S2E244 Getting Things Done with David Allen
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Welcome to its a good life podcast today. We've got a special treat for you with diving into the archives to share one of our favorite episodes from the past. Hope you enjoy.

I am very excited to have the personal productivity guru David island on our show alleged to have you.

Thanks for coming, and thanks for the I want .

to dive right in to the methodology. I've getting things done. And for those who we are new to, David island has been interesting to me because David was connected to corporations and what's called the gtd movement.

Many people in my space is a movement they missed. This is some of the most amazing, and stuff like they, they feel like theyve seen the cure for cancer. People are so confused today. So, I mean, the culture is designed to overwhelm me at today. But IT takes two to tango.

IT does. Well, anybody listening to this just look out on the world. It's fine. It's not confused and right. It's not overwhelmed.

What's the issue? How you are engaged with the world is the issue, and that's what I uncovered, was the algorithms about how to get a hold of appropriate engagement. Are you appropriately gauge with your health?

Are you properly gauge with your clients? Are you appropriate engage with your spouse? Are you appropriately gauge with your kids?

Are you appropriately gage with your dog? Are you appropriate engagement with your office space? Are you and it's not about finishing all this stuff.

It's not even about working harder. Yes, sometimes you got to put your shoulder to them. We will yeah that stuff.

But it's really about how do I create appropriate engagement so that I can be totally present with whatever IT is i'm doing. Which happens to be the most productive and healthy state to Operate from in the corporate we're on. We've done trainings for, I think, forty percent of the fortune one hundred companies.

And what are deliverable is an installed fought process is and you know, come on, productivity got a lot of baggage as a word here really does. You know, people think, oh, harder work. Is that right? Sweat, longer hours or whatever, whatever their image of that is.

But quite Frankly, productivity is simply achieving desired results, right? And your desired result could just be an experience. But if you go on a vacation to relax and you don't relax, that's on productivity, right? You go to a party buggy and you don't boogie, you know, that productive party, you know, but most people don't have framed that way. But outcome and action, as you know, it's really key elements of the thought process.

You think we're still conditioned by the industrial revolution that is all about turn in jobs. And as the Henry ford model, it's all about know the list. I mean, you look at folks today, I have six kids and then I get a lot of people come to us and how to do this and how do that, and they show me their list of what they're doing on a daily basis.

And it's everything. Is this assume need to be the chauhan that we have to go to this and this and this. We have the fourteen things to do over a two day period time with the kids and go go to this two or and do this, and there's no life in their life.

Well, if the stress of opportunity, you know, one of the easiest ways to really, really relax been a crisis, why? What happens is you start to engage in the behaviors that make you really clear. You get a very specific desired .

result calls.

right? You get very clear about the next action because you've got to get going. You course correct rapidly when you need to do that. That's why a lot of people move into their zone in a crisis. sure.

Because because of that yeah and you time disappears and my first ted talk that they did a clear mot, I gave an example of how that works. And so in a crisis, what he does is IT. So simplifies your focus and you get involved in outcome and action, and you get engaged in that. The thing as you don't have to wait for a crisis to do that, you just need the same kind of outcome and the same kind of action. And so for so, you know, I just figured out the algoma about how you could get in your zone, have time, disappear and be totally present all the time without having to have a crisis forcing you to do that.

So awesome again as sugar sive opportunity because, see, the problem is that when you're not in a crisis, there's a bigger one that's call all the demons at the gate come rushing at you oh my god, the neighbors putting their kids into a listened to music in mozart's put age two they're going to get into harvard oh my god, I need oh my god no so and of course, the social media and the internet have just quite dripped exponentially. Really the opportunity. I mean, come on, you have the world in your pocket in terms of things you could be studying. How many things could you be doing right now? Yeah.

there's two David Allen quotes that I just love. One, your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. K, I love that quote. Just tell the folks what that means to you.

Well, I discovered this thirty five years ago, and you know, had a mentor who taught me about just dumping everything out of my head, everything out of my head, and empty your head. And now in the last decade or so, cognitive science is basically proven that that's true. Your head can handle about four things bags before IT.

But IT starts to feel overwhelmed, confused, right? That your brain didn't evolve to do that. IT didn't evolve to remember, remind, prioritize our manage relationships between more than four things.

So as soon as you start adding in stuff like that, your head is just such a crappy office. And everybodies, almost everybody probably listened. And this is still using your head as your office.

But trying to think strategically, trying to manage, you know, the stuff, the dreams and the five years and the ten things you trying to manage that in your head is impossible, right? Is impossible to do. You've got to externalize that stuff.

What IT does that if IT freeze you up? IT doesn't make you stupid, actually, just on the opposite. What IT does IT freeze up your mind from not having the job of remembering, reminding you, need to finish the thinking about your stuff, and then park the results out there.

And a trusted system that freezed you up to them, listen to your internal intuition, got spirit. Whatever is that real? The real driver into of your prior, write yourself .

clear as the thoughts come. You have one place. You show your little pocket book on stage, which was awesome you've had for thirty years. Idea comes right IT down. It's out of your head into a throw away.

Probably eighty and ninety percent of those thoughts. sure. I just don't know which ones of the good ones yet, right? I have to get into another friend of mine to then see. So I learned over capture years ago and then just make sure I clean IT up before long.

So know when you come back from a conference, if you come back from a meeting, you've got a tony notes, right? You need to them filter that rapidly and go through IT. There's I hate to say that, but probably a lot of these fifteen hundred people that are going to come back and have a whole lot of notes that are likely a wind that have been their home stacks, right? They come back in the and sit on the side of the desk and they feel guilty if they do anything with that are liberate, you know. So my stuff is extremely immediately practical and visible.

IT is. And that's when the reasons we're excited because we feel these focus are going back to a coach who sit in their walk into the process, who was reading the book and goes through the training friday. I was doing this so we could catch IT and help people and walk to the process, because i'm all about, you know, education without implementation is merely entertainment, right? And so, powerful stuff.

This is a quote that I love. IT says, people think a lot, but most of that thinking is of a problem, not about IT. I love that concept that you most people are thinking a lot, but they're thinking of a project or situation, but they're not thinking about this, right? And there's such a .

radical differences, huge that that sounds like, but everything.

but what is worry and what is creativity?

sure. Well, we've finally know kind of unpacked the real mission of this whole getting things done for me and my wife and people say, g, what's my big y and what's the big vision I have that we have a world with no problems, only projects. Because the only thing you're going to call a problem or worry about is something that some part of you assume culter should be different.

You does not engage in making IT. So so you didn't complain about gravity this morning, and you have causing your body parts to say, right, right? People are dying because of gravity, but nobody complaints about that.

why? Because I know they can change IT, right? So you start to identify a problem.

You know, should I get divorced or not? Is that a project? You bet? What's the outcome? Get clarity in my relationship, right? So the subway of defining what are the projects, what are the things that actually have my attention.

And again, anybody listening to this, you don't have to go very far and where to apply this thought process, it's got what's got your attention where here's your mind gone that you've been listening to even me and bryan talk for just a few minutes that wasn't about anything we were saying, right? Wherever that was is something that you're not yet appropriate engaged with that's not bad, is just an indicator of where the work is to do this and invention. And henri ford is this told the industrial thing, somebody very shister gated person's.

I G David, what you've uncovered, IT, is essentially the hindford process for knowledge work, right in of the words, what is the process here? Because knowledge work means you got to think, to figure out what to do, as opposed to the doing is self ever in front of you, which is the old industrial thing, where Taylors work and so forth are just about making that work flow more efficient. And even these days, with sophisticated lean and Angel and screen and all of that kind of stuff, those are all about the external work flow, right? Somebody very accurate said, you know, gtd is leaned for the brain. No waste items of what's go on on.

Here's how I communicate IT. In my own mind is there is a difference between efficient and effective. And I think corporations right now are really struggling with this process.

I think it's why I actually think as much as gtd has been this worldwide phenomenon in this huge movement, I think by far as best days are yet to come. We help companies we're working with through our process, and they're so caught up in themselves. And there's layer on top of layer on top of layer.

And everything is about efficiency. But in the war we live in today, like for example, the technology can make a efficient. You can find a technology to walk your dog and put your kids to bed, but there's a more effective way.

And the simplicity this and I think this is really the promise of the book that sounds like, and in meeting you and get in, connect with you hyperbola ay is not something I would associate with you. You kind of an understated, cool cat. And yet stress free productivity, that's what the sub adding on the book is.

And I remember when I first read that, I looked at that and I went because I had heard things that people, that all you've got to hear her, David, on, and we had met people in common, and people, you ve got to meet David, and you ve got to do this. And people said, we got to have David, your conferences. And so I get the book, and I see this, this sub heading.

Now today, we live in a war where if you're on the apprentice on tuesday, your book comes out on thursday. Not I spent thirty years and fifty thousand hours consulting organizations of all sorts and turning them around by becoming more effective. I go to the look and I went, oh, my goodness.

And as I started to apply the process, I came face to face as much as i'm the personal growth guy and the seminar guy and the head of the coach, like, I fell in to every stereotype the book had to offer. I fell into every trap that you talked about. I was like, and I love system ization, because to me, that brings freedom.

Yes, you know, if you think about the california system, I know you live in nave for a long time. Sana barba, you think at the dots on the road, that little simple dots in occasion, little light bump, is what stops total chaos from happening here. Because i'm in my lane.

I have freedom, I can change lanes. I have freedom, I can go to speed I want, I can drive the car I want. But at the end of the day, that freedom for thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of people to commute together is maintained because of the structure and these simple little routines. And if you stay inside the lines.

IT is more stressed. That allows you to think about stuff while you're driving right sides. Driving yeah talking .

about that yeah right. And so what you're looking for is that type of life. And the goal is that the process of prioritization were okay. I want to set my mind to the things that are really most meaningful and important to me.

Yeah, i'm going to put a strange twist on what you said. No, there is the efficiency and effectiveness out of that dichotomy, that distinction. And yet at the deepest level, it's all efficiency.

Because at the deepest level, you are a purpose, spirit, some level, there's something for you to complete right here to express, expand, grow, change. When does brian really show up? When does David really show up? Yeah, right.

So we're here to do that. So there is an efficiency factor call how well are you doing that? That's why I identified the different horizons.

So that's why, in a way, I don't deal with your shots. I deal with what's true. But what's true can take on lots of different layers.

So once you give appropriate attention, brand and what has your attention, find out what really has your attention, which, by the way, once you appropriate engage with, will open up what really has your attention. This is a deep, big onion to appeal. So the process itself can be applied to any of these multiple levels.

So all you have to do is just the attention to what has your attention start to engage with the appropriate and IT opens space. IT opens the space for the visions to show up that are already there. They really are. Are there part of something .

that's already there? Is this, as you dolf into the discipline meditation? This was A A simultaneous dynamic.

Good for me. I was exposed to the discipline of contemplative prayer about thirty years ago. Thomas keeking, up in some mass colorado. And, you know, for me to get quiet and you know not the attached to thought and those kinds of things, I mean, initially was a arius.

I mean, my initial, you know, first few months in the endeavor were basically me with a baseball bat beating back my thoughts. You know that, and then over time now, as you get connected to this more mindful situation, becoming unattached to those things, you truly have a chance. Like you say, the onion starts to peel, and you really get to the heart of the matter, you know, what am I really here for? What am I really do? And yeah, what is really important, because what keeps coming up to your mind is what's really important.

And I kind of came matter from a strange angle, too, my first exploration of you to told me I was going to be a productivity guru, and especially in the business or corporate world, know, I said I would come on. You know, I was going to be an american history teacher. yeah.

And then as i'd began the spiritual explorations, and a lot of that was because I was having some very deep spiritual experiences, and I was trying to make sense of where they came from, get a hold of IT again. I've always been fascinated, interesting. And if I could look back, I couldn't told you this when I started, but the thread has run all the way from the time I was conscious as a kid.

I've been fascinated by what you couldn't see and how is effective, what you could 嗯， that there are invisible things so much that you can see emotions, you can see your mind, but there are a lot of other invisible things that are making things run. And I thought, well, if I could get a hold of that talk about lazy, if I could get a hold of what's really making the universe run, then, wow, I could be way ahead of the game. And I could make step move just by thinking about IT, right?

My first career, my first job, was as a magician at age five on the sidewalks of palestine, texas. I charged five cents to remind a little magic show. So I was always fascinated by the stuff you couldn't see.

And that's why I got involved in. I thought I was going to be interested in in law, and I was an exchange student in switzerland for a year. And that sort of opened me up to sort the field of arts and culture in ways I never seen before.

So I got very interested in the liberal arts, and then philosophy was my first interest in college. But then philosopher was boring because they wound up proving their original hypothesis, using their original hypothesis. Yeah, well, that's of what we call a circle thing.

no. So, but I got more interested to why that philosopher started without hypotheses, and why that one started with another one. And that's how I got involved, an intellectual history, history of thought.

And we didn't use that word back then. But IT was really about paradigms, and how paradigms m affected perception and performance. And that's that sort of LED me into you then expLoring a lot more.

What were these paradigms? So how did we get in touch with them? So I always been fascinated. How do you get in touch with them?

So I have made from the more spiritual experience side, but then discovered that, well, yeah, we are spiritual beings, but we're here in the material world. So you can just leave this if you're here, there's something to be engaged with this world. So again, as I said, about learning to be in this world, but not up this world.

Yeah, find out where we're here and in a way, and now I don't share this necessarily with a lot of people, but the whole concept of getting things done was about the two elements that I think are the critical elements, completion and creativity. We are here to finish what we've had put in motion and be accountable for that carma color. Whatever is you put in motion that you've identified with, you're going to eat.

It's going to come back to you, like that is a rule of the law of the universe, right? And then you can't stop creating if you're conscious. So now you not only handle what you have put in motion and handle that with integrity and then also be accountable for where you're putting your conscious focus. So completion and creativity, and that's really .

the essence of what getting that accountability and creativity are not often used in the same sentence that way. And that's why there's many people who are so heavily mind that they're no earthly good. That's right, right? And so haven't IT anchored and rooted into something that effects, you know, for me, IT became very simple to me as I grew and and learned IT was impact and improve the lives of people.

That was that impact and improve the lizard people. And that's where my thought life is. That's where every angle, interview, every process, every everything I do is, how can this impact and how can this improve? And we turned out into a business, yes, you know, so of people often come and say, well, you know, should I start a coaching company? Should I do this? And I laugh.

And welcome to our headquarters in california ago, all right, here's eighty million dollars worth overhead. And I say, this is not what I would desire for anybody, you know and IT wasn't what I wanted. But in order to get the outcomes that were necessary for transformation, IT wasn't known for me to get stand innovation on stage that just didn't do IT for me, just not how i'm word IT was the impact. Six nine months a year, two years, three years, five years. And now we have clients with us for twenty years and twenty three years.

Yeah well, you know, people have often made the distinction, the contradictions between being and doing. And for my experience, the people who are truly most tapped into being are big doors, right? So there is a very clear relationship between accountability yeah and creative.

No, that's good. That's very good. There's so much we can have into and there's so much I love to talk about. But there's one technique you talked about today that really can perk me up. And i've read about IT, i've seen your content, i've watched this, but I actually watching you go through your slides where you were talking about your little to do list. And I just thought the distinction was IT was so simple, IT was so profound and i'd love to share IT with the folks listen right here and if you could just share a little bit between the the standard to do list ah and then the gtd to do yeah well most people's organization .

are in complete list of still unclear stuff that can produce as much stress as they were believed to begin with because people look at and you're got they're still decisions and stuff I need to think about and not how the energy to think and decide to stop reminding me i'm overwhelmed. So most people's list have things like mom, or bank or tooth .

or birthday .

or holiday or VP of marketing. Mem.

yeah, just something.

And got lesson. That's the first step, is to the defy, something that has your attention. Well, why do write? Mom, well, our birthday coming, what are you going to do? Better birthday? I don't know what to a Better birthday, and that's the problem. So yes, most to do list are the first step or they're just the beginning of the first step of the g dd process. But then what you need to do is you need to be able to say, okay, what exactly that those things mean to you.

And the meaning of those things is, is that actually table yes or no? And if IT is, what's the action step that you would need to take if you had nothing else to do but mom's birthday right now, what do we you do had nothing else to do, we get closure on that. Where would you go? Would you write an email, would serve the web, call your sister, whatever, to make that determination? And will one action complete this? No, so you have a project.

So now you have an outcome, give bomb a good birthday party, and you have an action step call to your sister and see what he thinks about what we should do for mom birthday party right now. Those things, the outcome goes on a project list, along with all the other things like the vacation of the holiday, hire the vice president to whatever. But you also then have very specific actions that are about each one of those things.

And so you actually have to unpack essentially the initial thought that you captured. You actually did unpack that. So the in basket, my in basket and what we teaches the end bassa the capture place should capture anything that's potentially meaningful.

Potentially meaningful, you don't know yet, but that might be there might be something you might need to do. We're decided about those conference notes are about the email that's in there. And so all that stuff that we're collecting those are not listed as such.

They're just content that you then need to clarify. Once you clarify, you can delete a lot, you can file a lot of references, you can finish a lot of two minute actions, and then you wind up with an inventory of actions you need to take and projects that you need to complete. But that takes thinking IT, takes decision making about that.

So you need to take a another two steps so you capture that, you clarify, and then you organize the results of that thinking in some trusted place. So when you got for errs, you'll see every single iron you need to run, doesn't need you need to do all about, right? But you're not missing .

anything but to what you're doing is you're freeing up the heads space by not just doing something that makes you think choose, decide work and overwhelm you. So you're looking at a list of pain. It's actually you take the extra step.

Be more specific if we have a phrase in the coaching that said, if you want to be terrific, you gotto be specific. And so you push IT to the paci c and IT doesn't mean that the time or day is done next to IT, you know. But now it's like, okay, what am I going to work on? And then you're free.

You're free because you've gotten that your head right and down. Now here's the thing. I've been accused to be in two old school.

Now we have built kind of the gold start contact management system crm in the real state of space. So we have invested heavily in technologies. We had huge technologies of pavana company.

But you said something that I have lived by, and I continued lived by. And my Younger mEllen's als around me on occasion, give me great grief ever, which is, I still use panel paper and I still write things out. Just give us your perspective on the dynamic of writing things adversus just digital.

I like both that i'm not really expert. All the neurologist about that. We do know you'll remember stuff more if you're actually physically writing IT out, you know, otherwise, I like the digital world.

I use IT a lot. So i'm capturing a lot of things with penny paper because that's it's easier, it's faster, it's ubiquity. You don't have no wifi, no battery is required and you need ubiquitous ly kind of wherever you are.

So I like that and I have lovely fountain pendants and a journal that I love writing and and I think that's great. So just my own experiences, I think values for different kinds of things. Ways to do that, even like you write on an electronic White board, yeah also is still externalizing IT still gets you physically involved, but even the computer gets you physically involved. I don't think that there's a really too much in my own experience.

too much of a big difference. My mentor gone always told me to buy a really expensive journal. yeah.

And then he said, now make the thoughts that you put down inside. They're really valuable yeah and for some ways that was thirty years ago. It's always stuck with me and in a communicate. It's been great having you and thanks for making .

the to my pleasure you're got a great group of folks, your staff or fabulous boy. Da.

I appreciate. All right, here's our rapid fire questions. You're on the hot seats.

Sit here we go. All right. What's the best piece of advice .

you've ever received? Let go and let god.

I love IT love IT. Where do you get that from?

My spiritual coach, nice.

yeah. Which who you reference often and give a lot of credit. De, that's wonderful. Number two, what one talent or gift do you wish a possessed sed that you currently don't?

elegant. Small talk. I've always been jealous of people who just knew how to do that at a party.

Here is so anything.

And they find actually, my spiritual ach was one of the best I ever met in the world. He knew how to meet people where they are, and he knew how to engage them and something that made them feel fabulous. Talking about that dumb as silly as a little simple little things yeah, and having something to talk about because i'm really a cause of introvert you know, I stand out and do the kind of stuff kind of like you do too but that's not my so I actually have to work and engaging with people yeah so that my one great okay.

what book has been most instrumental .

in your life? There's no one really well, the bible tile teaching, I could put all of those kind of category when I was doing a lot of that kind of explorations.

I think getting things done been the most instrument like, well.

did if you really want to learn something? right? IT, yeah.

right. yeah. No doubt that's great. alright. There's a movie that you just any time it's on, you can stop and watch some of IT or all of IT. It's a movie you've watched over over again.

Is or anyone that band come on.

That's the second time i've heard that.

Now why is that? It's just so great. Brazil is is just so perfect in that role, along with whoever this side cake is playing, the neurotic yeah OK. And I don't know if just such fun and the music great and such a great story. My wife is not nurseys arly a big guy, flink, kind of, but he loves that to my struck would be up to now.

So for you and your that's great. Okay, last but not least, something still left out there on your bucket list.

A few places to go that I i've been pretty much all over the world, but I haven't been to new zealand or iceland yeah and those would be on my that my list to do that is, so far I got ten. I live in amsterdam. Had been there five years.

There's so much to experience, just an amsterdam I made so much culture is so much art, so much great food now. And I mean, a lot, a lot of things. So, you know, i'm of living my bucket 里。

Yeah, yeah. I mean, europe is so amazing where you go, like you think about the state and you go from state to state. But the category fried chicken and the crows junior looks the same. And you go thirty miles, you go forty miles into different country, different language, different culture.

different food. And also, come on, you know, brian, when you get to be seventy three, like me, yes, there's a whole lot of stuff. My life is just full of that.

I've done so just taking a walk yeah, you and we have to put our wonderful little cabuli controls down couple of months ago, so we're going to get another one. Just doing that is the easy, simple stuff, powerful and walk in park, my wife, good food and drink. Yeah.

we love. It's a good life.

Can complain.

I will say this to always on my flight home. I would always refuel in either Greenland or iceland to get ireland. And I will say both places.

If you get a chef, you do island, do Greenland. And IT is spectacular. Okay, the north, the lights in island, i've seen the northern lights four times, but the northern lights in icon was the side, I will never forget.

And if you've seen as an appetizer, I don't. You've seen the movie watter mindy, the secret life of water is fantastic and there's a whole period they are based in in iceland. I think you've get a great kick out of so good stuff. Well, you are a cool dude.

And you know.

I just really appreciate you. I really appreciate what you do and how you do IT. And I think it's made a great difference in a lot of people's lives, and it's brought a lot of clarity to a lot of people.

And even though IT scared around the packaging of productivity, I think it's really helping people to free up and focus on really live in Better lives and be in freer in the mind, heart, spirit. And I think that's the gift you bring. And that's what I see in the work. And a very thankful and just proud you can join us. Thanks for flying in from of .

the day you for the invitation.

Well, thanks again for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this interview as much as I did. This has truly been a great day we've had here.

I'm gonna you over to the man who gets things done for me, our producer, David li. Mister li, take IT away. And David is, by the way, our producer back home, an irishman who introduced me to David Allen in the first place.

So great stuff. Thanks for joining me to day. Dave IT over to you.

Great stuff. Thanks, brian, and thanks to you, David, for sharing all that content with us today. And as we finish up today, i'll leave you with a little marriage blessing from bronze mom trays made the road rise up to meet you and may the wind always be at your back, may the rain falls soft upon your fields and the sunshine warm upon your face and until we meet again, may god hold you in the halloween his hand see you next time.