90. Projects/hashtags, 250+ next actions and Horizons of Focus revisited – Getting Things Done® podcast

Transcript

Automatically transcribed and lightly edited. Timestamps omitted for readability.

Morten: Hi and welcome to another episode of the Getting Things Done podcast from Vital Learning. I am, as always, Morten Røvik. I haven't changed my name, and I'm here as always with Lars Rothschild Henriksen.

Lars: Lars, still Mr. Morten Røvik. Good to see you as always, and good to be with our listeners out there. We always start off with a quick reminder of the purpose of this podcast, which is to help you learn GTD or become even better GTDers. If you're new to GTD, we always recommend you go back and listen to episodes 1 through 6 to get an introduction to the basics of GTD. Today's episode number is 90, and today's episode is another listener questions episode. It's episode number 12, I think we, we counted today with questions from Poland and the US.

Morten: Indeed, we are looking forward to, to answering your questions. And as an introduction, we can say that you can send questions to us, if you haven't already done so, to podcast@vitallearning.dk. And Lars, what is the first question and from whom is it?

Lars: Our first question is from Marius in Poland. He has a long email, he'll let me, let me read it. He says hi in Polish, which I think I'll leave to you to say, Morten. How do you say that?

Morten: Uh, uh, uh, and it's Mariusz. I'm sorry. Yes.

Lars: He says, I've been listening to all the episodes of the podcast and watching new ones on YouTube recently, going through my paper notes for episode 56, the one where you used Polish language in the beginning. Just wanted to let you know that you have some audience in Poland as well. Great to hear that, Marcus. I find your podcast helpful, thought-provoking, and entertaining. I'm not new to GTD. I'm pretty sure I know all the main concepts and principles by now. I laughed when you mentioned in episode 52 that listening to GTD podcast is a great way to procrastinate about building your GTD system. I'm guilty of that as well, as well as fiddling too much with software. But still, I find that there are many important nuances in GTD that pop up in such conversations. You have asked for comments and feedback multiple times, so maybe I'll take this opportunity and share one example on something to possibly improve. I think it's quite hard to follow your advice on how to build Next Actions lists and projects, which is so fundamental in GTD. When you talk about it in general, like in episode 52, your recommendation is to use separate flat lists, the David Allen approach, no connections between projects and Next Actions. Similarly with Microsoft To Do, Morten recommends coming up with unique hashtags for each project, which Sounds like in quotes, radical advice, more so in a tool without hashtag auto-completion. But when you mentioned your actual systems, it's quite obvious that you put your next actions under projects where most people would normally expect them to be. I understand where it comes from. You can query your system in Todoist and OmniFocus, and most software is missing this feature, but I'm not sure all listeners are. Presenting demo setups would be very beneficial for the viewer. I've seen Lars doing it once with Tickler in Todoist. That's a good start. Also, he wraps up by saying, in episode 48, Morten has mentioned his leather hobby. I thought I'd also let you know that apart from the capture wallet, the leather is also an essential component of this GTAD-esque system. It's fun to watch. And he links to an Everbook video that we'll put in the show notes. Lastly, he says, I'm a big fan of Morten's file naming convention. Thank you from Marius.

Morten: Well, we do like fans, so thank you. Thank you for— and I'm, I'm, well, I'm grateful that you find, you know, find use and value in what we, what we are trying to show you. So thank you, Mariusz. And by the way, do I, I know a little, I know a little Polish, it's very little, but I used to travel. I am, I My best friend growing up, he got— first, he fell in love with the student leader of the University of Warsaw, and he later married her. And we traveled there for quite a lot for preparation for his wedding. And so I've been around in Poland in my young days.

Lars: Cool.

Morten: Where there still was dollar shops in Poland. This is a long time ago. So, okay. But thank you, Mariusz. For reaching out to us. And I'll let you start with this one because we had a little talk in the pre-show and we are not in full alignment here, which is good. We represent two different views.

Lars: Back to what we've been talking about basically all year, I think now with the simplification of our system, which we will also talk about at GTD Summer Camp, that we have both transitioned from a more complex system. You mentioned Todoist, you mentioned OmniFocus, which is exactly where we have both come from. Today, actually, in my system, in Apple Reminders, I'm actually taking that flat list approach. So I'm really going back old school GTD, flat simple list, one list of projects, one list of, or multiple lists of next actions. And I do keep them separate. I actually don't have, I think I still have one hashtag that I just sort of tried out, I think following an episode we recorded a while back. So I really don't do that. I really try to, you know, I'm trying out this, this very, the most simple approach I would say in getting everything set up. And I'm just to elaborate maybe a bit on the thinking behind it. It's been a very liberating experience for me to be able to put something on a next actions list. And I know that it relates to a project, but I don't have to navigate to a specific project to add it, which was the case in Todoist. Or if I were using hashtags, then having to add that specific hashtag to the next action, I can just go to my list, throw it on the list and move forward. So for me, me, that simplification of using GCD has really been very helpful. Obviously, there are times when I do miss that connection and link, and it's nice to see that overview of how it's all connected. But for now, as of this recording, April 25th at 10:32, it's still flat lists. But you use your hashtags, so, Morten.

Morten: Yes, I do. I use it in the reminders, Apple Reminders, and I use it when I teach people how to use Office 365 versions of Outlook and To-Do. The reason I'm doing this is because it speeds up my weekly review. If I look at my projects list, it has a hashtag for each of the projects that are active. Creating that hashtag and looking at my my project list makes it— it forces me to look at how many things I've committed to. So just to create that slows down my thinking, which I think is important that you are— you know, we are going to talk about what to do when you have too much to do. That's, you know, when your income, your inflow of next actions are greater than your ability to tick them off after. Then, but so for me, this is a way to slow me down and it is a way to, you know, reflect a little extra on what I say yes to and what commitments I've agreed to focus on. And it also speeds up the As I said, the weekly review, so that when I go through them, I just click the hashtag and I can see if I have a next action. Maybe I should just show how this works. I want to show you my screen. For those of you who are on YouTube, you will now see a demo system that I've set up for Microsoft To Do. Here you will see the project view where I create a list of projects. I have one called— and this is in Norwegian, I'm sorry, but this says in translated form— "New and well-functioning office in Stavanger established." So when I click the hashtag here, I will see what next actions I have. So let me just go ahead and do that. And here you will see that I have a project that's called "New and well-functioning office in Stavanger established." Then I have an email I have to Reply to, that's @office. Reply to Ole regarding leader development. And then I have a note for agenda for Johan. It's agenda for— I want to talk to Johan and I have some information there and I tag that as well with Kontur, the tag. So the, the idea here is that you should use tags to connect the project and the Next Action so that you can have them on separate lists but easily find them again. So you don't have to jump between— and this has been my gripe— is that if you do it as a separate flat list, you have to look at your projects and then you wonder, do I have a Next Action there? And then you have to click into the Next Actions list to see if you have one. And my only way of doing that is I have to have very little on my next actions list and very few projects to make that work. So what is your pushback on that, that aspect, Loris?

Lars: No pushback. I mean, it's all, it's all what you prefer to see. So for me, I am, as I mentioned, must be a million times by now, at least 90 times since we, this is episode 90, is that I really want to limit the amount of information that I see. So if I see links in there, for example, I can imagine them. I wonder what, you know, I'll click that and I'll click my way through and I'll have a look around. And, you know, just keep it simple so doing Lars can get his work done most easily.

Morten: Okay, okay. Yeah, well, we do recommend that you keep your Next Actions separate from your Projects and that you keep your Next Actions on whatever context lists that you prefer. And as few as you need and as many as you, you know, as few as you can get away with, as many as you need would be the tagline for how many you would have of the context lists. So anything else you would like to talk about when it comes to this subject?

Lars: No, I think Mari's question was just to, you know, elaborate a bit more on this and you've shared that now. So for those of you on YouTube, you can now see what it might look like when you set it up in Microsoft To-Do. To do. It would look similar if you were in Apple Reminders or any other similar system. And otherwise, you know, this is what we really dive into in the seminars. That's where we go through and actually look more into detail about this.

Morten: Yeah. And if you ever are in a seminar in the Nordic region specifically, we do tend to make them what we call a workshop as well, where you set up, really set up your tool and work with it. So If you're in the Nordic region and you're looking how to do this practically, a seminar might be the trick for you. So.

Lars: Yeah.

Morten: Should we move on to the next question?

Lars: Let's go for the next one. This is from Gregory and the email subject line was, sometimes I have over 250 next actions! Help! Exclamation mark. He says, I've been doing my best to carry out the GTD methodology since January of 2021, and it has definitely lowered my stress levels a lot, and I appear to be getting more done. However, I keep running into the same problem over and over again. I add next actions at a rate higher than the rate of doing them. I think We probably have a few listeners out there that can, can relate to this one. He says, typically once every 4 to 8 weeks, I'll reach a point where I have 200 to 300 next actions, not including agenda list entries and waiting for entries. This makes it really hard to even read the list of next actions because by the time I reached the end of the list, I've completely forgotten what was at the start of the list. Moreover, the weekly reviews can sometimes take 4 to 5 hours without reaching the someday/maybe step. So the question is, how many next actions is normal? For example, I've heard David Allen say that 70 to 100 next actions is normal, but I don't know if that includes agenda list items and waiting for items. And then he has done a bit of analysis. He says, periodically I sit down with the next actions list and I ask for each entry, would it be okay if I didn't do this action in the next 2 weeks? The actions are then divided into cannot wait and can wait lists. And I just finished that process today. I started with 211 Next Actions, not including Agenda List items and Waiting For items. 27 actions were deleted for either being done or now irrelevant/pointless. That's 12.8%. 91 actions could wait. That's 43.1%. 92 actions could not wait, but only 8 were truly urgent. So 43.6%. Perhaps I should learn to apply Morten's Seriously, Really Seriously filter when defining Next Actions. When and how does this filter get applied? I'd be so grateful for any help from Gregory.

Morten: I feel you, Gregory. I feel you. We've all been there. In the pre-show, Lars and I talked about that we wanted to— we are doing a presentation on the GTD Summer.

Lars: Camp.

Morten: This summer, and that we called Simplify Your System. Is that the name?

Lars: Yeah, I think so. At least start describing the journey that we have both been on since the beginning of this year when it comes to GTD systems.

Morten: Yeah. So, but for us to simplify our systems, that reminded me, maybe we should make a little animation or part of our presentation should be concentrated around the evolution of a GTD. So when you start off, you know, You start with your— very easily your GTD journey will be, I am interested in getting more productive, what systems are out there, and then suddenly you stumble upon GTD. And then if you get interested and start learning this, one of the things that you do is that you do what Gregory just did, is just to overflow the system. And then you understand that because when you get Getting Things Done and you start using it, a lot of the, at least the people I meet when I coach and train people, is that they go, "Wow, I can do a lot more things." And then after a while, it's, "Wow, I have too much to do." It's like, because even you get really effective at getting things done, you're getting the control parts, capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage. When you got that under your tool belt, you can get a lot more stuff done. But if you're just continuing letting things flow to you, it will at some point feel overwhelming, and that's not getting things done. Getting things done is about, you know, mind like water, feeling good about what you're not doing as much as the things you do. So with that said, I can feel you, and, and there is no— I would say no right number of things you should have on your lists. My take on it is that you feel good about what's on there. David Allen would say your list would either repel you or attract you. And if you are attracted to your list, you're doing something right. If you feel that you're, you know, you get nauseous when you look at your list, you have to do something. So what's your take on this, Lars?

Lars: Well, very much agree. And again, there is no right number. Yeah, I have recognized that, that number of items that were, you know, we probably heard from David before as well, from 30 to 100 projects and correspondingly at least the same number of next actions, likely more than that for most people. I like to underline that when we talk about this in seminars, it's not really the number of projects because in my system right now I have 6 projects on my list plus all of the sales work that we have. So the number is definitely quite a lot bigger. But what I have on my list is actually relatively little. But that doesn't mean that I'm not busy. So it might be someone has, you know, 30 projects on their list, but I might actually have more work to do. So it really doesn't— I'm just cautious about being too hung up on the number, at least when it comes to projects. But when it comes to next actions, like you said, I completely agree that it really depends on how you feel about those lists. Are you attracted to them or not? And if I were to— if you were to— if you told told me that I had 211 next actions that I had to choose from, I would certainly experience what, you know, exactly like Morten's scared face, Edmond Monk face just showed up the screen. No, you know, for me, I need very few things on my list. That perhaps comes back to what I just mentioned about not using hashtags. I really want simple lists. And, you know, with that many things on your list, Gregory describes it perfectly that, you know, once you run through that list, you don't know what was at the top. So for me, I certainly want to keep that list to a minimum and not put too many things on there. So I'm very diligent about using my someday, maybe list or on hold list, park things over there. So I only have a very limited set of items that I want to pick from.

Morten: One of the things that I've been reminded of several times so far this year and the last part of last year is the fact that if you want to get really good at getting things done, you have to get really good at listening to your emotions when you look at your tasks and your lists and your horizons of focus. And I do think, Gregory, you should, just for saving yourself some time, is that to get working on your essence of focus first so you can adapt with clarity your seriously bullshit filter when you are making decisions on what you should do and not do. I don't know if you agree with me, Lars, but I think that's that if you are in tune with your purpose of life— what's my values, what's my principles, what's my vision for how I live when I live my values, purpose, and principles— it's a lot easier to say no to things that are actually not relevant right now. I don't know, what do you think, Lars?

Lars: Yeah, I definitely think at least No, I see that more and more as well and feel that with my own practice, that there's a lot of, there really is a lot of feeling when it comes down to it. When you do GTD and have done for a while, there's a lot of, that's how you notice how to improve it that you really reflect on and how do I actually, do I want to look at that projects list? How do I feel when I look at that? Do I need to rephrase it? Do I need to do something different and really notice that? Because that's, it's a hard, I wish there was more of a formula. I love my Excel sheets and formulas. But it really does come down to that. And I just look now at my Mac at work list. I have 13 things on that next actions list. And that's even relatively high for me. I really try to stick it even lower than that. And of course, that will vary and things will show up and sometimes it'll grow bigger. But I want to keep it down to a good low number. So especially, you know, when the surprises do show up, then I don't have too many things on there. So there's room for me to grab grab all the new things that show up.

Morten: One of the things that David Allen has been very clear about in his book and in the former courses we've had, of course, material, is to identify what he called the productive and unproductive experience. So if you are in the unproductive experience, you are stressed, you are anxious, you feel out of control, your creativity is not there. You are not, you know, you're in the panic state maybe. And the opposite is that I feel in control. I am not stressed. I feel I have my, you know, I'm not overwhelmed. I feel good about what I'm doing and not doing and having an empty, you know, empty head feeling and feeling good with that. And that's what GTD is all about. And I will recommend all our listeners and viewers out there Start listening to that little voice inside yourself when you look at your list, saying, is this repelling me or attracting me? If you feel attracted to, I can't wait to tick that off, then you're doing something correctly. If you don't feel like that, take a step back and ask yourself why. Set aside half an hour just to look at that and try to establish a reason for why you're feeling like that. How does that make sense to you, Lars?

Lars: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Really keeping, keeping that in mind. And I actually, now that you mentioned that exercise, I kind of miss it because it was such a nice way. You know, when I first attended that version of the seminar, I didn't really, really get it. But I had, you know, when we delivered it and I, you know, saw more people, you know, starting to notice. So what does it look like when I'm out of control? How can I tell? What does my desk look like? What does my email look like? How does it feel physically? Is there any sort of my, you know, moving my foot up up and down, or, you know, what, clicking the pen, what am I doing? And just noticing those, those signs, it's, it's valuable input to, to all of this for sure. So yeah, keeping that in mind, again, wish it was a formula, but yeah, it's not, it's up to you.

Morten: Yeah. One of the things I remember when I, before my, my pre-GTD days is that a lot of people who are attracted to GTD are you know, conscientious people. You would like to deliver. You don't like to let people down. And because you are so focused on what you're doing, I remember that one of the things I had was that I forget to check my, you know, my body functions when I worked. I got so wrapped up in trying to, you know, stressed, really stressed, and trying to wrap, you know, everything up and, you know, get to some conclusions so that I can go home at the end of the day. But I forgot It's like going to the toilet. It's like, I need to check my bodily functions. And which is, I haven't drunk anything today, you know, which is a symptom that you're not appropriately engaged with your life and your commitments. So if you feel like that, or you feel stressed, overwhelmed, there is a way through that. And I stress that through because you have to learn something you can't, you know, you don't know how to do. Getting things done is exactly that, something when you start you don't know how to do it, but it is a way through those feelings and the other end is a mind like water, less stress on a general level. Of course, you will be stressed in between because this is not like you take one pill and it's kind of, you know, you never will stress again.. But it is a way to focus on what you need to focus on when you need to focus on it so that you could be appropriately engaged with your life and work. And there will be surprises that throws you off and stresses you, but at least you have your ducks in a row, as David Allen would say, so you will get more of the right things done. Okay, are we ready to move on to the next question?

Lars: Yeah, just one circle back to his final question about applying Seriously filter. So I think it's a great suggestion to reflect on the higher horizons. Another perspective would be to also, you know, really have, you know, do that good thorough weekly review. I know that it's going to take a while with all those many, many things on that list, but perhaps do a thorough weekly review with that Seriously filter in mind. See if we can actually move some things to the Someday/Maybe list, have a look at the Someday/Maybe list, see if we can cross some things off that list, recognizing that We don't have— there will be more to do than we have time to do. And one thing that has been really helpful for me as well in making sure that I don't overcommit, and that's certainly in the weekly review where I will spot that. And also, you know, just, you know, should I start this project? Well, let me look at my existing projects list. It's this long. Let me look at my next actions list. It's this long. There is no way that I'm going to add more to that list if that's what I feel like. So really, you know, keeping that in mind, and that's, I think, what Gregory is hinting at as well, is to really keep that in mind when you sit down, new stuff shows up in your life. Well, that's great. That would be nice. If there were, you know, 48 hours in a day, then maybe I could do it. But, you know, looking at the list, knowing how many things I have in my calendar right now, the existing projects, I just don't have the time. So we'll have to cross it off, delete it, delegate it, whatever you can do to to actually handle those things that have shown.

Morten: Up. And renegotiate. Renegotiated commitment is not a broken one, it's a renegotiated one. So I can't do that now because I have too much to do. I will put it on hold. If times change, I will let you know and I will commit to that again. But if not, I will let it go and I will let you know. So, but all of these, the thinking, you know, the thinking behind committing to something is important. So do it upfront if you can, if not, then renegotiate after. So good luck, Gregory.

Lars: Yeah. Best of luck. Last question was from Ivan. He says, hello, as always, I love the podcast. I joined much later and actually have reverted back to listening from episode 1 all the way through and really enjoying it. I'm up to May 2020 now, and it is interesting to look back and hear about your experiences as COVID took shape. Yeah, I can imagine that must have been interesting to look back at now. That being said, I wonder if separately or as a topic on the podcast, you could provide some samples of higher horizons. I have my horizons, but in listening to some of your podcasts, it seemed that perhaps more detail and granularity in and in general length might help better shape them. For example, at my highest level, my purpose and principle is really more of a 3-sentence mission statement. In one of the podcasts, you were describing principles in a lot more detail. And it made me think that maybe there should be more detail here. So I'm just curious as to what you generally recommend. Thanks as always, and keep up the great work and keep the podcasts coming. From Ivan.

Morten: Well, keeping it coming, we can promise you. We have no intention of letting it go. And it is a very important question. You know, the horizons of focus is one of the most important tools for making decisions. I'm referring back to listener question number 2 from Gregory, because it makes you, you won't be able to make value-based decisions on what you should say yes to or no to, so that you make more, more of a commitment to yourself to move into the direction you yourself have decided you should go. And just to look at this, you know, a little bird's-eye perspective, what I would recommend you to do is that look at— you can use it on You can use it, you can split it up, or you can keep it together. You can look at it as something you need to do for your company if you own a company or you're managing a company or a department. You can use it for a department, and you can use it for your personal life. What I would suggest that you do is just start building it. It is like everything else with GTD, it should resonate with you. You should feel good about what's in there.. And it should be whatever you put on your, you know, and it should be in writing, not in your head. As long as it's here, it's not, it gets a lot more true when you write it down. I don't know if you've noticed that, Lars. Do you have the same idea? When you write it down, it makes it more true?

Lars: Yeah, yeah, certainly. It's of course more clearly positioned on your radar.

Morten: So yeah, absolutely. And the weekend, you know, if you find the system guides or you buy or you can get access to the Making It All Work book, the second book of David, or it's actually the third book of David, which is Making It All Work, where he focuses— it is about getting things done, but it's also about the horizon of focus more than it is in the original books. That might be helpful for you. But the 5 Horizons, we might want to go through them. You want to list them for us, Lars?

Lars: I'm happy to let you do.

Morten: That, Morten. Okay, okay. Let's start on the top. On the top, we have the header called Purpose, Values, and Principles. And below that, you have Vision. And below that, you have Goals. And below that you have Areas of Responsibilities and Areas of Focus, which is in the same header. And then below you have your Projects, and below there you have Calendar and Next Actions. So if you go on the top again, Purpose, Values, and Principles, and there is no right or wrong way to write something down there, you have to try and identify what's your— what is your purpose in life? What— why are you on the planet? And why— and sorry, and what principles would you never break if those are important to you? And, and what values do you want to carry? What's important to you? What adjectives would you like people to use about you when you are no longer with us? It's a good idea. So for instance, if you want to be kind, if you want to be honest, I don't know what you want to be. So anything else you would add on.

Lars: The top level, Lars? No, I think, well, maybe just, I've seen them in different forms and shapes over the years. I've seen mine become, you know, different as we progressed, both made one for the company, made one for myself. And, you know, it can, for me, it's a mind map of notes and keywords for me, some quotes that and I want to, to keep on there. But I've also seen, I think Jukka in Finland, our partner there has a more visual approach to this. If I remember correctly, when he once showed us the one in Trello, it was based on images, which I always found very inspiring. Not something that I've done myself, but just an example of what that it might look different from one person to.

Morten: The next. Yeah. And I'm now reminded of that we talked before about affirmations in an episode My wife and I, we have written down my vision for how I want my life to look when I'm following my purpose, my values, and my principles. But also every year we make, every January, sorry, in December, we make what we would like the next year to be about. What is our wishes to happen? We make that as a vision board by cutting and pasting. Using some digital tools to cut and paste and print something that we could then put on that board. And it is actually just ideas of what we want to be true in the year to come. Anything to add to that, Loris? Do you have some ideas?

Lars: How do you do that? No. Yeah, well, we don't really have that kind of vision plan, but we do have a practice of thinking through this as my wife and I typically between Christmas and New Year's as well. This year we also included the boys just for fun to add some ideas for what they wanted to experience during the year. So that was kind of fun to.

Morten: Throw in there as well. How did they react? Because you have two young boys.

Lars: Yeah, they were 4 and 7 at the time. So one of them wanted to score 3 goals in one football match.

Morten: So.

Lars: That was achieved already. One wanted to, you know, throw rocks on the water and it skips. He wanted to do 3 of those. That was also already completed. So they're doing well on their.

Morten: Yearly goals. Good for them. Now it's just, it will be a bachelor in something or a master in something or a PhD. It's just a number of skips or number of something. I have actually have a friend who's a medical doctor and he has two PhDs on top of that. So he's doctor, doctor, doctor. So he skipped three times his school. Or yeah, it is just, you know, scaling it up. That's what it's all about.

Lars: Yeah, I worked for a German company at one point where the CEO was a doctor, professor, doctor.

Morten: And then he said, yeah. That's funny. Whatever makes you tick, man. You know, no, just to go back to the horizons of focus, the top level there, it's just for giving yourself some direction. So, and the idea is that when you give yourself some direction, it makes it easier for you to make sure that when you make decisions in your everyday life on what you should focus on, you are focusing more on what's— what you want to get to be true in your life and in your world. So, so to, to take time— I've, I've never ever heard any person telling me after doing, you know, work on their horizons of focus that this was a waste of time. Never. It's always been, wow, this was liberating. Now I understand more about how important this is. Have you ever heard anyone complain about.

Lars: Waste of time for working on those? No, absolutely not. Quite the opposite, actually. Just the other day I had, I received a text from one of the participants I had in a Level 3 seminar last year, back in August or September. As he was walking by the hotel where we, where we had the Level 3 training, which was all about thinking about these higher horizons. And we thought from top down. So this is my purpose. What would the vision be? What would the goals be, etc.? And we did the bottom up as well. So these are my areas of focus and accountability. What will then be my goals at the end of next year? And then moving up and up and up. And, you know, those 2 days were just so, so valuable and, and, um, as a, as a trainer, so inspiring for me to see people thinking through and, and hearing their reflections and, um, yeah. Mm-hmm. No, no, it's always, always valuable for sure.

Morten: Yeah. And, and I'm reminded now that I got an email for me personally, not for us, but it was referring to the podcast, um, where one person just asked questions. I hear you referring to Level 2 and Level 3 and they're intrigued and they live in the US. And I'm sorry to report to you, if you live in the US, those courses are not available for you. They will be available for you as more like a coaching format if you wanted to learn more about Project and Priorities and the Focus and Direction seminars. The reason is a little complicated. It has to do with licensing, and that's Crucial Learning in the US has the license for the US and Canada for everything that has to do with GTD courses. And GTDFocus.com with the coaching team there are responsible for, in the same region, for coaching. And they've— Crucial Learning decided they don't want to have— they do not want to have the Level 2 and Level 3 teaching. So I'm sorry, we can't help you there. But it is available as coaching, which is as well more tailored. So if you have the means to get some coaching, that might be just as well or better for you. It's more personalized, of course, if you.

Lars: Do it as a coach. Especially when it comes to the Higher Horizons coaching sessions, might actually be a good way to do it. And I think they even have a custom Taylor program. It's actually towards exploring the higher horizons. I believe I saw that at one point. So that can certainly be valuable. And I also just want to speak in episode 9, we talked about the horizons of focus. So for those of you looking to just get a refresher on that, episode 9 of the podcast is where you'll find it.

Morten: Indeed. And the idea of the higher horizons of focus is just, as I mentioned initially, is is to make sure that you are more in alignment with what you want to get done in life and to either reconnect or connect for the first time with why are you on the planet. Is there a purpose to your life? And if so, what is it? And what values and principles guide your life? And use that as your bullshit filter so you don't say yes to things you should have said no to. So if you go down, just simmer down a little. So we are now at, you know, we've done the purpose, the values, the principles, and we looked at the vision where you briefly touched upon where we say that you should write what is the vision of when you live your purpose, values, and principles. So what do you do then more or less physically? And you can use that place to write down affirmations. Like, I have one on mine saying, "I am a person who is comfortable being uncomfortable." And that has helped me a lot because I actually have been more comfortable being uncomfortable, which is good. You are getting more ready for life, and it helps you open your minds to possibilities that you didn't because you feel uncomfortable. And instead of of doing something and staying in that, you, you, you, you pull yourself away. But, um, that's my, that's my personal journey here.

Lars: So, yeah, no, so when it comes to vision for, for us, so we, we dove now into the, the kind of yearly planning. Mm-hmm. Um, but also on a vision level, we certainly have, uh, talked at home about how we want to live in the future. I think when it comes to vision, we used to say 3 to 5 years, but there's really a lot of flexibility in that horizon. Mm-hmm. And. One of the things that we spoke about, at least within the 12 months, was sort of more of a timeframe for when the boys want to spend time with us, when they get old enough that they don't want to spend time with us. And at some point, they also move out of the home. So, what do we want life to be like at that point? So, those were sort of the time horizons that we focused on. And focusing on, for example, on the— I have a coaching client or had a coaching client that so nicely reflected on the relationship relationship to sons and daughters and how that should be in the future and what that then meant for her to do in the near term, actually, to make sure that you establish that level of relationship. And I've seen that in the Level 3 seminar as well. So, so much value in there. So that alone, I think, is worth the time to dive into the vision part.

Morten: And we have— I'm getting all emotional here because I'm envisioning you and I know you're your wife a little and envision you together doing this. And that is, you know, if you do that, you are not only getting the life you want together, but you also make sure that you are together because you plan to be together after your sons move out. And so many people don't, you know, focus on the future in that manner., and it might stop you from living the life you want and having the relationships with the people that you want.

Lars: So, well, thank you for sharing that. Yeah, just a realization. No, happy to. And just a realization, you know, he'll be 8 in a few months. So likely, or maybe 10 more summer vacations where he'll want to travel with us, then there'll be a break. And, you know, seeing that number go down every year, is such a great reminder that we just, we certainly want to spend time together and making sure that we get most of those vacations. So really on a personal level, a lot to gain from this. And also on a company level, big picture, big ideas, how would we want to see the business in X number of years? For me, I started to elaborate and I think that may be what we spoke about in the episode that Ivan refers to where at least I have some more detail on an area of focus or accountability levels. So for each of the, in quotes, department of the small company of Vital Learning in Denmark, what would that look like? Sales, what would finance, what would community, what would, you know, all of those PR, what would those look like in X number of years?

Morten: So that's been very helpful for me to establish. And to focus on, and I, again, this, I'm reminded, you know, I'm getting emotional when you talk about I have maybe 10 10 more vacations with my sons before they kind of leave the nest, as to speak. And just to understand that your life is not infinite. It's so easy to think that it is. I will live forever. No, you will not. It will end one day. And how can you make sure that you get most out of your life and you do the right things that's important to And for those of you who are on video, I will try to do something now. I don't know if I can make this easily, but let me try. And in my— on my wall here, for those of you who are video, I have a calendar. And this calendar is— let me see if I can go down a little. This is a calendar called Memento Mori. This is— I will show you. These are dark squares. Every square is one week, and it runs until I'm 80. So I've just— as you might have understood here, let me see if I can use my hand to show this— I've just passed my 60th year. So I am in week 3 of my 60th year, and I'm not showing this for people to get depressed rest, more the opposite, just because I want to make sure that my life is consisting of what I want my life to consist of. And remembering to live when I have life, not remembering that I should die, but remembering I should die maybe triggers me to remember that I must live. Yeah. So, okay. Now, enough emotional stuff. But it is a little emotional, I think, getting things done. It's all about being appropriately engaged with your life and your reality. And I think if you really want to be appropriately engaged with your reality and your life, you need to think where do I want to be? Where, what do I want to achieve here? So anything to add at the end here?

Lars: No, I think just coming back to, you know, Ivan's question that made me think maybe there should be a lot more detail here. And, you know, it's really up to you. I, you know, at least the first few years, if not more, of my GTD practice, I didn't have anything on the higher horizons. It was just, you know, this is really cool tool to to get an overview of my different projects and then an empty inbox. And that was it for me. And then suddenly, probably by chance, I think there's some stuff started to show up that fit into those higher horizon slots. And I started to put them in there, perhaps not explicitly in the beginning, but just the awareness of some purpose things for me. And then over the years, I've elaborated it a lot more and I've expanded on it now in quite a bit of detail. And I might simplify that a bit as well. Now, coming back to the simplification approach that we've been talking about, I might go ahead and simplify it. So there is no right or wrong. I mean, just whatever shows up. But I think back to what you said, Morten, play around with it, work with it, see what shows up, and know that there are these— I would like to phrase them as different shelves that you can put things on. Just know that they are there and have a Word document to put it into, or do a mind map, do whatever works for you, vision boards, whatever it might be. But just know that they are there and play around with them because some.

Morten: Really, really cool stuff can show up when you do. Indeed. And David's book, Making It All Work, is a good template for this. And also the GTD system guides that you can buy. I think you can buy them for the Nordic region, both in.

Lars: The Vital.

Morten: Learning .dk and.no if you want to buy them there. And you can also buy them at gettingthingsdone.com. I think they cost like $10 or something, I don't remember, but I think it's— and those system guys have an overview of Getting Things Done, but also they had this, um, an overview over the Horizons of Focus steps, so you can have it as a cheat sheet if you want for when you create yours in addition to what's in the.

Lars: Book. So, are we at the end, Lars, you feel? I think so. And that's where we usually remind you to actually head on over to those websites. vitallearning.eu is a good place to start because from that website, you can find your way to the different local country websites with all of the different offerings that each of those countries have to offer about GTD, other methodologies, speeches, coaching, everything in there, both virtual and physical. Outside the Nordics, a good place to start is cruciallearning.com to find your local partners. And the last one I'd like to mention is the GTD Summer Camp. And it's, you know, we have all the participants, all the early birds were sold out. We had some people on the waiting list. We were able to add some more people. I don't know when you will listen to this podcast episode. So I don't know if we have more seats available to, to find. But right now the waiting list is just that you send me an email, lars@vitallearning.dk. Send me an email if you are looking to go June 17 to 18. It'll be awesome. Morten and I will be there. A lot of great and friendly GTDers will be there. There. And yeah, looking forward to seeing those of you who are going and.

Morten: Seeing you there this summer. Indeed. And for those of you who are looking at this at YouTube, please consider subscribing. It helps the channel a lot. It helps us, you know, gain listeners that come back and come back, and it will help you learn Getting Things Done. And the same with if you have your podcast app, subscribe to us. You can of course cherry-pick all the other episodes, the 89 other episodes, if you're listening to this. And, uh, but subscribe so that you don't miss an episode. What we are teaching you are skills that can change your life, so please make sure that you subscribe to learn more about that. And I think that is when I will say goodbye to everyone, and until next time, stay safe Be safe and stay productive. Bye-bye.