49. How GTD can help reduce burnout

Transcript

Automatically transcribed and lightly edited. Timestamps omitted for readability.

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

Lars: Guten Tag, Mr. Morten. Good to be back. Once again, and looking forward to sharing this special episode with our listeners and viewers. If this is your first time listening to the podcast, our goal is to support you in learning GTD or becoming an even better GTDer so you can get the benefits from using these things that we discuss here. You know, becoming more productive, becoming less stressed, getting a better overview of all your commitments and staying present with whatever you're engaged in. And we hope that you find these episodes valuable regardless of your experience with GTD. And if you are looking for a refresher on the basics of GTD, or you're new to all of this, then we recommend you go back and listen to episodes 1 through 6, where Morten and I cover how we came across GTD. And then episodes 2 through 6 is the 5 steps of GTD. Now, today's episode is a special one. Like I just said, it's an extended version, our last episode before our summer break.. And this is a special interview with both David Allen, it's with Morten, you're in this as well, we have with John Forrester as well, we have William from South Africa, and I think one more from VitalSmarts, is that correct? Emily, Emily from VitalSmarts. Emily, that's right, sorry, I forgot that as well. And the topic is how GTD can help reduce burnout. And it was, you know, it's a really interesting discussion. And it's a topic that is— there's a lot of different angles on this. And you're in there as well, Morten.

Morten: To share your experience. Yes, I was invited on this panel with these very smart people to talk about my experiences with burnout, because I have been burned out before in the year around 2000 to mid-2001, where I went on a sick leave for 1.5 years. And this is pre-GTD for me. I did not know GTD existed. And the good news is that if I had known GTD existed and that I actually could learn this, I would not have gotten into that situation. I am sure of that. And if that tickles your, your bone in any way, that you might want to ensure that you are not burned out, or if you know someone on the brink of being burned out, this is maybe the episode for you.

C: So let's just roll.

D: It.

E: Hi everyone, I'm John Forrester, here to introduce our topic and the panel that David Allen will be discussing it with. Today we're going to talk about burnout and how GTD can help to reduce and possibly prevent burnout. And to give you an idea of how significant this issue has become, the World Health Organization now calls burnout an official medical diagnosis. It's a result of chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed and is characterized by 3 dimensions: feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one's job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job, And third, to reduced personal efficacy. So burnout has been on the rise for years. You've all heard about it quite a bit, I'm sure, even before last year's shift to remote work and the challenges of the pandemic. But in 2020, there was a noted 35% increase in prescriptions for anxiety, depression, and insomnia medications. 68% of those prescriptions were filled for the first time. So it gives you an idea of what the slope is or the increase in the amount of burnout that's going on. In 2021, this year, more than 91% of employees say stress is impacting the quality of their work and life. So today's discussion was inspired by a thread in our trainers forum about how GTD can help to reduce that stress that leads to burnout. At this point, I'm going to turn it over to David, who will introduce the others here, and we'll get started.

D: Hey, beauty before age, Emily Gregory, by the way. Now I can attest, a longtime friend, senior person at VitalSmarts, our partner for exclusive training in the US of GDD, and Emily is really a huge champion of our stuff. Wonderful lady, highly articulate, as I'm sure you will hear. So Emily, I'm raising the bar for you there. Okay, so highly articulate and probably one of the busiest people you would ever meet, given— and she could tell you a little bit more about why and how and whatever— but as well as being a physician and a trainer and involved in senior management of a very successful and fast-growing training organization. Emily is a wonderful person to have in our network. So Emily, delighted to have you around. And then I don't know, age or beauty, William or Morten, I don't know which one we should go first or who's going to take the ball for that. Let me, let me go William. You know, William is just a delightful partner that we have structured our training and coaching work with in South Africa. William happens to be a practicing psychotherapist as well, so he's going to bring that to the table with, you know, hopefully some perspectives from the more clinical side of what burnout might sound, look, and feel like, and, you know, potential resolutions of that or ameliorations to that. So William, delighted to have you here. And Morten, God, I don't know how long we've been hanging out, Morten. And Morten has quite a background that, you know, if you did Morten's memoirs, you would say, wow, you know, amazing this guy made it through all of that, you know, in the great shape that he's in, given all of that stuff too. So Morten, I'll leave it, leave it at that. So a quick introduction by each one of you. Like what you would like this audience that's listening to this to know about you. So, Emily?

F: David, I think you said it very well, although now I feel a lot of pressure, like, to watch my vocabulary here as I go forward. No, no, no, no, no. I think the thing I would just add— so you kind of talked about some of my professional, like, the professional sphere. On the personal side, I have a brood of 10. I have 7 stepchildren ranging from 30 down to 15, and then I also have 3 little ones of my own. I have a 7-year-old and 5-year-old twins. So I am, like many of us, balancing that parenting and the work of parenting and our communities and our work, our professional work, and all of that together.

E: And Emily, tell us where you're physically located and how early you got up this morning.

F: Oh, I was going to say physically, like, I'm in my, like, basement office that I still haven't figured out since I started working from home in the pandemic. But that little basement office is actually in Salt Lake City, Utah. So it's 7:00 AM and not actually that early for me. So I'm delighted to be here.

D: Great. Great. So William.

C: Self-Profess. Well, I'm in Cape Town, South Africa. And in terms of adding to what you suggested, David, just as a GTD practitioner and someone who has struggled with ADD, And so that's, that's another perspective in terms of overwhelm and how easy it is to feel that. So I don't think I'll add anything more to that, but just that, you know, getting things done is not for sissies because facing reality is not for sissies. And I wish it was easier, but every now and then I think to myself, what's the alternative? And there really isn't anything. So we'll talk more about that later.

D: Thanks.

Morten: Morten? Yeah, I'm located physically outside of Oslo in Norway, in the Nordic region, north of Europe. And I am the GTD Master Trainer for the Nordic region. So I'm training trainers and leading the business here. And I think my role here is to be the patient, someone who really had burnout before and got over it. And I'm happy I have my psychotherapist with me here. So William, can I cry on your shoulder.

D: Today?

Morten: I think I'll leave it with that.

D: Thank you. Thanks, Morten. Well, let me start with, you know, John gave you the sort of scientific or the official definition of burnout that has shown up in the medical annals anyway in the US. William, let me toss it to you as a psychotherapist. And maybe to also both of you as well, Morten and Emily, but how would you define burnout in terms of how you've experienced that or how you see people experiencing that that might be additive to the sort of official definitions of that? Or would you just add more story to it?

C: I think there's a thing to differentiate, and there's so many different ways to talk about this, but To talk about fatigue or tiredness, so if we are tired and have worked long shifts, we know that rest will help, a good night's sleep, maybe a day off. But burnout is something more psychological, one could even say psychospiritual, where there's a weariness where no amount of rest helps. And in terms of what will restore us, is— and sometimes sleep, you know, can be just a sign of depression. So sleep doesn't cure or doesn't help us. So burnout is sort of accumulated weariness or fatigue that our normal activities necessarily won't necessarily shake. So we need to have things like hope. We need to spend time solving other types of problems, like in a hobby or recreation. Getting out in nature will help. But we need to be able to deal with the situation because that brief break from it isn't really going to help because it doesn't take long before the burnout accumulates again. So I think that's one of the things I would say, that there's a definite psychospiritual component to that, which is, which is more than just perhaps long hours, although long hours can also do it.

D: Right. And Emily, respond to that or give your own take on that.

F: Yeah. So let me pick up two things that I liked in what actually John's original definition from the World Health Organization, and then this word that I heard William use. So John talked about one of the three definitions from the World Health Organization as being reduced efficacy. But I liked what I heard in William saying it's about hope, right? And lack of hope. And for me and those that I've seen, I think that really is the difference between I'm tired and I'm stressed and when it, it sort of tips over into I'm burned out. Because you get to that place of burnout and you're like, and it's never going to end and there's nothing I can do and I'm so stuck, like I have no sense of self-efficacy that I can change this. I have no sense of hope that it will ever, that it will ever be different. And that for me is what really characterizes that difference from just, oh, I'm really busy and I'm really stressed and I'm really overwhelmed to I am just flat out burned out and starting to shut down because there's no path forward for me. It's, it's— so I really liked William using that, that word like lack of hope.

D: Yeah, and weariness. That's a, it's a rich term, really. Morten. Respond or add.

Morten: I would like to, if I can, I asked John silently in the chat to share something with you, and what I would like to share is a PDF that we got made of what's called the Jörgenson-Dodson's law, which is what you see on screen now. For those of you who don't have a screen, we will be brief with this, we will not use a lot of time, but it is, it's a curve, it's like a Dromedar hump, and where you have the x-axis is the stress level and then the performance level is the y-axis. And it builds when you have too little stress or not a lot of stress, you're not engaged, you sleep, you're not there. And then you get a little more stress and you get up in the morning, you get to work, you feel that people want you to deliver something that gets you out of bed. Your commitments gets you out of bed. But if you, then you get to the what we call the stress-free productivity level where you are having the right amount of stress where you get up in the morning, you get things done, you are driving your Ferrari down the road, you feel the wind in your hair and you feel it's a little scary but fun experience. But if you go, you know, you continue that analogy and continue to drive your Ferrari down the road, this gets a little too fast. And you're losing control, then you will start stressing. And in GTD, you will overcommit yourself. You don't have overview, you don't have control. And if you live in that too long, and that is what I would call chronic stress. If you're in too much stress too long a time, it becomes chronic. And that's the first signs of burnout. And you will get burned out over time. And then you have a breakdown at some point. And I've been in that black area. And at some point today, I'm sure I will share my story in the black area, which is not a fun place to be. And the story here is that I wouldn't have been there if I had GTD when this happened. So thank.

D: You. Thanks, Morten. I'm going to give you guys a little bit of my story and then a question about that. As you're talking, there seems to be a difference I experienced a time in my life where I really ran off the rails and they put me away in a mental institution and I had to sort of work my way back out of that situation, which was quite, I'd say traumatic, but it wasn't weariness. I was like totally on, but totally on to try to get out of what I'd thrown myself into or what I'd found myself into. So it was more of a traumatic experience. A mentor of mine who actually taught me karate at one point in his life was so stressed he went catatonic. He said it was one of the most freeing things he ever did was to give it all up and to just be in that peaceful unconscious state, though he was conscious, he was just catatonic. So that's kind of the extreme. Morton, I don't know if you went that far in terms of that edge. And there wasn't a weariness on my side. Maybe not even on the other side, it was just too much. And when too much happens, oftentimes there's a traumatic or dramatic or, you know, catastrophic kind of relationship to that. So is there a continuum about that stuff, or is this a different thing we're talking about? Be curious your perspectives of that, because I'm sure, William, you've run across people that suddenly had traumatic experiences happen and then either went off the rails or went somewhere else that you wouldn't necessarily would say weariness. It was just like total stress in a situation of survival, maybe psychologically, if nothing else.

C: Yeah, I think probably lots of different ways to think about that, but we call it depending on— I'm not sure about your situation, but we talk about a manic defense. Where we, in the face of threat, overshoot and we get into a kind of a sort of adrenaline spiral and can become quite grandiose or extreme until we hit a wall. And that can be quite sudden, yeah, when suddenly the balloon bursts. I like to think about, you know, when is the plate full? If you take a bucket, we all know when a bucket is full, it's when it's at the rim. But if I ask you, when is the balloon full? If you're filling it with water, it fills and fills and fills. And when is it full? We don't really know until it bursts, and then it's too late. So that kind of is when we don't have clear boundaries and we don't have clear clear, as you would, as we would say in GTD, a clear inventory of everything we've said yes to and taken on. If it's, if it's vague, we think we can squeeze some more in or we just open the tap all the way until it blows.

D: Up. Emily or Martin, any other comments on—.

F: I was going to say, I think that I love going after William, by the way, because I was like, oh, I loved what he said. I want to pick up on that. But as I think about like these two kind of two experiences we're talking about, it seems like the difference is the acceleration through the experience, right? Like how fast that balloon fills, right? So David, in your example and your mentor's example, it was like, boom, the balloon, like we just rushed it all in and it was like crazy intense and then bomb and burst. And we were in catatonia. And I think that some people experience that way. I think Others, especially right now in this, this like slog that has been this pandemic, it's like the balloon is just, it's just, it's building and it's building and it's building. And I can see it. When am I going to get to that burst? And there's nothing I can do. It just, the water keeps adding to the balloon. And that's much more an experience of that weariness. But so I like that metaphor of the balloon bursting because I think the difference in how we experience it is around sort of the acceleration of the experience, the acceleration of the pace to that burnout, to that bursting experience. And if you think about them as two, just two different paces of the same experience, then it does get us to saying, okay, well, like, how do we come back from that? And one metaphor that I found really helpful, well, it's kind of two metaphors. I'm neither a pilot nor an arborist, but there's something about planes and trees and stress that all connect to this for me. And so here's, here's what it is. Like, if you look at, like, the— you do a cross cut of a tree and you look at the rings, obviously you can count the years. I've been teaching my kids how you can count the years, but you can also see that the, the rings of the tree are often different, different widths. And it's actually in years of drought and stress for the tree, that the rings are much closer together, right? The tree doesn't grow as much. It sort of retrenches during that period of stress and it steps back a little bit. And I think that's similar. So now here's my next metaphor, and then I'll pull it together with the pilots, right? When you're— I don't fly, but this is what I've heard from pilots, right? When you hit turbulence, a new pilot, a young and experienced pilot, their tendency is to say, oh my gosh, I'm in turbulence, I've got to get out of this, and to speed up. To speed up to get through the turbulence, but that's actually the wrong thing to do aerodynamically. And you'll get yourself in trouble. When you hit turbulence as a pilot, the thing to do, and you have to teach yourself, is to slow down a little bit to be safe as you go through that turbulence. And I think that that is indicative of where we are and what GTD specifically has helped me do as I think about burnout stress, the balloon filling, The answer is not to frenetically increase your pace because that's just going to burst the balloon. The answer is to step back a little bit, to renegotiate, to decline some things, to figure out what your next actions are, and to retrench a little bit, and to understand that it is a period of stress that I'm going to manage and get through. So I offer up those ideas building on William's insights. I'm going to go with the balloon, William. I love.

D: It. Morten, poke at you.

Morten: I don't have a balloon analogy.

Lars: But.

Morten: I don't know if this would be the appropriate time to talk about how it felt for me, because, you know, it was a long time filling balloon. And it's a combination of change, too many changes at the same time, and stress, and stress that comes of uncertainty and worry. So the way that's built on me is that I moved with my wife to a new town, and she was not very happy doing this. She said she would follow me anywhere, but really she didn't want to follow me there, but she did. And I started in a new job, and this job was full of hazards. It's a lot of a small company with a big— some big sharks trying to eat us, trying to eat our lunch, and did their best to try and, you know, invade us and undercut us. And then suddenly we had some clients who didn't behave, they didn't pay their bills. And it is a small company, this company was 3 people. And a new role, I was supposed to lead these 3 people. And then suddenly I found religion. So I became a Christian, a devout one, a charismatic one. And on top of that, my wife decided she didn't want to live with me anymore, so she moved out and I have to move. And I moved 3 more times in 1 year. And then I met a new woman on top of this. And after a little while, we got married. And, you know, too much change in too much, too short of a time will grow the balloon quite fast. And it ended up with me that, with me, you know, the end of the story is where I really understood that I had a problem. I started, you know, getting hallucinations. I started, you know, hearing things that was not there. I started wondering if I was, you know, am I psychologically sound? And the answer was not really, and I needed to do something. So again, I go to us a psychologist. And I, you know, actually, I think it actually was a psychotherapist. I don't actually know the difference between those. Maybe William will enlighten me after. But I went to one and I did a lot of tests to see if I was kind of, you know, losing it totally. And they said, you're not losing it, you're just too stressed, which was good for me because I thought I was losing my mind. But it ended up that I couldn't work anymore. So I went on sick leave for 1.5 years. And I couldn't work at all. I was totally off. I had very high anxiety levels, which means that some mornings I couldn't get out of bed. I just sat in one of the corners. I got out of bed, but I sat in the corner of the bedroom crying, and it was really dark, you know, mentally dark with me. I just reread some of the things that I wrote at that time, and this is not very happy reading. And the sad thing that in this, after the fact, now that I, you know, got out of that dark place and into more of a good place to be, the anxiety is gone. I'm totally free for this. But I know that if I had a GTD before this, I would have the life management tool I needed to, you know, get out of there. I would know what's my horizon of focus. I would know that this is not what I want my life to be about. And I would take some clear steps. I would quit my job before it got that bad. I would maybe not marry the second time. I'm sure my second ex-wife would not be happy to hear this, but this might be the consequence of that. And, but for anyone who is in that dark place, Just start emptying your head. I tell, you know, I have clients, I'm a coach, GTD coach, and I coach my clients. I tell them, just start writing things out of your head. Just get all your worries down and tell yourself you will look at it later and it will help you. I mean, I see it works like a charm. It's so simple. And then after the fact, decide what you need to do and organize in a system your brain trusts and look at that system every now and then so that you feel good about it and do things. Move yourself in some direction and you will feel a lot better. So that's my story in a nutshell. William, what would you characterize me? Can you give me therapy now? No, I don't need therapy now, but what would be your, your insight on this, this story?

C: Yeah, I would just say welcome to the human race. Thank you. And I think we all experience those in, in various.

D: Shades.

C: I would say there's two types of suffering. And I know that the great— this is the first noble truth of Buddhism, not that I'm Buddhist, but is that life is suffering. But there's two types. There's unavoidable suffering, and I think the world is experiencing a lot of that. And those are the vagaries of health and vulnerability, illness, loss, pressure. But then there's avoidable suffering, and that's the one that You know, when we make things worse, when we are an agent of our own suffering, that's the worst kind of suffering. When we procrastinate or we, we take on too much or we don't manage our worlds well. And also in our attitudes. And we can talk about that, I suppose, when we come to the higher horizons. But for me, that's the, that's the one to, to zone in on. And, and to what extent are we reducing our suffering by our choices and how we're managing our lives? And, um, and, and to what extent are we making it worse? And certainly I've been working for 20, 25 years coaching executives, therapy. And, um, yeah, when I came across David's work, I thought, okay, yes, the person who summarized a lot of the sort of— here's the Rolls-Royce of what I've been trying to do. I mean, I printed my own Filofax when I was 32 because I was that desperate to get organized.

Morten: Me too.

C: But I didn't know that get organized was step 3 in a 5-step process. I think many of us just jump in and get organized. And I don't know about the first 2 steps. I'm, you know, to a certain extent, but I don't know what the other 2 steps were either. So I think that's the hope. And we're all managing it in some way. But there's definitely a lot we can do to reduce the avoidable suffering.

E: We might like— well, you like hearing that the GTD is, is a way to avoid avoidable suffering. I'd never heard it characterized that way.

D: And it tees off one other thing, and you know, you guys are already bleeding into, you know, sort of solution, or at least the degree to which GTD, you know, can ameliorate, you know, what we're talking about in that kind of stress. My other question is, well, William, you brought up the point, you said, welcome to the human race. I said, well, the human race either feels like it's in the driver's seat or it's not. In other words, people are either in victim mode called at effect of what they've allowed into their lives and work and commitments, or they're affecting their lives and work. And you and I, we all, all 3, all 4 of us have met people that thrive on stress. Give me a problem to solve. Give me a situation. Come on, you know, bring it on, you know, come on. You know, and then we also know a lot of people that complain that they're overwhelmed and they're, they're at a scale of about 1 on a scale of 100 in terms of how stressed they could actually be. But I don't like this. I don't know what to do about this. So, you know, there's this, this mild complaining that people can then like, I'm so busy and, you know, my life is overwhelming right now. So come on, you know, there's this range of how people assess themselves as being overwhelmed or not. And the degree to which they are or are not in the driver's seat. And I think that's a lot of what the GTD process does is it gets people back in the driver's seat from where they are. So they can take that to I'm mildly stressed to now I'm really feeling not stressed at all, to I am feeling, whoa, to now I can survive, to whatever. So it seems to be a bit of a scale in terms of how people are assessing, even people listening or watching to us right now. Who may have said that they were overwhelmed, are they really? Or are they just feeling essentially the victim of maybe one thing in their life that's particularly strategic that they're not in control of that then colors their whole life as overwhelming? So you don't need but one situation, particularly if it's strategic and important to you, to not be appropriately engaged with to color gray the rest of your world. You know, in that way. So I don't— anyway, I'm not sure exactly where that went other than those were thoughts that popped into my mind given what you guys said. Anybody want to respond or react to that? And by the way, to that point, who have you known out there who would— whom you would say they have self-professed being overwhelmed? You know, at what levels have you run across people that you would say fit into that self- defined category, call them overwhelmed, and were they.

C: Really?

Morten: Well, the people I meet in my coaching practices, most of them are— well, I met some who's truly overwhelmed, who's really at the wrong end of this stick. But most people that I meet are overwhelmed because everything they have to do are in their mind. And, you know, but when they get it out, ah, that wasn't so bad. I externalized it and got to see it in a little of a distance. It makes help, a lot of help. And, uh, but yeah, so I see both. Um, William, what do you.

C: See? Yeah, I think, and to David's point, There's a difference between overloaded and overwhelmed. I think, you know, I love quoting line 1, chapter 1 of David's book, Getting Things Done. It is possible to have an overwhelming number of things to do and approach it with a sense of calm control. Now, just because it's— we're overloaded doesn't mean that we will feel overwhelmed. And just because we feel overwhelmed doesn't mean we're overloaded. So I think we have to look a little bit closer. And this thing that, you know, talking about the driver's seat, it's— I think about Viktor Frankl and Man's Search for Meaning. And when I think about, you know, what he faced and what he was really good at showing us, how much choice there was. In a situation where only 1 in 28 people made it. So in an extreme situation in the concentration camp, people were still making big choices. Some were depressed, some capitulated and became oppressors, and some navigated and shared their food and remained in a calm sense. And those were generally people who had a sense of purpose. So there's a wide range of ways to be in the driver's seat and doesn't mean that life is easy. And from a privileged point of view, you know, it's easy to say, well, you know, just buck up. But even in very dire situations, there's a way to approach things where, you know, it doesn't help to freak out. It doesn't help to whine, although I can say, David, that I've been— and some days I'm a whiner and some days I'm, you know, some days you're the bug and some days you're the windshield. So, but sometimes I kind of curse Viktor Frankl under my breath because he took away a lot of that that sort of victim justification that I used to have. Because if he can find a place to make choices, then surely to hell I can. And so then it is a question of moving over to the driver's seat.

F: You know, I like, I want to just add, I heard a little something different or had a different thought, David, as you were talking in a little bit of a different direction that I wanted to add. I, so first of all, when people come and present themselves to me as I'm so overwhelmed or overloaded or burned out or whatever term they choose to use, I'm going to accept them at face value and say, OK, let's, let's dig in and see how we can solve that. That being said, I think there are some times where some people, they, they, they use that term and even that feeling of I am so overwhelmed and it provides actually some security for them and they don't want to let go of it. And here's why, because that overwhelm that I am so busy and I have so much to do that provides them with a sense of of worth and security. I'm important. Everyone needs me. The world would fall apart without me. I can't let any of this go because I'm so important. And they don't— they're not saying it that way. But I think there is, for a subset of people, and I can be honest, there's a little bit of that for me. When I get really busy, I'm like, I'm amazing. Everyone needs me. Look at my inbox just flood because I'm the only one who knows the truth, right? Or, or whatever it is. And it can be ego-fulfilling, that overwhelm, and therefore a little hard to let go of. I find this specifically when I'm talking to people about a concept I love from GTD, which is, right, you can do, decline, or renegotiate. You have 24 hours in one day. You can only do one thing at a time. So here's your choice. You either do, decline, or renegotiate. And when you push on people on that, that renegotiate and that decline, there can sometimes be that sense of, well, like, if I don't do it, no one else will do it. Only, only I can do it. And, and that's, that's hard to let go of sometimes. And so therefore the task, they don't let go of the task. So again, I don't want to, I don't want to dismiss people who come and present as I am overwhelmed and I am burnt out because I believe in the stats that John shared at the beginning. I believe there is burnout. I believe this year particularly has been very challenging, but I also think we have to to really look at ourselves and challenge others to look at themselves and say, why are you holding on to this? Like, what does that do for you to hold on to all these.

D: Things? Great point, by the way. You know, and I see a lot of people actually, if you read some of the new research, how depressed people are getting now working from home, that they don't have as much to do. They're not commuting. It's like, oh my God. And even though they didn't like necessarily the structure they were in, now they have no structure. So in a way, you go, wow, I'm a lot freer now. But a lot of people are going, wow, I am now totally in jail because I'm 24/7 on. I can't separate personal and professional anymore. I can't separate family and job anymore. They're all blended together. And wow, now I have a lot of freedom. And a lot of people, maybe it's 50/50, a lot of people say, wow, now I have the freedom to sort of structure that the way I want. And a lot of people are going.

E: Ah, they weren't ready for freedom.

F: I was going to say the doing, I think some people in some cultures, we define worth through results and worth through doing. And so like, I need to do and I need to create in order to fill my sense of worth. And suddenly when the doing is removed, or I can't do all the doing, then that— it really taps into my own sense of worth and what I am worth as a.

Morten: Person. We actually do have two different words to describe this in Norwegian. We have selbstelet, which means the confidence in your own abilities, And then self-worth is this feeling of self. Are you okay with who you are? Are you okay as a person? And I've always strived for number 2 because number 1 is a fleeting one. And to feel good about who I am is, I think, is something that GTD has also helped me with because it helps you straighten out your head. Who am I really? Where am I going? And how do I— what do I need to do to feel good about.

F: That? So I feel like I'm starting to dominate, and I can't wait to hear from William again because I'll learn something new when I do. But— and I don't want to shift too quickly to like a solution set, but speaking about this idea of doing, of not doing, of choosing what to do, I mean, I think two things that have been really helpful for me that I'll pair in an example of of how especially I approach parenting and balancing that with everything else. Our next actions and then the calendar as the hard landscape of our day. And so I love next actions, right? Like that's my solution to burnout and is to say, what's my very next action? It gives me a huge sense of self-efficacy. It gives me great clarity about what I need to decline or renegotiate when I, when I really break it down. I just love that, that, that energy it unleashes to say, I can take this, this like half-inch step, like I can do that. Right. I don't have to do everything, but I can take the next action. So I love, love next actions. It's always the solution when I'm feeling stressed or burned out. But what I realized as I was starting to, as I started having children and especially these small children and things, was that next action, like parenting is not like a next action on my next action list. And it never appeared on my list. And here's an example. I remember really clearly having this moment when my daughter was about 9 months old and it was a Saturday and I had this like, oh, these are my next actions. I'm going to do all this stuff. And I was going to bring my 9-month-old baby along with me for all of it. Right. And at the end of the day, that didn't happen. And I remember just being like, I I sat down, I thought, I have done nothing today. Like, I have done nothing today. And then there was this like a light bulb that was like, you parented, you parented all day long, but it didn't appear as a next action on your next action list. And so what I started to learn to do was, I know, because I love that, like, your calendar is the hard landscape of your day. And literally I started putting in blocks like Friday night, 4 hours. Parenting, right? I don't know what it's going to look like, but I'm going to block that time because I don't know how to put some things in my next action. But those are things that have to be on that hard calendar of my day. And so for me, as I think about how we, how we figure out that balance of doing and not doing and what to do, I love those two, those two ideas of next action and hard landscape. And, and the combination of the two is what has helped me like navigate through the busyness, the overwhelm, the burnout, the change, all the stuff that comes at you. Those two core ideas.

D: Well, I have to insert something right now. I was going to save this to the end, but I might as well, given what you just said, Emily. I'm going to insert a couple of things. First of all, I have to insert a quote, which is my favorite quote. From, you know, one of the greatest sources of quotations in the world, a guy named Mark Twain. He said, "Whenever I'm rested and feeling good, I can't help being frivolous." And I think that's— I think people have to deal with that too. Like if they really get to mind like water, some part of them just wants to play computer.

Lars: Games, you know.

D: Or cook spaghetti or something, you know, strange and frivolous. And that we think that's a bad thing. It's like, oh no, of course it's not. And, and, you know, to sort of taking the extreme of that, and I'd be curious whether you guys have met these folks or not, John and I certainly have. Real, real initial champions of GTD get so excited and enthused about how much more they can create and how much more they can do that they totally overwhelm themselves by overcommitting like crazy. Right. And then they actually use GTD to burn out, you know, which is not exactly our point.

Morten: You can run your Ferrari into, you know, into the terrain. It's not a problem. It grows just faster with GTD.

E: We've got some great metaphors going here. You can be filling your water balloon faster and faster while you're driving your Ferrari faster and faster toward the cliff.

D: It's true. But I just talked to somebody by the way, who, you know, was dealing with himself with after 2 to 3 to 4 years of doing GTD and realizing that he was just getting so overwhelmed and not feeling really good and not really realizing, you know, back to our point about the horizons. Well, wait a minute, I forgot that maybe having a good quality of life would be as important an outcome as, you know, getting all these projects done. You know, and so just that conversation is a higher level conversation that's still part of GTD, but a lot of people don't get that because they don't read that when they first read the book. They're reading salvation for the stress of the day-to-day ordinariness, you know, and out of controlness of their day-to-day lives. And now they get that under control, that new freedom, you know, can spin a lot of different ways. So I'd be curious whether any of you've run across that or not. And we can just put that one to bed and then let's talk about why GTD does.

C: Work.

Morten: I've seen that a lot when I, you know, we meet coaching clients who are, you know, they are, they maybe they start out as a little stressed and overwhelmed and then suddenly get their world under control. And they're doing a lot of stuff, they're doing a lot of things, but they are not focusing on doing the right things. And that brings them into, you know, the, and they, because they are doing it so efficiently, they move really fast doing things, but they are not focusing on the right things. And if they don't put— and I decide, I don't know if the other people have seen this in the wild, but one of the things, if you do not put yourself on your horizon of focus, what is my life purpose? Why am I here? What do I want to achieve? If you don't do that reflection, you will not be able to, to counteract that by saying that, well, gee, Morten, do you really want to drive that fast, or you want to relax a little now? Do you think that the relaxing might be good for you? Yeah, maybe. If you don't do that, you will run your Ferrari off, off the road and into a balloon or something like.

D: That. Okay. So solutions. So how much have we seen and in what ways have we seen people started to implement this? I mean, Martin, you started with this call, hey, just get stuff out of your head, you know, relieves a whole lot of pressure. And, you know, again, back to that hot button of the one thing that's out of control, that's important to them. If they suddenly get appropriately engaged with that, what's your strategic, what's the outcome you really want out of that? Wonderful. And so what would you need to do next to move toward closure on that? And they find themselves in the driver's seat about something quite challenging, you know, that the relief I've seen people lose 5 pounds in 2 days just with coaching, simply because, you know, somehow the weight was just part of their holding onto the stress or trying to protect themselves, you know, from that. You know, not that that's a promise to anybody out there, but we could make a billion dollars. Hey, you know, make a billion dollars, no money down, you know, lose 20 pounds in 5 days. I don't think so. But the truth is, you know, I'm sure we've all seen fairly dramatic consequences of people who did these, what seem like very simple things, and they are simple things, but can have quite transformational results. So any case studies or war stories or any of that, either of you, any of you folks want to maybe bring up or share about that, either from your own experience or experience of the people that you've been coaching or working.

Morten: With? I'm sure this is William. I hear his voice now in my.

D: Head. Well, you all may be dealing with what I'm dealing with. People say, gee, David, can you give me any really good stories of people's lives who have changed? I go, legions. How could I find one? You know, every day we get feedback, you know, from people that's just been transformative and try to trying to piece out any one particular thing, you know, that, that would represent real transformation because it just seems to be happening all the time.

E: Got a quick one, uh, ties to one of the GTD models. I was talking to somebody a couple of weeks ago who may be either on the way to burnout or, or really well into it by now. And one of the things that became pretty clear after talking with this person for a bit is she had gotten out of touch with Horizon 5. There was a lot going on in the physical world with job and various other stressors that way, but one of the, one of the key things that had happened was that all of that over the course of a slow water balloon filling up of a couple of years maybe was characterized by being out of alignment with Horizon 5 purpose and making sure that what she was doing in the physical world matched her purpose values, what she knew to be true about her true self. So we could get to that as a solution, but I'm curious whether any of you have heard of anything like that where you find that somebody being out of out of alignment with their own purpose is a contributor toward stress and.

C: Burnout. I would probably come in here with that, John. I've been thinking that how much we have on our plate, what our calendars look like, I'm starting to think that there's a direct cause and effect relationship between our purposes and our principles. And what we perhaps haven't noticed are the shadow principles or the shadow purposes, because just because something's a purpose or a principle doesn't mean it's noble. So there might be a shadow principle like never disappoint anybody. I am what I do. And the vision of myself is I'm always helpful. I'm a can-do person. So sometimes those— it takes a little bit of uncovering what has caused this sense of overwhelm or burnout. And sometimes there's a blind spot in the purpose and the principle running their life. So for myself, you know, I don't like to disappoint people. Maybe there's a principle of avoiding conflict. So I rather internalize than— and I know, Emily, you guys are great at Crucial Conversations in terms of of dealing with those kind of things. So the more I think about, you know, the reality that the X-ray GTD dashboard brings is which principle, what's pulling my strings, and that can make me rethink about, you know, I've got values, but sometimes those values are not very functional. And so I think for me that that's something to— they sound so noble, And to the point about, you know, GTD giving us a faster way to, to get the wrong things done, there can be a sense of space. And but what sometimes does happen, and when we talk in our trainings, we ask the question, what's the difference between making time and taking time? And there's often a conversation backwards and forwards, and people will use those concepts in different ways. But I've sort of wanted to ban this idea of making time because there is no time machine. We cannot make time. We can only take time. And so when I say, when am I going to take time to do this? I'll take— because people go around saying, I'll make time to do this, I'll make time to do that, as if it's elastic. We can make time. There's no time machine. So when we say, when are you going to take time for that? Then they're starting to trade and they start, okay, let's be a lot more humble about, you know, our abilities and let's be more realistic about the fact that time is finite and we have to take time to do things. And when we've got that dashboard, that famous GTD, fully populated lists of our commitments, And that can be a shock. It's like, wow. And then I will ask them, are all— are those things real? You now have 72 next actions and you used to make a little to-do list of 12 things. Are they all real? And really they are. And that is sort of a kind of a wake-up call of what they've said yes to. So, so that's— I've seen that happen quite a lot. And the other question— I'm going to ramble on a little bit, but the question also we ask is, can you say yes without saying no at the same time? And people go backwards and forwards, and the fact is, every time you say yes to something, you've said no to something else, because we are relatively large, slow-moving particles. We are not subatomic. We can only be in one place at a time. And so if we've said yes to something, we've said no to something else, either rest or sleep or something else. And so when I think of myself as struggling to say no, actually, I struggle to say no upfront or consciously. And so that's a little bit of a lightbulb moment for people when they realize that they actually don't struggle to say no. They struggle to say no upfront. And then they either say yes unconsciously, no to other things, or they say yes and drop the ball, which is, which is another way really of saying.

D: No. Hmm.

Morten: I don't know if anyone has seen this before, but also on who are listening now, I'm holding a big red button with the words no exclamation mark. And let me push this for the last time.

D: No, no.

Morten: And it continues in, I think, 10, 15 different variants. And I use this to tell the clients that you have to say no to some things to say yes to the right things. And as you said, this should be done when you clarify and organize your things. And the only way that you can do that with a good conscience is to know what's valuable for you. What's my life purpose? What's my principles? And it's so much easier to say no to the right things to say, right? So say no to things, to say yes to the right things after. So I like this. It's very, very easy to show people what it's all about.

D: You know, go ahead, Emily.

F: Okay, hold your thought though, because I want to come back. I was thinking about your question a little while ago, David, about like stories or examples of like people— I heard it as who've transformed in ways that GTD has been transformative for them. And I was thinking about it, which is shocking for me to actually think before I start talking. It took me a little while to think about it, but I was like, why am I having a hard time coming up with an answer to David's question? And I think one of it is sometimes I think of transformative as like huge, right? Like really big, life-changing. And I do more GTD training than I do GTD coaching. And consequently, the people that come into a training class at least in the US where I'm doing it, you know, they're in the organization and they've signed up or someone said, hey, you should go to this. And sometimes they're in a level of distress, but sometimes not a huge level of distress. And so it's not this— it's not going to be this huge transformation. But I think about it this way. I read a book years ago, kind of a funny book by this guy named Dan Harris called 10% Happier. And it was actually about his experience with meditation. But I loved the way he thought. He said, it's not that it transformed my whole life, but it like like, this practice of meditation makes me 10% happier. And I think for a lot of people with GTD, I mean, I do think there are people that it is like truly like light, dark, complete transformation kind of thing. But I think for a lot of people with GTD, they come, they're pretty productive already. They like, they're like doing things like things are okay. They show up in a training class and it's like, how can I get a little bit better? And actually that 10, that 20%, that, that like That's huge. And you create something new, you align with your horizon of focus. And I've seen a lot of that where it's, I'm 10, 15, 20% more present with my kids when I'm with them. Or in that 10% of the time, like I was fully present and it was amazing. But it was like a sliver, excuse me, it was like a sliver of my week. But it was huge and unlocked something because in that moment I could be present. And I think for me, that's, that's probably what I see so much with, with GTD. So it's hard to pick that story of this person's life. The Ferrari was about to hit the wall and now they're like on the Autobahn. Like, I don't see as much of that, but I see people who are saying, oh, I was doing okay, but I was just missing the ability to really engage in the moments that mattered most. And this just this just let me show up in those moments.

D: Yeah. And to your point, I really agree, Emily, because I've been through transformational experiences, and that's not, that's not what we're talking about. I mean, transformation truly is you transform, you change your whole operating system in terms of how you are and how you engage and perceive life. And that's happened, you know, several times for me. So I wouldn't put it— I would agree, I wouldn't put GTD necessarily in that category, though there have been some outliers, you know, who would say that that actually happened for them. But the nice thing about GTD and what's maybe transformative about it is you don't have to transform yourself to get it. You don't have to change who you are. You don't, you don't have to go through some major traumatic or dramatic, you know, life-changing, you know, experience to get the value. As a matter of fact, as we say, GTD is not running with scissors. Anything you do If you just do decide one next action more than you normally would, it'll change your life. If you just, you know, if you just wrote down a few more things than you normally do and get them out of your head, it'll make a better day. Yeah. So, you know, no kidding.

F: When you said that, I was like, yeah, it's not that it transforms me. It unlocks me.

D: Right. There you go. Yeah. We're using actually, we're using a phrase now. That's, you know, in our trainer network that's kind of caught on. And that's what GTD does is it allows us to unfold. It's not about adding new. It's about unfolding what's there. And you're really, you know, and the unfoldment can be transformative for sure. But it truly is just like, wait a minute, I don't have to add anything more. And you're right, everybody is already up to here. Everybody's already up to their eyeballs and beyond in terms of stuff to do. And what they don't want to do is something new and add on to, I'm already busy enough, you know, oh my God. And at the same time, you know, a curious phenomenon over these years is the people most attracted to GTD are the people who need it the least. They're already the most inspired, most proactive, most positively focused, aspirational people you'd ever meet. The problem is they've outrun themselves. And so they've created more than they, you know, they need to pull up the rear guard and they've created more than their own structures and behaviors can actually manage. And that's why they're running into the wall. You know, they didn't, you know, they've gone faster than the oil in the car could handle, or the tires or whatever.

Morten: I have heard you say this many times, David, that, you know, the people most attracted to GTD is the people who need it the least. But I also see that we attract a lot of people who are, you know, under you know, they are swimming with just barely their nose over the water and they can't breathe. And then sometimes the waves get into their nose, it's difficult to breathe. And then of course they will tell you as a coach or a trainer, I don't have time to learn GTD. But then I tell you, okay, you have time to drown, but you don't have to learn how to swim. Okay, so I'm gonna have a good day. But I can help you if you want. But I've found, you know, you talked about transformational experiences. And I was reminded of a woman who— this must be maybe 8 years ago, 9 years ago, when I started out as a, you know, as a trainer. I did a seminar at a client, and this woman, she's there and she listens very attentively. And then 2 weeks after the seminar, the boss of this group We had a conversation, a follow-up call, and he tells me that this woman, she was on sick leave. She's been on sick leave for 6 months because of stress. And she started practicing GTD. And last week she came back and she stayed. And now she's part of our GTD community here in Oslo. And she loves GTD. I think her tagline is, I can't live without it, which is— and it helps her, you know, helped her a lot. And get her back on track again. So, so yes, a lot of busy, really high-performing people are attracted to this, but also the people who are stressed out and who actually need relief, not speed.

D: I think it would be probably appropriate right now, especially anybody listening or watching this who might be new to what GTD is about, or maybe just watching this for the first time, maybe we should back up a little bit and say what it is. What is this thing we've been talking about, GTD? So those of you who already know what GTD is, this is just going to be a reminder, but I've had somebody read Getting Things Done 25 times and said he hears something new every time he reads it. So you may still hear something new in these basics. And all I did over these years was to uncover the best practices we all do whenever we're trying to get any situation more in control and more focused, whether that's your kitchen or your company or your consciousness. And identified the 5 basic core steps about how you take any kind of situation and get it under control, which is by capturing the stuff, identifying the things that are not under control, clarifying exactly what they mean, what you're going to do about them if anything, organizing the results of that thinking in terms of reminders in some trusted external system, usually lists and some sort of a tool that you can then review and reflect on, stage 4, when you take a look at the gestalt or the sort of the whole overview essentially of your commitments and the actions you need to take. So that step 5, you engage your attention and your activities in a trusted form, not just, I hope this is the right thing to do. You could see the whole game quickly and then make a trusted choice. It might still be whether it's the best choice or not, you'll live and learn, but at least you're doing it out of a sense of confidence. And those are the 5 steps. And that's what I call horizontal control, which is during the day, how many different things do you have to then focus on and manage, whether that's your kitchen or cooking dinner or the 10 kids, Emily, or the 3 coaching clients I've got, or my new app that I just launched into my computer. I don't know how the hell it's going to work and blah, blah, blah. So any 24-hour period, just think of how many things that we all have to deal with that could essentially throw you somewhat out of control or out of kilter. And so those 5 steps of capture, clarify, organize, reflect, engage are how you sort of horizontally get control across the day-to-day, hour-by-hour aspects of our life. And then you say, well, should I be having dinner tonight with friends? Well, then you go back to the horizons where I say, well, what are the different levels of commitments that we have? And we've mentioned the horizons there.. And we've identified 6 of them. You know, the top one would be what we call Horizon 5, and then Horizon 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then ground level. We do the sort of European elevators that don't have a— they don't have a first— first floor is actually the second floor in American terms. Anyway, so ground, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The top level would be purpose and principles. You know, you guys talked about that. And that's sort of the big why. Who am I? What really matters to me? And then you have the level of commitment. Okay, if I were really doing that successfully, what would that look like in the long term? And that would be your vision, essentially, a long-term horizon of ideal scene. Here's what I'm going to look down and feel like if my life is wildly successful in the future. Then you come down to the level 3, which is what are the things I need to accomplish over the next year or two that are going to get me to that that vision, goals, objectives. Most organizations would be, that would be the level that they have organizational goals and, you know, operational plans and so forth. Then you come down to level 2, which are all the things you need to maintain so that you can get there. How's your health? How's your sales? How's your staff? How's your technology? How's your relationships? How's your fun factor? How's your energy and vitality? And all those are the things both organizationally as well as personally, you just need to maintain so that you've got an engine and an enterprise and a mechanism that actually can get you where you want to go. Then you come down to all the things you need to finish about all those things. And those will be what we call projects, Horizon 1. All the things you need to complete that you can't finish in one sitting, but you can finish probably within a few months or within a year. Get tires on your car, get your kids into the school that they need to be getting next, hire the vice president, research the new mobile phone service you might want, fix the tooth that hurts, decide whether you want to adopt or not. Those are projects, right? Those are the things that most people in our experience have 50 to 100 of those. And then you have all the things, the commitments to all the stuff you need to do about any of those moving parts of any of those other horizons, emails you need to send, stuff you need to buy at the store, stuff you need to talk to people about, you know, stuff you need to surf the web about, any of that. And that's where the real doing happens. And those 6 horizons, golly, over all these years, I would have loved to have gotten it simpler than that, but I couldn't. All of those have very different content, and all of those impact our decisions about the rightness, as you mentioned, you know, Morten, you mentioned, are we doing the right things? And a lot of those have to come back up to, well, what are those different horizons that you have commitments about? So that's what I call vertical control in a way. There's also vertical control of how do I control a project? Which we call the natural planning model. But I won't go into that detail about it. But that was a big— that's 75 years of my experience, folks. I just canned it to about 3 minutes in terms of what I've discovered. And you can't— it's bulletproof. You can't punch a hole in that. You know, that is how you get your kitchen under control by noticing what's not in control, by deciding what it means, organizing the spices where they go, the dirty dishes where they go. Looking back and reading the recipe, looking at your time and then pulling out butter and melting it. You just went through the 5 stages of how you got control of your kitchen. You just do the same stages in terms of how you get control of your head. What's got your attention? Write it down. Decide what's the next action. What outcomes are you committed to about that? Park the results someplace you trust. Step back and make sure you review the contents of this external brain that you build that keeps track of all these commitments at all these different levels. So you're making trusted choices. Folks, bottom line, two bottom lines. First of all, stop using your head as your office. It's a crappy office. It doesn't work. You will over and underreact to life as soon as you have more than 4 things on your mind you're trying to keep track of. That's cognitive science now. I just discovered that on the street 35 years ago and built that in as part of, as a huge part of this methodology. But now it's, you can't fault that. That's the truth. You will not take a test as well. You will not be as present with your kids as well. You won't be able to do anything as well if you're still using your head as a way to try to manage the reminders and organize and manage priorities and relationships between all the commitments you've got. Wrong answer. Won't work. The other thing is, you know, our mission is to create a world where people perceive problems as projects. In other words, get in the driver's seat and don't let yourself be at effect very long. And being victimized by the situation that you find yourself in. And outcome and action are the sort of core elements of this is about. It's about what, that's what productivity is about. What are you trying to accomplish? How would you like to feel? Would you like to produce? What's the action step you would need to take to make that happen? Those come from two different parts of your brain, by the way. That's why this doesn't show up automatically. You actually have to train yourself and build a cognitive muscle to train yourself to think of both the outcome you want, Emily, like spend more quality time with my kids, and the action step you need to take. Hey, let me block it in. So I got some time blocked in there and then I'll figure that out when I'm there. Absolutely. That gets you appropriately engaged.

F: With parenting. David, as you, it's so fun to hear you like distill, you know, decades down into like 4 minutes. Thanks. And I thought that was a great overview. And as I was listening to it, so I've been practicing been practicing GTD for about 4 or 5 years now. And I don't know, so William and Morten, I'm going to tee this question up for you guys. I don't know about you, but I find that like I kind of go through like phases. Like there'll be a period of months where I'm like, this is the most important thing I've ever learned from David Allen and this piece of wisdom. And then something will change in life and some other part of GTD will really be what I need because I feel like it's so encompassing and so, so rich. That different parts of it stick out to me or resonate deeply with me at different points where I am. So I would be interested in— I'll share mine, but I'd be interested, William and Morton, like, what's like, for where you guys are right now, like, what's the, what's the thing that's really like, what little nugget of GTD is really coming to the forefront of your mind, even as we practice all of it? And I'll tell you what it is for me right now, something I learned from David years ago. And it comes between the— it's in the clarify stage. But part of the problem when we first start capturing everything. And especially David and I were talking in this conversation about capturing every idea that comes into your head. Like, you can capture a lot of stuff. And then for me, somehow, especially when I first started practicing, the idea of capturing it, of writing it down, it gave it a concreteness and a weight that it didn't always deserve, right? It was like, well, if I've written it down, then it must be something I have to do something about. And we were talking about the different parts of clarifying. And, and right, as you think about like the 6 things that we learn in Clarify, you can, you can do it now, right? 2 minutes or less. You can do it soon, right? You put it in your system, you can delegate it, you can file it, you can incubate to think about it, and you can trash it. And David, I don't even know if this was just a flippant comment, but you made it and I stuck it in my head and kept it there, even though I probably also wrote it down somewhere. But it was, you were like, I probably trash about 90% of what comes out of my head.. And it was so freeing to just think like, oh my gosh, yeah, all these ideas I capture, but that doesn't mean they're good ideas. It doesn't mean I have to do anything about it. Capturing doesn't give— excuse me— capturing doesn't make me obligated. And that was really freeing for me between that capture and clarify to just be like, I'm going to put it all down. And you know what? I can just be like, oh, trash that. Oh, that's not important. I'm going to trash that. I'm going to move these things out. So that's one that for me, especially right now in this time of burnout and stress and so many things are coming at it, I am holding on to trash it. I can just delete this. I don't have to— just because something exists outside of my head does not obligate me to do something, to deal with. I can trash it. So that's an idea that really is sticking out for me right now. There have been other phases of my life where other parts have been more important, but I'm interested, William and Morten, if you guys have anything that right now you're like, this is the forefront.

D: Of.

Morten: My GTD practice. Yeah, I can start. I see William don't unmute himself. That's a signal to me, I guess. No, what I've been, you know, I started as all people do with GTD, starting emptying your head. And for me, that was transformational because I didn't have to do anything about. And I remember very clearly this, David, at some point I heard a talk or podcast or a book or something, I don't remember exactly, but that you write it down doesn't mean you have to do something about it. And that's so that stuck with me as well, because it's a very important, you know, piece of advice you can give yourself. If you write it down, it doesn't mean you have to do something about it. But for me now is when I've been doing practicing GTD since 2006.. And I've been doing my higher horizons many, many years ago. And I started, you know, the more I get in touch with them, I use, and I hope that this will not redline this podcast, which they automatically, Apple scans this because I'm going to use a little word that's maybe not appropriate. So please forgive me, Apple. But I call them what I call my bullshit filter. And this is something I learned from my son. He taught me this word, this is slang. My son is now close to 18 years old, he'll be 18 in September, but before, I think it was when maybe 12 or 13, he used the word seriously and with a little slang, but seriously, are you going to do something about this? Seriously. And when you clarify and organize, you go, seriously, am I going to commit to doing this? Because if I put it on my list, if I actually tell myself I will do this, I must do this, I must put it on someday maybe, or trash it. Really, am I going to do this?

C: Seriously?

Morten: And calling on that bullshit filter, it makes it a lot easier to say no when you need to. So.

C: William, over to you. Thanks, Morten. I see your filter's gone up, David, because I've heard David on two occasions say 80% of what he writes down doesn't make it onto his list. Now it's up to 90%. And I specifically asked that. And growing. Yeah. And I must say, Emily, to your point also, it's like just because I wrote it down doesn't mean it even has to make it into someday, maybe. So that's— so what am I doing well or well I think I look at it a little bit in reverse. When things are not going well, what am I screwing up and where am I, where am I falling off the board? And what I noticed is that when I was busy clarifying and clarifying is when you've written everything down and you're going to decide, are you going to do this or not? And the 2-minute rule suggests that if you can do it in 2 minutes, when you're busy getting this thing to zero, it's better just to do it. But what I was doing is it was just a clever way for me to avoid stuff. So I would put it on my to-do list. And so I was just putting stuff on my to-do list because I didn't feel like doing it and I was avoiding the decisions. So now I'm a lot more ruthless about if I can do it in 2 minutes, do it already.. And so that simple thing was just a clever way in which I, I was avoiding doing things that would be quick. So, but, but uncomfortable to make the decision or an uncomfortable thing to do. So sometimes it's kind of a humble error that I'm making, kind of very basic error. And sometimes it's a more philosophical error about but why am I really here? And what am I valuing? Am I valuing harmony or am I valuing realism or authenticity? So sometimes it's up in the higher horizons where I have to ask myself, you know, what is making things so difficult? For me. So it, it can really vary. Um, so the, the other thing I, I would like to say that I, um, I've spoken about this before, the stall warning. When I've captured everything, clarified it, and organized it, there's a sense of relief. It's like, wow, it's in a system. And so the sense of overwhelm kind of drops. And, and if I don't move on to the reflect step, then I can have a false sense of safety. And it's when I, when I look at it, it reintroduces the correct amount of pressure or positive pressure or appropriate pressure. And so, so when I feel lazy or avoidant, it really helps to look at the list and to look at the, at what's on, that's on the dashboard, what's on my plate. And that can sometimes wake me from my slumber or like, okay, I've heard many people say they can only work under pressure. And if we have everything written down and we can look at it in advance, it's a way to bring the pressure to today, not in 2 weeks' time. So sometimes that's— that reintroduction of pressure helps me to get past my high levels of.

D: Inertia that I can have. Hey, thanks, actually, all of you and those of you listening or watching this. We could take anybody who's a GTDer and probably have lots of different things to say. I have to say that because you guys were talking about, you know, because you write it down, you don't have to do it. If you don't write it down, it doesn't make room for the really good ideas. So you can't dismiss externalizing thinking. That's why journaling is a very good psychological thing to do, especially people who might be feeling overwhelmed or depressed. There's nothing better than just take a journal and just empty, you know, everything. I've written, I've kept journals for years. I never go back and read them. Maybe when I do my memoirs I might, but meanwhile, it's truly just another version of sort of a way to let go of stuff to make room for whatever's new. But if you don't write them down, they're taking up cognitive space, cognitive real estate. So you need to keep the real estate clean. So just a comment, an addendum to what you guys were saying about that. What else? We're getting to closing time here. John, any other poking questions you want to ask or any other final comments that any of, any of you would make?

E: John, go ahead and take it away. I had a list, of course, before we started this. I had a list of different angles on this that I was going to to bring up if I needed to, to kind of prompt you all. And you have covered, one way or another, all of you have covered everything that was on my list. So either you dictated the list into my head yesterday afternoon, or somehow we're all just in sync that way. We've covered all the things that I was hoping we would cover and even more. This has.

Morten: Been a really rich discussion. Can I make just one last comment? Of course. About a topic we haven't spoken a lot about, and that is worries. A lot of people worry about, you know, the future, where am I now, you know, Corona doesn't make it easier. And one of the things I found, you know, that was very interesting for me to hear about is that our friend and colleague, my partner in Finland, Jukka Bachmann, he's a trainer there and coach, and he was very open about this, so I'm sure he will not mind me telling this. He's also said this publicly, is that he had a time of his life a few, you know, a year or more ago where he really had things to worry about.

C: And.

Morten: I mean the family health, both his own and the family health. He had this, you know, a child that was not doing well. He was also not doing well. And he said he made a list of things I worry about. And just write everything down and say that you stay there until next time I look at you, but I will see you at least once a week. And if I start worrying, I will write you down again. You go on the list. But when you put things on the list, it's kind of like— it's— people don't believe this to be true, but if you write things down, tell yourself, I worry about these things, put them on the list and promise yourself you will look at it later, it will dissipate, it will go, it will leave you for now, and you can concentrate on what's in front of you. Whatever you find meaningful to do in the moment. And then you can revisit that if you feel like it, or it moves into your brain and say, okay, this is all the things I worry about. Can I do something about this? Is this within my control to do something about? If the answer is no, then maybe you should try and let go. Maybe you should just let go of what you cannot control. You cannot control Corona. You cannot control the world economic situation. You can't control your family. You can't control your kids. You can't control your health. The only thing you actually can control is the way you think. You can do something about how you think about things. And that one would be my last words is if you worry about things, understand what's under your control, what's not, and then decide what you can do about the things you actually can do something about. The way you think about the future, your worries, and use.

D: That to change your world.

C: Voilà. Thank you.

F: Great stuff. Emily, you go. You go. I guess it is. Wow. I'd like to follow William, but I mean, I think I guess I would just add this. It's like this stress, this burnout, this overwhelm this year, it is real. It has been hard. For so many people. And the messages and the questions that we're getting, like, they are coming from a place of deep anguish sometimes, right? Like, this has been crazy and unparalleled, and it is hard. And I always try and be real. I want to try and be careful about saying, like, here's the answer, because I don't want to dismiss it's the pain and the anguish that people are feeling and the stress. And it is what you said, David. It is pretty simple. The understanding of it, I guess I would say, is pretty simple. Like David did a great explanation of GTD. I can usually explain it in about 5 minutes in a pretty clear way. Several times I feel like on this podcast we've said like, it's pretty basic. You capture everything, you clarify everything. And what I have found is that it is basic, and yet that doesn't negate its power to meet people at this very, very stressful and anguished and despairing place that some people are right now. So I want to honor the depth of challenge that people are facing and not, you know, feel like we're band-aiding with something simple. I think it is foundational. And, and I love that idea of I'm going to keep that unfolding, right? I, I look at it and say, so at VitalSmarts, right, the, the organization I work for that, as David mentioned, we have the license in the US and Canada, we— our mission is, starts with, we believe people can be great at being human. Like, great at being human. And we only bring skills and products to the marketplace that we think help people do that. And that, for me, is what GTD is about. It's saying I think there is just greatness in all of us. And I think the structures sometimes of the world that we live in inhibit that greatness. And I feel like GTD is again unlocking, unfolding. It's like, here is something you're going to be great at. And this is a skill, a skill set, a really foundational skill set that can help you be great at being you..

E: So that's where.

C: I'll end. Yeah, very inspiring. Yeah, sure. Just when we were talking about the bigger picture, I was thinking about Ana Maria, who, who would say, what race are you in? You've got to decide what kind of race are you in. And that's kind of one of those broad topics, David. And I also remember something you said. If people don't realize that there's more to do than can be done, they need either psychological or spiritual help. And often I'm in need of both. So because it's kind of one of those things to, to really realize. Yeah, in terms of it's definitely real, Emily, I like, I like how you brought that back to just, just because something is simple doesn't make it easy. I mean, running a straight line for 100 miles is— I mean, it's simple, but it's not easy. So there is something really challenging about them. And I also wanted just to pick up, Emily, what you were talking about, the calendar. This is one of those little detail tips that I currently also love when I think about is booking recovery time. Whenever there's a peak deadline, um, other work will have to wait, as it should. And just looking ahead in the calendar, knowing that after every peak deadline, book yourself an hour or two. Or when you've been on leave, make sure you don't have a full calendar the first day you get back. Back. Just in terms of managing that, I mean, that's not, that's not complicated, but it's quite hard to negotiate in that sense, to, to, to put your name. I like how you put parenting in the calendar. Make a meeting with yourself and don't cancel on yourself any faster than you would with somebody else. So just on those very practical things, and my tip for years before I knew GTD, if somebody was feeling overwhelmed, what is the smallest next action you can take? Keep making small decisions, even if that is, I will have a nap until lunchtime, or just make it to dinner, and just reduce your time horizon, and reduce the, just find the report, if constructing the report is too much. So, there is always maybe some small thing that you can do that can push back the sense of overwhelm, and normally there is some small step we can take. So just to say thanks, it's really been a wonderful conversation. I've learned a lot and certainly helps.

D: My sense of hope. What all of you have said brings me to sort of, I guess, my closing remarks on this, which is one of the unique things that we've uncovered and that we do this work around GTD is it starts with where you are, not with where you should be. And so that whole idea, both Morten and Emily, hey guys, we need to just accept and acknowledge, I hurt, I'm overwhelmed, this is anxiety-producing. And acceptance is really the first law of spirit. If you resist anything in life, you're stuck with it. And the way out is through. So I go back to the Stoics. And again, one of my favorite books recently is called The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman. It's happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking, which It's a great subtitle. And he really goes into why the Stoics were so powerful. And it's not— most people's popular idea about Stoicism is asceticism and hard life or whatever. It's really about accepting what's true in life as opposed to trying to pretend that's not true. So don't pretend that you're not overwhelmed. So any of you listening or watching this, look, feel okay, whatever you're feeling, whatever you have been feeling and experiencing about that, that is welcome to the human race, you know, to William's point. You know, it's like, yeah, this seems to be part of what we're about. And you don't have to go very far, again, to William's last point, you don't have to go very far to get yourself back in the driver's seat about what you're doing. But a real key is you need to love yourself enough to say, I'm okay no matter what I'm experiencing, and give yourself permission to then take some positive steps forward. And they're not, they're not hard. They're easy to do. So hopefully this has been useful for some of you listening to this. We have a lot of resources. John, you want to point people to.

E: Resources that, that, and Emily, you too?

Morten: Sure.

E: Yeah, I'd like to give all of you a chance to list out your website and so folks can go visit you there, and then.

D: I'll come up with a closing. Yeah, well, I'm— John, you can, you can have mine.

F: You can do all that. Yeah, I'll jump in and then let the gentleman go. So as I mentioned, I work for VitalSmarts. You can find us at www.vitalsmarts.com. And we give training for GTD in the US and Canada. Also, if you're on social media, you can look for One Productive Minute. My colleague Justin Hale does a great social media posting on just one, like, here's 60 seconds or less, here's one little nugget. And I think probably if you listen to all the hundreds of them that there are, you might get about like 30% of what GTD is, but The goal is to just give people— to meet them where they are right now and give them something to get started with. So vitalsmarts.com, and then find us at.

E: One Productive Minute on social media.

Morten: Thanks. Thanks, Emily. Morten or William?

C: William, come on. Come on, man. Okay. As I said, I'm in South Africa. I think my name is probably also showing the website, gtdsouthafrica.co.za. And also in Africa. If you'd like to hear more, give us a shout.

Morten: Thank you very much. Great.

D: Morten?

Morten: Yes, I'm at gtdnordic.com, gtdnordic.com, where you can find information about our services in the Nordic region. And we also do a podcast. I would like to use 2 seconds plugging that. You didn't, I was going to, so please do. Okay. Getting Things Done by GTD Nordic, where we walk you through the 5 steps of GTD and teach you GTD, discuss it, interview people. And we just had Justin Hale in our podcast, just, he released, I think, last Wednesday. It's a biweekly podcast, about 20 to 40 minutes long. So if you want to learn GTD, that's also, as you know, secondary. Source of wisdom and insights, except from this very good podcast called Getting Things Done.

E: So I think that's— it's an English language podcast, unless Justin learned how to.

Morten: Speak Norwegian since last time. No, he did not. No, no, he did not.

C: No.

Morten: And we are very proud. You just, um, we have more than 100,000 downloads and we are super happy.

E: So, and growing fast.

D: Yes.

E: Yeah, great. Well, GettingThingsDone.com, that's the place to go to find out more about David, GTD, and get connections to all of the.

C: Resources.

E: And partners that we have. And as my closing, I'd just like to say we talked through this about what we say yes to and what we say no to. I'm really grateful that all 4 of you, when I asked you about this a couple of weeks ago, said yes. And so thank you for that. Thanks for having this rich discussion, and hope we'll have another chance to talk.

C: With.

Lars: All of you before too long. That was a very interesting talk, and I especially appreciate the different perspective that each of the participants really, you know, added to, to that topic. So Thanks for sharing to everyone.

Morten: Thanks for sharing your story as well, Morten. You're most welcome. I've been asked about this episode or this recording by others, and I said that they say, "Thank you for sharing." Then I'm saying that, okay, I'm a GTD Master Trainer. Who should have thought about that when I was in 2000, 2001, not being able to go out because I had out of so much anxiety. But if my story can help you who listen to or hear this or see this to be inspired to learn Getting Things Done and get your world under control, my, my being open has been a small price to pay for helping you. So if that is helpful for you, I'm super happy.

Lars: I'm sure.

Morten: It will be for someone listening.

Lars: So Lars, will you take us out? Let us do that. Yeah, let us know what you thought of this episode. So this was obviously an extended version, longer than we usually go. We placed this here as well as sort of a longer episode for those, so you have a bit more time now to listen to it because our next episode will be around mid-August. And we always wrap up these episodes with a quick reminder to head on over to gtdnordic.com that's where you'll find links to all of the country websites for the GTD partners in each of the Nordic countries. And on each of those websites, you will find all of the articles about GTD, the newsletters, links to social media groups where natives from each of those countries discuss the different tools and, and how they use the methodology. So head on over there, where you will also find all of our offerings, both the speeches, the coaching, and the seminars, both both physical and virtual. If you're looking for GTD courses in the US or Canada, vitalsmarts.com is the place to go. And if you're looking for coaching in the US and Canada, GTD Focus is where you'll want to head over. For everyone else, head over to gettingthingsdone.com to find your local partners. And lastly, as always, we really hope that you find these episodes valuable. Look forward to hearing from some of you what you might have picked up from this episode. You have the email in the show notes. Let us know what you thought. And we really love making these episodes. We hope that you benefit from them. Share this episode with a friend or a colleague if you think this would be beneficial for them. And as always, if you have time to give us a rating on iTunes, it really helps the discoverability of the podcast.

Morten: So thanks to those of you who have already done so. Yes, indeed. And until next time, stay safe, stay productive, and avoid burnout.

Lars: Have a great summer, everyone. Take care.

F: Have a great summer.

C: Bye-bye.