35. Preparing for Christmas with GTD®

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

Lars: Ho ho ho, Morten, to be with you. Really looking forward to sharing our thoughts on today's topic, which you may be able to guess from my greeting. If you haven't listened to this podcast before, our goal for us is to help you learn or become even better GTDers so you can become more productive, get a better overview of all of your commitments, and be better at staying present with whatever you're engaged in, both at home and at work. And we really hope that you find these episodes valuable regardless of your experience with GTD. And whether you are a seasoned GTDer or new to GTD, we have covered the basics in the first 6 episodes. So if you want to learn more about the 5 steps, then we recommend you go back and listen to the first episodes of this podcast.

Morten: Yes, and today's episode has gotten the working name "Preparing for Christmas with GTD." And some of the topics we will be covering today would be: how do you do a really good weekly review at work and what's the value of that? How can you use checklists to prepare for Christmas? How can you get your Christmas cards writing done in time if you do that? Buying Christmas presents with GTD and decorating at home. Have I forgotten something, Lars, or are we covered by this?

Lars: No, I think that's at least some of the ones that we would want to mention as we go through this. And I think overall, if we take a step back and look at the purpose of this episode, it really is, you know, it's a time of year where we perhaps even more appreciate the quiet mind so you can really enjoy the time with family and friends and enjoy the holidays. So Hopefully some of the things that we talk about in this episode will help you with that.

Morten: Exactly. And when we had the pre-show before we started recording, we talked a little about— and I said jokingly that you live a more rich Christmas life than I do because you have small children, you have a big family. Growing up, growing up, and he lives with his mother. So there's a little interaction with— except, of course, presents we must buy. We don't get away from that. But I don't have a lot. I have some insights here, but this is kind of Lars' episode, I think, at least a little in that direction. So, Lars, where would you want to start today?

Lars: Well, I think maybe I will have more projects than you in this area, but I think as we also spoke about, some of the projects that you have will likely be more complicated or bigger projects. But we'll get to that in this episode. I was thinking maybe just to start off from a working perspective, because I think that's probably the, you know, the smaller part of this. But we wanted to mention this as well because, you know, obviously there will be, there often are, depending of course of what kind of work you do, there is often a lot of work that you to do and want to get done before Christmas. So one of the things that I like to do is really to have a maybe a bit of a special weekly review, a really good thorough weekly review to really think things through before we, before we, or as we approach the Christmas vacation time here in the, in the Nordics at least. So really think things through, really have a realistic view of what you can expect to get done before Christmas. Maybe some communication needs to be done, maybe some things need to be rescheduled for the new year. So really I would invest some time in looking maybe a bit further into the calendar and see what else might show up in the future. So you really have a good grasp of what, what happens from a work perspective before we, before we get to late December.

Morten: Exactly. And how would you go about getting that set up? Would you do it only for work, or would you do it with your spouse, or a combination, or for the.

Lars: For the work perspective, that would just be me and really thinking, you know, thinking— we always think projects through, but really thinking them through from the perspective of, I know there is a few vacation days coming up. I think I'll personally be working a few days between Christmas and New Year's. But, you know, just thinking those things through and really also preparing for the new year, thinking about, you know, what will I get done now and what will I, you know, plan to start off a new year with. So really, really think that through.

Morten: So it will be kind of like a weekly review plus.

Lars: Yes, that's probably a good way to say it. And just a small recommendation from my end, we recently did record one of our Danish virtual meetups and we had English-speaking participants join that show. So we recorded that. It's actually available on our website as well. So it's a 2-hour virtual meetup where we talk about the weekly review. I talk a bit about the basics. Then we we had a surprise visit from none other than David Allen to also give his perspective on some of these weekly review questions. And then we had 4 Danish GTDers talk a bit about how they do their weekly review. And I found it really interesting and inspiring. So I wanted to be sure to mention that as well in this podcast, that as we talk about a more thorough weekly review, maybe there'll be some tips for you in, in that episode.

Morten: Exactly. So, but how do we find that?

Lars: I'll link to it in the show notes to make sure that people can go and see it. It's on YouTube, so I'll just link to the website where we have the file embedded and people can go in and watch it from there.

Morten: Good. Nice.

Lars: What about you? Do you do any sort of special weekly reviews as we approach Christmas?

Morten: Yeah, you know, from a work perspective, from a work perspective, I, you know, the time we are in now where you are in the, you know, late autumn, beginning winter here in Norway, we have our more hectic period of delivering seminars and coaching. So the calendar is fairly full, which means I really need to set aside time to do a good weekly review. So that's kind of like the name of the game or the name of the season is that you need to do more thorough weekly reviews. And one of the things I found very very good for me personally is that I lift my gaze further into the future. I don't stop at like 2-3 weeks ahead of time, but I go to the whole of December and the beginning of January to see how does it look, what do I need to prepare for, have I forgotten something, is something sneaking up on me. And yeah, so for me, the thoroughness goes to lift my gaze further into the future. To make sure nothing slips.

Lars: Yeah.

Morten: So, so when we talk about— because we mentioned that briefly, but you do a weekly review or of sorts with your, with your wife as well. Um, would you like to mention something about that?

Lars: Sure. Yeah, of course. So, so that's one of the things that I really like to do around Christmas time. Um, and I believe you mentioned this in the podcast before as well. I have twice a year a really the biggest review I can possibly do with reviewing all of the different horizons and all of the commitments and really giving myself time to think these things through and really try, especially around the Christmas time, to stop and have this review with my wife and really think through the higher horizons where we're heading all the way up to purpose, vision, really thinking those higher horizons and see what shows up. Maybe also reflecting a bit on the past year, see what we've committed committed to and completed. And also, I do that from a work perspective as well, but certainly with her and also looking what do we want to achieve in the coming year. So again, aligning on those higher horizons, bringing out that— finding the best bottle of wine we can find. And when the boys are sound asleep, then sit down and really enjoy that. And I think we both really appreciate going through that and thinking these things through. And it's nice to visualize and realign and think about all the cool stuff that is hopefully heading our way. That's what we have on those lists. And yeah, it's really an inspiring time. And a few tips on that, we've already covered that really, or at least many of my tips I think we covered in the pre-summer 2020 episode where we talked about a half-year review. So I think it's called a thank you for the first year and a half-year review, something like that. You can find that came out in June, I think, of 2020. What about you?

Morten: No, the only really reviewing my wife and I do is because we talk a lot about the future all the time. So it's because it's changing, you know, we have family in a different country and we have the corona coming and worries about the family there. And a lot of things that we need to talk about, which we talk about on a regular basis, just because it's It's the nature of things now. And we don't do a yearly weekly review because we don't need to, but we do something that's kind of different. We take a big cardboard, we buy a big cardboard around A1 size, the big ones, and we sit down with it, or we sit down on each end, you know, one half is hers, one half is mine, in, you know, in a landscape position where we will go through, through, for instance, magazines and clippings. We go to the internet and make prints and then cut what we would— what do we want from 2021, you know, and, you know, in case of what we do not want and what do we do want. So minus corona back to business as normal, seeing people. And then what do we want for 2021? It's kind of like a visual board of desired outcome or visioning for exactly for that year to come. And that works really well for us. It gives us kind of a joint map, a joint way of discussing what do we want. It's kind of like The higher horizons for a year, not goals and targets, but what do we want for the next year? And that's been really valuable for us. And I, I think I mentioned this before, but this, this boarding actually was my wife's idea. She's been doing this for years. And when we look back at the one that was in for 2017, um, was the pitch was the year that we met. She wanted to meet the love of her life, where she put a photo of some person she found in a magazine. He had a beard and he did not look too far away from me, actually. So when she found me, she knew she found the right person. So that's kind of interesting. So that's for the weekly review part or the lifting, you know, looking at the higher horizons. We do. But we also do checklists. You do also checklists for Christmas, I guess. Can you say something about your checklists?

Lars: Yeah, sure. So a lot of this stuff really shows up in my weekly— sorry, in my yearly checklist. I have a yearly checklist where stuff that happens usually on a specific month every year, I want to put that in there. So actually, we're taping this on November And a week ago I did my sort of monthly review where I check this yearly checklist and a lot of these things came up. So I have a lot of things that I do on a yearly basis, preparations for Christmas that shows up on my projects list based on what was on that yearly checklist. So all the projects of, you know, buying Christmas presents, decorating the apartment for Christmas, planning these, Christmas. Yeah, we were talking about what we should call these in English. We would call them Julklippe in Danish. I think, what would you call them in Norwegian?

Morten: Juliverksted.

Lars: Juliverksted. Exactly.

Morten: Christmas workshop, which sounds very businessy, but it is kind of a workshop with your family.

Lars: Yeah, exactly. So we just meet up with my sister and her husband and their children and sit down and do some, cut some things that we can put on the Christmas tree or just enjoy some Christmas cookies or whatever it might be, just meeting with the family, getting that planned as well, planning to do some specific foods that we make around Christmas. That also became a project for me. We do some— and this really underlines the Nordic part of this podcast. We have some special herring that I like to make. It's a recipe from my grandmother and we always make that. So I'll make a batch in November and in December. So that's certainly on that list as well. And also New Year's Eve, that's— we're hosting that this year, a different New Year's Eve than previously, but we're planning that as well. And there's a checklist for that as well, for sure. A lot of stuff that happens, a lot of stuff we want to get done, some traditions we want to maintain that we really enjoy with the people we celebrate the New Year's Eve with. And so that goes on my list. And of course, if we were, you know, we don't celebrate Christmas at home, but if we did, then we would certainly have a checklist for that as well. With all the cooking preparation and all the other things that we want to have ready for that evening. What about you?

Morten: The checklist for preparing for Christmas is very short because I don't have the kind of family that you have. We have different family situations. So it's very short, but it's more like for buying Christmas presents, which is a live list for me. I have one list that's called just Julengavet, Christmas presents in Norwegian. And where I will note down Christmas presents as they occur to me, you know, within budget. Some person said, oh, I like this, and if I understand this person don't like themselves, I think that as a kind of like a hint. Guys, pay attention to what your wife says. That's a good idea. And yeah, so, so then my Christmas presents are already bought because I know what I want to give people. So it's been ordered online or I buy throughout the year and I'd make a secret of them in the cabinet.

Lars: Don't tell anyone, okay?

Morten: And just a little note on what you said for your Julklippen, Juliverks, that is Christmas workshop. This is, I think, a bit of a Nordic thing. For those of you who are not from the Nordic region, is that we are very— most Norwegians, Danes, and Swedish, and I'm not sure for the Finns, they're a little different, and the Icelandic people I don't know very well. So But for the Scandinavians of us, we like to hygge os or kus os, as we would say in Norwegian. And the way we do that in Nordic region is that we meet up, we find an excuse to meet up and do something together because the activity in itself is important. I don't know if you've reflected on this, but I think this is more or less uniquely Norwegian, that you don't invite invite people for dinners, well, pre-corona and hopefully post-corona we will do this. But it's uniquely that we do things together, you know, like we get an excuse to meet and activities in the Nordic region is important. So, okay, with that side note, let's go back to— I have one thing that is on my I don't know if I feel like I'm very old when I will tell you this, but I still believe in Christmas cards, and I will write this year something like, I'm not sure, I think 60 cards at least to friends, family, and to business associates, people we work with. And how do you write all this? And it's personal cards, it's not just just like Merry Christmas, best regards, and I want to make it a little personal. And so the way I've handled this is to— I made it, of course, I made it into a project and I have it as an optional action, but every week I need to write 10 cards. And the way that I've done this on the practical note is that I put all the card recipients into a spreadsheet. You have to have technology to do this because manual lists are a hazard and very clumsy, I think. But when I've done that, I make the card, the envelopes first. So I write all the envelopes first, so I have a stack of envelopes beside me now.. And if I'm a little, you know, procrastinating or ready for do something different, my brain is a little tired, I can look at just the recipient's name and I will remember who is this and what does this person mean to me. And I can just write that card. It will take me like maybe 3-4 minutes to write.

Lars: It.

Morten: And but then after I've, you know, I've done something productive and every week I write 5, sorry, 10 cards. And when those 10 cards have been written, I can tick it off as done and then it shows up next week. How do you handle Christmas cards? Do you write them at all?

Lars: Do you use them? I have one on my list or one project to write to my Norwegian family to just send them a Christmas card. We've done that over the last couple of years and I think we'll stick to that this year as well. So nowhere near the amount that you were aiming for. But yeah, like you said, or like we said in the beginning, we have a lot of other projects that will surely take up a lot of time. And just to note, you know, I have the same Christmas idea list. I don't buy them at the time like you've done, but I have that for— we maintain that shared with my wife and I, so we can both add to that list. And we also add our own things to that list so we know what we want as well, or what wish that we might get for Christmas. And then, you know, just also from a practical level. So I have one project called Buy All Those Christmas Presents, and I have in my support material, I have the overview of who should we buy Christmas presents for. So we again, we have this in a shared system. It's just a table in OneNote where we simply add the names of the people that we want to buy things for, ideas that we might buy, you know, Christmas gift ideas, and whether we bought them or not. So this is part of the, part of the review that we then do on a weekly basis. My wife and I will review these projects. A lot of agenda things really are in that, but that will automatically come up when we then review that support material list to see whether we're on track or whether we needed to do something else or come up with other ideas or figure out what they might want for Christmas, you know, whatever it might be. All of that stuff shows up when we, when we then have these, these joint.

Morten: Reviews. So the last thing I've noted down here is, and maybe we've touched on it, but decorating at home, preparing for decoration at home. And as I also told you in the pre-show, is that I have a wife. She loves Christmas. And let me tell you, Christmas has been in this house for 2 weeks now with the Christmas playlists on the Sonos. Of course, I mean, you know, with the Sonos sound system, you have of course speakers in every room and everything goes Christmas here. And I'm just trying to keep her from decorating the house because she wants to decorate the house now. So that's how much she loves Christmas. And she starts talking about the tree already and she wants to take out the Christmas lights. And I'm trying to— because I mean, my wife has a different tradition and, you know, she's French-Turkish and I think this may be the French part of her or Turkish part, I don't know, but loves decorating, loves the good feeling of Christmas. And so, but the thing here in Norway is that we have a tradition that you will not decorate a tree until the 23rd of December, which is the day before where we celebrate Christmas, the 24th. I know the Americans celebrate the 25th, but we do the 24th.

Lars: We win. And others.

Morten: And others. Yes. So by the 23rd, you would decorate the tree and decorate the house. But this is way late here in our household. And I don't need to do anything because she loves doing it and she don't want me to meddle with her Christmas decorations. So we already have a couple of small Santa Clauses around and she kind of sneaks them out.

Lars: And, um, yeah, so I hear you saying you've delegated that project.

Morten: I delegated the whole decorating at home for her and she loves it. So who am I to stop her? And, um, you know, I'm not into it like she is and she loves it. So go girl. This is how I think. How do you do it at home?

Lars: Yeah. So for me, it is like I said, we have a.

Morten: Project.

Lars: Um, I've, um, We would normally start decorating early December, so I've put that in the calendar. There's a Sunday nearing December 1st where I think we will probably spend some time during that day to do the Christmas decorations. But there are some preparations like finding out, getting all the Christmas decorations there right now, I think in our summer house in the storage room that we have there. So there is a bit of planning in getting all that back to the apartment. Happen. And then also, yeah, I think that's, that's basically what we do. So it's a pretty, pretty straightforward project from that perspective. And yeah, I don't— yeah, my wife was pretty Christmas happy as well, and I think just as much the, the boys. As we, you know, start to see other houses around the area starting to put out, you know, a Santa or maybe a small Christmas tree with some lights on there, they're starting to get pretty excited as well. So I hope we can, can stick to that date so we get closer to December before we start putting all the, all the Christmas decorations. Yeah. And other than that, I just, you know, um, and maybe that comes back to the thorough weekly review, is to really, you know, maybe spend a bit of extra time clearing your mind, really doing a thorough, thorough mind sweep about all the stuff that is going on. Again, to really focus on, on the, the goal here, which was to, to try to help you stay more present when it comes to Christmas, really enjoying it more, get all that stuff out of your head into your trusted system. Review it so you know what's in there, and hopefully you can even enjoy Christmas more.

Morten: Yeah, and one thing that I would like to touch on before we close this episode is that it is important for all, you know, to feel good about Christmas, is that it might be good for you to visit your higher horizons if you have a Christmas tradition that you are not attracted to.— that we have this standard in Norway, you must make 7 different kinds of cookies and cakes for Christmas. If not, you are not a good housewife or househusband. And this is— maybe you don't want to bake at all and you feel resistance to this. And then ask yourself, why? Why do I have to make these cakes and cookies? And maybe you will understand more thorough one, maybe, because if you have resistance, maybe you don't want to make them. Maybe you feel pushed by your past, your parents, and you don't want to make that. And you kind of like— we talked about your inner 5-year-old saying, "No, I don't want to make that cake. I don't want the bake." Or maybe it will remind you of why you make it. Maybe you will remember, yeah, because it's a good tradition, I can take the children with making this cake and we can have this Christmas feeling. It's a good tradition to have, or maybe have not. But if you visit your higher horizons, if you have any resistance to anything related to Christmas, I know a lot of people have a difficult relationship with Christmas. Especially if you're alone, you don't have a family, that could be really a difficult time. And ask yourself, what do you want from Christmas? And not for Christmas, but from Christmas, the celebration. Is there anything you can do? And should you visit your higher horizons to find out more about your motivation for Christmas and see if that would help you? I don't know Do you have anything.

Lars: To add to this? Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. And maybe one last tip for me would be to maybe use a natural planning model for Christmas to think that thing through, just like you said, because that will also bring you into touch with maybe higher horizons, maybe brainstorming some things that might not otherwise have shown up. So maybe natural planning model would be a good place to start if you don't already have these checklists and have thought these things through.

Morten: True. Yeah, so the natural planning model in a nutshell is ask yourself, why are we doing this? And get to the real why. And what are the standards we need to adhere to for this to be good? What's our framework? What's our outer walls? Christmas tree needs to be 2 meters high, green, of this, it needs to be pine, cost no more than 300 kroner, something like that. I don't know. But you can make all of these just using the natural planning model for this. And then how, what's the wild success? How does the vision look? You know, when you're finished, this beautiful tree decorated, we all feel good and it smells Christmas in the house, something like that. That would kind of reconnect you with why are we doing this. So, natural planning model is good. And we have an episode dedicated to this natural planning model, but I don't know which one. Maybe you will link to that in the show notes.

Lars: Yes, I will link to that in the show notes. And otherwise, also, it's chapter 3 in the Getting Things Done book.

Morten: Yeah. Which is, yeah, read it, revisit the podcast, and plan your Christmas with the natural planning model. Anything else you would like to add.

Lars: As a signing-off note? No, I think we covered pretty much all we wanted to get to. Again, the purpose of this episode was really to hopefully help you enjoy the holidays even more. And we hope that some of these things that we went through now will help you do that. And as always, if that's the case, we love to hear from you. So there is the email in the show notes podcast that gtdnordic.dk. If you have any feedback on this episode or ideas for future episodes, you know, you can let us know via that email address. It reaches both of our inboxes. And other than that, we always wrap up these episodes by reminding you to head on over to gtdnordic.com where you will find links to the country websites for each of the Nordic countries. And from there you can find articles about GTD, links to the newsletters, groups, on social media where natives from each of those countries discuss GTD. And of course, you can find all of our offerings regarding speeches, coaching, and seminars, both virtual and physical. And as mentioned in the beginning, we really hope that you find these episodes valuable. And if you do, we appreciate if you can, you know, maybe share the episode or share the podcast with a colleague, or perhaps rate us on iTunes. Again, it really helps discover ability and helps more people discover and learn GCD.

Morten: Absolutely. And while preparing for Christmas, remember to breathe, remember to remember why you make this, and hopefully you will have a great time preparing for Christmas. And well, thank you everybody for listening. Until next time, stay safe, stay Stay productive and have a great.

Lars: Great winter.

Morten: Bye everyone. Bye-bye.