17. Most common pitfalls in GTD

Transcript

Automatically transcribed and lightly edited. Timestamps omitted for readability.

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

Lars: Hi, Morten. Happy to be back once again to do another episode of, of our podcast. And if this is your first time listening, I just briefly want to mention the purpose of the podcast, which is to help you learn or become better GTDers, become more productive, less stressed in your work and life. And we hope that you find these episodes valuable regardless of your experience with GTD. And if this is indeed your first time listening and you want to learn more about the basics of GTD, we always recommend to go back and listen to the first episodes of this podcast. Episodes 1 through 6 will guide you through the basics of GTD.

Morten: Good, good. And today's topic is a very important one because you will at some point, you will step off the path. So let's talk about the most common pitfalls and how to avoid them. When I started learning GTD, I remember very clearly that I think that, you know, well, I made, I made my I captured everything. I tried as much as I can. And I know I did my weekly review and everything else was kind of like not working very well. And I remember when I started getting it really into my veins, people, you know, you feel that you have more overview, more control. And then at some point, I come into the David Allen Company certification process. And I remember very clearly understanding that more Jordan, you really don't understand GTD very well. You think you really are good at GTD, but you're not. And I think all people who become trainers in the Getting Things Done methodology have the same experience. Did you have that, Loïs?

Lars: Absolutely. So I think certainly the pitfalls that we'll discuss in today's episodes will be common for a lot of GTDers. And then certainly, I think when you become good at this, you tend to maybe overestimate your skills in the area. So one of the things that I think happens to all trainers, and I think really all GTDers that become experienced, seasoned GTDers, they will have a tendency to be more open and more aware of the need to watch that they haven't drifted too far away from the core methodology. So I can certainly remember that at least, you know, managing my emails wasn't really well aligned with the 5 steps. Weekly review was somewhat weekly, I think. So there were certainly some adjustments to be made back then.

Morten: For sure, for sure. And I call this when I talk to people about them, ditches you can fall into. I've fallen into, I think, every ditch there is. So now this is the Beware of the Ditch program. So the first thing you can in the methodology, you know, become a failure on is that you stop or you don't totally write things down. You don't capture everything. And I have a few ideas why I didn't capture. So, you know, the first is very easy. You need a capture tool. This is first. You must have a capture tool close by. Very handy, very easy. That normally would be a piece of paper or a computer or a mobile phone. And if you don't have somewhere to write things out of your head, that's kind of number one pitfall. Always have a capture tool. But then when you have a capture tool, I don't know, I'm sure you had the same problem, Lars. You either forget or you don't write things down. Did you, did you feel this? Did you have this when you started out?

Lars: That was actually the first thing when I started learning GTD back in 2008. The first thing that I picked up was to start writing things down because that whole concept was, as stupid as it sounds today, that really was news to me. So writing things down, and I think where I often see it in the, in the, in the in the world where people miss it is that they then tend to think, well, I'm, you know, I'm a smart human being. I have my education and years of business practice. I think I can remember the small things. So I'll just write down the big things. But as all GTDers know, you know, that does become a challenge. If you don't capture the small things, then they will start to take up much more of your attention than they deserve. So really expanding that, both for me establishing the habit of writing things down, but also capturing the small things that were rumbling around in there that But that took a bit of time for me.

Morten: Me too. And one of the things that I encountered is that, you know, you deceive yourself with the notion of, yes, this is so obvious, I will remember this. And then half an hour, half a day after, it's gone. And somebody is, you know, angry with you or because you forgot or you're angry with you because you forgot something important.

Lars: Yeah. And it can even be less than that. I mean, when I talk to people, they will be Sitting at lunch and they will promise to, yeah, I'll send you that PDF when I get back to my desk. And we know that your short-term memory can hold basically 4 things, you know, depending on the complexity and how experienced you are with things, etc. But the starting point is 4 things and you will keep talking at lunch, you will come, you know, meet an old colleague on the way back to your desk, your phone will ring, you will see an email, you know, so quickly you can find 4 new things to show up in your world and yeah, that will fall out and you'll remember when you put your head on the pillow at the evening and be annoyed at that time. Yeah.

Morten: Or when you are in your car, you can do something about this. Yes, I know. And so I will remember this is don't let yourself be fooled by your brain or your psychic. Your brain understands you will not remember this. So it tries to remind you of it all the time. So that's why you must write it down. So I will remember this. Not a good, not a good strategy. So, so one of the other things that I've fallen into is that I can't write something down if I can't commit to it. For instance, if I am not sure if I'm going to do something about something, I don't write it down. So, but this is also the same misconception. If you take your time to, to write it down, you can look at it after. There is no commitment on writing it down. You're just inside your head. It should go go outside your head and into your system to look at it and reflect on it when you're smart and intelligent and can make smart and intelligent decisions on this. And it might be something you look at and say, "No, I'm not going to do this." But when it's in your head, it's in the wrong place. Get it out. And I remember very clearly at some point it really dawned on me Because I had a, what do you call it, a resistance from writing it down. Because if I write it down, then I must clarify and organize it into my system. I mixed capture, clarify, and organize into one lump. And I can't write it down if I can't clarify and organize it. And I haven't made that project yet, and I haven't defined this, and I don't have the right context for this, so I can't, I can't put it in. It will then stay in my head. And this is really, people, this is a separate step. Capture is a separate step exactly for the reason that you should get it out of your head. You should have no commitment, just free up your mind to be present in the moment. So get it out of your head.

Lars: And it's so nice when you get into that habit and establish that as a habit, really having that allowing yourself to have that thought and not waking up the captain, so to speak, to start making those decisions. It really helped me a lot. And on that topic, I think also having the right tools makes that easier to capture. So certainly you can mix up the steps, but also if you don't have a tool that works for you, then you will also have a tendency to resist this. And what came to my mind when you started mentioning that was when I'm in my car and I often have really good business-related ideas, ideas for customers, ideas for articles, companies to collaborate with, whatever it might be, that I have an audio capture tool in the form of my Apple Watch. But that could really be, you know, a dictaphone or whatever you have handy. But there's a lot of, you know, they will often, if they are complex, they will be a minute-long recording. I can imagine that I would have a resistance to writing things down that had that much information. So maybe if I was writing it down, I would often write these trigger words, but the ability to capture the whole thought as an audio recording, I think that helps me a lot.

Morten: Yeah, I use the same thing when I get article ideas. I don't want to, you know, I get a brilliant idea. I don't want to forget it. And I know this and don't forget this and remember that. That helps when it's an audio audio recording.

Lars: Yeah, exactly.

Morten: So another thing that I've found that I've myself and a lot of other people fall into the ditch of mix your old system with GTD. You take your existing system for what we call them task management or handling your reality and you mix it in with GTD and it becomes a hybrid. And what I suggest that you do is that with this, I suggest that you try and migrate to GTD because it makes more sense. It's a holistic system where everything ties into the other parts. All parts are working together to give you the best system you can have. And don't ditch your system, but migrate it slowly to your GTD, new GTD system. And also say goodbye to your old habits of reactive behavior. That is, if you are reading an email, you know, it takes 10 minutes and you just do it anyway, even though it's not very important, maybe even, you know. So get off the reactive wagon and don't mix your old system with GTD is one of my my ditches I would recommend not falling into. And one I really would recommend people, this I see a lot when we have seminars, I go to see people after, we do workshops with them or we do a follow-up with a client or I do a coaching. This is the hard part. This is where you really need to think, to clarify and organize, to clarify and organize is is the core of maintaining, one of the cores at least for maintaining a clear head when you are executing is that you could trust your system is good next actions, well thought out desired outcomes for your project so you know that you're moving on the right direction. And instead of, if you don't, I see a lot of people taking unclear things from their inboxes, from their head and just putting it without any processing or clarifying at all on their organized lists. And then after a while, they don't understand why GTD don't work. And then you look at the system, it's not like it doesn't say call Bob regarding cinema this weekend. It doesn't say that. It says Bob, which is kind of like defeats the purpose. Or you have, you just drag an email into your action folder and it says re-re-re-re-forward Project X. And you have to rethink that. And that is really not GTD. GTD is, you know, David Allen says he's the laziest person on earth and he would like not to rethink things. So when you think things true and make decisions, then make them good, record them, and don't think that same thought twice. Don't be a cow with your brain and regurgitate your your thoughts. That's not necessary. If you like the thoughts, as David would say, have them. But if it's not necessary to reflect, if you want to call Bob on Thursday regarding cinema, maybe you should get it out of your head instead of reminding yourself of it all the time. And you had another one I remember about weekly review.

Lars: Yeah, that's certainly a classic, not getting that weekly review done. And it takes time. And it can be a difficult process to understand, especially when you start off with GTD. It can tend to be sort of intangible, or you don't really know what's in it. Once you familiarize yourself with it, it's actually very, very specific, 11 specific steps to take. And so it is actually very specific. But when you start off, it can be difficult to get done. So most people will do it Friday in the morning. A lot of stuff is going on at that time, and you may have some stuff that you need to get done by the end of the week. So it could be difficult to, to stop and take the time to actually reflect and update your system. But, you know, understanding the value of the week review often also comes from doing it. So pushing yourself to doing it a number of times will help you establish this as a habit. So initially, you really have to trust the process and prioritize it. When, when, when, when it comes, comes time to do it. So maybe you'll find that, you know, it doesn't have the right place in the calendar. Well, then find, find another spot in the calendar where that could go. Or maybe you don't have time to do a full review. Well, then do a part of review and then make sure you do a full one next time. Or I think the most common pitfall that I see with the weekly review is that they, they come into the weekly review and they have, they have to spend a whole hour getting to getting to zero in their inboxes. So maybe that then requires that you take a step back and say, okay, maybe in the afternoon on Thursdays, I will just spend an hour getting to the bottom of the inbox. So when I do my review on Friday mornings, there will only be whatever just came in late or during the night if you work internationally. So that weekly review, and that really is, you know, it's a keystone habit for all of this stuff. So getting that weekly review set up is just essential. And really, if you're struggling with it, then really take the time to reflect on why that is the case. Can you make it easier for yourself, or how can you tweak it to, to make it more easy for you to, to get done?

Morten: Yes. And I, my last note on the ditches here to fall into ties into the reflection you just mentioned, is that we are not as knowledge workers taking enough time to reflect. David has a very good quotes I like a lot is that you need to slow down to speed up. And if you start really thinking about what does that mean, it takes you to another level. If you slow down, make sure you are doing the right things in the right manner, in the right order, make sure that you are executing on the most elegantly on your projects. And then that will speed you up when you are engaging and doing what you've decided to do about something. But you need to sit down and think about it. And if you don't take time to reflect and see the whole in your system and in your world and in your life and where am I going here, if you don't take time on a regular basis, you cannot be confident that you're moving in the right direction because basically if you don't reflect, you don't have a direction. You must find a direction, stick with it, move slowly towards it, and reflect on, you know, on a problem at work or some challenge you have or to solve how should we handle this project. Is important, but also to reflect on a bigger level. Where am I going? Am I going in the right direction? Which is important instead of alternatively drifting along, hoping that you are making the right decisions. And reflection is helping you to make the right decision. But today in this world we live in is that we are addicted to our smartphones. And notifications pull you out of your concentration and you are allowing yourself to be constantly interrupted. You lose your concentration too often. You can't focus. You can't reflect. And this maybe is the— So ditch your phone should be maybe the first real good. I wish we really could ditch our phones. And I know that you've done something with your phone. Lars, you've gotten an Apple Watch with a SIM card in, so you can leave your phone.

Lars: Yeah, that's true. That's one of the things I wanted to test out because I could see that I am like so many other people. I think I'm fairly good with my phone, but I tend to still use it too much. I think that there's certainly room for me to become better at that. So I want to leave the phone behind as much as I can. So I just upgraded now to the Apple Watch with the data connection. So I don't have my SIM card yet, so I don't know how it will work out. But my theory was that it would be easy for me to leave the phone behind because people would still be able to reach me with the watch with the data connection. So they could still give me a call. People know that if they want to reach me quickly, that that's the way to do it. So if I was able to always have that at hand and certainly also disable it when I don't want it, then that, that might work, work well for me. So being able to still be connected without having, you know, I don't want to check emails or any social media or stuff like read the news on my watch. That screen is just not attracting in any way to do that. So I think this will work out well. That's time will tell.

Morten: Yeah. And this, this will also help you to be more present in the moment and give you more less distraction. I know I am really, when I do my seminars, do my coaching, I said I'm really a weak person when it comes to my phone. I'm attracted to looking at it when I don't really need and I really have to resist. And but this is reality. We live in this. And if you want to make more of the right things, you really need to make sure you're not distracted. You need to think long thoughts. You can't just— short bursts of thinking is not going to give you long-term high value. It's going to give you short-term low value. So take time to reflect. Exactly. And we passed the 21-minute mark now. And when we started this episode, we didn't think we would fill it, but we did. This is good. Well, anything else to add, Lars, before we close?

Lars: No, I think that that about wraps it up. Just be sure, you know, if you're one of those people where people tend to take up all of your calendar, and then be sure to make time to work the system, make time to define your work, perhaps also make time for working, you know, working from your lists and using the list to choose from. Be sure to take that into consideration as well. Otherwise, I think it's just time for me to say where you can go to find more information. And that would be gtdnordic.com for all of the listeners in the Nordics. You'll find our newsletter, a lot of articles there, links to our meetups. You can find Morten and myself on various social media platforms, et cetera. And if you're outside the Nordics, go to gettingthingsdone.com to find the partners in, in your area. And as mentioned in all previous episodes, if you find these episodes valuable, and we really hope you do, We really appreciate if you rate, share the podcast on iTunes, share it with a colleague. That really, really helps us out, and we, we appreciate that.

Morten: And as a sign-off note, I would like to also mention that next-action.eu has— they have a podcast, our colleagues in London, Todd Brown and Robert Peake, and I would highly suggest you look into that as well. In addition to the GettingThingsDone.com podcast.

Lars: So definitely, yeah.

Morten: Okay, thank you for listening, and until next time, be productive. Take care. Bye everyone.

Lars: Bye-bye.