41. GTD tips for Students with Espen Agøy Hegge

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 Røvik, and I'm here as always with my friend and colleague Lars Rothschild Henriksen. Merhaba, Lars.

Lars: Hi, Morten. Good to be back with you and looking forward to learning some great tips with you and our special guest in this episode. If you haven't listened before, our goal for this podcast is for you to help you learn GTD or become even better GTDers so you can be more productive, get a better overview of all your commitments, be better at staying present with whatever you're engaged in. And we hope that you find these episodes valuable regardless of how experienced you are with GTD. And if you want to learn more about the basics of GTD or you need a refresher, I recommend you head back to episodes 1 through 6 of this podcast.

Morten: Yes, and as you mentioned, this is an interview episode with Espen Augehagen from Productive Norge.

Lars: That's right. So today's topic is GTD tips for students, and we decided to invite Espen on because he is the most, the most knowledgeable person about this topic in the Nordics. So let's dive straight in and bring him on. So, very happy to have you here with us, Espen. Thanks for joining us. To start us off, could you maybe tell us a bit more about yourself?

C: Yeah, sure. I'm the managing director of Product Org, as Morten mentioned, and that's my full-time job now. So, I teach GTD, and I I run this business, but before I used to be a teacher. So I worked in the middle school and the secondary school. I've also been involved in all kinds of education policymaking. I've been involved in taking care of the students, of being a representative for the student council on the teacher body. So I've been really working with education and students my whole life, it feels like. It's really exciting to be able to implement GTD into that context as well. So learning GTD and then seeing how that adapts for students and how they can utilize it.

Morten: Good. And Lars, you have prepared some questions for Espen, I understand.

Lars: So will you just start off? I just wanted to mention that some of you might actually remember Espen's voice from previously because he joined us on an episode last week as well, around summer, I think it was, about GTD. For teachers. So if you think you heard the name before, that's perhaps where. No, I think a good place to start us off is to learn a bit more about the program that you're running in Norway, Smarte Kneipp, to learn more about this. And what does it look like? When do you start to teach students GTD? What do you start to focus on from a GTD perspective? I think that might be a good place for us to.

C: Start. Yeah, first things first, of course, is you can start with GTD basically at any age, but of course the younger the child is or the student is, the more help and guidance the parents or the teacher need to provide. So if you ask how soon you can start, then I'd say that if you're a parent, you can start at home as long as you're your kid is old enough to be able to join in play and do something fun that is based on the GTD methodology. I know many people start by teaching kids the concept of inboxes, for instance, that they can— when they clean the room, they just put everything that's not where it should be in an inbox. And that could be made into a game that even a 4 or 5-year-old could participate in. Even though they don't understand why, it's a good practice to begin with. So you can really start at any age, I think.

Lars: I can certainly recognize that, as you know, as recently as this weekend in the summer house, the whole floor was covered in toys. Asked the boys to clean up. No, not interested. Could you maybe ask the boys to just take all the toys and put them on the table? Sure, that works. And then pick up one thing, clarify and organize, decide what it is, place it in the right box. So yeah, I I can echo that as well from a practical perspective.

C: Me too.

Lars: Yeah.

C: Long time ago. But yes. Because just like us adults, you know, kids get overwhelmed. You know, if you tell them to clean their whole room, their brain just shuts down. At least many does that. And it's just too much to cope with at once. So just put it all in an inbox first and then taking one-on-one thing and deciding where it goes. Is a lot easier. So, so yeah, that's, that's a great, great way to begin with GTD, I.

Morten: Think.

C: But of course, at some point you, you also want to want the kids to, or students, and to start learning this and using it on their own with perhaps minimal guidance. And, and then I think you'll, you'll have to be in, in the mid-teens or thereabout, I think, for— because you need the kids to be old enough to to see the value, or as perhaps I would say, to feel the value. So that they know that without GTD, there's a lot of stress and their everyday life is more or less based on avoiding that stress or coping with it in some way. And they can feel that when they use the GTD practices, they get more freedom to just do what they want and spend their time the way they want. And just be happier. That's, as far as I can— I'm concerned, the ultimate goal in using GTD is to be happier in how you.

Morten: Spend your life, more content with your life. Yes, which is a big problem with, uh, for students these days. I think that a lot of people don't— are not happy with who they are. You know, there's a lot of pressure on body, um, how you look, what you do, who you hang with. Or right now you don't hang with anyone, but do you play your games with something like, like that?

C: Yeah, you know, how to maintain your social life when you're more or less in lockdown, or at least cut off from meeting people in.

Lars: Person. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I know it as well from, from, you know, starting off with, uh, GCD, starting off with an inbox. I know Danish GCDers where they have kids that are 10, or, you know, as recently as this morning, I, I, uh, I checked my inbox and saw an email from, from one teacher in Denmark where he's working with his daughter and she's 12. She just got an inbox getting everything set up and starting to work the process. But obviously need to be comfortable writing things down and, you know, being able to practice those basic things. So at what stage— I know the Smartiknip is the program in Norway. Maybe you can start off by elaborating a bit on that. I don't remember how much was covered in the previous episode, just to catch everyone up on that.

C: Yeah. It's what we've chosen in Smartiknapp in Norway is to start in the Norwegian Grundschule, which is from 12 to or 13 to 16 years old. And because that's really a transition phase for most kids going from just having fun at school and showing up and having a lot of play to making the transition into, well, college and university later on. So it's for most kids, that's when they first start to feel some kind of stress or pressure, I think, related to schoolwork, at least. So we focused on that.

Lars: Period. How do you go about then? Where do you start off with GTD? I guess what, you know, it would be interesting for listeners to learn how you approach it there because maybe they could, if they want to work with GTD with their own children at this age. How would they start? How do you start in that program?

C: Yeah, we based it around focus, really. So what we want to learn kids and students is how to focus on one thing at a time, because that's an acquired skill that many people have lost or never learned. They're so used to handling 5, 10, 15 different things at a time that they don't really know how to do it any differently. And they sure don't know how to do it and still get things done. They think that they need to do 10 or 15 things at once to be productive, to get everything done. And then we come along and say that you're actually faster if you do one thing at a time and do it right.

Morten: So that's the main focus. Interruption just for one second. Are you telling me that, you know, trying to do homework, listening to music at the same time as you are on Snapchat is not a good idea? Yeah.

C: Okay.

Morten: But teenagers, I guess music, but doing.

C: Homework and listening to music might work. Yeah. But as Snap or.

Morten: Facebook. Or TikTok or whatever is the fad at the moment.

C: Yeah, whatever the latest, newest is. That's the problem with doing this podcast. The recording will be out there, so someone will probably wonder what is TikTok, what is Snapchat some years from now. But yeah, of course, you should only think about one thing at a time. So if you need to think about your homework, then you should not do anything else at the same time that requires thinking. So for some people, listening to music does require thinking, and I would then suggest that they turn the music off or do as I do and put on— search for cafe sounds on Spotify and have that in the background, just some kind of white noise. Just experiment. But as long as it doesn't require you to think, then yeah, you can do more things at once.

Morten: And it is, I don't know if you've, you know, I know I made jokingly that, you know, the music and Snapchat at the same time, but when you do homework, but there is proven evidence and that listening to music can enhance your focus because it kind of blocks out the channel that wants to distract you. You occupy the channel that needs to be distracted not to be distracted. But you're distracted with music which doesn't, you know, interrupt your thinking. I don't know if that makes sense to you.

C: Yeah, and it's a good point into the next thing, because if you're going to learn how to focus, then you also need to be aware of what is distracting you. And that's another thing that we're working on with the students, that, you know, what distracts you? Are you mostly distracted by visual things, by auditory things. Can you have music on or not? Should you be in a room by yourself or should you be together with friends when doing homework? What is— what is— yeah, what's the most optimal setup for the different places you are during the day? So it's not just homework also, but it's, you know, how to be focused at school. You know, even though you get help from the teachers or professors, if you're at a higher education level, then you need to know how to block out the distractions when you need to.

Lars: Focus. So how do you approach this? How do you then— where do you start? Do you start off with capturing and then, you know, please clarify, organize, etc., or do you take a different approach with these, I guess.

C: Teens? Well, for many teams, we need to spend some time just talking about why this is relevant because it's relatively new. So just as I mentioned, we need to establish that multitasking doesn't work. And that can take some time. And once that is done, then we can move on to the other phases of GTD, the other implement the other tools. So like capture, clarify, organize. Review is adapted to the level they are at, both, you know, how mature they are, what age they are. For kids in the age range that we're teaching in Norway, then a full weekly review is tedious. That's the feedback we get from the kids. It's too much. So we try to narrow it down, to simplify it. Look at your schedule for school, look at what homework you have, try to plot that in the different.

Morten: Days.

C: Take, you know, the whole point of the weekly review is to just see things from a higher level. So not just focus on doing the homework, but planning how you're going to get it done, for instance. Not just thinking about all the things you need to do this week and the next week, but actually going into your calendar and figure out how you need to organize it in order to make all the fun stuff happen. Yeah.

Morten: And how does the student react or the young teen react on the— you do this to have more time to have fun? Aspect of this? Are they positive or are they going.

C: "Eh"? We've discussed this, me and Anna Stina, who is my partner in this in Norway, that we might divide teens, students into 3 categories based on what motivates them. And one category is those that are motivated by, "You will get more time to have.

Morten: Fun.".

C: Use this and you'll— well, we can find all 3 categories in all age groups, but we've been working with, you know, 13 to 16 years old. So, you know, motivated by, if you use GTD, you'll spend less time doing homework and you'll have more time doing fun stuff. Just, you know, the pure productive aspect of it. And then you have the ones that are motivated by doing better work.. Like if you use GTD, you will, your grades will go up. For instance, you will be more focused, you will learn more, you will, as a result, you will get better grades and it will do better at school and you can, you know, get into the school you want to get into later on. And then there's the group that perhaps a bit more overlapping with the other two, but that are motivated by feeling better. You know, they're stressed out, they have too much to think about, social life, school life, family life, and using GTD helps them to spend the right amount of energy and effort on each level so that they feel better about themselves and how they're interacting with.

Lars: Their world. Cool. So how do you get feedback directly from the kids and then you iterate on the program to improve it? And what are you hearing from from the kids that are picking this up?

C: What's their feedback? Yeah, we're really much in a testing stage, so the feedback is immediate. So after every session, they are asked to just leave some kind of feedback. It's not always easy to motivate teens to write an essay about why this was good or bad, but But try to get a few sentences out of them every time so that we can do better. And of course, we want to scale this. We want this to be a part of what we offer to all schools in Norway and in the Nordic countries. We know that kids need to learn this some way, and we think we.

Morten: Have the best way to do it. So I'm just curious now to lift it because this episode has the name Students as a topic. Topic. And what we are talking about more and more is that, well, in my brain, pupils more than students. But if you lift it up to students who graduate from, you know, going to university or some kind of higher education, how would you adapt GTD for them? What, what could be— if you haven't heard about Getting Things Done at all before, what would you recommend a student.

C: To do? Well, in my experience, if they haven't had any kind of contact with GTD or these kinds of thoughts before, then they would still need, you know, the introduction that tells them that multitasking isn't good for you and really seeing the value of doing focused work and doing single tasking. So I think that would be a great way to start. For all age groups, you know, just making sure that you know the value of focusing on one task at a time, that it's not just something you hear, but it's something you know, because that will give the drive to continue. And for students in higher education, they're so old that the approach will be more or less similar to what we do for people in the workforce. You know, they, uh, you just take your subjects and, and that's your area of focus or your project for that semester, and then you have, have next actions to, to reach whatever your goal is. Whatever a goal in one subject could be to just get a pass, and in another subject you, you might want to aim for a C or a B or A, you know, or you just want to learn as much as possible in that subject because it really interests you. So, you know, you, in my view, you would just create a project for that semester's courses. Make sure it's not just finish the course, but, you know, find out what you really want to get out of it. And then stick to it and do a weekly review and do all the steps in GTD that we know works. But the motivation really is key. And that's why we start there. You need, You need to know that this is good.

Morten: For you. So would you recommend, for instance, like I'm remembering the book GTD for Teens for all people in that world? Of course, you have to understand English because it's not translated to Norwegian yet. Are you listening, Kaplan Dom? We need to translate this book. Kaplan Dom is the publisher of David's books.

C: In Norway. Yeah, I've heard from adults as well that think that the GTD for Teens explained the methodology and the concept in a new way, so that even though they had read the book and even though GTD for Teens is written for teens, they got a new perspective and learned something new. So it might be a more easily accessible book for both teens and students and everyone who's new to GTD. It has drawings that are targeted towards a younger audience, but if that's not a problem for you, then sure, go ahead and read it. And as you say, it's now in 2021, it's not in Norwegian, it's in English, but hopefully that will.

Morten: Change sometime.

C: Yeah.

Morten: So if we are looking at the higher the higher educations, and you're on the— depending of course on what kind of education you're trying to achieve or try to— what exams you want to pass and what's, what you're thinking of your career will be. But if you want to become a consultant or you want to become a scientist, what kind of benefits would GTD give you when you are If you learn this while you are a student, and then what kind of benefits would you.

C: Have after, in your opinion? Well, it's much the same as the 3 categories I mentioned earlier. You could use it to spend less time on work, but still doing what you're supposed to do. You could spend it doing your work as well as you could and just being recognized for high-quality work and advancing and creating a career for yourself. Or just, you know, nothing just about it, but having a good, you know, mental health, making sure that you're spending the right time on the right things. So I think for adults as well, those three categories are relevant. And if you learn GTD in school, then you'll hit the ground running when you're out in the workforce because Still, there are a lot of people that don't know this, that still try to multitask, that still try to use whatever comes in latest in your mailbox as a priority system. And that's what we do. That's our line of work. We teach people a better way to work. And it's really needed. So anyone who learns this in school will have a huge advantage.

Morten: Yeah, I think so too. I got an email just the other— last week actually, from a former student who has had a great career after school. He attended, I don't remember, a long time ago, 7 years ago or something. I did a pro bono GTD fundamental seminars for students in Trondheim. And the leader of these students is the person who sent me this email and said that this has been really beneficial for me, it helped me in my career and landed me the jobs I wanted because I can prove that I am, you know, I have a proven track record of being reliable, which is about GTD. And the high yield of productivity, you have a lot of things you can show too, and at the same time, you are sane. You have a life in addition, which is not bad when you go to work after, you know.

C: And that's the thing, because people think that they have to choose, you know, you have to be either productive or stay sane, and, or you have to take time off from work to recuperate, to, you know, catch your breath. But We teach stress-free productivity, and that's a combination that most people think are not.

Morten: Possible. Yeah. I think the notion is that if you want to do more, you must work harder. Yeah. But this is not correct. Use your brain smarter. Don't use your brain as a system. Use your brain as a place to be creative and productive in the moment is what we teach people. So, um, we are at, uh, getting to the, the, the time limit of our podcast. Any questions at the end, Lars, for.

Lars: Espen you would like to— I was just wondering what the future might hold. So now we, we— I think we, we managed to transition all the way from, from early years all the way up to being students at maybe a university even. And a personal note, I would have loved to— I really would have benefited to, to know about GTD as a student. I would have benefited more from the course, learned more, being able to contribute more, finish faster. So many things that I— and I think most GTDers out there will probably recognize that they wish they had learned GTD sooner than they actually did. No, but I was just curious. I was curious to hear what the future then is. Are you— the future of Smartik Naip, or are there any other initiative programs on maybe a someday, maybe list to start off and teach more young people, whether it's, you know, the current age group, older, or maybe even, even younger. Any, any thoughts on that?

C: What does the future hold? Yeah, it depends how far ahead you want me to look into the crystal ball, because definitely the ultimate goal is, is to make ourselves superfluous. You know, that you don't need to go to a GTD course because everyone learned it in school. They already know this. Perhaps they just need a refresher, you know, as to what to do now that they're out in the workforce. So that's when we'll talk about, you know, desired outcomes far ahead. It's that this is available in schools. And we have come a ways, and we see that the society really appreciates these kinds of— putting this kind of knowledge into schools. At least in Norway, we have subjects now where you're supposed to learn, you know, how to master your life, you know, how to cope with life. That's a part of all school levels in Norway, at least. And so there's an opening, and we hope to show them that GTD is the quickest, easiest less stressful or least stressful way to achieve all that. But in the near future, we still have COVID-19, we still have stuff going on here. So for now, it's definitely on pause, but hopefully we'll be able to pick that up.

Morten: Again soon. And for those who don't know the history of this, and is that Smartiknip is pro bono? It's not going to be associated with Getting Things Done. You will not find GTD or Getting Things Done in the course material. We do this because we want to— this project has been started because we want to change the world for the students to the better. And as Espen says, we want.

C: To.

Morten: Be out of a job at some point, maybe in 50 years or so. I don't know how long time that transition will take, but hopefully it will not take forever because It's really good. It's going to help the world. It's going to be a better place. It's going to be easier to become, to be a student. You're going to have a better life after. So maybe if you don't believe us when we say this, then read the book, start emptying your head, start doing the stuff that we talk about in this podcast and see if it doesn't help your life. So, okay. Any finishing comments, either of you? Before we sign off?

C: No, just thank you for having me. It's, it's a great subject and one that I love talking about, so thank you.

Morten: I'm sure we will have you on at a later stage with an update when you have something to tell us, any, any news. Send us a ping and we will have you on quickly. So Lars, will you take us out?

Lars: Sure, let me do that. Yeah, thanks, Espen, for, for joining us. A lot of interesting stuff. Um, and we always wrap up these episodes by, uh, letting you know to Drop by gcdnordic.com and have a look around over there. You'll find the country websites for each of the GTD partners in the Nordics. And on those websites, you can find articles about GTD, links to newsletters, groups on social media where natives from each of those countries discuss GTD tools and all that. So head on over to those websites. And of course, you will also find all of our offerings there, both the— sorry about that— speeches, the coaching seminars, both physical and virtual. If you're outside the Nordics, head over to gettingthingsdone.com to find your local partners. And as always, we really hope that you find these episodes valuable. I know that I did for sure. And if you do, we really appreciate it when you share the podcast or an episode with a colleague, perhaps rate us on iTunes, give us a thumbs up on YouTube, wherever you're consuming this content. It really helps people discover this. And shout out to both Andy and one other person who were kind enough to leave us very nice reviews on Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for the kind words.

Morten: Okay, thank you everybody for watching, and until next time, stay safe and stay productive and have a good one. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. And today's episode is an interview episode where we interviewed Espen Auge Helge. We will interview him here live. So, and I'm making a lot of blah blah now so we can start again because this was a.

C: Very good—.

Morten: This is for the outtakes.