot, even in these corona times.

Lars: Fully agree.

Morten: Yeah. So, you know, just for those of you who are new to GTD, but also those of you who are unfamiliar with GTD, GTD is about making sure you have the emptiest head you can have at any time for having the freedom to focus on what you want to focus on. If that is to focus on creating something new, just, or just take care of your family without worry, moving in about the 4,000 emails you haven't responded to yet, or just for you to relax in a hammock whenever that will be next time. But next time you have a hammock, you can go into it and really, really relax and be present. And everything we talk about in this podcast is about making sure you have the mental bandwidth so that you can have the freedom to focus on what you want to focus on, not being driven by the latest and loudest all times.

Lars: Yeah, and that exactly is part of the real value for me when it comes to GTD in these times. So the current situation in my life is that my wife and I take turns taking care of the kids as the The daycare institutions are closed, so I switched from yesterday just spending all day with my kids and enjoying that and not having to worry about work and thinking about work to today when I'm at the office and working my way through the list and getting all the stuff done that is waiting for me now. So it's again the ability to switch and disconnect and be present with whatever you're doing that again is even more valuable in times like these.

Morten: Indeed, indeed. Um, I think maybe we come to the end of our list and the end of this podcast. Do you have something to add or—.

Lars: No, just to hope that this was valuable for people. And if you know, if you have any other tips, uh, if you find value from this, we'd love to hear from you. So send us an email. You'll find the email where you can reach us in the, um, show notes. It's called podcast@gtdnordic.dk. Um, and again, if you want to find more information about GTD GTD, go to gtdnordic.com. You'll find links to all the country websites in the Nordics where we have articles, newsletter, links to the various groups that we support, meetups where we meet and discuss GTD, all the good stuff. Go to gtdnordic.com or gettingthingsdone.com if you're outside the Nordic region. And as mentioned in the beginning, we always hope you find these episodes valuable. So if you do, And we really appreciate if you share the podcast with a colleague or rate us on iTunes.

Morten: So, um, until next time we talk, stay safe and stay productive and have a great weekend days ahead. Bye-bye, everyone.

Lars: Bye-bye.