42. Procrastination for GTD’ers

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 am Morten Røvik and I'm here as always with my friend and colleague Lars Rothschild Henriksen. What do I need to say now?

Lars: Usually some kind of hello.

Morten: I know, but I know, but what should I say? Give me one. Give me one.

Lars: Hi, Lars, in Danish. Hi, Lars.

Morten: Okay.

Lars: Hi, Morten. Good to be back with you. And yeah, once again, looking forward to doing another episode with you. If you have not listened to this podcast before, we deliver this podcast to you to try to support you in learning GTD or becoming an even better GTDer, to help you get the benefits of GTD, becoming more productive, less stressed, get a better overview of all of your commitments. And we hope that you find these episodes valuable regardless of how experienced you are with GTD. And if you are looking for a refresher or want to refresh on the basics of GTD, then we recommend you go back and listen to the first 6 episodes of the podcast.

Morten: Yes, do that. And today's episode is about something we know nothing about, but we've read about it. It's called procrastination. Yeah, I've heard about that concept. Of course, I'm making a joke now because we we all have procrastination. When I talk to people, I say that if you don't procrastinate, you're either Mr. or Mrs. Superman Woman, or you're lying through your teeth, because we all procrastinate. Okay, so I'm Morten, I procrastinate every now and then. I guess you do too, Lars?

Lars: Absolutely. Absolutely. That still happens. I think I probably, I used to be a master procrastinator. After implementing GTD, But it's certainly gotten better for sure.

Morten: Yeah. And I'm sure we will at some point, we can mention that now, that we'll post a link to the, to, you know, maybe the most famous or infamous video on a TED Talk from Tim Urban, Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator. I'm sure you would put that in the show notes because if people, yeah. And then when you finish listening to us now or seeing us, then go see that video because it's, you can.

Lars: Procrastinate watching that video.

Morten: Yeah. You can watch that video instead of working. Okay, so no, but what is procrastination? This is, you know, the feeling of something is uncomfortable for you to think about. You don't know how to solve it, maybe, but you're pushing it in front of you. And I try to make a kind of a physical image of this because I know a lot of people have physical, you know, kind of a manifestation of this. And if you do that, write us and tell us what is your manifestation of procrastination. How does it look for you in your mind's eye? And I know a lot of people— not recognizable. When you said it's like a hazy, unclear, woolly ball of unclarity, you don't know exactly what you're going to do about this thing, but you push it into the future. So that feeling.

Lars: Yeah, exactly. Unclear.

Morten: Keep listening because we are going to try and unravel what is it and what can you do about it with GTD. And we are also going to talk about procrastination of doing your GTD, which is very, I think, I'm sure, people have problems with that as well, because I did. I'm sure you did too.

Lars: Everyone does.

Morten: So if you ask David, I'm sure he would say something, and that's David Allen, the originator of Getting Things Done. He would say something that procrastination stems from a fear of losing control. And I do agree with him. I think that's But I think that's part of the procrastination problem. And I try to identify some things, and we will of course dig into this, but the feeling of unclarity, if you don't understand what this really is, but you know you need to do something about it, that's the hallmark of a classic and clean procrastination item. And then I'm, you know, the lack of urgency is also maybe like, I need to file my taxes, but that's 2 months until I need to do that. So, hmm, let me procrastinate that, you know. And for a GTDer, I think that one of the hallmarks of procrastination is that you don't put it on your lists.

Lars: Even.

Morten: If you put it on the list, it's a little bit more difficult to procrastinate it. But if you don't put it on the list at all, that's really a hallmark of you should go, oh, so do you have any other reasons for procrastination that you have identified? I know that we are going to talk about GTD, but in the more general sense of procrastination. How does it feel for you, Lars?

Lars: Yeah, well, I think that what you said about David and the fear of losing control, I think, is especially true in these cases where you don't know what the outcome will be. So difficult conversations with colleagues or your life partner or boss or whatever it might be, those can really stay on the list for a long time if you don't really take a step back and think through what would be the right thing to do. And then for sure, for me, what, what I would normally procrastinate on, I would for sure not write down. So getting into the habit of capturing these things, that, that is, of course, the first step in all of this. But even though if they are on a list, it is still easy to procrastinate if it's still unclear, like you said, it's this kind of unclear stuff. So as usual, as GTDers, it's, you know, the issue would be you're not sure what to do now, or you're not sure where you're heading. So those, those two 2 different areas of it. So defining that as usual with the clarifying step would help you at least get an idea of that. So the unclear part is gone, and then it comes back to, well, what should I do right now? And that's where urgency is certainly a factor. And again, the lack of overview can also really play into this.

Morten: Yeah. So if we are going to, just for those of you who are fresh to GTD or not, you know, just stumble upon our podcast, Then, you know, Lars talked about capture, and that, that is just write it down somewhere you're, you're, you're comfortable, you will see it later. It's capturing it. That's either write it down or talk it to you, you know, either on a phone or, you know, a wallet, something, you know, we have our trusted capture wallets, or just a piece of paper that you carry around with you. So when a piece of paper, piece of paper, which is, uh, you know, unbeatable because it's fast, it's easy, but if One of the courses, your brain needs to trust that you will see this later. So don't just write it on a napkin and then you will lose that napkin. That's, you know, you need to trust that your brain needs to trust that you're actually going to handle that later. So exactly, so that's capture. So that's, you know, one of the steps that you can do for make sure that you don't procrastinate. But, um, do you see any other you know, in the wild, talk to people, you know, general procrastinations? Should we just talk about, to give people a little feeling of bad conscience here, what is typical things that could be procrastinated? I talked about taxes, filing taxes.

Lars: Yeah, it's probably, I think, reports. Those could be the very near ones, things that you don't prioritize or see as actually adding value. So those things can, you know, that add management kind of stuff that you actually have to get done. So just to say quickly, the GTD perspective on that, and from, for me, is to have a separate list for that. So it's late in the afternoon, I'm tired, I still want to do some productive stuff. Great to have a list for those kinds of things to, to get those, those out of the way and get those done, because they, they will tend to stay on the not-so-urgent, not-so-important list. And all of a sudden, things with the, the fire is getting closer. So now you really have to get these things done. That's when you start to run around and put out those fires. But otherwise, I think, so that's, that can be from a more sort of close perspective. And otherwise, it's those, maybe those bigger things that you haven't really thought through about what to do something about, like health-related things, for example, that they are, you know, out there somewhere. And yeah, I'll, I'll get to that. That's, that's a problem for future Lars, not me. I'm fine. I'll get, get the stuff done. I'll send that email instead and have a quick, maybe not so healthy lunch, you know, but thinking those kinds of things through, I, I see that as well. But again, that comes with the clarity priority of getting things under control right now and then starting to look ahead.

Morten: Yeah. And I'm sure that you will agree with me that when you get better at GTD, the more you get under control, the less procrastination you do. Just because you are clearing your head, you give yourself better bandwidth. This better bandwidth. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, this is live more or less. We are not going to edit this, okay? But, but one of the, the things that I, I think that when, when I got better at GTD, I started procrastinating less because my head is not competing. I'm not competing inside my head. This new thing that don't— doesn't doesn't seem urgent or it's very unclear, it doesn't compete with all the other things I need to do something about. It's just really, it's, it's, it's cleared. And when it comes into my brain, I can look at it and analyze it, you know, and ask myself, why am I procrastinating this? And I think that's one of the keys to, to when you get better at GTD, you will be better at asking, why am I, why is this not working? Why am I procrastinating? You get to know yourself better. Which can be a fairly self-revealing exercise, but you get to know your inner workings, which is interesting. Maybe you like what you see, or maybe you don't like what you see, but when you get to your horizon of focus, then later at some point you will be able to adjust if you want, if you see something. So should we just move on to procrastination of GTD itself. You prepared something on this. What do you call that again? We call it limiting mindsets.

Lars: Yeah, so I was thinking through as we were preparing for this episode, I was sort of listing why do you procrastinate about parts of GTD. And 3 things came to mind as I was thinking through this. One being that you're, you know, we are all different human beings when it comes to our brains, what we are attracted to, what we, how we naturally process information. So we see this, for example, when we coach people and include them in the Kairos Cognition survey, we see how people's brains adapt and handle and manage information differently. So we will naturally be drawn to different aspects of GTD depending on how your brain works. So So really, whether you're more associative or sequential, there will be steps in GTD that will be easier for you, or that will be harder for you. So you, we will, you know, typically have, let's say, to simplify this, of course, we would have people that are really, you know, system-oriented, really happy with their lists and very much focused on that and tweaking that area, really thinking of next actions. And we will have the more visionary people that are very happy to come up with ideas, fill up that inbox with all kinds of great stuff. But maybe have a tendency not so much to want to process it because that really requires brainpower for them to engage in. So that can certainly be— there will be aspects of GTD that you're more naturally drawn to. You need, of course, all 5 steps to make this whole thing work. But there will be aspects of GTD where you need to add some more willpower in order to get through that. So that might be one area.

Morten: Okay. So I suggest at this point that I read us through the 5 steps and just kind of short description what happens on the 5 steps, and then we can walk into where in the 5 steps where you can see procrastination and why and how you maybe you can beat it. So the first step is called capture, where you will capture everything that has your attention that you might want to do something about or you will do something about or you have a worry about. So there's 3 categories and you will write things down somewhere your brain trusts it sees it later and then it stays out of your brain, your brain or your thoughts. And then for it to continue to stay out of your brain, you need to clarify and organize it. Clarify it means that you must make decisions on what you need to do about the things that you've captured or not do something about, and then organize that into your system, which comprises of a calendar and your normal calendar and your your GTD lists. And if your brain trusts that you will do that every 24 to 48 hours, your brain will relax and he knows that, well, Lars, he has control. There is nothing not clarified. And I made, he made good next actions for himself and good desired outcomes for when that is needed. And then when he has, you know, you come there, you're still without, you know, your thoughts don't move into your brain again. It stays out of your brain, in your external brain system for handling that stuff. But you need to then clarify— sorry, to review this, reflect upon it on a regular basis. We call that weekly review, where you have to go back and see everything you've committed to do and refine and update and rewrite the map so you know you are on the right track to whatever you want to do and achieve. And then you have to Engage, which means that you have to do what you decided to do before. Then you go to your calendar or your lists and you do what you think is most appropriate in the moment. So if you start at step number 1, I've found that some people, myself included, tend to— nah, I don't need to capture that because it's so obvious. I will remember this. It's so big that, you know, this will never slip. I think that's maybe the "I fool myself" approach for this.

Lars: Exactly. And also writing down the small things. That's, I see that a lot, that when we approach people that are maybe in this more Visionary category, where they tend to write things down, they tend to make, maybe make lists and also maybe are in the, in the Sequential category, then they will still miss out on the small things. And when we talk about it, and they reflect, the small things can really, you know, take up so much of their their brainpower in order to remember all that stuff. So that was certainly a change for me, both just starting to write things down, but also getting the small stuff down. So you don't end up procrastinating on that activity itself.

Morten: Yeah, which is, you know, that if you are engaging on high-level stuff, it's easier to remember, you know, this big negotiating deal or this very important project I'm working on and a presentation that's more or less I wouldn't say easy, but it's easier to get out of your brain because it's kind of— it yells with a bigger noise, voice. But, you know, cat food, 2 milk on the road, you know, on my way home now today, or remember to send that email to Bob is also pulling on your brain. It takes up valuable, you know, brain space that you don't have too much of that. You need to make sure it's as clean as possible to be moving as fast as possible with the least amount of friction. So, start capturing, don't give yourself excuses, make sure that you also capture the small things. Is that a good recap of what you need to do there?

Lars: Yeah, and from that perspective, keep in mind to have the right tools at hand so that the tool is not the issue that you don't— Don't give yourself excuses. Yeah, exactly. Well, I don't have the pen at hand, so I'm not going to write it down. I have to go all the way over to another, you know, place in my home to write this down. Make sure that you have these things as easily at hand as you can possibly get to.

Morten: So then we come to clarify and organize. And what do you see for those two? Clarify, why do people procrastinate that?

Lars: Yeah, so defining work, well, that requires brainpower.

Morten: Exactly.

Lars: That requires brainpower to sit down and think all this stuff through. So I know I have an inbox right now as we record that is waiting for for me that I will want to, to get to the bottom of soon. And it is easy to, to just stay engaged in work, busy work. Just, I could snack on emails and social media and news all day if I didn't stop and think, what should I engage in? So again, some of you will be more naturally drawn to this because, you know, it's nice, I can make lists and tweak that and work with that. But, but stopping and taking time for that is, yeah, it's a, it's a habit change, especially making activity on its own.. Yeah.

Morten: And then one of the things that you might want to bear in mind that when you want to, you know, you get getting better at GGD is that when you, you need to be aware of and in touch with when does your brain have the most power. Because what, what I also see, I'm sure you see also, Lars, is that people tend to want to make decisions when they don't have brain power to do so. For instance, when you are starting to, let's say, you're going to do decision-making on something that really needs brainpower and you're tired, then you should maybe go take a nap instead. That's more productive than trying to make a decision or do it tomorrow when you have the brainpower. I have a white paper I wrote a few years back when we talk about the curve of your mental energy level throughout the day and that you should do clarify, organize, and reflect when you have the brainpower to it. And don't try to reflect when you don't have the brainpower. Just then that's the time for engaging or doing some mindless stuff. I know you have some, what do you call it, brain dead list or something.

Lars: I have my zombie list.

Morten: Zombie list. Yeah, when you're a zombie, you need something to do as well. That feels productive, at least that is necessary to do. So procrastinating making decisions can actually be a good thing because if you try to make decisions when you're really tired, you will not make the decision with your frontal cortex where all your common sense lives and your wisdom lives. But you will start making, you know, decisions in the feelings, the amygdala part of your brain, which is more your Neanderthal part where you you fall back on default. What did I do last year instead of reflecting what do I need to do now on this? And at the same time, he, you know, this is— I read a lot about this, it's very interesting stuff. You know, when your brain don't have a lot of brain power left, it's— you fall back to default and your decisions will get not so good. So you need to make sure your decisions are made in a good— so if you don't do— if If you feel like procrastinating making decisions, not good. Make sure you do them when you have brainpower. If you're tired, don't make them. Yeah, exactly. So do you think the same for this, or do you have something to add?

Lars: No, exactly. Exactly.

Morten: Completely agree. So, and one of the— we've been hammering this point in this podcast for some time is that when you, you know, if you don't clarify, you're setting yourself up for failure, for your GTD system will be filled with unclear stuff, unclear stuff. And you will start procrastinating looking at your lists, which brings us to organize that when you organize things in your lists. What do you see for procrastination there?

Lars: I will maybe tend not to actually use those lists is the first thing that comes to mind. I have at least one person that I'm working with right now where the procrastination can actually be the you know, too much focus on one inbox, maybe. So they'll tend to really stay on top of email, but not really then getting to their lists and working on that. So from an organizational perspective, to keep in mind that you have the right lists and you know how to use them efficiently is probably the two key things that come to mind here. I'll just leave this in the inbox, maybe I'll add a label or something. So I know it goes in the right place. That the organized step is not completed, which again leads to more work in the end. Yeah.

Morten: And you have to think when you are, you know, the GTD discrete 5 steps is for the decision-making happen in one step where you decide how to do something, you decide what to do and how to do it. And, you know, physical, visible next action. And the next decision is what should I engage with when you come to the other end of this. And this is a lot easier to do to do, you know, intuitive judgments on if you made good next actions. And you take, you take out the friction of doing something because you have the next physical visible action where you have everything you need, which makes it, I don't have to think here, I just have to do, which is, you know, very nice and easier to then use the limiting criteria of context, time, and mental energy to choose what to do. And one of the things I see when people are doing procrastination is that they start fiddling with their system. They look at the list and they need to call the label them. And I need another context here, I think maybe. And they're bloating their system to make.

Lars: A— I need a new tool. I heard about this new capture tool. That's going to be so awesome.

Morten: Yeah, the new list tool. I read about this and that. And I have to— and I'm sure you can agree with me, it's okay to change a system every now and then, but don't do that as a part of procrastinating doing your GTD. So, well, we've all met all the trainers around the world who do this. We met people, at least if you're a coach and you get to see their people's system, you met people who color code and their system look it becomes extremely big. I hear about people who have 17— sorry, 1,700 next actions in their list. Yeah, good luck choosing. Exactly. So, so I've— and that's, that's not a good, good place to be. So, so don't use— don't become what you call it, a David Allen Cole or something like productivity pornography, where you get more interested in fiddling with your system than doing the job. So don't become that, don't become that person. So now we covered capture, clarify, and organize, and now we come to reflect. And I think that's, this is a very easy step to skip and to procrastinate doing. Absolutely. What have you seen there? And what is your take on this, Lars?

Lars: Well, the tendency can typically be to, let's say, you in the moment, I have the weekly review coming up in my calendar. But I have to get that email done. I have to, you know, let me do that. And then I'll get to the weekly review. And then you tend to keep hanging on to work and never stopping to reflect. So procrastination really refers back to the weekly review that you are procrastinating on that activity itself as well. So you stay engaged with work, and that can certainly feel really productive. You're getting things, really, you're getting things done, right?

Morten: But you're missing— You're getting the right things done, which is— Exactly.

Lars: Are you doing some things that you actually should not be doing, taking all the other things into account? That requires a weekly review.

Morten: It does. And it resonates with me when I look at my own practice on doing GTDs, that If I start reading emails as the first thing I do that morning, it's very difficult to get out of reading and responding to email. And, you know, because, you know, emails, it feels urgent. This person needs an answer. And there's very, you know, and especially if you have a lot of emails and you feel, oh, it's like a panic. I have to do this before I can do my weekly review. Which is, which is then you take all your uncertainty with you into these emails because you will have some uncertainty on what's in my list, what's in my calendar. I don't have the overview, I don't have full control of what I committed to. And to get to that first. And one of the last things I do is to, to in my weekly review is to, because, you know, weekly review are supposed to be tailored to you as long as you don't forget one, some of the steps. And I move that, you know, written, you know, clarify and organize email to one of the last parts I do, because I know if not, I will be email ping-ponging with someone easily. So what do you procrastinate about, if at all, if you're not Mr. Lars.

Lars: Perfect GTD, Rotske Henriksen? No, certainly not. No, and I think I've mentioned this in previous episodes as well, that I am an My name is Lars, and I'm an email snacker. I really do tend to— it's so interesting because you don't know what's in there. You could have won the lottery. There could be, you know, fantastic things in there, clients that want to, you know, book you for 100 seminars. You know, you never know what's in there. That kind of, you know, random positive reinforcement, right? I think that's the term that you don't know what's in there. And it can happen on social media as well. I think it's something that I'm focused on getting much better at, but it's still something that I feel I could be doing better. So that, that's probably the key area for me. But you can be, you know, you can, you can procrastinate on all three different types of work. You know, you could be procrastinating by always just managing all the stuff that shows up, unplanned work, just grabbing that, oh yeah, I'll run, run after that, as opposed to clearing out your inboxes or doing stuff from your lists or It could be one of the other ones as well. So it's really, that's some of the things that I've been working on for the last couple of years, I think, is to be more aware of that choice in what to engage in at that moment.

Morten: One of the things that I, you know, that we both use some kind of, what do you call it, tool for managing our emails, for, you know, resist that urge of snacking. I use something called, you know, we are both in Google Mail or G Suite Mail or whatever you will call that. What, Google Work now? What does it call it again? I don't know, they changed the name. Okay, Gmail for Work. And we both have that and we use— I think you are as I am, you do that in Chrome. Yes, yes. So, and there are plugins for those who have this, who are in Gmail. It's called— I use one called Inbox When Ready. And what's your called? You use Boomerang something.

Lars: Boomerang, yes. They make it, it's called, what's it called, Inbox Pause, I think it's called. Okay. It's by Boomerang, so.

Morten: Okay. So, and both of them can be structured so that when you open your email, you don't see anything in the inbox. You don't see how many unread you have in your inbox also.

Lars: Yeah, exactly. No, I think it's, you're right. It's called Boomerang and then the functionality to pause the inbox is called Inbox Pause.

Morten: Okay. So did you, did you snack now?

Lars: It is paused, so I'm good.

Morten: You didn't snack. Good. Well done. Okay. So, so, okay. So now we covered reflect. Now we engage step. What procrastination do you see there for engaging?

Lars: Well, I think we maybe touched on that just, or I maybe touched on that a little bit before about choosing which type of work to engage in. So it can really be that you, you live on your lists and you only work from those and you forget the other ones that, you know, maybe there is some spontaneous action that might be the right thing to do. Or maybe you should have been cleaning, clearing out your inboxes. And the other way around that, that people tend to maybe clear out their inboxes too much. That's where I came from. So that's where I'm really aware of that. That I used to have, you know, at least two screens. One was dedicated to Outlook and emails would come in all the time. So, so really not, you know, giving that too much attention, putting your— I.

Morten: Understand where your email snacking comes from.

Lars: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No. And then that's it. It is a tricky one because you get so much positive feedback from people that say, wow, Lars responds all the time, you know, within 5 minutes. He's, he's awesome. But that impacts other things. Of course, my lists would not be, you know, getting smaller because I was always checking emails.

Morten: Yeah, so, but let's just get this straight. Is that if you are working in IT for support, IT support, your job is to be in ad hoc mode, you know? And we are in GTD, we define that there are 3 kinds of work you can engage in. On the big stuff level is that you can either define work, you can decide what to do, you can plan the work, and then you can work the plan, and then you need time for work as it shows up. How much time you should spend in these three categories is highly depending on what kind of work you have, what is your role, what is your areas of responsibility. And if you are not engaging enough in these 3 categories, maybe you're not doing your job. And what we see is that a lot of people don't plan enough. And this is why GTD, that's how GTD comes in. You will plan enough so that you get most of the right stuff done. So, but when you have, when you come to engage, you have either something on your calendar to do, you know, you set aside 2 hours to work with this project or or you have this next section, you just have to take this, this call today. Now it's maybe a good time to do that, or you will work off your lists. And what I see when you are working, I put things in my calendar to not procrastinate. And because, because if I put it in my calendar, it feels like an appointment with me and I feel it heightens my sense of urgency that I really— and the importance to do it. I don't know, do you do something like this?

Lars: Sometimes I do. I still try to work as dynamically as I can from my lists. So I have different perspectives, things that I maybe flag as stuff that I want to get to as soon as possible, but don't try to necessarily block time in my calendar unless my calendar is getting really full. Then I will start to block out time for that.

Morten: So then, you know, if you can use your calendar as an anti-procrastinating tool, if you use it correctly, or I'm not saying I'm using it correctly, but it works for me to put things in there. But when it comes to your lists, one of the things I see when people procrastinate doing things from their list, it's mainly two reasons. I don't know if you can supply with some other, but one is that things are not clarified. They're just unclear stuff you pulled into your list, and now you're a little irritated because, ah, GTD doesn't work. Well, duh, you haven't made a decision on what to do, and now you have to think again. You decided I need to do something about it, but you didn't decide exactly what. And that is maybe one of the most common procrastinating rules we can see. And then the second I see is that when you are looking at your lists, you have committed to too many things. So you get decision fatigue on choosing from your list.. And people, this is why GTD tells you you should only have one Next Action listed on your context list for one project. Don't make 10 of them because you will confuse yourself and you have to look at, is this the first Next Action on this project or is this one? So don't do that. One Next Action per project on your context lists. The rest can be in the comment field of the project or somewhere else. So when you finish that, you can pull the next inside. And I see also that a lot of people have too many things. You know, they are committed to too many things.

Lars: I was just going to say, that's where I came from.

Morten: You say yes to too many things and you have to then scale back. So if we can, I'm sure I've been saying this before because I say it all the time, is that there is always more to do than there is time. Okay, reality check, is that true for you? Then you need to make sure that you say yes to the right things. By saying no to the right things.

Lars: And at this point, I would say.

Morten: Your, your no button. My no button. This is on my desk just to remind me I have to say no for say yes to the right things. And I push it, it goes. For the last time, no. So that's my, one of my decision-making tools.

Lars: Yeah. And maybe as a tip for, for the listeners out there, next time you do a weekly review, maybe reflect on whether you need to have all these projects active. Maybe there are some things that need to be paused because that was something I've worked on, I think, for 3 years now maybe, is to try to find the right amount of projects that work for me. And I wish there was a number that we could give you all to say how many projects should you have active at any given time. That is really a part of the art of getting things done is to having the right number for you so you can most easily choose on what what to engage in at any given time. Those long lists, and we're all busy, there's so much going on, even though these are different times maybe than 12 months ago, it really is a good thing to spend a bit of time on reflecting on whether you have the right projects on your list or whether you need to renegotiate them, delegate them, whatever you need to do to maybe.

Morten: Park them for a while. One of the things I found to be beneficial is to— for a client, on the client side, is that you as a client— sorry, you as a GTDer should maybe start making— and this is, some people do that, what I'm going to tell you now, just for the sake of seeing progress— but make somewhere in your system, this system, or just on paper, how many things did I tick off today, how many things did I do, and how many new things did I add. So if you add more than you do, then you will over time see a bloated system, and then you might want to have a look at, okay, you know, how many next actions do I have on how many projects that are active? And then as you said, Laurits, then move it to an appropriate place like someday maybe, or, you know, projects on pause or something like that. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so, so we are at the longest episode forever, I think, this week, 38 minutes something. But this is some very interesting topic.

Lars: And I'm sure we actually didn't cover— there were two more things that I added to the list, but we can just quickly run through the last one, because I think that might be also really valuable for the GTDers. One other place where it could feel like you're procrastinating on your GTD path is is just areas that you haven't gotten to yet. You've heard us talking about it before, also this episode, for example, about the horizons of focus, getting a clear picture of those higher horizons. And some of these things just take time. So, so maybe that's not procrastination. Maybe that's just how, you know, how your system will evolve over time, how your GTD practice will evolve over time. So, so it really— and then again, there is no right answer. It depends on how engaged you are in your GTD process, how long you've been work with it, and also how the, you know, how the world has shown up. There was one of the interview episodes, and I don't know whether this will be out before that, but there was a pretty, you know, GTDerf that has been using GTD for maybe, I think, a couple of years only, but had a pretty clear picture of the higher horizons. And at least for me, it took a lot longer, and I think for many people it does, to get a clear picture of those because of how the world had evolved for him. Then that was actually very clear for him. So it might not be procrastination. It might just be that it takes time.

Morten: Some things take time, like you say. And when you talk about this, I'm also reminded that people are sometimes filled with fear of looking at their life purpose. Absolutely. And one of the fears I think is the most strong is that you are afraid that you will understand that your life does not have meaning, which is Of course, if you have, you know, if you're a religious person, your life does have meaning just because you will worship whatever deity you worship. But if you don't have this, then you have to make meaning yourself. You must find that meaning. And people procrastinate looking at that because they're fearful. What I will find is a void. There is nothing there. And that is, that is scary for a lot of people.

Lars: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think for— it's got to be for everyone, I think. And that's why on the— at the top of my Horizon 5 mind map, I have the Viktor Frankl quote, the purpose of life is to give life meaning. That's, that's for me to be reminded about that.

Morten: Yes, yes.

Lars: Very philosophical question. Yes, exactly. And the last one was that, that you may be procrastinating on getting getting really started with GTD, maybe. So you've run into what we would refer to as the common limiting mindsets. And these will be familiar to those of you who have maybe attended a fundamentals course with us in the Nordics or maybe somewhere around the world and have participated in the Mind Marker program, because this is where David talks about some of these. So I'll just, just outline them for you all here. First of all is that you tend to not really start with GTD because you want to clean everything before.

Morten: You start. And to be ready before you start.

Lars: Yeah. And I see that on a maybe a smaller scale from people that attend the seminars, because there's always at least one who shows up with a totally clean bag and sort of have, have started this process already. Then the second one is also very common is to that you want to find the right tool before you start. And there can be a tendency to really think that you can find the perfect tool and, you know, stop searching. It's, it's not out there. You can find good tools, just get started, get familiar with the process, work it, then, then maybe, you know, sometime later, as you said, there's nothing wrong with changing your tools. But, but maybe don't start off searching for the perfect tool right now. It's not out there. The third one is that you don't see the value immediately. So you will, maybe you've read the GTD book, you've started, you have added a couple of things to the inbox, started to make some lists, but don't see the full value. And it takes time. It takes time to familiarize yourself with the habits. It becomes more easy over time. Getting that system built up can really take a long time. You have a whole life going on when you start GTD. Getting all that stuff set up in a system and working that process just takes time. So the value shows up as you evolve that process and that system. Number 4 is that you don't know where to start. That could also be, you know, from a different perspective, you really don't know where the right place is to start. And it's true that, you know, GTD is, you know, a very complete system. And as you have a whole life and start to look around, well, how, how, where should I start? That's certainly an understandable reaction. Connection to this. So the simple answer is start anywhere, just start to build it. And then you will, you will start to, to get a feeling of how the system should work for you. And the last one, you don't see the value of a weekly review. And that really, again, also comes back to, to working the process. I think for me, the weekly review did not make, give that much value when I started with GTD. But as you evolve your system, as your system starts to grow, more complete, you see that it becomes sort of a crucial part of your GCD practice, getting that up and running. So a good habit is to really force yourself into doing this initially. And once that starts to become a habit, then it will add even more value because you really need it as your system grows.

Morten: Yeah. And you will have the, you know, the feeling of I don't have overview, I don't have control if you don't do this.

Lars: So. Exactly.

Morten: Exactly.

Lars: So those were the ones that I had listed.

Morten: Yeah, good. I think we really exhausted this. It's the longest episode ever, but I'm hopeful. I know this is going to be a valuable episode for people. I'm sure. I wish I had this information when I started with GTD. So I hope that you find this interesting. And Lars, will you take us out?

Lars: Sure. We always wrap up these episodes by reminding you to head on over to gtdnordic.com. Gettingsthingsdone.com. Have a look around, you can find the country websites for each of the Nordic countries and go there. On each of those sites, you will find articles, links to the newsletters, information about our offerings, information about social media groups and where you can, can follow GTD, learn more, discuss GTD with other natives from your countries. And if you're outside the Nordic, gettingsthingsdone.com is the place for you to start to find your local partners. And as always, as you said, Martin, we really hope that you find these episodes valuable, regardless of how experienced you are with GTD. And if you do, as always, we really appreciate any— if you share the podcast with a colleague or rate us on iTunes, it helps the discoverability of the podcast. So thank you to those of you who do.

Morten: And if you want to be coached by Lars and me on the air, we are doing the GTD Coaching Cafe. It's supposed to be in the future every first Tuesday at 8 o'clock PM CET, which is for you in the Americas. You are, I'm sure you're sleeping at that point, but for the rest of Europe and the world, please join us if you want to have your GTD journey addressed. Where are you? What can we do to help you? And send us an email, podcast@gtdnordic.dk, and ask for this, and we will maybe send you a link to, to, um, to join us on camera for doing this on our coaching cafes. And that will be streamed live on the Facebook pages in the Nordic region. You just have to follow that page. You click follow, not just like. You have to follow to get that notification. We've just found Facebook changed their algorithm. And, and you can, if you go to gtdnordic.dk, at some point Lars has made a page there, I'm sure, for the GTD Coaching Cafe so that you can find information how to attend. And we also have a calendar you can make a subscription to so that you will be notified when it gets closer to when we will start broadcasting. Exactly. Yes, so, um, well, without further ado, have a great one, take care, and stay safe and be productive.

Lars: Bye-bye, everybody.