3. Step 2 in GTD: Clarify

Transcript

Automatically transcribed and lightly edited. Timestamps omitted for readability.

Morten: Welcome to episode number 3 of the Getting Things Done podcast from GTD Nordic. I'm Morten, and I'm here with my friend and colleague Lars Rothschild Henriksen. Hello, Lars.

Lars: Hi, Morten. Happy to be back again and looking forward to doing another episode with you.

Morten: Good, good. Today's topic is the second step of the 5 steps of the GTD methodology, namely clarify. But maybe we should start off by giving an overview of the 5 steps, Lars, so that people can get to the bigger picture here. Could you do a quick overview of the 5 steps, please?

Lars: Sure. So to zoom out all the way, we like to talk about control and perspective. And when we talk about getting control of your life, we talk about these 5 different different steps. The first one we covered in the last episode, and that is capture. So capturing everything that, that might be of importance to you in specific places that you know you will get to the bottom of within a reasonable amount of time. And how do you do that? Well, you do that with steps 2 and 3. So we'll cover step 2 today, which is clarifying. So figuring out what this means to you. Once we have clarified, you can move on to organize, meaning placing the things where they, where they should be. And step 4 is reflecting, so taking a step back and getting an overview of the big picture. And last but not least, 5 is engaging and doing the stuff. And we have various models to help you figure out what you should be doing next.

Morten: Yeah, great. One of the things that I found when we teach and coach in GTD is that this step is very important. Both, I can say that on a personal level, but when we, when you coach and teach people this, if you jump these questions over or do this not seriously, you will not get GTD to really work for you. So maybe we should just tell people in more detail. Maybe you could try and take us through the process, Lars. What is the first thing you do when you pick up something from your inbox and look at it and ask yourself, "What?".

Lars: You ask yourself, "What is it?" So regardless of what has entered your life, if it's an email or a post-it that you wrote to yourself or a piece of mail from your mailbox, first question is, "What is it?" And second question is, "Is it actionable? Is it something you want to do something about?" And from then on, you have two different options. It can be yes and it can be no.? And I think maybe even pausing at that question could be worthwhile, at least for me. I'm one of the type of people who tend to start too many things, setting too many things in motion and then having to let, you know, the smarter version of myself clean up later on. So, I'm really— one of the things that I have to work on continuously, and that's actually been a focus of mine this year, is to being smarter about that question, is it actionable? Is it actionable right now considering all the other options that I have currently engaged in? So that's at least one of the key questions for me that has helped me a lot. I don't know about you, Morten?

Morten: Yeah, me too. This is where the time optimist and the over-committer of you are having a field day if you're not taking time to really reflect on You really, what is it? And is it actionable? And if you don't take, you know, time is limited. It's not finite. It's limited. So when you say yes to something, you say no to something else. And a backlog of things, it's not very fun to have. And it could be very, you know, demoralizing for your own feeling of how well you're doing GTD if you are overcommitting and then suddenly GTD doesn't work because you you've overcommitted totally. So asking those questions, and remember, I've borrowed my, I have a son, he's 15. He has something he says to his dad every now and then, it's like, seriously? And I think maybe you should take a hard look at yourself in the mirror when you commit to things and say, seriously, am I going to do this? Because I don't know, there's an old expression saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and saying yes to too many things is, well, not good for you. I wouldn't say the road to hell is paved with them, but hey, it's the road to feeling not good about yourself is paved with these good intentions of always saying yes to things.

Lars: So very important. Exactly. And I would add to that, that at least one of the things that I experienced when— when I clearly remember that when I met GTD for the first time 10 years ago now, was that I started to get a lot more ideas. So really the, the first step when you get— and even as you get better at that, you get more good ideas. So you really have to, you know, hold on to the whatever it's called that you grab onto when you go riding. You know, you really want to make sure that you don't start off too many things. Yeah.

Morten: Exactly. Yeah. So when you've had a hard look at the thing that you are picking up or looking at, asking yourself, what is it? These questions, I've found that many, many Jiu-Jiters are not very good at, because they don't take the time necessary, that's necessary to look at this and really ask, What is it? What does it mean to me? This secondary question is to clarify to yourself, what is this really and what does it mean to me? When you ask this question, it could be helpful. This question could be helpful when trying to figure out if you're going to do something about it or not. And then adding seriously before you continue, Answering, should I do something about this? Yes or no? Is it actionable? Yes or no? So, so when we found out, let's go for no to starter. When we found out what it is and if it is actionable, we answered it's not actionable. What options do we have, Lars?

Lars: So there are 3 different buckets that these things can, can end up in. And the first one that we, we look at is, is simply throwing it out. If you don't, it's not actionable and you don't want to keep it, then, then certainly throw it away. And I remember when when I met GTD for the first time, I thought, well, that seems rather obvious. Maybe if you don't want it, you don't need to do anything about it, then throw it out. But the reality is that for many people, a lot of the stuff that they have piled up, they simply never took that decision, meaning that they have a lot of, you know, piles on their desk or in their basement with stuff that they should have thrown out, but they never actually made that decision. So, so that's actually an important step, even though it, at least for me initially, it seemed like, well, yeah, that's obvious.

Morten: Yeah, me too. So, so when you've found if you are not going to do something about it, and how do you take it.

Lars: Further down the rabbit hole? So, well, the second thing, the second option is, well, if you do actually do want to hold on to it, then, then you want to archive it. You want to place it somewhere where you want to be able to get back to it at a later stage. So that could be, you know, reference material that you want to, to find, find later. That's the instruction manual for the new vacuum cleaner that I just bought. You know, I may want to change the air filter at some point. I don't trust that I can Google and find that somewhere, so I'll place that somewhere where I know where to go and find it later.

Morten: Yeah, good. And it's— one thing that's interesting here is that I see always when I coach people is that the people have problems deciphering what is reference material really. And because they sometimes think that reference material is material I need for when I need to do something or like I need support material for my project or my actions. So, but reference material is material that has no action tied to it and that is more or less permanently parked somewhere where you can find it if you need to reference back to it. And I think that's an important distinction, especially for the more advanced GTDers out there.

Lars: Yes, completely agree. And also, it really varies, you know, what type of material we're talking about. At least that's also a lot of what I'm seeing, that people really recognize, oh, the digital stuff, that's— I'm struggling with that, or the paper side of things. You know, we have too much paper. It really varies a lot from person to person and company to company, what— how much stuff piles up and where you most need this.

Morten: Hmm, okay, so now you've answered no, I'm not going to do something about it. You can either then trash it if it doesn't have any value, toss it, recycle it, delete it, or you can archive it for a future reference. You can put it somewhere in your archive where you will find it. And what's the third option?

Lars: Well, the third option is that you it is actually something you do want to do something about, it is actionable, but not right now. So for whatever reason, you want to park that for later. So that's the incubate option. So that can be, you know, it's, it's not the right time of year, you don't have the resources, you don't have the right people in the department, whatever the reason is. So this is sort of the, the parking lot for all the, the good ideas that you might want to do something about at some point, but just not right now. It's not actionable.

Morten: Yeah, and this category is called someday, maybe. It's something you someday are going to do something about, or maybe do something about. You haven't made that distinction yet. In Norwegian, we have the same expression for this category as when a hen sits on an egg. What's that called again? Do you know that, Lars, in English?

Lars: In Danish, I don't know. In Danish, it would be rotpudding. That's what we call it here.

Morten: It's somewhat similar. Ruggipo in Norwegian. So, but whatever a hen does on top of an egg while trying to hatch it, maybe it's called hatching. Maybe. Anyway, it's a way to keep the things warm and make sure that you don't forget them because they're in a safe place. And you may hatch it later after it becomes more clear to you what it really means to you and if you really are going to do something about it. Very good category for a lot of different reasons. But for now, I think it is important to stress that this is non-actionable. All the things we talked about now is no, I'm not going to do something about it now. So it's the no arm is very important because it distinguishes from the yes arm, which is actionable. You are going to do something about this. And But the no arm is very good because then maybe is no, which I like a lot. So maybe we should start moving up the, the yes arm.

Lars: Sure. Well, in that case, we have a separate question as well. Another question that we need to ask, which is what's the next action? What's the next physical visible action that you need to do to take your, you know, project or activity one step forward? So that can be calling someone to check on something. It can be emailing someone. It can be Googling something. It can be, You know, whatever, whatever the next step, next action might be for you, that's what we need to figure out first. And then if that next action takes less than 2 minutes, then we recommend to do it right away.

Morten: What's the reason for this, this 2-minute rule?

Lars: Well, that's actually, uh, it makes sense from an efficiency standpoint. So since we, we find the next action, it takes less than 2 minutes, we just want to get it out of the way because otherwise you would leave it on your list. You would have to consider it as an option every time you were picking something to do. It would be part of your reviews, etc. It really makes sense to just get them out of the way, respond to that email or whatever it might be, and then, you know, you won't become a bottleneck. You get that good feeling when you check something off. You don't have a big backlog when you can— when you complete your, your big assignment, if that was what you were working on. So it really makes sense to just get it out of the way.

Morten: Yes, and one other aspect is that maybe you have colleagues that wait for your answer. If you can answer them quickly, they will love you. And I'm sure your spouse would like to know if you can buy 2 milk on the way home on a quick SMS, and you can just say yes. You don't have to wait for that answer. So now we've decided, well, it takes more than 2 minutes. What's the next question we have to ask?

Lars: Well, the next question is then, am I the right person to do this task? Am I the right person to take this action forward? And if you are not, then make sure that it gets into the right hands, forward it to the real appropriate person, and possibly note somewhere that you want to track, you want to make sure that you follow up to make sure that it happens. If you have some kind of ownership over that next action or you need the feedback.

Morten: Yeah, good. Then we've decided, well, it takes more than 2 minutes and I can't delegate it to someone. Then what's my last option?

Lars: Last option is to defer it, park it on your list or in your calendar if it's a time-specific event to be done as soon as possible if it's on your, your list. And in Danish we call this "uset," and I know that some people get a bit scared when we look at their work and we say, because that's more of a postpone kind of action, that's the best word we could find. But it really is to be done as soon as.

Morten: Possible. Yes, and we have the same reaction here, is that am I not supposed to do it when you defer it for the future? Well, it's deferring it for future action, not for not doing it, but not doing it right now. Because right now you're clarifying, you're making decisions, and it's very important to stay in that gear of making decisions. Making decisions until you finished all your decision-making before you then can go and decide what to do and engage with this. You're only deferring at the most until you end of clarifying. End of clarifying, if that's 5 seconds or 5 minutes from now or 5 hours from now, the first thing you can do after, you can do then execute and engage with these things and get them moving. So, and when you've decided the next physical action and you've deferred it, where do these decisions go after this?

Lars: Well, they could go to the calendar if it's a time-specific thing or they have to do something on a specific day. But otherwise, they would go on your list of next actions. And I guess we would in the next episode of when we talk about organizing, then and may touch on what those lists might look like, those context-based lists.

Morten: Exactly, exactly. This, um, we are touching on the next subject here at the end of this session with Clarify because it's very tied to Clarify. We normally would say that when you're doing clarifying, you will organize the minute after you decided or the second after you decided because when you made a decision of what the next action is and then you want to park it on the appropriate list as soon as possible because hey, we want to be lazy about this. We don't want to rethink things. They don't have to rethink mundane decisions we made about to milk on the way home or call Bob on Thursday. Not necessary to rethink it. But we are missing one item here of this bigger picture of clarifying, is that when we decided what the next action is, we park that on appropriate lists and/or appropriate list. Then there is another question we'd like to ask ourselves before we can let this go. What is the last question, Lars?

Lars: Exactly. So if you're not done with whatever that, that thing you, you picked up from your in-basket reminded you about, if that is not done with one single action, then we, we, we probably have a project on our hands, meaning that there is a certain desired outcome that we're looking to achieve. And, and we want to capture that as well. So we want to capture that as a, as a project. So, so something that is multiple steps, typically within a time frame of up to 12 months. So we want to, want to capture that on a separate list. So we what the goalpost is, we know what the finish line is. I think the usual expression in English is what done means and what doing looks like when we talk about projects and next actions.

Morten: Exactly. The desired outcome is a very powerful method of focusing on what you want to achieve when something is done because it's— you can paint a very accurate picture of what should be You know, what you want to achieve. And one thing that I found very, very good for me and for all people I talk to is to really focus on this, to make sure that you make an accurate finishing line, as accurate as you can in the moment. Sometimes you can't make an accurate, then you have to make an assumption that the first step could be that I need to to figure out if I'm going to buy a new car. That could be the first step. And then when you figure out, yes, I need a new car, then the desired outcome could be decide which car to buy. And then it could, if you still don't, not clear on the model, you will probably not get a car. But if you wanted to, you can then rename it to new, Tesla Model X acquired or something. I don't know what your car of choice would be, but I know a lot of people here in Norway would like a Tesla X.

Lars: So I'm sure they would here in Denmark as well, although the price may be slightly different.

Morten: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the desired outcome is then what do you want to achieve? How is the world changed when this is done? What's your finishing line look like?. And you can make it as interesting as you want to. One of the things I like to do is to throw in what I call color words in there to give that sentence a little color. Instead of saying seminar finished, I would say successfully finished. Or I would like to throw in— I'm so silly, I admit it. I'm the first person to admit I'm silly, but one of the things that I do is that I make— even throw in emoticons like a smiley or a thumbs up or something like that when I write it down in my task list system. So just to make it interesting for me. I'm a very visual person, so if I can get something, a visual trigger, that helps, especially if there's something that I think is a little difficult to do.

Lars: I don't know. No, but I recognize that also here from Denmark. It's something that I'm investigating a bit more, and I know from some people that are more visual tend to really appreciate that, that it could be emojis, but it could also be that the whatever list manager we end up choosing supports that we can choose our own label colors, for example, that we can, you know, just make it more easy to navigate and get an overview using the right color. So things like that can certainly help as well.

Morten: Yeah, yeah, for sure. So now we've asked ourselves all these questions, and what is the benefit of clarifying? What is the benefits that we get from clarifying anything?

Lars: Well, I think there are multiple benefits. One of the things that I know from a lot of people that they really appreciate about this is that it makes the world more clear. It makes the world and specifically their work. So work can be challenging to talk about because it's sort of, you know, it can be a very hard thing to define because if you ask, you know, So you asked an overwhelmed person what they're working on, they would likely not be able to give you an answer. So it really is about having a clearly defined list of things that you are working on, because that also means that, let's say, a new and exciting opportunity shows up, you get a new, new customer, and a lot of exciting things are happening. Well, then you may need to park some of your, your current activities and to be able to work with that and communicate that and align with other team members or bosses or customers that, you know, we need to park this. It's just been extremely helpful for me to be able to— that there is sort of a defined thing that I can actually work with and park or finish or whatever the case might be.

Morten: It's one of the things that I find, you know, one of the main benefits for me is that it's, yes, it's clarifying, but it's also giving an overview of everything I could possibly do. And this overview also leads me to the possibility to prioritize, to park things that I can't possibly do within the foreseeable future on the someday maybe list. Just to, if you don't clarify your work, if you don't understand or have the full overview of all your work, it's also very difficult to say no. And I, you know, people who overcommit can relate to that. It's difficult to say no if you don't know. Everything you've committed to. Most people don't have a full overview, and this not having the overview also maybe leads to people feeling guilty about the things that they don't remember they've committed to. But they know they're committed to something, but they just don't remember what. And this thing has a sneaky way of moving into your conscience and, and drum at you before you go to sleep, or when you try to be with your kids, this numbing, some humming noise that can be into a roaring motorway noise if you have too much of them. But this clarifying step helps you to clarify what you will commit to, which is to have that overview. It's, it's a mental mental health factor, I think.

Lars: What do you think? Yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely. And one of the things I would also mention is something that has recently shown its power to me is this habit of just automatically finding these next actions. So a lot of what we teach, as you know, Morten, as the listeners may know, is about making these, installing these best practices processes as habits. And one of the things for me was this finding the next action because it really makes the world so much easier to work with. So I can be overwhelmed by nothing really. I can be overwhelmed by doing the dishes, but I could at least, you know, the next action is to fill up the water bowl and put in some soap. I can do that. So starting to naturally think in Next actions has really been helpful for me to just make things happen. Not necessarily just the dishes, but also much more complex things.

Morten: Yeah, for sure, for sure. I'm totally agreeing with you. The value of this is worth its weight in gold to have these practices installed in your life, but it takes time. To get good at clarifying, but the more you do it, the easier it gets, as you say. So just practice, people. What is it? Is it actionable? Yes or no? And well, we are on the verge of going on, or not on the verge, we are over our normal time of 20-something minutes. Closing in on 30, so maybe we should try and wrap this sucker up. Do you have any last comments before we say goodbye for this, Lars?

Lars: No, I think just, yeah, if, if someone out there might be struggling with procrastination and, and, you know, tend to check, check Facebook or email or your favorite news outlet too many times, then again, this dividing the world into next actions and really learning to find those that, that weekly can, can help a lot with that as well.

Morten: Yes, for sure. So maybe you should sign us off, Lars, for this time.

Lars: Until next time. Sure. Yeah. And, and don't forget, if you want to learn more, you can go to gcdnordic.com to find all the franchisees in the different countries in the Nordics, and you can find the Facebook pages, GTD meetups, where we, where we are on LinkedIn and Twitter and all over the place. So hopefully you find these episodes valuable, and if you do, we'd really appreciate if you can share the podcast with a colleague or rate the podcast on iTunes.

Morten: Yeah, great. And if you want to reach out to us, LinkedIn is a good place. Maybe you can also reach out to us on our Facebook pages. And profiles for that matter. Um, good, thank you, and until next time.

Lars: Happy clarifying.

Morten: Bye everyone, bye-bye.