65. Do You Have Too Much To Do?

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 good friend and colleague Lars Rothschild Henriksen. Tere, Lars.

Lars: Tere, Morten. Good to see you as always, and looking forward to recording another episode for you, not for you, but with you, for all the GTDers and GTD curious. People out there. We record this episode or this podcast to help you learn GTD or become even better GTDers. So we hope that this episode supports you in that. And as always, if it does, we'd love to hear from you. If you're new to GTD, we recommend you go back and listen to episodes 1 through 6 on the podcast to get an introduction to the basics of GTD. And today's episode number is number 65. And I'm really looking forward to today's episode as a listener. Questions episode, which can hopefully really help some GTDers out there. But before I— I would normally hand it back to Morten right now, but before we do, I just want to mention our GTD Summer Camp. So this is a nonprofit event that we organize in Denmark. It's organized by a group of Danish GTDers. Jens, Mikael, Birgitte, and Fede are all working on this as we, as we speak. So it's an event that will take place in June in Denmark. Both Morten and I will be there. David Allen will join us for our virtual Q&A, and we have a lot of great sessions planned for Saturday and half of Sunday, giving you plenty of time to travel home on Sunday if you, if you need to do that. So it's cheap to participate. Half the seats are already sold, and we have people from 7 different countries, I think, by now, and all different types of people with different backgrounds. So This will be a fun, great weekend. Everyone will surely level up their, their GTD game. And, you know, GTDers are just the nicest people, so it'll be a great weekend to spend together with nice people. So we hope you'll be joining us. gtdsommercamp.com is where you can go to read more about it, to sign up. And just want to mention that before we head off into today's episode.

Morten: Yeah, thank you, Lars. And for those of you who are listening or watching now, this is— last year it was really good, and I'm sure that we'll— if it's half as good as last you must attend. It was an interesting event with a lot of people learning, and the feedback we got was overwhelmingly positive. So I hope we will see you there. It's a way you also can hang out with us if you'd like to ask questions or something. We are going to be there. And am I totally mistaken, because I'm not as fully connected with this as you are, but there's going to be a virtual coaching session there as well, I think. Is that— or not a virtual, but a coaching session live? Live one like we did last year?

Lars: Yeah, we're looking into how we can, how we can best do that. So right now the parts of the program have already been scheduled. So David is joining us on Sunday as the last event before we wrap up for the, for the day and get a nice group picture and all that good stuff and say goodbye to everyone. But we have some different plans for, for what happens during Saturday, some really cool speakers, and we'll be talking a lot about the different aspects of it. A lot of thoughts has gone into this, and like you say, we will likely do a sort of a coaching event on the evening of that Saturday, just to hang out and discuss systems and just give you an example of what that might look like. So again, gctsummercamp.com. Hope to see you there.

Morten: Indeed, indeed. Hope to see you there. So moving on into today's episode, we— this is a listener questions program, and I think you have two questions lined up for us, one from Gregory Bard, I think.

Lars: Yeah, one came from, from Gregory. He sent us an email a few months back talking about if we might be able to go into more detail about the on hold category. So he wrote, at several points in the podcast series you've mentioned the projects on hold and more recently next actions on hold. I wasn't able to find very much detail about this in David Allen's books. I have to admit that I haven't reached halfway with the Ready for Anything and I think there was a brief mention of projects on hold in making it all work. Nonetheless, maybe you might like to do an episode about this.

Morten: And this is touching on to our second listener question, which was from, which is from, or not a listener question maybe, but a comment, or is it a question from Jukka Bachmann, our friend and partner in Finland.

Lars: Yeah, exactly. No, there was a reflection on this in the sense that how do you know that you simply have too much on your plate, which lines up very nicely with Gregory's question. So this was referring back to a coaching session from a while back with someone who was already experienced as a GTDer. And they went into some details in trying to calculate how much time was actually available, trying to really get an overview of that. And looked into the numbers. So maybe 50, 60 real email messages on a given day that needs to be acted on. So estimating that might take maybe, maybe 2 minutes on average per message, that would be 120 minutes, meaning that per week that would be more than 1 day just spent simply processing email. But then of course there wasn't enough time just for that because there was already meetings going on, different routine maintenance things that needed to happen, a huge project list, 90 projects going on. Did we have everything scheduled? Did everything have a next action? Was there room in the calendar? And you could really see that this person was struggling to get through all of these things. And then from that on, just a reflection on the fact that you do see some organizations throwing more and more stuff at people that are really busy already, knowing that they will then stretch their hours to get it all done. And it was clear based on this that this person wouldn't stay at that organization for much longer because this was simply the workload that was being thrown at him. And it really was, as he wrote, such a huge loss for an organization to lose people like him because they actually really get so much stuff done. And the combination of emails and actually seeing his projects and calendar from this point of view simply underline that this is a game he can't win.

Morten: Indeed. So when you, you, you, you read the, the questions or the comments, I, I started reflecting on them, and I am— I think might be a good angle that we can attack this, that because when you have the, the episode title is 'Do You Have Too Much to Do?' which is kind of like a rhetorical question because a lot of people do have too much to do. And, um, and how do you deal with that, uh, on a total totality level. Um, David Allen uses, um, and a quote that goes something like this here is that, um, mosquitoes can— do you remember that? Mosquitoes can kill the— sorry, again, ruin.

Lars: The hunt for big game.

Morten: Yeah, ruin the hunt for the big game. Yeah, exactly. And, and in this, in this, um, context of this thinking about having too much to do, that, that, you know, the mosquitoes can be everything from yours— you multitask yourself in your brain, you're not using GTD fully, you're still having what we call mental monkeys that are roaming around in your brain. But they can also be interruptions by others, teams knocking on the door, emails, sorry, phones. And then On top of that, if you have a huge email inflow and meetings on top of that, that hinders you of getting things done. Because do you have too much to do? Yes, maybe you have, but is it your job to be in email for 1 hour a week? Are you in the right meetings? For instance, so I'm looking at the mosquitoes. What I would suggest, I don't know how you would attack this, but I will throw this to you, Lars, like a curveball. Here it comes. So if you are, you are a person who have a lot of distractions or, or interruptions, let's call them interruptions, and a lot of emails, a lot of meetings, how would you handle that? How would you scale back on that if that's— you know, that what I call the mosquitoes, or I would also call it a low-hanging fruit because you can actually do something about that.

Lars: Yeah, you know, calendar is always a good, good place to start. And I love talking about this to people also in the introductory speech that we, that we do, just to talk about, so what does your calendar actually look like? And that really varies so much from person to person. I had a Q&A with a client this morning where some of their employees joined and we talked about this. And then, you know, even on that call, even from the same department, it was very different from person to person how, how booked their calendars for. But coming back to the reflection that many people recognize in not having room for all the unplanned work, this is really something that I always enjoy. And I have to remind myself as well, because when I look at my list and I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to get so much done this week. And the unplanned factor of work, so how much actually shows up. And as you know, in the previous version of the seminar that we delivered, we used to ask people to weigh in. So how much of their day was unplanned? And we, back then, at least in Denmark, the responses would vary from 30 to 70% of their day was unplanned. Even the highest ones actually coming from one of the biggest medical or pharmaceutical industries in Denmark, where I thought, you know, everything's just, you know, lined up and easy to attack. They really had a lot of things showing up. And then taking that into context of the calendar. So what does your calendar look like? Do you have, you know, let's just say 30-35% of available space just to handle the unplanned work, then maybe an hour, you know, or maybe even more, as in this case in the listener question, where, you know, we need to sort of scratch that as well in the calendar and say that's how much time it takes for you to stay on top of the incoming stuff. And then if you have half a day of meetings, you know, you're not going to get anything done from the list. So it really is, that's a really nice place to start. And if we then start to look at the calendar, so what can we actually do about this? Again, my experience is it really varies from organization to organization, how many people, yeah, what the calendar culture is, if we wanted to focus on that. What shows up? Are you just invited at random to things where you could just get a summary of things? Can you send someone else? Can you delegate it? Can we just skip it and attend every 3 weeks, 4 weeks? What can we actually do about those things that are in your.

Morten: Calendar? Yeah, and you pause now for me to comment, or— yeah, um, and I would, I would tie that. Yes, you're, you're absolutely right, um, about meetings. Um, one of the things I find as an interesting exercise to do with people is when we are looking at interruptions, you know, talk about what interruptions do you get, um, and do you need to get all of them? And I mean, interruption can be team messages, it can be people knocking on your door, people calling you. And when I talk to people about, you know, make sure that you are doing the most of the right things, is one of the things you have to understand is that you need your concentration. And if you're interrupted, you're not doing GTD when you're trying to do concentrated work. So, so shutting off the world outside so you're not interrupted, like close your door, hang the "Do Not Disturb" sign, or the "Genius is Thinking" sign on the outside of the door. Do not disturb. Do not disturb on Teams. Go in your phone for, you know, focus work mode so you're not interrupted by others. That's an easy way to make sure that you are getting more of the right stuff done. When it comes to emails, I think you kind of mentioned that, but a lot of the emails that I see my clients have in their inboxes are everything from, you know, analytics emails from reporting systems that is, you know, not urgent, that actually don't need to go into your inbox. It could be routed outside somewhere else into a separate folder called like reports or read later. Later, or read before I leave today, or, or I don't know what you want to call that folder. But you can do email triaging upfront. So you can— you and I, I have a— I've mentioned, I think I mentioned this before on the, on the podcast as well, as I have an idea for what I call the, the email nirvana, or the inbox nirvana, is that when you have only emails hitting your inbox that you actually have to be to clarify and organize, that it really needs your attention. You need your brainpower to decide what it is. So to route everything that is, you don't need to see immediately as it arrives, take, get it somewhere else, get it into a folder, and then unsubscribe from everything else that is, you know, a mosquito that you don't need to see at the moment. You know, like all the emails you will not read at all, but they, you know, kind of, I signed up for that at some point, but I thought, and I think my best intentions are that I will read them, but do you? No. Then get rid of them. I don't know if you've seen that, but I see that all the time, that people are, you know, signing up for emails— sorry, newsletters. And if you are signing up for our newsletters, feel free to unsubscribe if it doesn't give you something. If you are just looking at them going, I want to read that, but I don't have time, and you know by yourself that I will not read that at all, then unsubscribe immediately. I will not be disappointed in you. I will be more proud of you that you're actually taking responsibility for your own attention. So to get all the emails out of there that you don't need to see, so that you are using email rules, you can set up rules for auto-routing emails outside your inbox and into a folder, or unsubscribe everything else emails you don't need to get. And hopefully you will spend less time in emails at that point.

Lars: But no, but I just saw that in my own— I'm trying out a different email client and I just noticed I actually have a newsletter one, which then routes a newsletter that I wanted to hang on to, puts them in this. Oh yeah, well, that's pretty interesting. And then I'll check it if and when I find the time for it. But it's nice to, like you say, try to get the unnecessary stuff that you don't need to see in there to see if you can manage that differently, unsubscribing, setting up rules, etc. One thing I just wanted to mention, because this client this morning, they mentioned it, that if you're struggling, you know, you say you go on Do Not Disturb on Teams, but then, you know, in this case, 3 people still would interrupt within a single hour. So it's not always the culture that people respect however you set that up. So you may need to actually go fully offline. From a calendar perspective, what I often see people doing is marking events as private, because that will tend to get, in quotes, a little more respect from others. One of the others mentioned that they'll mark it as out of office. So it'll look like they simply are not in the office. And that will typically make it more easy to hang on to, for example, the weekly review.

Morten: Yeah, I do agree, the meetings and the The calendar is important and to make sure that you don't get interrupted, but to get back into meetings again is that if you get rid of the low-hanging fruit or the low-hanging mosquitoes, if you may, then continue on meetings and take a hard look at them and look at what meetings do I not need to be part of. But when you get there, and even when you go to emails interruptions,, it might be difficult to make that call on, do I really need to attend this meeting or do I need to be interrupted by this person or do I really need to read this person's emails even though I'm in the CC field, I'm CC'd on it. So, and that ties us up to areas of focus. In the Getting Things Done methodology, we have the control aspect of GTD and we have the perspective aspect of GTD, which the perspective is the, Horizons of Focus model. Or I don't know if you, if you can take us from the top down there from, and, and, and then stop at Areas of Focus, and we can, you know, use that as a, as a way to, to continue. There's a, like, a repetition. Loris, you're good at this.

Lars: Hey, go do it. You can see, so, so for those of you listening and watching, you can see Morten is good at delegating. That's how you get room in your No, but the Horizon focus at the top, Horizon 5, meaning, purpose, and principles. So what's the purpose for you? What's the purpose for the organization? What are the principles surrounding this? That's what we would capture on Horizon 5. Horizon 4 is vision. So what does it look like ideally when, when you live out this purpose? And what is the ideal scenario? What would things look like ideally if we go 3, 5, 10, 20 years, however far you want to go into the future, and try to describe that in, in the vision section. Level below that is Horizon 3, goals, which is typically 1 to 2 years into the future. So what are you committed to actually achieving there? And these can again be both personal and professional. And just below that, Horizon 2, areas of focus and accountability. So what are you responsible for maintaining at certain standards? What do you have your attention on? What are you, what are you focused on personally, for example? So this could be, you know, financial things, health, things, family, properties, whatever it might be on a personal level. And work-related is all the stuff going on right now. What are you responsible for in your current position?

Morten: Yeah. And, and for those of you who have not made that connection yet, is that if you are not aware of your areas of focus and responsibility, especially in work, you know, your, your job, that is going to give you problems, mainly because you don't know what you're committed to do. You don't, you don't know what you are measured on. And if you don't know what you're committed to do, or what you should be committed to do, if that's, you know, you don't know this, how can you know that you're doing a good job? That's not possible. So to identify or update your areas of focus at work, and you can do that on your own or with your superior, to make sure that you have a clear image, a clear picture of What is, what am I responsible for? What areas am I responsible for? So that you know that if I maintain this, I am doing a good job. When you do that exercise, you might understand that I have too much to do. Then you will understand, do you have too much to do? Yes. Because you can very easily say that when you make, for instance, let's say you are making this as a— you can, you can do it as an exercise on like a list on a, in a Word document, or you can do it as a mind map. But when you do that, you can go as deep as you need to, to get us, you know, as wide a picture of— let's say that you are, you have marketing is your responsibility. What does that entail? What areas under marketing is, you know, specifically would you like to maintain? And And what I see so many times, so, so many times, is if people don't have this, but take the time to make this overview, a lot of, you know, it starts to, you know, the bulbs start coming in their brain, because they will understand that I have too much to do, I have too many areas of focus, or they are unclear to me, so I don't know actually, I don't actually know what I'm, I'm, um, if I'm working on the right things. And, um, I guess you've seen the same thing, is that when the clarity.

Lars: Comes, it's— yeah, certainly the coin drops. And just a quick, quick reference back to an earlier episode, um, episode 59, the first episode of this year, is where we dive into areas of focus. So highly recommend you go back and watch that, find that on, on YouTube or in your podcast player No, but I just recently, I'm working with a coaching client right now who actually, you know, just used this. He has a new boss. He has too much to do. He knows that. Both people know that. And so they actually walk through the areas of focus. So we drafted this together in a coaching session. He brought that with him to a discussion with his boss. They looked through it. More recently, they revisited that, but actually from a project level. So, so he had, you know, up on the wall, A3 size paper, one Post-it, one project name, trying to place them all in just, you know, simplified categories such as, you know, to do right now, urgent, do if you have the time, and last category was to drop this. And then trying to place them, and it just was so nice and visual and clear for, for, for the boss and for him that, you know, we're not going to get all this done. And, you know, get as much done as you can. But, you know, the reality is that, that this is the budget, this is how much we have, you know, available manpower to do. So we'll do it as best as we can. But it's so nice to, to get that level of clarity, like you say, especially on the areas of focus. It's just, I love walking through that with the coaching clients. I love it when we get to work more with people. As some of you listening probably know, that we focus on, you know, ground level, next actions and calendar, and we focus on Horizon 1, projects when we start off with GTD. Just that one level above, it just, you know, it gives so much more clarity. It opens up more, so much more easily for the higher horizons as well, that it just starts to all connect up in such a nice way that I always try to inspire people to play with that. But especially the project level, as well as was mentioned in the question as well, you know, when you see that big projects list, when you see that long list of things, you see your calendar, you see your areas of focus, there's some thinking that needs to go into this. And in finding the right level for you and how much you can actually get done in a given week or over time.

Morten: And the idea of making, you know, the areas of focus overview is that you now will be able to say yes or no to projects easier or more easily. Is that possible? Easily is the word I'm looking for. But the more easily you can then attach match your project to an area focus, or understand that an area focus is not maintained at the level you would like, at the standard you like, so you have to create a project to maintain that. That also, you know, that overview creates an idea if you have too much to do, and it becomes very visual. And when I do my keynotes and seminars, sometimes I talk about which person do you want to be. Do you want to be the person who comes to, you know, the superior and tell him or she that, ah, I have too much to do. I'm so stressed. I don't know what to do. And then the boss asks, okay, how much do you have to do? Show me. And I said, I don't know, but I do just, just, it's just too much, you know. And this is the classical victim responder. I, you know, the the worst place to be. But it is fairly easy. If you want to be a GGDer, start capturing everything that has your attention, clarify and organize them into a system. You will have them. When you clarify and organize, you will get them into your projects list, whatever projects you have. And when you want to be maybe number, you know, the person B that comes to the superior saying that, you know, I have too much to do, and then the boss asks, okay, what do you have to do? I have this, and then lay out the land of all the projects that you have or are responsible for, and if possible, and link them to your areas of focus to make sure that, you know, the boss understands that this is actually something you are committed to do. And then ask the boss what needs to go. Yeah, because if some— something don't go, I will go. Maybe you will tell— no, I don't know what you will tell, but no.

Lars: But it is— and it takes time. It really takes time to get that built up. So be sure, those of you starting out trying to build this, Again, the projects list is essential to get, get that kind of overview and being able to discuss your work. But be sure to know that it takes time to get to that right level. So the people that I spoke to this morning, you know, they've been working with GTD since the seminar for about 6 months, I think, and they were at the right level now where it started to make sense to, to level up a bit. But it really takes time to get to that, that right stage. And often you'll find that, you know, when you start to get that clear overview, you'll find that there's too much to do. And I think that, I guess, leads us to very nicely to the first question that I, that I mentioned from Gregory.

Morten: What do you do when you have.

Lars: Too much to do? Yeah, exactly.

Morten: Yeah.

Lars: So how do you, how do you then manage that? Yeah. And I've mentioned, at least if I could go maybe from my personal perspective, this is something that I've been working on for a long time. I am very good at underestimating the ongoing maintenance, making sure that things are maintained to the standards that I want, That sort of day-to-day routine chores kind of things, I tend to overlook how much time that takes. And that means that I, you know, my projects list would be too long, leading me to feel, you know, bad about which things that I'm not moving forward on. So really, that's, you know, it's continued to be a part of my work with GTD is to try to keep that number of projects that are active to the right level, really, you know, keeping at the right amount for me.

Morten: At any given time. And you will be, or we will be as human beings, the worst, you know, the worst bosses inside your head because you will beat yourself up for everything you don't do. And I called the project on hold. I remember I was, to be honest, and Gregory, he asks, where do we, where do you find that? And to be honest, I don't remember where it is in the books. But I remember first time I was presented to this, it was during my training to become a master trainer. Meg Edwards, who then used to work for David Allen Company as a coach and trainer, she introduced me to the Project On Hold. And I found that to be, you know, a little curious at the time. But as I understood what purposes it serves, it becomes like a jewel in your toolbox of getting things done. And it is the sanity tool for you to make sure that you are doing most of the right things at the same time as you maintain a feeling of being in control and feeling of succeeding in your work and feeling that you are a master of your world. Sometimes you have too much to do, and what you do, you take lists from your active project list and move them to a project on hold. You find the ones that are, are not urgent and important, the least urgent, least important, you move to the project on hold. That does not mean that you will not do it, but you will not do it right now. And to make sure that you have an appropriate measure of things you have committed to do so that you are actually doing progress, we talked about the combine harvester before, my image of this I don't know which episode that was, like 100 years ago it feels, but I have my combine harvester is if you have a wide cutter or a narrow cutter, a narrow cutter will cut a smaller amount of next actions, but it will fulfill your projects faster if you don't have too many active projects. And I call the Project on Hold as it is a sanity tool, but it's also a speed tool. So if you want to move faster, then remove projects from and focus on what's on your active projects, and then you can move them faster. And if you have, you know, want to slow down a little, add a few projects and do it that way. That's also— anything to add on that image thinking?

Lars: No, just that it's— and that's also, that was part of Gregory's question or reflections on this, and I don't know if I mentioned it, but he says perhaps talk about subcategories. Summarizing the someday-maybes in general. And that's really what we're doing. So what people will find is that when they, as they get good at GTD, they'll get a good list of projects going on, they will have a lot of next actions, and they'll find the need, or maybe they'll discover them on their own, that they have a lot of someday-maybes as well. So yeah, projects that the only commitment is to revisit that list on a regular basis to see if they should then activate some of these projects. And what you'll find, for me, that list became long. Pretty quickly because, you know, there are many things that I would like to do at some point but not right now and like to keep that list. A lot of cool, fun, inspiring things to look through that I might want to do at some point. So you'll find that, that, you know, as you start off with GTD, it might be just one, one single list, and that list builds up and adds.

Morten: Up and you go, oh, too much.

Lars: To do, what do I do? Then maybe you need to subcategorize it. And one sort of bigger distinction is that on hold category, which is more of an as soon as I can kind of thing. I know I'm going to do this, but just not right now. Then that's where the on hold comes in. And then whatever else you might have on that someday maybe list, be sure just to maybe organize them in a way that makes sense for you. I found that for myself, it often makes sense for me to— most of the things I'll be able to organize by area of focus. So coming back to that, as you know, an area of focus of mine is the summer house that we have, old summer house lots of projects that I could be engaging in. That certainly needs a list on its own. So that's, that's how I would normally, normally go about that. I don't know, how would you organize yours, one?

Morten: No, I just have a, it's either active or inactive in my system. So I just pause it and I can then look at all my paused projects. That becomes my someday maybe. And I don't, in my active project list, I don't see the paused ones. So, but I've seen people do the following, which is kind of like an interesting take on this. And remember people, getting things done is not religion. You can break the rules, it's okay. As long as you keep within the framework, you can break the rules. So, or break this, and there's no rules, by the way, so it's break something. I don't know how to say that. Yeah, best practices. But imagine that you can also split someday, maybe, up to someday, and maybe. You know, where someday is a little closer, if you take them on a scale, that you have active projects in one end, and then you have maybe on the other end. So that you say that projects are active, and if they are, you know, on pause, they will be active sometime in the near future, but just not right now because I have too much on my plate. I use that as a way to balance my days. And then you go for someday I will do this, and then maybe, which can be a fourth category. It's up to you how you will slice and dice this, but remember that whenever you create a new list, it becomes a category you have to look at. When you do your weekly review and keep it simple, keep it lean, keep it mean, make sure that you're not confusing yourself where you put things. And for the, you know, for your own sanity, look at your system often and maintain an overview and control of it. So do your reviews. That's a very important part of making sure this, everything, you know, fits together.

Lars: Ambitious, cross them out as you walk through them in your weekly review. Like you said, if something does not have your, you know, it shouldn't be on that list anymore, then be sure to get rid of it because that'll often take time. For me, I also have a, you know, subcategorized into someday maybe monthly and someday maybe yearly category, whereas I don't need to look at these every week and once a year is fine. I wanna, you know, we get a new nice roof on the summer house, but I don't need to consider that every week. So So that's also another layer that I've introduced to my someday maybes. But it's interesting, you know, people have, you know, I've heard from several listeners that they found it interesting to hear our discussions about the details in our organizing steps and organizing reference material. And so it's interesting to actually hear that we, in this case, we actually have the opposite, that I have a much more more detail-organized system when it comes to someday-maybes than you, if I understood you correctly.

Morten: Well, it is, you have more subcategorized than mine. For me, it's either active or inactive. So if a project suddenly, I understand, and this is my, I have the project on hold, but I also have the someday-maybe, and project on hold is a folder where I drag projects to, and then that will— and I will pause them so they don't show up in my normal, you know, when I do my look at my contexts. So I, you know, I don't see the next action for the on paused or on hold. And when I do someday, maybe— which I've actually been very good at cleaning up because I don't know about you, but when I started with Getting Things Done, it's like I wrote down everything that had my attention that I might someday in what you should do, which is a good idea. But at some point you understand that, you know, I talk about my, you know, my, what my son taught me, uh, you know, seriously, are you going to do that? And then adding your bullshit filter so that you can, you can look at that and say that seriously, am I ever going to do that? And more often now that I'm in my 59th year, which means that I, you know, I really have to focus on, on what I need to get done And that clarity that comes with it is that I don't have time for that. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to focus on that. I don't have the time. I don't have the energy. And let me get rid of that. That clarity helps me, helped me make a little more difficult decisions than before. I don't know if that makes sense to you. I wouldn't say it's less, it's, mine is less organized than yours. We just, you know, we're just different. So, all right. All right. So, any final thoughts, Lars, before we, I think we are going to wrap.

Lars: This puppy up soon. Yeah, no, I think it's just great, great questions. You know, it's, You know, good overall reflection to take a step back and consider how much is on your plate. We have to-do lists, uh, we'll never get through everything on those lists because new things will show up, things we want engaging, new things will be started, new projects, etc. But having a good solid level of work that you can get done, you know, that feeling of control is really something not to be underestimated, and your job satisfaction and how how you enjoy life. So really trying to find that right level is key. And I love that we could dive into this both from a general perspective and as Gregory dived into one of the aspects of, okay, so where could you then park things and how could you navigate that? So good questions. Thanks.

Morten: And keep those questions coming. Yes, yes, indeed. I just want to, you know, to wrap this up with a David Allen quote. He says, there's always more to do than there is time and that is a truth for a lot of people, myself included. And if you take this and say that, do you have too much to do? Yeah, most likely you do. But when you realize that there's always more to do than there is time, you have to prioritize. You have to, you know, let something go. And remember that if you say yes to something, you say no to something else. If you say no to something, you say yes to something else. Make sure that you say yes to the right things and no to the right things. Things. That's my good one. Final thoughts. Lars, will you take us out, please?

Lars: Then I will wrap up the episode as always with a quick reminder for you to head on over to gtdnordic.com. Have a look around because there you'll find the country websites for each of the Nordic countries, and on each of those sites you will find articles about GTD, links to the newsletter that you definitely want to subscribe to and not unsubscribe from, groups on social media where, you know, inhabitants from the different countries and the different offerings regarding speeches, coaching, and seminars, both the virtual and the physical ones, all those you'll find there. If you're outside the Nordics, gettingthingsdone.com is the place to go to find your local partners. And lastly, as always, we really hope that you find these episodes valuable. If GTD has made a difference in your life, then please consider helping us spread the message to more people by rating the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen, or sharing episodes with, with a colleague. It really helps other people discover and learn GTD, which is why we are here.

Morten: Yes, indeed. And before saying my normal words for saying goodbye, head over to gtdsummercamp.com and sign up. We hope to see you there. And with these words, I would like to say until next time, stay safe and stay productive.

Lars: Bye-bye, everybody. Bye-bye.