48. GTD for Hobbies and Housework

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

Lars: Hello, Mr. Morten Ørvik. I was really expecting a new language from you now, so you threw me off course with the Of course.

Morten: That was my intention.

Lars: But good to be back as always, and looking forward to sharing some more thoughts on GTD with our listeners and viewers. If you have not listened to this podcast before or watched the podcast before, our goal is to support you in learning GTD or becoming an even better GTDer so you can get the benefits from GTD, becoming more productive, getting that good overview of all of your commitments and to really be more present in whatever you're engaged in. We hope that you find these episodes valuable regardless of your experience with GTD. And lastly, if you would like a refresher or learn more about the basics of GTD, we cover the 5 steps and how Morten and I came across GTD in the first 6 episodes of the podcast. So if you're looking for that, then go back and find the first episodes.

Morten: Good. And today's episode title, we've titled it GTD Hobbies and Housework. And this idea stems from a Reddit post you read, isn't that so, Loris? Can you take us back to that a little?

Lars: Yeah, sure. No, so we were brainstorming a bit on what would be fun to talk about, and I've started, like you, Morten, as well, to spend a bit more time on Reddit. The GTD forum there is very active, and, and always good to hear some of the thoughts and questions that are coming from, from GTDers around the world.. And one that I came across from Jen the Dog Lover was, am I missing something? GTD seems very geared to office and work life. I can't grasp its usefulness to housework/hobbies. And I thought that was pretty interesting because it is, you know, people often come to GTD, find GTD because of work, because they, they feel they need to be more organized, be more productive at work. So, so that's how they find it. But then how do you then expand that to cover more areas of your life and then what could that look like? So I thought that would be a fun topic to go over in today's podcast.

Morten: Yes, I think so too. So if we split it into, if you look at this as in the Horizons of Focus model, then hobbies and housework would be under areas of focus or areas of responsibility. And why don't we try and take hobbies first? Is that okay for you? Sure.

Lars: Yeah.

Morten: So, and when you have a hobby that might be time-consuming, take a lot of time and effort, and it can be like anything can be a hobby. Even GTD can be a hobby. And, and just to start off, I just started a new hobby. I don't know actually how we found that, but my wife and I, we started looking into leatherworks. I think we actually found some old leather that she had, and we started talking, what can we do with that? And then suddenly we have a hobby. And with that, suddenly I think we have hobbies because then we went to see a big shop during the corona pandemic last year where we before everything closed down, we went there and we bought some extra leather, some tools, and I go to eBay and buy a lot of different tools. And now we have everything set, or more or less everything set, to start doing this. But, um, I think that— I'm sorry, I have to do a little coughing, which hopefully you didn't.

Lars: Hear. No, you're good.

Morten: And I have to go again. Okay, sorry about that. Okay, we are back. This is nearly live, so we don't edit a lot. So I'm sorry about that, folks. But, um, when you identify a hobby as something you would like to, to do something about, I suggest that you And some people might think that this will demean or lower the joy factor of a hobby to put it on your, on your list. For me, it is not. It's a way to not forget that I actually think this is a cool thing to do and, and make sure that I prioritize time for focusing on that hobby. So, um, so my first suggestion is if you find a hobby, put it on your of the area of focus in your areas of responsibility and focus lists or brain map— sorry, mind map, brain map, mind map, or something like that. And then ask yourself, is there a project there? Is there something within that hobby you would like to create? Like, one of the first things I created, I didn't put put there because it was over in one night. I made a little leather pouch for my wife's newly acquired power bank for her phone, extra battery. But the next project went there. I want to buy— sorry, I have a Remarkable tablet. I would like to have this with— create a leather case for that so I can carry it in my bag. And that is my next project. And for this, I had to have some special tools that I don't have. So, um, that will be on my next actions list for that.

Lars: Project.

Morten: Um, build a remarkable, um, I don't know what I would call that in English, um, folder or something like that, case. And, um, and then the next action is source that tool. The tool is something that— it's a clamp that you put, you sit on it, and it keeps your tool fixed. So whatever you sew at, it's not moving, which is very important after you make the holes and then you make the sewing. It shouldn't move. So that went on the next actions list. I found it on eBay and I bought it. Feels good to not— you don't have to remember that you have a hobby, but the hobby don't get forgotten. So I think that's my first take on hobbies. I have some other examples as well, but how do you do? What hobbies are you having, Lars? Do you sew leather as.

Lars: Well? No, my sister does the keychains and those kinds of things. Really, really cool. No, I just wanted to take a step back maybe just because you touched on something that I think will resonate with a lot of people listening and watching, is that there can be this sort of tendency to, I don't know how to phrase it, that you only want to put things in your GCD system that is work in the more traditional sense. And maybe, you know, at least for me, it was a bit harder to start to capture some of those more personal things and more sort of not as clean-cut. There is no KPI on this one, so it doesn't go into my GCD system.

Morten: Being a good son.

Lars: Yeah, exactly. And those kinds of things also, you know, there's some kind of, I forget the word now, but there is, you know, that instead of remembering someone's birthday to put it in the calendar, it sort of feels like it should be something that I should be remembering. And there's some kind of nostalgia around that. And I think that it might be that same kind of the area for the brain, at least for me too.

Morten: What kind of person are you? You can't remember my birthday.

Lars: Exactly. And then on the other hand, now I I get people praising me, oh, wow, you remembered it, how nice of you. Sure, let's say I remembered it, or maybe, maybe my calendar did. But no, coming back to the areas of focus, I find that at least with the, you know, the CEO-level people that we work with can oftentimes tend to, you know, be so focused on work that hobbies will tend to have fallen out really on their attention space. They don't they don't seem to remember it because there are so many other things going on. The complexity in their lives is so, so big that, that they tend to not see it. It doesn't show up on their radar until we then start to, to, to clear their minds and start to empty their heads. And then, ah, that's right, I actually have a guitar somewhere. Maybe I should pick that up again. So that's where it shows up for me as well. I completely agree. You know, areas of focus is where we would want to, to place them. I have them on my list, a handful of them that I, I keep there that I, you know, keep for— some of them are to remind me that I want to, to, you know, just keep it, you know, fresh in my memory. No, no projects related to them, but just something that I want to keep in mind. Like my guitar, for example, it's in the, it's in the summer house to, to pick it up sometimes and just play around and play along with whatever is playing on the, on the speakers or whatever it might be. And just like you said, some of them will be more directly moving into my GTD system. So for me, two things come up besides the running that we already spoke about in a recent episode. One being my sort of DIY practice when it comes to programming. So that's my, that was my background. So I have an Arduino, I have a few Raspberry Pis, I have a couple of kits to play around with. Yes, very traditional, but it's so much fun. I actually have a project on my list now. I just looked that up and I'm planning some small projects with my Arduino to set that up and get that running and playing around with, you know, I had one set up where when the temperature changed, it changed the color of the light bulbs in the summer house. Yeah, whatever is fun in my world. What it looks like might not look that way for you. And that's, that's, that's of course fine. And then the other one on my list is the piano. So I recently bought a piano, wanted to get back into playing. So I'm playing around with that. I'm trying to get my boys interested in playing as well. So we have that set up. I try to play some stuff with them and and we play the Paw Patrol theme on the piano and play around with them. So that's really, you know, it's both an area of focus for myself. It's one for my boys. There's a project in there as well in getting it set up so we can, you know, mix songs from the iPhone with the piano and play along and have our own little band going on. So certainly, you know, otherwise it'll, That actually, to take it a step further, when it comes to home stuff, I recently noticed that my home list was a mix of chores, which would be the next, next one to dive into, and this more creative stuff. So I actually recently split my next actions list home into the usual home and left that as is, and then took the creative ones and called home creative. So whenever I'm looking to do something creative, I have that list, I have some songs I want to practice on my own. I have my things to move forward with the programming projects that I have. And yeah, really enjoying that list. Love to look at that and sometimes.

Morten: Pick from that list. I like that idea. I haven't implemented that myself, but I might— I'm reminded now that I might want to play with that. And that is to make just make a home project list called just fun. And just to remind myself, I'm not having problems having fun, but for someone who hasn't been, you know, well-versed in GTD, maybe just to make a fun list of things you find fun and that you will not forget. You don't want to forget that you found fun at some point and want to continue, because in the hectic everyday lives, as you say, that we meet people who work a lot and that don't don't remember to have fun enjoying their work or their spare time, enjoying the fun things in life. And just have a list of fun. I think that might be a good idea if you haven't tried it before. So maybe I'll do that in my system as well. Just tweak it a little. Okay. So, but how would you use then for people who are fresh to GTD? Just decide outcomes and next actions. How would you just give a brief example of something that you could like if you wanted to when you acquired that piano? I'm sure that was a— was that a next— sorry, decide outcome and the next action and the next action.

Lars: And it certainly was.

Morten: Yeah. So, so, so to make it— put it into— you will have a to-list called projects home and then and a next actions list. Some, in some context, you would like to perform the first next action. So what, do you remember approximately what the name of the project was?

Lars: I do. It was finalize the piano corner. That was it. So that sort of expanded not just to buying the piano, that was the original project, but really it's, you know, it's part of the, it's in the living room. I wanted to make sure that we had everything set up for the, for the mixer that, that I'm using for it. And, you know, the place to place the sheets and, um, yeah, have the right lighting. Um, you know, have a— I got a— this sounds very Nordic, I'm sure. We have, uh, instead of a painting or a photo on that wall, we have a— it's a corkboard with— what do you call— what's it called? Moose? What's it called? You know.

Morten: The I'm sorry, you lost me now.

Lars: Moose? What is this? You know what it is. No, you know, so whatever is growing on rocks, for example.

Morten: Oh, moss. Yeah.

Lars: English moss. I'm glad that we managed to tease that out. No, but so we actually have that on a corkboard. So it's alive. It lives there. I love looking at that because that's just this nice green wall. It's inspiring, it's creative. I got that for my birthday in March.

Morten: And you must put a link to that in the show notes after.

Lars: I'm sure people will love your moss corkboard wall. My moss corkboard wall, exactly. No, so I have that. So that was a part of it, you know, thinking through. And again, I actually really like that as an example of a GCD project. Being very, you know, it can be very concrete and getting that piano set up and playing around with it, figuring out that's the one we wanted. And then taking that to what is the space that I want to be in when I'm sitting at the piano. And that can take on so many different next actions, like the, the moss on a.

Morten: Corkboard. Good. Well, I think, well, that sounds like Next action, sorry, the decide outcome and next action. So, so if you are going to then change to housework or house chores, how are you handling that? How do you— by the way, if you just go up on the, you know, the bird's-eye view of things, why would it be good to have divided the chores between you and your spouse. Why is that important? And, and that there is kind of a balance there.

Lars: Absolutely. Yeah. No, it's, um, it's really good to, to make it clear who owns what, at least. Why is that important?

Morten: Why is that important? I'm just trying to tease this because it is, it is some— I, I know that people are I remember in my former relationships and my former marriage is that it is, it is not always evident who does what. I remember especially one, in one relationship that was really hard because we were so different, so that when we made agreements that some person should do something and that person did not do that, I got a little upset. So, but, so for me, that is just, it makes the traffic rules of the home, who does what, a little better. Who's directing traffic today? Who's packing for our son? Who is making dinner? Who's shopping? Who's, these are things that if they are on cruise control, and well organized makes life easier, I think. I don't know if you agree with me.

Lars: Absolutely. And also too, that's a good step. And also in some cases to align on the standards for how, you know.

Morten: How often should you throw out the trash when it's kind of like bulging and it's going to automatically— sorry, you can't put anything in there or should you? Yeah. I agree.

Lars: Exactly. So we actually took a very structured GTD approach when we moved to a new apartment about 8 months ago now and drafted notes. So what do we need to maintain at certain standards, you know, cleaning and shopping for groceries and all those kinds of things, and really just brainstormed that. And then we took a different turn and saying, okay, instead of just brainstorming, all that stuff going on, we actually said, okay, let's put each of our names on there and then start to divide these between us. And so now we own these different areas. It's not that we are not helping each other with one area or another, but the overall owner of some of these areas is then responsible to, in the end, to make sure that they are up to date. And it, you know, that's again coming back to the nostalgia perspective and, wow, that sounds heavy and a lot of lists and things go on, you know, in daily life. It's, I think our household is probably like any other or like many other homes with the small kids, toys are on the floor and things like that. So it's not that, you know, it could sound very clean and square and everything's nice and shiny, but it's nice to have these things split up, especially for a GTDer like me who has, you know, been doing this for so long that I have a really well-trained radar for what shows up for me. What am I actually noticing when I walk around? So if I don't tell my brain what to look for, meaning which which things should I be on the lookout to make sure that happens. I will likely not see it. I will walk straight past the dishes and won't see them because if it's not on my radar to keep an eye on that.

Morten: I guess you're not a high observer.

Lars: Yeah, that could have that, that probably also adds to it. But it's just nice to have those things split out, who owns what, and then we can manage them in our own ways.

Morten: Yeah, but if you brought your wife on board this podcast now, what do you think she would say about this arrangement and that you actually went through that process? What would she say to us?

Lars: I think she will say that she likes it, that it's nice and clean. It's not that she's as hardcore GTDer as I am, so she doesn't manage it in the same way. So I have some reminders set up to check on whether we need to do the laundry on Wednesdays and Saturdays, whatever it might be. So she manages it in her way. And she knows, I think the key comes back to trust and trusting that he has this under control. I don't need to keep that on my radar. So I think it helps her in that way. Yeah. Is it the same for you or did we go GTD nuts on that one?

Morten: No, no, no, no, no, we did not. But my wife has the nickname, she's by the way French, and from Turkish origin. So we call her Madame Organisé, and she's super organized, and she loves rearranging and, you know, making things more efficient. And, but we do share our responsibilities around the house, and I know what I need to do. Like, this is, it's in my And I use— and since I'm so easily distracted, I'm sorry, I'm high associative, and give me something to look at and I will forget who I am. And so I have to have reminders of the things I need to get done. But when I have reminders, I am trying to be as adamant and do my duty towards what I've got responsibility for. So I build routines on anything that I have to— like, we have a, you know, before-bed routine. I'll go check the doors, I will go, you know, refill water bottles because we both like to have water by our nightstand if we wake up on our Thursday. So I refill the water bottles. I will then clear what's on the sofa table and put things into the dishwasher, and that kind of concludes my little ritual in the night. And that is on cruise control, so everything is on cruise control. I don't have to remember, but because that happens every night. But like, I have— I must remind my wife to, when we both do that, take some airdrops for you know, the health of our ears. And we do that once a week. And I have a reminder for that because I don't want to forget that because it happens once a week. And it's, you know, and I use the reminder app in iOS for that. And there's two reasons is I will get a reminder. And the second is I can pause the reminder. Remind me in one hour if it's not suitable to do something or remind me tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon.. And that is really helpful. You can do that from the lock screen when you get a notification, or on your iPhone— sorry, your Apple Watch. And that is really helpful because then you can snooze that thing. And that's the Reminder app on iOS. And I also have set it up with repeating tasks. So when it's finished, it will repeat next week, same time. Yeah, that's about what I do. What do you do, Lars, for remembering?

Lars: Those, I think, are also really good examples in the difference that you might see from hobbies, which are more maybe directed at doing something, where housework can be coming back to that original description of areas of focus, meaning maintaining things at a certain standard. So I think for, for a lot of GTDers, when they start off with GTD, they will you know, find all the things that are going on in their life. They will get that into their system, projects, next actions. As you progress with that, you will start to think more of the future you and how you can help that person. And one thing that I certainly improved significantly at was, you know, maintaining the things that we have, the bike, the washing machine, the, you know, the laundry, the dryer, all those kinds of things. It's just something that never was on my radar before because so many other things going on. But now we got, for example, new washing machine, new dryer as we moved into the new apartment. So I just quickly skim through that manual and then pick up, all right, so every 3 months it's good to run a program with this and that and this kind of extra cleaning stuff that you put in there. So that's in for me as well in the reminders app every 3 months, you know, just to run that program and then make sure that that help of that machine will maybe be extended by 2 years, 5 years, whatever it might be. It can really actually have a pretty big, big impact on these things. So we have that. I have, you know, cleaning the drains. I have cleaning the one that sucks the food smells out of the roof. I'm missing the English words for the right things. The ventilator. Yeah, exactly. You know, we, we get the food delivered every week, so I need to, to put some stuff out when they come with the new things. Need to water the flowers. Watering the flowers is just a standard reminder for me every Sunday to just do that quick round. Takes literally 3 minutes for me to walk around and, and get that done, but I don't have to remember it. It's in there. So I think that's a— it's a good example of You know, the difference in those kinds of small things that it's just so nice to get on cruise control, because the alternative would be that the machine would stop working, or that the drain doesn't work, or that the flowers would be dead. So it's nice to help the future Lars just get ahead of that annoyance and just, you know, do it on an ongoing basis.

Morten: I think so too. And one of the things I would like to make a point of is that if something is on cruise control, you put it— don't put it in your system. So if you automatically will go out with the trash because when you look at it, it's full, that's kind of your modus operandi, you'll just do it, then you don't have to do that. I have— I'm looking at my reminders app now. I have my father who is 90 this year. He gave us a couple of years ago, he gave us a French I think it's called a table clock. It's in the, you know, the— it's black marble and gold and looks really beautiful clock. And it is a mechanical clock. It's nearly 200 years old, but my father is an old clockmaker, so he cleaned it out for us, made it really— it works really well. So now my job is just to wind it. Every Sunday, and because it will run for a week, and I wind both the clock itself so it works, but also the chimes. So you have the little ting-ting. Oh, I love that sound. I didn't before, but I do now. You know, these are things that I, if I don't do them, it will stop working. And it's just a friendly reminder for myself that every Sunday this is at 3 o'clock, I will get that reminder. If it doesn't fit, I will just move it to another day or later. And I have, I am also trying to build a habit of calling my father-in-law once a week just to say hi. I'm learning Turkish, so I need to practice. So that's a very good, and he's very patient with me.

Lars: So I was just going to say, I hope he's patient as well.

Morten: He is, he is. And we are taking small baby steps. We talk about the weather and I tell him what I've done today very, very briefly. And he tells me very briefly what he's done. So that's kind of like we're trying to communicate. I want to learn Turkish and he's my guinea pig. And just to establish that, that is— is that a chore or is it a hobby? I think both. Yes, it's a chore because I want to— I really, I want to make this. And I committed to him. So I need a reminder not forgetting that.

Lars: So, no, and that's, again, that's a good example of something where I would traditionally see people saying, I'm not going to put that on my list, but it's something that has your attention. It's something you want to do. It's great that you have a reminder system set up for that to make.

Morten: Sure that it happens. Yeah. And sometimes the thing in itself is a reminder, like, when I have— it's in my list system for my— our leather hobby. But my tool now is out on the— we have a little side table, little leather chest is behind the sofa table where we have all the leather. And on top of that lies my new tool, my hold the leather tool. I don't know what it's called in English, but it's a clamp for holding leather when you start stitching it.. And that is there as a reminder. So when I sit down, I can look at it. Do I want to do this? Yes, now I feel inspired. Let me do something. Let me work a little on my project. Maybe I should cut some leather today. And then voilà, the thing in itself becomes a reminder. So maybe if you walk past the piano every day, you might be inspired to just sit down and play something. If your guitar is outside and not in a cabinet, you might get inspired to pick it up. So that, and that might be enough. You know, if you remember doing that and you feel good about it, then the thing in itself might be enough. But if you don't feel it's enough, find a way to remind yourself of it. So you don't forget all the fun stuff also.

Lars: It's the same for me in the summer house. You know, I don't really, I don't need to write down that I need to mow the lawn. It sort of reminds me on its own when we go there that, okay, we have to lift our feet high now. Maybe now is the time to get that. But just to take that perspective as well, because I think, you know, we now focus mainly on the housework, but a lot of people will live in houses. My wife and I, we have the summer house, a lot of projects going on there as well, and they go into my system just as work projects do. Renovating the bathroom. We are going to paint the house this year. We're painting some lamps. So these are several of the projects that I have there. And so that certainly goes for the personal life as well. Looking through my list, we have some smaller vacations travel that we hope we can do this year. Those are projects in my system as well. So, so all of that stuff still goes in there. It's the same kind of process that we use for, for both. We just, you know, we're planting things now. We are making sure that, that there are the right conditions for the blueberries and the strawberries and the raspberries, and we've planted potatoes and peas and carrots and everything else. That's certainly projects as well, to go and get that and buy those, plant them with the boys, and, you know, do all that kind of stuff. So it's not all chores and boring things on the on the house lists as well.

Morten: It's a lot of fun stuff. You should ask— you should add, instead of being Lars GTD, Rodskilde Henriksen, maybe a farmer should be in there as well.

Lars: Small-time farmer. Yeah, no, and we love it. Both my wife and I really enjoy spending time in the garden. The boys love it as well and play around and help us out sometimes they want to. So it's certainly on the hobbies list.

Morten: As well for us. Well, great. I, I don't know if you, um, I think what we are at the end of this episode, it sounds like that to me. Um, anything you would like to add, Loris, to what we talked about now?

Lars: Anything that you— No, I think we covered most of what I had, had thought we would want to, to mention. I think it's, um, I'm happy that we made this episode, so thankful that, that this came up as a question in the, in the Reddit forums.

Morten: And what was the username their editor is called?

Lars: You really like those usernames, don't you? Yes, I do. This one was Jen the Dog Lover. Jen the Dog Lover. Okay, I'm guessing the things there. No, I like that we made this because I think it's an interesting topic for people that are coming from the GTD perspective of, you know, managing their work and they have their systems and projects and everything set up and it's It's nice to get these things set up as well on the home front, whether it's maintenance, whether it's hobbies, whatever it might be. Nice to get those lists set up and making it a more consistent way.

Morten: To live your life, really. Yeah. Okay. End of episode, getting near. Lars, will you take.

Lars: Us out, please? I will. We always, we wrap it up, but In reality, I, I always wrap up the episodes, but we do that with a quick reminder to head on over to gtdnordic.com. That is where you will find links to all the countries in the Nordic with each of the websites for each of those countries containing all the articles about GTD in the newsletters, links to groups on social media where we discuss tools and practices with natives of each of those countries. And of course, you'll find all of our offerings there, the speeches, the courses, and the coaching, both the virtual and the physical ones. If you are in the US or Canada and looking for a GTD course, vitalsmarts.com is where to go, and gtdfocus.com is where to go to find GTD coaches in that region. And for everyone else, head over to gettingthingsdone.com to find your local partners. And lastly, as always, we really hope that you find these episodes valuable. We have a lot of fun making them, as I'm sure you can hear from us, and really hope that you benefit from them. Thanks for all the kind words that we get from, from different places, whether on Reddit, whether by email or other places on Twitter. So thanks for that. And if you benefit from them, we hope that you'll share them with a colleague or a friend who might benefit from this. And as always, rating on iTunes is always helpful for us to become more discoverable for other people that might benefit.

Morten: From listening to us. Well, thank you, Lars, and thank you, our dear listeners and viewers. We are on YouTube as well. Do a search for GTD Nordic. I'm sure you will find either the Danish or the Morten Ørevig channel. You can see us as well as listen to us. So thank you so much for listening and viewing. Until next time, stay safe and stay productive.

Lars: Bye-bye, everyone. Bye-bye.