47. The life of a commitment

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. Ni Hao, Lars.

Lars: Hello, Mr. Morten Røvik. Good to be here and look forward to recording another episode for our listeners. For those of you who have not listened to this podcast before, our goal is to support you in learning GTD or becoming an even better GTDer so you can experience the benefits of GTD, becoming more productive, getting that clean overview of all of your commitments, and being better at staying present with whatever you're doing. We hope that you find these episodes valuable regardless of how experienced you are with GTD. And if you'd like a refresher or just learn more about the basics of GTD, the 5 steps, we always recommend you go back and listen to episodes 1 through 6 of this podcast.

Morten: Thank you, Lars. And today's episode, we called it The Life of a Commitment. And this episode is highly influenced by a Reddit post from a Redditor, and I'm sure he made that name because he wanted some, some person say it out loud for him: Magic Fluffball. Posted at the subreddit called GTD, something that you got inspired by, Lars. And can you give us an overview what he, what he wrote and what he, what we are inspired by?

Lars: So I always enjoy just scrolling through that and see how people, you know, learn about GTD, how they consider different aspects, how they pick up different things along their own GTD journey and listen to what their struggles are and what works well for them. And this one popped up with the headline, concrete examples, are there any? And this is from, as you said, Magic Fluffball. I'll go ahead and say it as well. So it's, it's, it's out there, posted 3 days ago as of this recording, where he, he or she states that, that, that they're trying to apply GTD, but are struggling a bit with the exact workflow. And this user is then saying, are there any YouTube videos, articles that provide a concrete complete example for a tiny project with all activities in it. Concrete, doing it, as in putting actions on the list. Execution, checking off. Next actions, review, etc. And then he shows up and describes what he or she does at the moment. And it stuck with me. I noted it down, of course, and was mulling it over over the weekend as well. And it's just, yeah, if we could broaden it maybe to, as you said, the life of a commitment. It's actually an an interesting perspective and goes across a lot of the topics that we've discussed and the different episodes that we've covered. And I thought this would be interesting, not maybe only just to focus on a tiny project with specific actions, but take that as an example, but really whatever shows up in your life and how you would see that transition through the whole workflow and through the life of your GCD system. I thought that was really, really interesting, hopefully an interesting episode for the podcast. So yeah, that's what we picked up for today.

Morten: Yeah, and you started with giving some examples in the pre-show here that you would like to use, and I've also made a few myself that we can kind of follow a commitment or potential commitments. That's probably maybe better to call it a potential because it might be that you want to do something about something. But, and where will you start, Loris?

Lars: Well, the first thing that came up for me was that because next to me I have some fishing wheels for— I don't know what they're called in English, so that was probably a bad example. But the idea came to me for some new fishing gear. So we have been spending a bit more time with the family recently, gone fishing. And I noted that my gear was really, really out of date. We don't do that much fishing.. But in the end, it was actually very nice and very relaxing and enjoyed that. And in that moment, you know, that commitment popped up in my life saying, well, maybe we need to refresh and get some new fishing gear. So that would enter the first step of the 5 steps, meaning capture. So I wrote that down, captured that in my system, and later on clarified it, walked through it. What is it? Is it actionable? And for me, Yes, part of it was actionable in the sense that I needed to refresh some things. The line, the wire on the wheels were not solid enough for the hopefully big fish that we were going to go capture. I needed to change that. It's actually on my list now. Was it actionable? Yes. The next action was simply to just get some new line on those old wheels unless the guy at the fishing shop is going to tell me that, don't bother with that. Get a new wheel with a new new setup. So, so that's, that really is the next action that showed up. I got it, you know, crossed it off my, my list. Um, it's not a project for me, it's just, uh, you know, something that showed up. And all the other cool ideas, the nice fishing gear that I saw some of the other people had, um, that went on a someday maybe. So what is it? Is it actionable? No, not actionable in that case. Got on my someday maybe list to perhaps upgrade some of those things. But that was just a very basic simple example of something that showed up in my life. I have my support material, meaning my fishing the wheels that I need when I do my errand, which is where the next action went to my errand to drop by the fishing gear shop and talk to them to see what they thought about it. So that was really just my very basic simple example of something that showed up in my life. Went fishing, captured that, got it into my system. Now it's on my errands list. And when I drop by the shop later today, actually, then I'll cross it off my list. And that commitment has gone for now.

Morten: So it's not on a someday maybe, but it's on an errands list.

Lars: Some of them, you know, there was some really cool fishing gear there that I thought, you know, someday, someday I will upgrade to that level. Okay. So it actually spawned both. So next action being an errand and then someday maybe.

Morten: Okay, so upgrading later, but, you know, fix what you have so that you can fish is on the errands list.

Lars: Okay. Let's see if I'm just inspired in the moment right now, and for the next 3 years I won't be doing any fishing, then maybe I should not invest in that, you know, complete set of fishing gear.

Morten: Yeah. My first example is I get, you know, I signed up for a few newsletters from some vendors. I have like a rental car service I use when we travel. And that is at the moment very often just delete because it's not, you know, we're not in the area or we don't think it is interesting at all to rent a car right now. But for instance, when I find— so that might be just I see it, it pops up. Is that a commitment? No, it is not. Am I going to do something about it? No. So I trash it. But let's say we have, you know, I have, I have a wife and my wife, like sometimes when I buy her perfume, some to her birthday or for Christmas. And if, if I get an email from our vendor of that sort of things where they have a very good campaign, that may be triggering me to look into this further and see if I want to buy her favorite perfume. And so that, that is going from, from either not at all a commitment to a commitment to make something. So that will be in the next action, will be check out the, the, the campaign, and then I will look very quickly, is the perfume on sale, yes or no? If it is on sale and it's, you know, interesting price, interesting price-wise to, to make that purchase now, I will make it. Or I will put it on my next actions list for Mac. If it is time sensitive, where you really, you have to, this like 24 hours, something that will give a very good price, I would then tell myself, okay, this is an ad hoc thing. I will let it sneak in the queue, which is, it takes more than 2 minutes. It may take 5 to 10 minutes to make that purchase, but it will, I decide this will sneak in the queue because it's very good price, and I will do it. So that might be just the next action done, and then I have a waiting for after. After I made the purchase, I will then go into the receipt. I paid this email, and then I will make a waiting for from that email, you know, received perfume from vendor. So that's my newsletter. It's either trash or it might be just an ad hoc thing because sometimes that happens. I don't know if that happens to you. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, where you decide, because people think that you should never do that. Well, sometimes you must do that to get around life. Let it, because you can choose whether you're going to, either you will define work You will do predefined work, which is what we think is good for most people. Then you have ad hoc work or work that shows up. And sometimes work just shows up and you have to make a judgment in the moment. Should this go on the list or should it be done right now? Because it feels urgent and important enough.

Lars: So, yeah, I find that as well. So sometimes those kinds of things just show up and it's just, it's nice to get them off the list, even though they might be like 5, 10-minute tasks. And also sometimes I see myself putting on things that are really 2-minute next action. So I will capture that. It doesn't happen often. But sometimes when I review my list, for example, in a weekly review, I'll go through the list and I'll look at the list. Now, you know, that, that really would have taken me 2 minutes to just get that done. Now I'm looking at it on my list. Why? Why did I do that? And probably I was in a state when I was clarifying and organizing where I did not really have the energy to get through those things. And then maybe next time I'll adjust that process to to get it done right.

Morten: Away. Okay, so that's, that's the ad hoc thing that might show up. But let's continue your next example, Lars.

Lars: Yeah, yeah. So one, one other that was relatively simple, you know, some things that can show up in your life that are, that are maybe part of an ongoing project. So right now I'm working with a coaching client. And in my inbox right now, I'm looking at some coaching notes that I have made for that kind of meeting. So captured during coaching, different notes on what I want to make sure that we bring up in a follow-up meeting to make sure that things are moving forward as I see fit. And capturing some details where I've maybe noticed some hesitancy, where I would be worried that this person would not be, you know, optimally using the process. So there would be different notes on there for me to just scan through. And the way I would do it is simply to pick it up, as we recommend, one item at a time. I would pick it up, read through it, make my notes. In this In this case, I will likely transfer them to be support material for this coaching client. So I have a project to finalize coaching for this client. In that project, I have then captured meeting notes in relation to our different coaching sessions. So those will be in support material, in my case, and some will be in OneNote, and the actionable bits will go in my list manager to make sure that I cover them in an upcoming meeting. So I would walk through that. Once I have processed that through the clarifying and organizing, that would simply be curled up and go into the trash can. Done with that. It's on my lists, making sure that that project has a next action and to set up a follow-up call, for example. And then, yeah, that's done. That was a fairly quick commitment that showed up, something that I had captured in that moment. But it's something that shows up relatively frequently for me, those kinds of meeting notes. Captured digitally or physically, and then walking through them, finding the actionable bits, transferring that into the system. And then, you know, in the case of paper in my world, that just goes into the bin. If I had taken, you know, digital meeting notes, I would typically just let them be so I could find them if I needed them in the.

Morten: Future. Good. My next example is something that showed up. This is a real-life thing. Showed up on my brainstorming. I did, what you call it, a mind sweep. And that was before Christmas, I think. And I, sorry, yeah, Christmas last year. And I started because last year, in September last year, we rented a sailing boat. We rented a catamaran. And sailed with the family. And my brother-in-law and I take a turn on being captain for this. We both love sailing. And we— and I think I was thinking, should we do that this year? Is that possible, you know, to, to make that happen this year? So it's kind of like it started off like an idea that on the minesweep, and then I am So my first instance that I captured, I called it, the project will be a private project. And it is to decide whether we will, it is possible for us to rent a sailing boat. So, you know, find enough information to see if that's possible to decide on that. And then that will become a project. So that went on my, it became an active project, because I wanted to start moving on it. And my next action was, if I remember correctly, it's on my calls list to— when I talk to my, um, my calls list for, for my brother-in-law, um, to discuss that with him if he was interested that we do that this year. And what do you think, is, is it possible to do? Because I really enjoyed the sailing, the family enjoyed sailing, so we wanted to do that. So when that was over, we were, you know, that project, he was very positive. The rest of the family that heard about this was very positive. So what we did is that we put that— I put that on hold, a private project on hold, because I wanted to move on that. It's not a someday maybe, it's, uh, it's definitely we are going to do something, follow this up. But then we— I put it on hold until February, then I picked it up again because then I think I looked through my weekly review, I looked through all my projects on hold, and I found this and I said, yeah, I really, I want to reactivate that. Then I pulled it up to active project, personal active projects, and then I started nesting that, you know, that not nesting, trying to find the next action. What's the next action here? And, well, if we've, then the next action is find the bots and then you know, see if it is possible to, to, to put a finger on this specific boat because we use a charter, a yachting chartering company for rent the boats. And so we've, we put that, I put that on the, you know, my next actions list to discuss it with my brother-in-law. He will call and ask what boats are available and is it possible to make a, you know, preliminary reservation pending what will happen with the pandemic. Is it possible for us to go there at all? So that is a project that is active. We are moving on it, and then we ended up finding the boat together. We made a meeting with the people and the family. We decided on the boat. And so it's kind of like if you take it one step at a time and it goes in and out of active. And now it's actually on hold again because we have done what we need to do now. It's an active project, but I don't need to do any work on it. So it's on hold. We've found the boat. We paid a deposit. And so now the boat is waiting for us. So when we go there in July in Turkey, we will rent a 45-foot Bavaria, which is a very nice sailing boat. We will never be able to afford buying one.

Lars: No idea what it is, but it sounds nice.

Morten: It's a fairly— it's not a huge sailing boat, but it's fairly big. So it houses 8 people. And it's— yeah. And we love sailing. It's fun. Both sailing and just anchoring somewhere, swimming, enjoying time with the family, spending, making, cooking, you know.

Lars: So from a GTD perspective, the life of that commitment in your system has— it's been a project, obviously. It's had, you know, you mentioned that it was on a call list. It's gone from on hold to being active. It sounds like there's been a waiting for, there's been a meeting in the calendar. Is it now crossed off your list because you have arranged it, or is it still an active project?

Morten: Well, it is. No, as I told you, it was first decide if we're going to rent a boat, and then we decided to make a boat. So I changed the decide outcome. It made it active. And now that we've got all our ducks in a row and everything is ready, I'm not going to move on this until maybe in June, end June. We must start pick it up again and start planning, you know, you know, you need flights, we need discuss exactly where we will be going, we will bring some friends because we asked if you want to take some friends on board. And it ended up now on my private project on hold. Just now because it's not, it's, I don't want to move on it the next 2-3 weeks. So, but in June, beginning June, maybe mid-June, I want to pick it up again. But when I do my weekly review, I will see it and I will then move it from on hold to active again.

Lars: So it's also more from not only just finding a sailboat to booking it, but also to, it's the whole vacation now. It's more than just that single thing. Yeah, so no, I think that's a good example. And it's also nice to remind because I, I see that in some cases that people get sort of hung up on what should the definition of the project be, what's the finish line. And it's a good example, I think, for people to see that it can— this— sorry, Siri just decided to chime in. No, so, so it's, it's a nice way to see how a project can, can evolve. And, you know, as you progress and become smarter about things. The project title might change. So I think that's a good example.

Morten: Yeah. And sometimes you don't know the end of something, but you want to start figuring things out. So, you know, that is, you know, it is possible to use a title like figuring out if we're going to go for a vacation or not to Belize or should we build a rocket to go to Mars? I'm sure that was on the someday maybe. For someone at some point. And now they're planning to make one trip or several. So, but it goes in and out of different stages and to have a flexible, you know, David uses, what does, how does done look like? This is an important word because if done in the earlier stages is, have you made a decision? When the decision is done, then that is done. And then what's the next level of this? Well, you know, we must find a boat. Okay, now we found the boat. What is now escalating it to vacation in Turkey 2021? So hopefully we will not see— we will both be fully vaccinated and are able to travel before we do this, and, um, all of us, and Yeah, we will see. But it moves through different stages.

Lars: Yeah.

Morten: Yeah. Okay.

Lars: Yeah.

Morten: And you have a, I don't know if I'm skipping the line here for you, but you had a really put down something of your really higher horizon stuff, the birth of a child. Are you ready for that one?

Lars: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We can jump to that one. No, it was just to give an example because what the Magic Fluffball was asking about what's, you know, the life of a tiny project. And you mentioned a nice one on the personal level, and it could just have been, you know, the same from a business perspective. One that came up for me, just to quickly cross that one off the list, was just an idea for an ad campaign. So we've been working on these 1-minute videos. You've done the same in Norway. I happen to be in touch with a video guy that has made our ad campaigns before, and we talked about setting something up. We actually created that as a project. We put it in the calendar. We had support material in the form of me drafting scripts for these 10 small 1-minute videos. We shot the videos. I got the results, and he, he wasn't too happy with it because the microphone setup that he had made was not something that was good enough from a quality perspective from his end. So we decided to reshoot them. We will do that later this week. So we'll do that with a different microphone setup, some improved scripts, some different ways of working with them. But that has gone through my system as well as a project on my list. It's been on my computer to draft these scripts. It's been waiting for him to come back to me with some dates for when it would be feasible for us to work together. We have had that support material in the shape of those scripts and working on them together. Together. It will be a project on my list for, for, you know, a little more time now because we'll go ahead and we'll shoot them and then we'll have a waiting for, for him. And when he comes back with them, that'll then morph into probably a new project somewhat similar to you in— now that we have made the videos, obviously we have to put them to use. So there will be a new thinking process for me to go through. So how will we start to use them on social media, for example, and in ad campaigns? So that would be the life of that campaign, ad campaign. But you're right, the birth of a child, just to take a, you know, to broaden it a bit and not only zooming in on the smaller project, but also, you know, again, an example of GTD handling whatever shows up in your life. And, you know, the birth of a child was obviously big for me as it is for anyone else. And how did that then impact my GTD system? Well, all the way up to Horizon 5, Purpose and Principles. The most important thing for many people is family, along with other things that are the purpose of their lives. And obviously, that went straight to Horizon 5 and impacted that. It also impacted Horizon 2, Areas of Focus and Accountability. That's certainly an area of focus and certainly an area of accountability for being a a dad to my two boys. So that impacts on a monthly basis my weekly reviews to walk through that on a daily basis on how I want to spend my time. It has impacted Horizon 4 in how do I then see life in 5 to 10 years? What kind of a dad do I want to be? I want to be able to show them some things. I want to spend time in nature with them, spend time with them, just hanging out having fun. And again, these higher horizons can then impact, you know, Horizon 3. What does that then mean? How do I, how do we need to evolve? And what needs to change in my life? What needs to happen to make sure that I can achieve that vision or work towards it? That can impact projects as well. And that can impact all the way down to next actions on what happens today, which kinds of, you know, business decisions will I make? Will I, you know, make a sale that makes the business thrive, that means that I can maybe leave work an hour earlier and pick them up sooner and spend more time with them. You know, it really all goes together. And it's just, once you start to see that in action, it's just, for me, it's really honestly fascinating to see how it all flows together and how, you know, aligning your next actions with your values in the end is actually, yeah, it's Fascinating.

Morten: Yeah. And I'm reminded of the fact that if you use GTD as your, if you may, task management system, that's where people start with getting things under control with the 5 steps of GTD. But you can upgrade GTD to be a life management system. So how can you manage your life? How can you make sure you are doing the right things in your life by implementing and exploring the higher horizons, the horizons of focus. And when you do that, that's very powerful and it helps focus on the right things, move in the right direction. And the birth of a child is a big thing, big event. And what do you want to achieve? What kind of legacy do you want your children to remember their father by? You know, these are things that you will visit at some point if you are using your horizons of focus for this. And you said that most people think family is most important, but I was brought to the— I was reminded because, you know, that people in the world don't think the same about family and work. I remember very clearly that, you know, that Maybe we don't think about this in the Nordic region because we are fairly the same. You know, we have fairly the same values in this, at least in Scandinavia, but also in the Nordic region. I would say that we think families is important. But I remember what I think it was, some oil company executive, big person coming to Norway and looking at how we did business there and says that the difference between Norway and the US that in the US you live to work, and in Norway we work to live, which means that we work to support a life, and the life is what we focus on, and the life is often family, friends, experiences, etc. So that's— but that then drives the core of what you do. So if you're driven by your career, that's also a possibility. You can become the best in your line of work, that could be something you can focus on. So, but for us, family is very important. Both of us.

Lars: Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah. For me, I have, I have 4 sort of key things on my purpose. One is being there for the people that I care about. So obviously that's where family and friends drop in. Helping others is a purpose for me. Using the abilities that I have is a third and enjoy life is a fourth. So those are sort of the key things and there's obviously more to it, but But that's really the purpose on mine.

Morten: And remembering that when you know what's important for you and what's your purpose, values, principles, vision, and your areas of focus and accountability, that's when you go down to that level, it's very important to make sure that you say No to things to be able to say yes to the right things, because there is always more to do than there is time. So, you know, and now we got very philosophical and, you know, the holistic part of GTD where we are saying that it can encompass your life and it can become your life management system, but not necessarily. And I hope that we've brought some value to you. Do you have some I think we are at the end of the list that we put up for this episode.

Lars: No, we are, we are. And that's, uh, this is exactly where I hope to go with this. And hopefully this will be helpful to, to, to, to the Redditors and all, you know, other people listening or watching the podcast. It's not, not only magical perspective, it's, it's magical.

Morten: Exactly. I think we are now 5 times we said this. Yes, it's Reddit.

Lars: Name. No, but it was an interesting perspective to see how things then move through the system. And obviously it could, in quotation marks, just be a tiny project as we walk through just simple next actions, but it could also be all the way up to the, you know, all the way up to the top. And like you said, it varies what aspects of GTD people use, but hopefully this was good to think through how these things, how the life of these commitments can evolve through the through the system.

Morten: And I want to, at the end, before we sign off, you know, tell people at Reddit, thank you for being interested in GTD. And please note that both Lars and me, we read the forum. And if we find that something we would like to answer, you might find it an episode here. And if you want to make absolutely sure that we are seeing this, you can write, if you write GTD Nordic somewhere in your posts, in your— that will be, that will be a that giveaway for us to, to, to, to read it with, um, with an extra interest, uh, or, you know, Getting Things Done podcast, GTD Nordic, that will be, or just GTD Nordic, that will be, um, something that will grab our attention. And we can't promise you we will make an episode about your question, but, um, we will maybe be inspired by it, like this episode, um, by Magic.

Lars: Flux.

Morten: So thank you so much for, for inspiring us. Lars, will you take us.

Lars: Out? Happy to do that. We always wrap up these episodes with a quick reminder to head on over to gtdnordic.com and have a look around, because on that website you will find links to all the country websites for each of the Nordic countries. And on each of those sites, you will find all the newsletters, articles, groups on social media where we discuss tools, process, etc. And you can find all of our offerings regarding speeches, coaching, seminars, both the virtual and the physical. If you are looking for GTD courses in the US or Canada, the place to go is vitalsmarts.com and gtdfocus.com is where you'll find GTD coaches in the US and Canada. And for everyone else, gettingthingsdone.com is where you find the local partners in your area. And as I mentioned in the beginning, we really hope that you find these episodes valuable. We love making them. We have a lot of fun doing them. We hope you benefit from them. And if you do, it's great if you can share these with a colleague or rate us on iTunes. It really helps the discoverability of the podcast. So thanks for that.

Morten: Yeah, and I'm really happy we did not automatically start recording this morning. Because then we would have something very interesting at the end to, as a, I don't know if I want to mention what happened, but I was changing my shirt. I was changing my shirt when I, after I opened this recording. It's not a recording yet, but it's, I opened and Laura see me change my shirt and my wife gave me a kiss. So I don't know if you saw that later, but she did.

Lars: So. No.

Morten: So these are interesting times. Monday morning. Well, thank you so much for listening in on us. Please get in touch with us. As Lars mentioned, we'd love to hear from you. And until next time, stay safe and stay productive. Bye-bye, everybody.

Lars: Bye-bye.