68. Listener Questions: A Lightfooted Hand on Your System!

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

Lars: Morten, good to see you as always and looking forward to recording another episode for all the GTDers and GTD curious listeners and viewers out there. We always start off by reminding you of the purpose of this podcast, which is to help you learn GTD or become even better GTDers. So, we hope that today's episode supports you in that. If you're new to GTD, we always recommend you go back and listen to episodes 1 through 6 to get an introduction to GTD and the basics. Today's episode is number 68 of the podcast, and the topic of today is listener questions.

Morten: Indeed. And we are receiving all the time new questions from listeners. And if it takes a little while before we answer, please be patient. We care about your questions and they will be answered eventually. Some of you are asking really difficult questions to answer easily. So there's maybe a little hesitance from our part to try and answer them, but they are in our system and you're not lost.

Lars: Absolutely.

Morten: Should we just dive in, Lars? What's the first listener question we will answer today?

Lars: Let's do that. Yeah. So we decided to go back and pick up some of the older questions that we had received to make sure that we covered them all. And the first one is from Jerry. And he says, hello, Lars Morten. I got a question for your podcast. Over the years, in search of a tight bulletproof system for my productivity, I've given up on several systems due to it breaking under heavy overload of information. I believe that GTD is the solution to this problem. So here's the question. Suppose I am a contractor and I have a project to build a hospital from the ground all the way up. And I have managed to complete this successfully using the GTD methodology. Well done, Jerry. I look at the tremendous amount of engineering data that has been produced. Personnel of, you know, 500 to 2,000 people have worked on this over the course of 3 to 5 years. I see data in the range of 1 1 to 2 terabytes produced. How would I organize all of this data in a way, in a GTD way, such that it would all be relevant and easily accessible for me sitting at the very, very top, with minimum dependency on all the others who have worked on this project for interpreting this information for me? Thanks so much for being a part of my life. Thank you, Jerry.

Morten: When you read this question, I, I kind of get this, this gut reaction says Thank you, Jerry, for asking this question today. We're very happy that you did. Is there any other questions? No, because there is no straight, easy answer to what he asks, at least as I see it. Yeah. What is your take on this? No.

Lars: Well, first of all, I can say, as I was saying in the pre-show, that I can certainly relate to this, not to the exact same level of detail that Jerry is mentioning, but as, you know, in my former life as an IT consultant, we would, you know, build personnel payroll systems for, you know, global companies. And there would always be a ton of information relating to that. And it was always, you know, fun to see, fun to look at, look through when you were in that project, it all made sense. And then you You would go on to the next one and the next one. And then at some point, you might want to look back and see what you had saved from earlier. And it would all sort of, yeah, I kind of remember something about that. So I can certainly relate to the wish to be able to capture all that information, store it in some sensible way that you could then retrieve and understand. And to understand all of that, all of those details, there will be specialists on all of those subtopics. Topics of that specific project. So, having a way to understand that, make it, as he says, relevant and easily accessible for me sitting at the very, very top, that might be a challenge. I think, really, much of it comes back to, from my perspective, in how things are documented. So, really, it's a question, maybe parallel to GTD, in how the system and how the project was managed and what kind of documentation was produced and how did they, you know, to what level of detail were they described and how were they, Directed, who were they writing this to? Were they writing this to the specific, to the people on the ground who are actually building the things? Were they describing a high-level, you know, process and then ways to build things? So I think for me, the question would come back to, and, you know, how was this all written? And then from that perspective, just like you said, it's very individual how you would then structure it, how it would make sense, and comes back to the type of project that Jerry would be working on.

Morten: Now I'm thinking that there is two ways of attacking this, and I would prefer the first one, which is document as you go and think into the future who would need this at what time, in what kind of format, and try and structure it as it happens. And then it could be that you would need at some point, like Microsoft Project, which is, you know, the Gantt diagrams where you can store documents, you can store links to documents, you can store notes. And that, but that takes it to the second, you know, the another level of project planning. Getting Things Done has never been touted as, you know, the project planning system for a huge project. No, it is not. It's for all the other projects that you might life happens and you would like to do something about it and you would like to have something happen. And sometimes you need project planning tools with Gantt charts and resource allocation and resource tracking and budgeting and everything. And sometimes you just need your desired outcome and your next actions. And so I'm a little hesitant to say anything in this regard, except that maybe, you know, record as you go. And start using, you know, have a little reflection time, set aside a little reflection time at the end of the day to reflect on what happened and how do I need to document this so that I can share this with the right people after. So if you're going to do it again, we can do it again with, you know, do it faster, easier.

Lars: Yeah, maybe a debrief at the end to go through and capture as much information as well. Just on that note, you're reminding me about the, I think the most recent podcast for those of you are GTD Connect members right now, they are reusing some of the old recordings that you can buy, one of them being Managing Projects, the series there. And I was just listening to it yesterday where they talk about the projects list and how people structure this differently. So again, now we're more talking about a reference setup here, but just from projects perspective, would that be one big project? And then that Microsoft Project overview with all the different moving parts going on right now, and again, chart setup, where that might be support material and where some people might say, well, these are actually different projects that I have going on in my life and how people want to structure them. So if you're on GTD Connect, if you're a member, I highly recommend listening to the Managing Projects series. I think that was episode 3 that I just listened to.

Morten: Yeah. And the David Allen Company has some really good resources on that. And GTD Connect is a paid service, but there's a lot of value behind that paywall.

Lars: For you. Absolutely.

Morten: Better at getting things. And all the setup guides and everything they have in written material is also available to you as, you know, for free, if you understand my air quotes. If you listen, you pay for them by your subscription to the service.

Lars: And there's so much good stuff in there.

Morten: Yeah. And, but to think before, you know, try and structure before you do, that is a good thing always. You know, if you think this is— I've seen so many times when I've not done this, and it's a little complex and I need to reuse it, it's not ending well. So when I start a new project, like we are in a process of a big one now. Maybe some news coming on our big project later, which involves all the Nordic countries, of getting things done. And planning ahead on the structure of my reference system has been crucial for me to now have a system that I can easily toss things into, and I have a structure where I know where things go. That, that has helped me to make sure that I look semi-intelligent when I talk to people. My stuff is, um, yeah, especially on.

Lars: Projects where you collaborate with, with many other people, like, like, uh, like Jerry was saying that, you know, there are so many, so many people involved in this. And of course he doesn't have, you know, direct one-to-one contact with all of these people, but there are different managers. And where are you in, in each of these stages? And how do you then manage all that information and, and make sure that you're moving forward? Yes, exactly. So, all right, should we go for the next one?

Morten: Yes, and I hope, Gerry, you got something out of this.

Lars: Yes, fingers crossed, Gerry. The next question is from Erwin, who says, hi, it's me again. So yeah, we got a question from Erwin in a former episode, and he's sending that question. That was actually late last year, I see from my, from my list here. He says, I have a quick question about the Someday/Maybe list and Next Action lists. Do you think it's possible to move actions from Next Actions list to Someday/Maybe list? For example, during the Weekly Review, you don't want to move forward on this action for now, so you put it on the Someday/Maybe list. Or do you think that when you choose that an action is active, you can't put it to the Someday/Maybe list? Thanks. And that was from Erwan.

Morten: The answer is yes, you can move it. Moving on. No, no, but just to, let's back up just a little because when you structure this in some kind of a tool, if it's paper or digital, you will structure your project or decide outcomes like job decide outcomes or job work projects and private project maybe. And it always is good to make them a someday maybe folder and could be also someday maybe next actions if your system it doesn't automatically move your projects into a state where you can't see it if you drag it to Someday/Maybe. So if you have, for instance, Microsoft To Do, if you have— let's say I've created a project, let's go private, it's called Cabin Refurbish Before Summer 2022. So my hashtag would be cabin, which creates a link to my next action called call Lars Rie Dugnod at the cabin. For those of you who are Nordic, you know what dugnad is. It's a way to get your neighbors to help you or your friends to help you when you need help for doing something. So then that would be an active project and an active next action, which will live then on my respectively personal private project list and my next actions list for the calls if that's it's, you know, a call list, or it's just at the office, or at home. I don't care. But when I understand that I don't have time or energy, or it's not something I've decided to move on, or because life changes, your priorities change, you have to be able to have a light-footed hand on your system and then move things in and out of focus. And the way that you do that, and it's very beneficial for your mental health. So if you don't feel comfortable doing something with a project, then move it to someday maybe and grab that next action as well to get it out of your here. So have a next action, someday maybe, next action, someday maybe project could be beneficial for you. So we can just drag things out of focus. I think you agree, Lars.

Lars: I think I do. And I just want to mention that. So obviously, we're not native English English speakers, and I just love that, the light-footed hand on your system, as you just said. That's what you get from the GTD Nordic. That's what you get from the GTD Nordic podcast. That's the kind of, you know, special, special expressions that you will not find anywhere else. No, but I completely agree, and I think it's, it's a really critical part of the, you know, your GTD practice to be aware of, you know, things like you just said. Things change, and you have to take a step back, especially in the weekly view, as Erwan also mentioned, is, you know, take a step back to actually have time to do this. And I see this playing out in my system as well, that I will sometimes have to add different perspectives or layers and move things around, or, you know, just worry from, you know, in some cases, like right now, so many things are going on that I really want to move forward on. And I don't really have a good, you know, I don't want to move things around too much because I know I'll I'll get to the other side in just a relatively short amount of time. So just, however you can structure it in your system, making sure that you can park things so you're seeing the things that you need to be seeing and have that right menu of options to choose from is just absolutely critical. So yeah, go for it. Move those things around, make them active, make them go to the someday, maybe list and park them for a while. It's certainly a critical aspect of the methodology, for sure.

Morten: It is. And I'm reminded when we had that good laugh about my light-footed hand.

Lars: Yeah.

Morten: We have a listener in the US who has become a friend of mine. He is, you know, a very avid GTDer, and he listens to us on his podcast player in, I think, 1.5x speed. And one day his daughter came inside the room and he was listening and And she asks, what are you listening to, Dad? And he replies, I'm listening to the Nordic chipmunks.

Lars: The Nordic chipmunks with the interesting expressions. I think that's— we have to find a place where we can add a tagline for the podcast.

Morten: Yes.

Lars: Okay. The last question is from Andreas. Who lives in Örense, where I live as well. He says, hi Lars, I have a listener question for the podcast which we have emailed about previously. I'm an avid GTD user at work using Outlook and partially on a personal level as well in Todoist. When things are moving fast— or sorry, when things are moving slow, so when, you know, it's vacations and similar, my personal GTD system runs really well.. But when things are really busy at work, my personal GTD system suffers quite a bit because I'll be too tired to work it. I don't want to, you know, have my computer and my phone when I'm finally off work and things like that. I have considered putting both systems together in the same place, which would be in Outlook since I cannot use Todoist at my work. So I'll put those things together. But on the other hand, I don't really, you know, want to mix personal and professional stuff. So that's why I have kept those two systems separate, and you just live with the fact that my personal GTD system will sometimes suffer when things are busy at work. What are your considerations and experiences with other GTD users keeping the, you know, personal and professional in the same system or separate? And that was Andreas from Windsor.

Morten: Okay, greetings from Oslo. And we are— no, the best practice of getting things done when it comes to a system is to have as few as possible, as many as you need. And saying that, it means that when you are— if it is possible, you would have it in one place. But some people can't. And so the best practices is if you can have it in one system. And the reason being that you will have ideas at work that has to relate to your personal life and vice versa. And having just one inbox, in-tray, for everything, keeps the complexity of your system down. And I just realized when you read this question that I might have a very good idea for him. Because as you know, Lars, we are, you know, Microsoft To Do has taken a big step up the last year or so, and they have something really, you know, interesting new to share with us, and it is part of the Office 365. So if you have that subscription at work, you would be in the go. And the reason I'm saying this is because you can have a free Outlook account, if I'm not totally mistaken, your first name dot last name at outlook.com, and you can use that for your personal stuff. And the way that you would do that would you will share the link lists you have at work— sorry, do you have at home with your home user, which means that everything that you put in when you are at work will show up in your home lists and you will not see your work.

Lars: Lists when you are at home. Yeah, that's a great tip. And that, that might actually be the, the best option for, for Andreas. And, and yeah, in my experience as well, taking a step back, you know, keep keeping it simple, it's always a good, good recommendation. There'll be— I tend to see it less. I don't know if it's the same for you, Mort, but I tend to see less people struggling with, with, let's say, access to the list. For example, one consideration might be that you were, you know, you want— when you're at home, you want to be able to see your, let's say, your list at home, or your errands when you're out and about, to see if there's anything else you might need to pick up. And of course, if you need to open your laptops and connect with VPN and to go in there and find your list, obviously that's not going to work for you. So you do need to have those, those kinds of systems separate, or you just don't want to want to see them. So I think that's a, that's a great recommendation to try to see if you could then mix them in that way, have them accessible, having access maybe to multiple accounts so you can navigate them kind of like you said that you don't necessarily want to see. Or it might be, you know, I see more and more people playing with paper in the sense that it's, you know, it's not a lot, but it's still a considerable number of people that do tend to play around with paper. And then it might be a mix. They might be printing their lists and working off those printed lists for the— during the week, and then at the end of the week and during the week weekly review, they'll go back in and update everything. So for some people that might be a better approach. But yeah, I think in his specific case, it might be nice to actually connect them like you suggested.

Morten: So that, for instance, you have the possibility to sit at work and plan when you're doing your weekly review. You need access to both systems. So then you will use your to-do work-wise for everything, and you will have access to your private projects and your next actions at home and maybe errands. And then, you know, you plan and you get it out of your head, your, your head is clear. And when you come home, or you can then pick up a tablet where you only have access to the, the personal account, so that when you open it, you will only see maybe two lists, which is, you know, the decide outcome private or private projects and the next actions at home and errands. And that makes it— and you can have it on your phone if you want. Then you will not see your work-related stuff when you're at home, but you can access your lists and you can add to them. Yeah, exactly. And if you have— all right, I'm sorry, but— and you can also structure this if you have— you can log on to two different accounts from your browser. If you want to use two different browsers, that's also possible. So you can have access to both systems simultaneously when you are at work.

Lars: So yeah. And just one, since we're anyway nerding a bit on the system side, he did mention in the email, he says it would be an outlook because I cannot use Todoist at my work. I will tend to hear that from people that focus focus on installing the application. But in the case of Todoist, they have a very nice browser version that can do basically anything you want to do that you could also do in the app. So unless they actually specifically blocked Todoist as a website that they wouldn't want you to go to, then it might actually be an option for him to have access to it there as well.

Morten: Yeah. Unfortunately for Todoist, some of my— or more than one of my clients abandon Todoist because they lost the Outlook integration, the plugin to Outlook. And it's a big hassle where you get security warnings. Do you really want to use this plugin? You know, it's dangerous for you. And that scares a lot of people. And now lately they have said that if you want to use this, you have to be logged on as an admin user for your machine. The system and call your IT. That makes kind of like the barriers went up a lot. So I see, unfortunately for, for Todoist, and you know, we've been, we have been in contact with them regarding this, the integration, and they don't give us, you know, any answers on how and when that will be fixed and how they will use that. So, so in the meanwhile while we wait for Todoist to get their act together, or I don't know if it's them or the Microsoft teams who are saying we can't work with you because, because, but until then, then Microsoft To Do is where a lot of our clients or my clients go now. They have a very beautiful integration in the web browser version of Outlook where you can open up My Day and then drag and drop emails as tasks. You can archive them first and then drag them from the archive to the task, and then you can then access that at any time from To-Do. The tasks is then linked back to that specific.

Lars: Email. And I would say, you know, try it out because your mileage may vary, of course, But they did update the plugin. We just tried it out in a seminar last week. It has improved significantly. There was a challenge with people where they don't have an Outlook account, Exchange account. If you don't have POP and IMAP, then it might not work. But I tried to set it up on my account. It worked very well. We also tried forwarding to Todoist, and they improved that handling significantly. So when you in— In a previous version, you would forward it and it would just take the text of the email. Now it's attached, it handles attachment as well. So it's much better. It might be only the premium version because I'm not sure that all the comments and file attachments will work in the normal version, free version. But it actually might— some things have improved recently in that area. So again, give it a try to.

Morten: See what works for you. No, what I have gripes with Todoist is the plugin version. The program itself, beautiful. It's easy. It's easy to structure. But, and I would, if you are going to Todoist, you should have the premium version. You get access to a lot of cool stuff like tagging that can give you the possibility to create next transactions lists with tags. Yeah, so, so I'm not dissing Todoist, but for people who try to use the plugin in the Outlook desktop application, they have seen problems that they can't solve, apparently.

Lars: Yeah, yeah. But like I said, I just tried it last week and it worked fine. So there may have been some, some changes recently that might work. But again, like you said, there are some restrictions. It did have challenges in the past. No.

Morten: Who knows? Give it a try. Yes. What I found is that normal people, like not you and me, they are not working with computers. They are tending to go, if I get a pop-up that I don't understand or I have to call my admin, then I don't care anymore if it's good because I can't have this. This is friction. And even if I'm not sure if if it would, if you reinstall the plugin, would help. I don't know. But okay, Todoist, you have a challenge.

Lars: Give it a try. Like you said, like you said, I'm.

Morten: A little more hesitant.

Lars: Yeah. No, but we did have, you know, there are always some strange, you know, and you must see this all the time as well. You know, you'll be in a, so in a company and there'll be variations even though they're all and the same type of machine should have the same software, all of them, they'll be different. They'll have multiple accounts. Someone has been there longer, so they migrated. Last week was an open seminar, so obviously there were changes from one person to the next. One person didn't even have the option to add anything in Outlook, even though he was on Microsoft 365 and everything. So yeah, like I said, your mileage may vary.

Morten: Let's see how it goes. Exactly. And I'm just saying that To Do is part of Microsoft.

Lars: Soft. So, um, I think on that clear direction to you guys out there— no.

Morten: No, no, I'm, I'm just saying that I just want to round this up. Maybe I was a little harsh with Todoist, but, but Todoist is a beautiful system. I like it. I love it. I would consider using it if I'm, you know, ditching my existing system, that will be on my list to check out. If I was on a PC with, you know, I loved my desktop application, then I would be hesitant to use it because of the plugin and all the hassle that has had. So I'm not saying that it's just an issue. Let's hope they will address it. That's okay. I don't know if— was I a little bit more positive now? I tried to.

Lars: I love the expression, "Your mileage may vary," because we've said what we could say. Yes, exactly.

Morten: Give it a try. With that light-footed hand, we will then close this episode with our favorite expressions. Lars, will you take us out?

Lars: Yeah, just, uh, first a quick, quick thank you to, to Jerry, to Erwan, to Andreas for their listener questions. Uh, like I started off saying, um, they sometimes stay on my list for a while, but we do get to them. So thanks for your patience as well. And then we always wrap up these episodes by reminding you to head on over to gtdnordic.com, have a look around. You will find the country website for each of the Nordic countries where we are present, and on each of those sites you can find articles articles about GTD, links to newsletters, groups on social media where natives discuss the GTD methodology. And of course, you'll find all of our offerings regarding speeches, coaching, and seminars, both physical and virtual ones. If you're outside the Nordics, gettingthingsdone.com is the place to go to find your local partners. And we are slowly approaching the GTD summer camp in Denmark. We are now, I think, 32 people signed up. Uh, it'll be so much fun. June 18th and 19th, I believe it is. Go to gtdsommercamp.com to learn more about this. Morten will be there, I will be there. A lot of cool and fun and excellent GTDers will, will be there. Um, I'm sure we'll, we'll level up anyone's GTD game. So if you have the chance to, to come, be, be sure to, to check that out.

Morten: And last, we have confirmed that David Allen will attend virtually. And so if you want to hang out, understand more GTD, asking questions, you have the possibility.

Lars: Yeah, it will be fun. It was fun last year. I'm sure it will be this year as well. And lastly, as always, we hope that you find these episodes valuable. If GTD has made a difference in your life, then please consider helping us spreading the message to more people by giving the podcast a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. It really helps other people discover and learn GTD, which is why we are here.

Morten: So thanks for that. And with this light-footed hand, I would like to say stay safe and stay productive until next time. Bye-bye, everybody.

Lars: Bye, everyone.