96. Listener Questions 14: Alternatives to contexts, analogue systems and projects lists without AOF

Transcript

Automatically transcribed and lightly edited. Timestamps omitted for readability.

Morten: Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Getting Things Done podcast from Vital Learning. I am Morten Ødrebyk, and I am here as always with my good friend and colleague Lars Rothschild Henriksen. Privet, Lars.

Lars: Privet, Morten. Good to see you as always, and good to be with our listeners out there. We always start off with with a quick reminder of the purpose of this podcast, which is to help you learn GTD or become even better GTDers. If you are new to GTD, we always recommend you go back and listen to episodes 1 through 6 of the podcast to get an introduction to the basics of GTD. Those are only available in audio form. So for those asking, I got a question recently on YouTube, so where to actually find these episodes? Perhaps we need to specify in the introduction that these are only available as audio version. So you can find them in your podcast player. Today's episode number is number 94 of the podcast, and today's episode is another listener questions episode.

Morten: Yes, it is. We have 3 listener questions that we are going to answer, and why don't we just dive right into it? So give me the first question without any further ado.

Lars: Very efficient, very, very productive recording today. Question number 1 is from Alex. He says, one personal thing that I haven't been able to work with is context. I tried the standard computer, phone, at home, at office, low energy, high energy, less than 30 minutes, less than half a day, and so on. But nothing really worked for me. What I do now and what kind of works mostly for me is planning 1 to 3 tasks on the evening for the next day and then work in the "context" today on the next day. Did you come across people with this during your coaching who also struggle with context? The other GTD practices really work well for me: capturing, clarifying, organizing, having projects, areas of focus, tasks, doing the weekly review regularly, and so on. All the best and keep up the good work from Alex.

Morten: The short answer, Alex, yes, we have come across this before. So this is nothing new for us. At least I have had people struggling with context and they say like, one of the most common things I hear is that I have, I am mostly working from my computer. So why on earth do I need anything else? Like everything is on my computer anyway. And then I said, well, I would say then, well, you have more than one arena where you do work. Maybe, you know, if you are only on your computer, maybe you need to be at the office physically for some physical work you need to do there, like empty the trash, water the flowers, talk to the boss, something you want to do physically, or at home. But it is a slippery slope. So what have you seen, Lawrence, that is You know, the most common, uh, about context.

Lars: No, but I think overall, yeah, I think overall that, that is, uh, and where I think we've spoken about this before, it's probably one of the most common criticisms of GTD is this with the context. I can do anything anywhere. Why do I need to actually put these on separate lists? Um, yeah, how do you want to choose your work? That would be, how do you go, go back to that question for me? So how would I actually, when I sit down to do work, most easily choose the right things to work on at the right time? What do I need to see? How do I then organize it to make it most easy for me? And, you know, it used to be the case that there were more, you know, differences in what you could be doing. Today it has simplified for me as well. But this is really something that I continue to play around with a lot. So at home I have my computer and I have at home, and I want to keep them as separate lists because there are different things. Sometimes I want to sit down at the computer and do some things, and sometimes I want to be, you know, fixing the bike or fixing the air conditioning thing or whatever it might be. And then sometimes I want to sit down and order those things that I needed to order online and whatever else was at the computer. Same at the summer house. So I've been playing around with having lists for inside and outside stuff need to get done or having lists when in these days with the summer that we've had in the Nordics at least where it's been very hot and very wet and really mixed. I've been playing around with having lists that said, if it's dry outside, then I can do this, right? That really describes, that sums up the summer, right?

Morten: That's, I'm sure this is going to be more and more people experimenting with that. If the forest is not on fire, I'm sorry, I make joke on something very, very serious, but we are going to see that if there's water in the streets, you know, what do I do? No, but to take us back to the question at hand is that I think the idea of, well, let's go back, back, back, back, that's why my wife would say when we reverse the car, go back, back. She says this to me. So that means reverse the car, go backwards. But let's zoom out a little and then ask yourself or ask ourselves or explain the The Trifle Nature of Work. Would you take us through the three parts of that, Lars?

Lars: Just because you just got back from vacation, Morten, does not mean that you.

Morten: Can just— I am delegating. Oh no, but I can do that because it's ingrained in my inside of my brain.

Lars: We have the planned work, of course, which is the things that we have told ourselves that have to happen. So we've either put it on the calendar, it has to happen, or we put it on the list. We've already defined that this is something we need to to do something about.

Morten: Predefined work.

Lars: Yeah. Then we have the unplanned work stuff that just shows up that we need to deal with in that moment or hasn't found its way into our systems yet. And then we have defining work, clarifying and organizing the stuff that has showed up in our different inboxes.

Morten: Yeah. And what we are talking about now is doing predefined work. So you planned what you need to do. There's not work that shows up, but you have some time discretionary or you've taken time on your calendar to do work you plan to do before. And the idea here is that if you have done that, you've decided this is what I want to do, then you can slice and dice it. You know, I come back to this, Getting Things Done is not religion, guys, it's, or girls, and it's a set of practices and you will understand if you're doing it correctly because your brain will be freed up to be present in the moment. There's nothing that pulls on your attention away from what you're doing in the moment. So if you are feeling that your system is not supporting that, you maybe need to take a step back and ask yourself, what do I need to do to make that happen? So I don't know, what do you think about that definition as a starter?

Lars: Yeah, absolutely. That's certainly a good starting point. The one thing that I would, you know, so he says what kind of works for me is planning 1 to 3 tasks for the next day. I've certainly seen that as well work very well for some people. Some people do that on the evening and plan for what they do the next day. Some people, Dan, that was on the podcast before the summer break, mentioned at one point that he would put 5 things on a list separately, pick that from his next actions, and he would do those 5 first, and then he would get back to his complete system, pick 5 new ones, right? So there are different variations on this. And again, if that works for you, then great. What I would be just keep an eye out for is that depending on your work, it can sometimes be difficult to actually define what is going to happen the next day. And then how are you flexible to then replan that? And does that actually make sense? Right.

Morten: The way that I'm handling this myself is why don't we just open up our systems that people tell us what next action context list we have. I have one for the office, one for Mac, one for at home, one for errands, and one for the, uh, which is our camping site. We have a caravan park there where we go in the weekends to relax and swim and enjoy outside outdoor life. And those are the 5 contexts that I have now. How many do you have, Lars?

Lars: Could you list them? So work-wise, I have the, the at work, I have finance-related, sales-related, zombie videos to watch, and then yeah, the someday maybe is waiting for us, those kinds of things.

Morten: And for your personal ones, you would like to talk about?

Lars: Personal ones besides all of the ones there, so you could know that those really are the ones that I just mentioned. At home Mac, at home, at the summer house. Those really are the three ones that I have. I've been, you know, continue my continuous journey towards having as little on the list as possible. Also impacts now the number of lists that I have. Yeah.

Morten: And for those of you who don't understand what we are talking about now is that we have started a journey more or less together without telling each other or maybe very inspiring each other, but to simplify our getting things done system. So our list system. And practice to make it as simple as possible. So when we look at context, you know, I've been trying the Someday List, that didn't work. I tried the less than 5 minutes, 30 minutes, half an hour, you know, 1 hour, and that didn't work for me at all. So I'm leaning towards, or what I'm doing now is that when I'm doing my weekly review, I am trying to mark some as I would like to get this done during the week that follows. And that is just a way to tell myself that this, if I can make them, that will make me happy. That will make, if I can cross this off next week, I will be good. And then what I do is the same day or the day before I go in and I pick When I look at the calendar, I look at how busy is my day. For that's, you know, what I blocked out time either to, and I block out time to do projects. I work on projects. I move on bigger blocks. So my next actions could be the first thing of what I do, and then I just do next actions as they show up in my brain. Let's say I have now later today, I have Outlook tasks on PC for I'm going to do a seminar. I have to re- visit how to do that, and then just check out Outlook tasks on a PC. It's going to take me, you know, 45 minutes or something. That's on my calendar because I know this. I'm not attracted to PC, I'm not attracted to doing Outlook tasks, so it's going to be a little painful. But I have to relearn how to do that, and I set aside time to do that. So, I use the calendar as my prioritization system. So, I set aside time to do what I think I must do, There's a seminar next week. But at the same time, I also prioritize what would I— what do I need to get done today that's not on my calendar that I would very, very much like to get done. I will feel better if it's done. Then I do— I make it a full-day event and put it in the, you know, the My Day view of the app that I'm using. Or today view. So, it reminds me of the things that I would like to get done throughout this day, if anything else. And that is not context-wise, actually, because I can have do an errand on there that needs— I need to get out of the office and go to some shopping mall or some, you know, some shop somewhere to pick up something or buy something. But that is, and that is working fairly well for me. I think the combination of using the calendar as a hard landscape saying that I'm committing to work on this project, not only using the calendar as a meeting, but also a meeting with yourself where you are going to do work. Plus the full day events. They don't show up on my calendar, they're only in my list system, but I have them visible for me when I want to. I have a way of showing them as a widget on my screen. So when I remove all the— I just do this on my— this with my hand on the trackpad and then it's visible.

Lars: It's embedded in those of you on audio. Morten is doing kind of a Jedi gesture, I.

Morten: Think.

Lars: Yes.

Morten: No, and that's what that is. Five finger gesture. Yeah. Sounds like I'm doing something completely different.

Lars: Yeah. So, no, so I have, that is actually one of the things that I'm, you know, playing around with in my system right now in order to optimize when it comes to dates. That's why I thought also this was a good question to look at today. So, right now in my system, of course, I have my calendar. Date stuff will show up there. We also have the CRM system for customers that also shows up in my calendar, and I have dates on things in the reminders application. So those are the three things where, or areas where dates can show up. And I still find sometimes that either I tend to plan too many things for a single day, or there will be, you know, something that, that planning last month ago thought was really smart if I could be reminded of today. But now that I'm looking at it today, I'm like, what? Why would I want to do that? Right? I know that I also have a tendency, and I think there was a— there was this balanced processor profile where it's common that you have a tendency to want to use ticklers. So date-specific items as opposed to someday maybes instead. And I can certainly recognize that in myself that I need to be better at that. Using the someday/maybe list. So that's, that's part of what I do to handle that. That's something that I'm playing around with. So yeah, I think to sum it all up, it's really about, you know, setting up those lists the way that they, that they work for you, whether it's day specific, whether it's context. One thing that I was playing around with recently was stuff that I have to do versus that I would like to do. So it can be hobbies, or it can be just, you know, I really want to prioritize this for the, for the company. And just, you know, there seems to be a difference in my mind between those two. So perhaps I'll play around with, you know, differentiating the two of those that actually happened this summer as well. When I was looking at my areas of focus, there's something I have areas of focus and accountability, some things I'm accountable for, some things I have focus on. And I actually ended up splitting those two up. So now they're two separate mind maps on the, you know, the same page, so to speak. So again, play around with it, see what works for you. If that works for you with planning 1 to 3 tasks for the next day.

Morten: Great. And the idea is that play around with it, try what works for you. And I tell all my coaching clients that if you really want to get good at getting things done, you have to really get in tune with you. So, and with that, I mean that you need to be, or try to be more and more aware of how you think. What your emotions are in the moment. So if I feel like, you know, looking at a task at my list and I go, "I don't want to do that," and then just stop for a second and ask yourself, "Why?" Is it not well-defined enough? Next action doesn't have a high enough— it's not high enough on the totem pole of importance for me? Why do I not want to do this? And then ask yourself, is the next action defined, clarified enough? So it is really a next action or is it something else? Because there is a lot of things that you can do. It's like, for instance, if you don't clarify your next actions, really clarify them so that, go back to listen to the clarified episode. Because to be really clarified, it really needs to get really good, very well defined to be attractive to you. But it can also be that you lost interest in something and you go back and say, why is this on my list? And you feel reluctant removing things on your list. And I think that a well-seasoned GTDer can look at something and say, this is not going to happen. Let me just delete that. I remember when I started with getting things done, it was like everything you need to get done, absolutely everything on my list, and it's going to go, ah, I have too much to do. Yeah, dummy, you do. I have to tell myself, you need to scale down. So, yeah. Okay. Should we move on, by the way?

Lars: Let's do that. Let's head on over to question number 2, which is from Jukka. He says, hi, in recent years I've truly enjoyed your podcast and all the small tips and tricks you've provided for us GTDers. Great to hear that, Jukka. For over a decade, I've been using GTD in varying degrees during my studies and work. From time to time, I tend to reevaluate my GTD system and workflow, and in recent years has meant the transition from digital tools to analog tools, even though I I spend a lot of time at my computer. I don't always have it with me when I'm doing work. That's why pen and paper have eventually become my number one choice of tools. There was a lot that resonated with me when you talked about the GTD Road Warrior tools and setups you've seen in the, the episode back then. I noticed, however, that most of the non-digital tools seemed centered around making small notes and capturing ideas and stuff, while the rest of the system was in the proper office workspace and computer. I would love to hear your thoughts on some future episode about fully or almost fully non-digital GTD solution. I myself have found a concept called Everbook, which works fine for my needs. I've managed to organize my workflow so that I have most of the things in my GTD system in paper form so I can capture, process, organize, review, and get things done and do my weekly review without my digital devices. Thanks again for the podcast. It's always a joy to listening to what you guys have to say. And offer? Best regards from Jukka.

Morten: Thank you, Jukka. Good question. Yeah. And we talked about a little in the pre-show that we have seen in the wild people who go total paper. I can go first and give my anecdote. Back in 2010, I attended one of my first Making It All Work with David Allen seminars. Where I remember I got to sit next to, on the table, to one of the— he was the CEO of one of the really big global companies. He was very young. I was kind of like shocked when he told me his title and what he was doing, but he was a global director, CEO of these operations of this huge company. And he told me that he has a paper-based Getting Things Done system. All his lists was on paper. And he says that I do this because I need to slow down my thinking. Because my decisions, what I decide to do, what I give my attention to, affects the whole global structure of our company. And I think that is key if you want to slow down yourself. No matter what that might be, then paper might work for you. Do you have some anecdotes of getting things done system paper-based?

Lars: I think that, you know, some of the listeners will be familiar with this, that we had a presentation at the summer camp, gtdsommercamp.com, plug. We had a presentation there with a completely analog system. And there was— it was just— we talk about this a lot in, you know, the GTD community, and it's interesting to see. And there was a lot of interest in actually, you know, playing around with it. I don't think many people converted to an analog system after that, but it was just nice to see, you know, nice to see the pieces of paper in use and how they were captured there, how they were reused, how they were organized in a small box. I mean, there was just something really attracted in the way that this was organized. And sitting down and I remember Torbjørn, who is now a certified trainer actually in Denmark, he talked also about how he was able to lay everything out. And I remember that visualization, having all your, let's say, each project had its own card in your box and you were able to get an overview of your projects. Put them all out on the table, right? And we had that visualization in some previous course materials when we delivered the Level 1 with this paper system. And it always sort of— I was always curious to see what would it actually look like because the projects, this is something that for me, it works now because I have been able to minimize it to the level that I have. So I have so few projects now, but I've been playing around with having, you know, a PowerPoint presentation with each project on a separate list, or I have made a Gantt chart, or I have put it up on the wall, or I have, you know, really still trying to play around with that format. And perhaps the paper format would actually be even better. So yeah, we've seen it, but, you know, we don't see it a lot. I think the most common thing I probably have seen when it comes to analog version is I still come across more and more people that say, um, I don't want to open my computer when I get home. I want to use GCD when I get home. I want to have that list available, but I have to make it in paper form instead of a digital version. So I see that probably, but again, still not a lot of people, but I think some people. I don't know if Denmark is different from Norway in that sense.

Morten: No, I don't think so. I don't think so. But some, and what we are talking about now is the getting things done list system. So we talk about about the lists for desired outcomes, personal, work-related, next actions lists, waiting for, we talk about agenda for lists for people, someday maybes, etc. And, and to have them, I just, what I suggest we do is that we go for cons first and then we go for the pros for a paper-based system because, you know, We understand these things and I will show you, I have, I'm going to show for those of you who are on YouTube, which is a big.

Lars: Plug, Morten Dørevik.

Morten: Get there, just Google it. You'll find my channel, not Lars, because Lars has more subscribers than me. Please subscribe to me. Okay. So, but, no, to, Let's go cons. So what I see for cons against, you know, what are the arguments against Paper? One is that it doesn't sync. That can also be a con because some people have very highly sensitive things on their list that they don't want synced. So it might be a pro and might be a con. It's not possible to back it up easily. That is probably my highest, you know, negative for this. It's, and it's slower, which might also be a pro for this. What do you see for cons?

Lars: You have to carry it with you, it's bigger. Was it the case that all the pros were also cons?

Morten: Yeah, for some.

Lars: There are really two sides.

Morten: Yeah, there is two sides to the same coin. Yeah, exactly.

Lars: No, but I feel the same way. It's very familiar. I think what would What would, you know, why I don't have a digital or sorry, an analog system. I think some of it is emails, the integration between emails and list managers. Just it makes it so much easier for me that they are all connected so we can follow up with people. That's, I think, you know, so much of the work is already in digital form. So it makes sense that my list manager is there as well. Faster. Easier to organize, easier to search. Just, you know, that I think just, you know, what is just, you know, naturally available when you make things digital is also part of the pros list for me as to why I would want to have it in digital form. But I certainly still use, you know, the analog tools as well. I actually just used the last piece of paper on this one here. So you can see that this There's quite a number of pieces of paper that have been used. And yeah, I'll fill that up. And yeah, oh, you need to refill soon as well. No, so I certainly use that. I have my good old GTD wallet as well that I sometimes use to capture things. So certainly still use it. But yeah, I probably won't be switching anytime soon. But you also take notes in like Semi-analog notes, I guess.

Morten: I wouldn't call that part of my list system, but I use Remarkable for notes, meeting notes, coaching notes, mind maps. I play around and that has been working very well for me. I've been playing around with Rocketbook as well for that. That's more an analog part where you scan pages by taking photo with an app on your phone. But I wanted to show for those who can see the camera, I will go full screen on me. This is— oops, let's not kill the microphone. This is, um, not kill the system. So this is a paper-based loose leaf system called Atoma, A-T-O-M-A, and they are made in Belgium. So if you search for Atoma Belgium, I'm sure you will find this. But it is a paper-based system where you can take, you can take notes And what is really genius about the system, and it's very easy to take a page out and you can put it somewhere else. It's fairly easy. I can't show it on the camera now because it's, um, I have to put it down, but it, uh, to, to put it back. But it is fairly easy to move pages around, and when you move pages around, it makes it possible to make lists that you can, you know, when you finish the paper, you can move it So what I suggest that you, you use in— if you use Anatoma— is to buy page dividers where you have, you know, these divider tabs that shows you you can make lists by the divider tab. So you have only one divider tab called desired outcomes, you have then two pages within that called maybe, you know, desired outcomes personal and then another for work., and then create next actions behind that where you can have one page is office, one is PC, one is etc. So it is possible to create a good system for that in paper-based, but for me it's, it's a little too slow. But I'm sure if I was, and we mentioned that we talked about this briefly in the, in the pre-show, is if you have like a, you know, condition or some Some part of you needs to slow down to make good decisions. So, well, if you have ADHD, maybe that could be a way to slow your thinking down to make sure that what you put on your list is actually something that needs to get done seriously. And I think that might be good. And then if you have, you need to slow yourself down for make high-level thinking. So what goes on your list? Lists really must go on your list. So, and I would like to thank, uh, in the GTD community in Europe, we have two very active people who's also at gtdsommercamp.com, um, uh, Just and Sebastian, who put me on to Atoma. Thank you for putting me on to Atoma. And they just show their tools in the the year before 2022, I think they showed me this and I got a little intrigued.

Lars: Yeah, it looks nice. Looks also like a nice quality and.

Morten: Something you want to work with. And this is the— I have on a, you know, you have more than the plasticky ones, but this is the— I bought the leather one just for the feel and looking. It smells leather. It's gonna be like, never Never underestimate the tactile feeling of something and your list system on your phone will not smell of leather.

Lars: So that's an added bonus for— Oh, maybe the iPhone 15 is coming, right?

Morten: So you never know. It's a little smell.

Lars: Whatever adapter. Yes. But, but yeah, no, coming back to Jukka's original question about a fully non-digital GTD system, we don't see that very often. There is a mix, and that's exactly what Jukka is mentioning as well, that people will capture analog, but the list systems will be digital. And that really is the case for most people. It was very inspiring, like I said, to see Tropian's system. I think we have an article somewhere on the website where he walks through it. So perhaps you can find that, Jukka. I'll see if if I can put it in the show notes as well. It's interesting to see how that works. And yeah, I'll see if I can find that, put it in the show notes.

Morten: And some of the things that's good with Getting Things Done is that, you know, that we've all done this, I'm sure. You found an article, 10 things you didn't know about productivity or something. I think 5 things you must know. And then you start reading and you go, okay. Okay, and then you wasted a lot of time. We call that productivity pornography. But to fiddle around with your system in a productive manner where you're not doing productivity pornography is to, to, to focus on how do I feel about my system? How does it— does it attract me? Am I doing the right things? Do I feel good about what I'm doing? If not, what do I need to change? Do I need to, to look at my higher horizons? Do I have the right direction? Am I in the right work? Am I working at the right place? If something is off in your life, you can use Getting Things Done to get a clear head and then find out what you need to change. I think that is the hallmark of a seasoned GTDer, just the ability to reflect on how you feel about what you're doing in your life.

Lars: Any comments? Yeah, no, but that awareness, that makes sense. And again, that's perhaps also a part of what makes GTD difficult because it's not an awareness that you have the bandwidth to spend on when you don't already use GTD. So perhaps there's a chicken and egg.

Morten: Thing there as well.

Lars: Yeah.

Morten: Should we clarify? Sorry, capture comes before higher horizons, that's for sure. That's not a chicken and egg question.

Lars: Yeah. Yeah, no, exactly. Exactly. So question number 3 is from Ivan. He says, hi guys, as always, love the podcast. Just had a long drive over the last few days, so I crossed off 5 or 6 episodes. Wow. That's an accomplishment. Ivan, well done. Well done. He says, I came across one episode discussing the areas of focus and maintaining them outside of your organizational structure. For projects and next actions. I use OmniFocus, and as of recent, I've been struggling with the shame of taking on too much work. Angry smiley or sad smiley. As a result, my structure has gotten very complex and I'm having a hard time sorting out what I'm committed to and if I'm committed to the right things. I'm doing a mini weekly review to get in order, but I also think simplifying my system could help a lot. I'm wondering what is the recommended organization structure in a tool like OmniFocus. As an owner of business, I have lots of areas of responsibility, even with people underneath me. Currently, they are all in OmniFocus with projects and next actions under them. I'm playing around with stripping all of that and only going with— and then he has a headline says Business, and then he has Active Projects, Maintenance Projects, and On-Hold Projects. And then a personal headline with Active Projects, Maintenance Projects, and On-Hold Projects as well. He says this would greatly simplify my system as well as give me clarity on how much work I've taken on at any time. I'm curious on your thoughts. And where do all of the single non-project Next actions go? Keep up the awesome work. Always enjoy the lesson from Ivan.

Morten: Thanks so much. Thank you so much, Ivan. The last, the last question is very easy to answer. It goes on a single actions list. Very easy context called the single actions. So that's that one out of the way. So how would you tackle the rest of.

Lars: Them? Yes, I should have taken these ones. No, again, I think this comes back to what we spoke about before, you know, the simplification that we've gone through. And this, you know, so he refers to having this set up in OmniFocus, but this could probably, yeah, you can relate from your OmniFocus days, but also from my Todoist days, how much, you know, the structure in there organized, from, from areas of focus. I would have that long list, and simplifying that really was, was a benefit. I have seen sometimes that I could perhaps miss it in the way that I set things up right now, but, you know, in his simplification, it really sounds like it would be a big help to actually set it up this way. So he would go to active projects, maintenance projects, and on-hold projects. I would actually be curious to hear Well, it's a bit hard to ask an email for clarification, but I'm wondering what the value in active projects and maintenance project would be in the difference. I'm wondering whether it's really— maybe it's.

Morten: A recurring project, maybe, I don't know.

Lars: Yeah, that's what it sounds like, but I'm wondering whether it's really this is business critical for keeping the business running and the other ones are really projects for developing the business or new ideas. I'm wondering whether that might be the the distinction, because then I would be able to use that as a priority. These are things that actually— these are projects that are more important because we want to maintain the business. It would be really nice if we could develop the business as well, but the starting point must be to actually keep the business going. So I'm wondering whether that might be the distinction. Anyway, certainly simplification of that projects list sounds like a good idea for Ivan. I'm still wondering whether I will go back and actually start to make the system more complex again. But for now, I'm really happy to have that very simple list. I just have my one called Projects, Projects-VL for Vital Learning. That's where I have my project for work. Same at home, Projects Private, and I have my projects there. And I've really simplified that a lot. I work a lot more with my, my areas of focus now as well and have that as a separate list and really enjoy not, not blending those two together.

Morten: I'm just reminded of that this is, you know, and I would really like to, you know, if we had one or two coaching hours with Ivan, we would sort this out fairly quickly because then you will look at your system and then, but we are not there, Ivan. There is, by the way, for those of you who are listening, you know, all the Getting Things Done coaches in the world are really good at what they're doing. I'm sorry, but we have been dabbling around with this for a long time. So if you find your regional GTD coach and ask for a couple of hours of their time to look at your system and see what they can find, that might be a good idea. But when I'm listening to his question, my gut feeling is telling me that he has a lot of things he's not applying the seriously filter within what I call the bullshit filter, seriously filter before making a decision. That might be because you know that the day has only 24 hours. You can't fill it with more. You have to have a life somewhat if you want. And then there is always more to do than there is time. And if that is true, you have to— because what I see a lot, I don't know if you see this, Lars, but I see a lot when people are, you know, been doing getting things done for a while and, you know, starting getting, you know, getting a knack of it, they tend to capture a lot. And they clarify a lot without discretion at all. And their systems are bloated. There is too much. And it's kind of just look at the system, you know, I get nauseous. You know, how can you manage this? Giving me a heart attack just looking at this. I could not relate to this. And then just, you know, make decision on what really is important, that really needs to get done. And focus on that. And then let's just say the rest of it, there is no time or delegate to some person, learn how to delegate by using the natural planning model well. That might be my take on this. What is your gut feeling when you listen to this or you read this?

Lars: Yeah, that sounds likely. And I think perhaps it comes back to the Clarify episode once again, to really be much more aware of that. We did that. And again, thanks to Gregory for pointing us to making that episode because I have heard from multiple people that they actually really enjoyed that episode. And then we'll refer back to it. And I think it'll be important because again, how much we put on our lists, that's, I think, one of the key takeaways if I reflect back on my system over the last couple of years where I've, as I've mentioned on the podcast, really been trying to minimize the number of active projects that I have. And that is that is now, I think, now it's starting to look like what I want it to look like, where I can actually now head on over to that someday maybe list. So I'm really, you know, being really tough on the stuff that shows up and really saying no to a lot more, because there used to be so many things that I would put on the list that I would, that would be nice to get done, or that I would like to do. And there are some things that I have to do. And again, coming back to that, that mix, really starting to be much more aware of this, I think, because that then does— if you're not really good at clarifying, then you end up with that big, big projects list. Could also be a delegation question. So if I would sit at the, you know, a place in the organizational structure where it sounds like he has a lot of people to delegate to, then I think the delegation part could also be something to keep in mind to make sure that we have the right areas of responsibility, that we have the right projects with the right people. Just a thought, but one book that I'm listening to right now is the Holacracy book. So I'm just now reading about that. I think I've read it a while back, but now I'm rereading it now. We're playing around with some of the ideas and concepts in it for meetings, but also having those circles and having that responsibility and ownership making sure that it's distributed to the right people. Perhaps that could be something to also listen to. It's a, I think it's a 4-hour read on Audible. So it's pretty quick. Perhaps that could be used as inspiration as well to make sure that we have the right people doing the right things and not overwhelming his lists.

Morten: Yeah. And we made an episode on the natural planning model some time back. And I'm sure if you look in the episode, I'm sure Lars would put which episode number that is in there. In the show notes so you can find.

Lars: It. The problem is that— sorry?

Morten: Number 10. Number 10.

Lars: Okay.

Morten: So, but I'm sure you will put it in show notes anyway, wouldn't you? I can do that. Great. No, I'm just thinking that imagine, and I talking to you, listener now, or the viewer, imagine a reality where you have, you know, the, the, the best amount of the right things to do, and only that. So that when you close the office or leave your work at the end of the day, you feel good about what you've done. You feel that you've made meaningful progress on what's most important for you and your company that you are a part of. And that you get home and you do the same at home. You do the most meaningful work or use time on the most meaningful relationships that you have, so that you feel good about who you are and your life. That is getting things done. If you're not feeling that— I'm not saying that getting things done cannot fix everything. It can't fix conditions. It can't fix mental illnesses. But it can help you live a more meaningful life. And ask yourself, are you there where you want? Are you there where you want to be with your life? If not, ask yourself, how can I change this? What can I do? Does that make sense to you, Lars?

Lars: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think the last, coming back to Ivan's question about simplifying this again, one angle that I also like to to explore is what are we optimizing for. So whenever we're doing something, we are optimizing for one thing. And what I tend to see is that people try to optimize for multiple things at once, and that really just optimizes for none of them, right? So a classic example could be the shared projects list, which, you know, that could also be what is happening, that he's trying to maintain an overview of all the different projects going on. And that can certainly be helpful when you sit down with the team, right? So you want to have an overview of the projects going on, coming back to Holacracy again, that's one of the concepts there for a circle, the active projects. What's the status on those? Great to have a shared overview of that. That does not help me when I sit down to do my work. So I want to have my own separate list. So that's part of the reason why it was so helpful for me to set up my own projects list, simplify it away from the areas of focus and accountability, and just keep it plain and straightforward because that gives me an overview. What am I working on right now so I can actually get those projects done and get some new ones on the list? I used to have, you know, I don't know, I don't want to pick a random number, but let's say a really large number going on at the same time. And obviously, it would just take so much longer for them to be completed. So more focused on fewer projects, that helps me with just having that single list. Because if they're spread out in too many different locations, I'm sure there are tricks in OmniFocus where you can see all the projects going on. For me, having that more simple, straightforward list is a.

Morten: Big help. Simplifying your getting things done is never wrong. I think David would, well, let me paraphrase him. It has to be as complex as it needs to be, but not more. So, you know, as simple as you can get it, but not more simple. It has to encompass your life and your reality and be lean and mean and fast to use and If you then know how to use it well, you will maintain it and your head will be used for what is intended, for being present and being innovative and problem-solving and enjoying life.

Lars: Yes.

Morten: Am I wrong or was that the last question?

Lars: No, that's another. That's what we picked out. We had those 3 questions. So thanks to Alex, thanks to Juka, thanks to Ivan for the question. So we do capture them in the spreadsheet that we have for all of the listener questions. So when you send them in, we do put them there. If you have any other questions, be sure to let us know. It might take a while, but we will get to them. We promise. So thanks. And hopefully this was helpful for those of you who posed those questions and for those of you listening along as well.

Morten: And before we leave this subject, I think I will go back and listen, but I think you said this was episode 94. And I think that's— yeah, it is 96, but you said 94. And I think that's because it's listener questions number 14. So that's probably correct. 94. Yeah. So just to set things straight here. So we will, maybe I will bleep that into the, the, the, uh, that's okay.

Lars: But we have smart listeners. I'm sure they will, they will manage that. But we have something else to remind them about, which is that we are approaching number 100 and we are closer than I might have said. So whether it's 94, uh, or 96, we are slowly approaching that. And as we've mentioned earlier, we were hoping to, uh, ask a favor of those of you out there listening. Um, this is This is a big milestone for us. We never thought that we would make it this far. No, but it's, you know, it's, we really want to make it a special episode. So we'd love to hear from you, whether it's a quick email, an audio snippet, even better, a quick video. Some of you have already let me know that you will make a video, really appreciate that. Please do record it and send it to us. Hoping to hear from as many of you as possible. Podcast@mysalearning.dk is a great place to send it. So be sure to record that. Doesn't have to be fancy, doesn't have to be advanced or high quality. Just a quick hi will do and we'll make a fun episode for episode number 100.

Morten: Yeah, if you have a question or if you think that we have helped you, help celebrate our 100th episode, that would be great. And we are now at the end of the, the story of today. So we are, these episodes getting longer and longer. We are now at 50 minutes. So will you take us out, Loris?

Lars: Yes. And we can do that the quick way, which is just a reminder for you to head on over to vitallearning.eu. Have a look around. You'll see all of the different offerings, Getting Things Done, Crucial Conversations, et cetera. You can learn more information about that and you can find links to the different country websites in the Nordics Plus. So we'll find all the information there, vitallearning.eu. If you are outside of the Nordics Plus, then head on over to cruciallearning.com.

Morten: To find your local partners. Indeed. And if you like what you do and want to show your appreciation as well as sending us an episode, Sorry, a video or audio or an email for the 100th episode. You can get the episode. No, that would be a little too much. But if you, you know, like and subscribe, you know, help us grow our audience by showing, you know, showing your appreciation with a star or something, or preferably 5 somewhere. That will be cool. We have a lot of people listening on Spotify who's been all of them very positive. So thank you for that. Apple Podcasts as well. Actually, Audible, we are even there. And I think we are even in Google Podcasts now. And I don't, I'm not sure if they have a rating system, but if you have a rating system in your podcast or you're listening on YouTube, please give us a rating. Thank you. And with those words, I will say Like always, thank you for listening and stay safe and stay productive.

Lars: Bye-bye. Bye everyone.