Getting Things Done

In this episode we present an excerpt from a talk that David gave in front of a live audience. It covers procrastination, what type of people are the most susceptible to getting stuck, and how to stop procrastinating on your taxes….and everything else.

A bit of a repeat if you've listened to my other tips, but one I just wanted to reinforce. Outcome and Action Thinking. Outcome and action are the two core elements of productivity. What do I want to produce or experience? And how do I need to allocate or reallocate my resources to make it happen? So that kind of thinking, as simple as that sounds, is something that we need to train ourselves to do. It's really a cognitive muscle you need to work with. So anything that's got your attention, anything that's either worrying or bothering you. That's the time to practice this sort of cognitive muscle. To use it. What would you like to have true? Instead of whatever is currently true. And how do you need to reallocate, or allocate your attention, your activities, your resources, to make that happen? For those of you asking "What's that huge pile of books back there David?" Frankly, the outcome was, I had a bunch of archives of all of the translated versions of my book in the different languages that we were going

You know this is another one of those kind of out of the box things but this could be a really good time to do some reflection on new stuff. New relationships. New ways to manage your relationships. New ways of managing yourself. Being able to work more independently, even if you're still part of an organization, and need to be connected to it. We grow with challenges, so the challenges that we may all be in right now or experiencing in some way, shape, or form they're going to teach a strength, patience, and tolerance I've discovered after my 75 years. That tends to show up and expand, and kind of add to the quality of my life. Add to the relaxation of my life. Add to the focus of my life. One very useful key many times, is journaling. If you're not doing that already you might want to consider just sitting down and just writing. Just writing out. I've done journaling on both my computer as well as with a great fountain pen and a wonderful journal, over the years in my life. There have been times that was re

Upgrade, you know if you have any downtime at all, with that kind of backed off time that we have, in the pandemic. It's the situation we're dealing with right now. This is a time to think, it's part of one of those backlog things, one of those things you may have had in the back of your mind. I need to upgrade my computer. I need to upgrade my operating system. I need to upgrade this piece of software. I need to upgrade any of my technology, and any of my tools. If you're painting, do you have the right brushes? Do you need to upgrade those? If you're playing the flute, or the piano, do you need to upgrade any of the music that you have to be able to practice with? So I know this is kind of an off-the-wall question. But, a good idea to sort of access, is there anything that you might want to bring up to current speed? That you enjoy, that you love, or you need to be involved with. I love Kevin Kelly's book from a few years ago, talking about the inevitable, talking about the inevitable trends that are happen

How much money do you actually have in your bank account? How do you and the people in your family really feel right now? Really.  What's really going on in your professional environment? In your personal environment? Not generalizing or exaggerating. Most people have a tendency, me too, to generalize. Everybody's leaving. It's so awful. Everybody's leaving the company, what do you mean? Everybody's leaving. It's so awful. Everybody's leaving the company? What do you mean? Well, Sally said she thought she might want to get a new career. And over 35 years of my consulting and coaching practices, I've often seen, And over 35 years of my consulting and coaching practices, I've often seen, all I have to do is to start to address, what is the real current reality?   And there are lots of ways to do that, but I would highly recommend you examine whether you're running any exaggerations or generalizations. That may be creating more pressure than you need. What's really true? What do you know what's really true? What

I'll steal a play from Marie Kondo's work that she's been doing, by getting people to clean up closets and clean up their environment. And only keep the things you love and that turn you on. Mine's a little more universal. Look, there's a lot of things that don't turn you on that you still need to keep. There's a lot of things that you need to kind of look at and say, yeah I'm not sure whether I want to throw that away or not. That's fine. But it's not a bad idea, especially in times like these, if you have any kind of extra time at all, to, as I say, bring up the rear guard. I've mentioned this in several of my other two-minute tips, but this is sort of the universal clean up. Clean up your computer. Clean up your closets. Clean up the boot or the trunk of your car. Your garage, your attic, any spaces that you have. Any rented spaces that you have, to hold old stuff. The world is just so addicted to hanging onto a lot of stuff, as opposed to being clean and clear. So I highly recommend you look around. What

Well, you may already have a groove, but I imagine your groove has been disturbed to a large degree by whatever has been going on in the world lately. And especially in turbulent times, it's going to disturb your groove. Get into a new one. So ask yourself. What about my groove do I need to put into a groove? That I can comfortably now, given the world, and given what's been going on. Whether that's when to take a walk, how often you need to exercise, how often you need to talk to people you need to talk to people about. Any of that. It's a good idea to get into a groove, because some part of us really loves to have a habit, it loves to have something traditional that we do regularly. So that we don't have to be thinking so much about that. But we use that as an opportunity to sort of lift our thinking, relax. Kind of look at the world from a higher perspective of things. So what's your groove now? Does your groove work? If it doesn't, think about what would you need to do to improve your groove? I highly rec

I'll quote my wonderful wife Kathryn. Laughter and Soap. At some point you just need to laugh, and you need to clean up. She sort of nailed it brilliantly. If you haven't done it lately, at least look for a good joke. At least find some way to find something to laugh about. Something funny, something that makes no sense. Those are always wonderful things to do. And soap, obviously clean up. I've been trained by my wife, when I walk in the door, Wash your hands David! Which I do. And I have to laugh about my hair, which I usually keep fairly short. Pretty soon I'm going to look like I looked in Berkeley in 1970. But that's ok, so I'm kind of laughing about, well David you're gonna have longer hair until your favorite barber comes back in a little while. So anyway, a small little tip for turbulent times, but sometimes it might be quite healthy just to make sure you sort of plug into your world, laughter and soap, and make sure those are sort of regular things. that you engage in and people around you. I hope th

In these kinds of times, that's actually in retrospect when we find out we've learned how to grow. We've expanded. We've stretched ourselves. We've challenged ourselves, we've had to look at things from whole new perspectives. So my tip is to shorten that time of reflection and introspection about what these times could mean for us. What we could learn. What you might be doing differently after this in terms of relationships, in terms of your systems, in terms of how you're approaching your career. Your world. Given what we've been dealing with. I'm not saying they're easy answers to that. But again, you won't find answers until you ask the questions. So my tip is, as I have to challenge myself regularly, What am I learning now, given what I'm dealing with? What can I do differently? What will this bring to the plate? In terms of how I could approach my world differently and what I might be able to do more successfully, or more elegantly, more easily, given what I've learned. Learning happens in challenging t

Out of the box here... I Am Unreasonably Joyful. That's an affirmation I've actually used for many many years. And when I heard it, or when I thought of it, I thought, what a cool thing to do. To just take me out of the box. I'm unreasonably joyful. Given the world we're in, and especially the times we're in being joyful about anything seems to be one of the hardest things to do. But if you want a real tip, to just kind of break yourself out of some of the code that we're in. You'll think better, when you're happier, when you're more up, when you have more positive energy. And so creating the affirmation to me, was a useful bandaid to use when things were like insane. When it made no sense to be joyful or happy. And so it's just a big tip. Give yourself permission, for at least a minute, to just pretend that there are all kinds of things to be joyful about. So, be unreasonably joyful. It's a great thing to do. Also, learn to do that when you're in these kinds of stressful up against the wall kind of times. It

Actually, it's a tip I'd give anybody any time. And those of you familiar with the Getting Things Done methodology will know this already. The Two Minute Tool. The Two Minute Tool basically says, look, any action you've figured out that you could actually complete within two minutes, of where you are in the context you are, in the location you are, you're better off to that right then than to hang up on it, not do it, put it in the backlog or whatever. Frankly, that's the efficiency factor. It would take you less than two minutes to do it, but it would take you longer than two minutes to look at it again and review it and reflect on it later on. So this is a pure efficiency factor of the Two Minute Rule. Anything you can do in less than two minutes, if you need to do it at all then do it right then. And people say, well if I spent my whole day two minute stuff I'd never get anything else done. Well first of all, you'd be amazed as to how many strategic things have just a two minute action that are required on

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Clean Up Your Computer Now if you haven't done this already, and you have some down time, or at home time, or whatever. Then, come on guys, it's like when you get your car washed, or your motorcycle washed, or whatever, it drives better. Well very much the same thing with your computer. Come on, this is like a master tool if you're doing any kind of knowledge work at all. This is reference, this is creativity, this is communications. This is your work. And so it's really nice to make sure that this doesn't become like a black hole. It starts to get clogged up with a lot of old stuff. The more old stuff I found that accumulate in my computer the less anxious, or the less interested I am in looking back for something or going back into that area. But there's a lot of creativity that will show up if you actually do that. Like email, what's your backlog? The bigger your backlog of email, the more any kind of change or surprise is going to be bothersome, even th

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Areas of Focus, Responsibility and Interests Revisit or Create an Overview of Your Areas of Focus, Responsibility and Interests It's a different horizon of your commitments. You've got actions you need to take, and you've got projects you need to finish. But the reason you have actions, and projects is because they respond to or they relate to areas of focus and interests. For instance, you may have a project about your kids, well that's because obviously kids and family will be an area of focus. You may have a project about your health, in which case heath and your physical energy is an area of interest or focus. So it's a next level of abstraction, a useful place to visit, especially when things are changing a lot. Where you might need to revisit these different areas and say, how's everything doing? This is like being your own CEO, your own executive, essentially, for your life. Looking across all of your roles, and responsibilities, and accountabilities

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Get Your Cockpit Under Control What I mean by that is, your workspace. Where when you sit down, you are ready to fly, you're ready to go. You don't have to rearrange anything in order to be able to do your best work. There's mine, it's been quite functional for several years, something like this. And I don't mean particularly anal or compulsive about this. You just want to not have to rearrange things, look for things, when you're ready to just go to work. And so sit down and be able to do that. Another important aspect of that is I would highly recommend you do not share that space with anybody else. You don't want them rearranging it for themselves and then you have to come back and rearrange it in order to get work done. You want to lower the barrier of entry to engage. You've got a bright idea, you're in the kitchen, you've suddenly thought about something that you need to send an email about or want to surf the web about, or whatever. You need to be ab

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen One Bad Apple Can Spoil the Barrel So this is a cautionary tale. There are times when one situation, project, or circumstance that's particularly important to you, you're not appropriately engaged with yet can color the whole rest of your life, and make it all feel grey, and solemn, and burdensome. Where as it's really just one situation that you need to get ahold of. You know, our Getting Things Done methodology is a lot about creating appropriate engagement with the things that you're committed to do. Are you appropriately engaged with this project? Or with this relationship? Or with your health, etc. And appropriate engagement just means you've identified what it is, what outcome you're after, the action step you need to take to move it forward. and have a trusted system to hold all that. But any one thing, if you're not doing that yet, if you have not yet gotten to that place of appropriate engagement. Can, as I said, discolor the whole rest of your lif

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Renegotiate Your Commitments See a lot of what the Getting Things Done methodology is about has been about inventorying what your commitments are. What have you agreed with yourself you need, would, could, should, ought to be doing, handling or whatever. And so managing those commitments is a whole lot of what the methodology is about to keep yourself clear, so that you don't feel like you're constantly having to do all of those. There's an inherent renegotiation process that needs to happen. Once you've externalized these commitments out of your head You write it down, I need dog food, I need to hire a vice president, I need to figure out where to send my kid to school next year, etc. And those commitments, as you may know, that's very important to make sure get that inventory nice and clear, about what those are. But now in turbulent times, that becomes extra important, to make sure you're looking forward at all those commitments you've got. All those thi

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Catch Up Your Communications with People Another nice thing to do especially in terms of catching up, it's often times subtle. And depending on your personality style about how much you engage with other people. Who do you owe a thank you to? Who do you owe a communication with to update them? All the best things in my life have actually come from relationships that I've had. Surprising serendipitous stuff. But as a bit of an introvert, I actually am. I often times have to work at making sure that I maintain my communications externally, and that I nurture them and take advantage of that. I highly recommend you think about, what are just some emails to shoot off, simple little things, or come on, get some note cards and write a hand written note. Those things are invaluable, as you probably know. That's another little thing to do, you might want to consider as a project maybe, is you catch up on all of those communications, with family, with friends with ne

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen What's Really Got Your Attention? Many of my tips are about sort of catching up, and simple things to do kind of keep your energy up, clean things up, catch up. This one is a big one. What circumstance, situation that you're in right now, if that were put onto cruise control, or if you were appropriately engaged with that would make the biggest difference? Would give you the most physic space essentially. Would relieve the most pressure on you. Sometimes that's the thing you need to grapple with. Interestingly, what you think may have your most attention...Once you recognize what has your attention, you may then discover what really has your attention. It can go to some pretty subtle and sublime and deep levels, if you allow it to. Nothing wrong with that, nothing bad about that, as a matter of fact, it's a very powerful thing to do, and to think about. So I highly recommend that you take a little bit of time and say "What most has your attention?" And then

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Worst Case Scenario Building I know this may sound a little strange, but one of the best and healthiest things you can do is to actually do a scenario of the worst case, and then imagine you getting through that. And could you handle it? Because the worst case scenario is likely to be banging around subliminally anyway. What you need to do is to relieve that pressure, and the way out is through. The best thing to do is to sit down and figure out, what could the worst case be? Can I and could we, tolerate that? That will relieve a bunch of pressure and give you much more freedom to focus on wild success. Obviously you don't want to be dwelling on the negative picture. You don't want to sit there and be fatalistic or dwell in some sort of negative picture building. But you do want to go through that and take a look. That allows you a lot more freedom to then focus effectively and productively as you kind of shoot down the middle. Prepare for the worst, or at

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Labelers I know that may sound a little dumb and dorky, when you're in a turbulent time to think about a labeler. What's a labeler? Any of you old GTD practitioners probably know how adamant I've been about the value of labeling things. Being able to have a typeset labeler. If you're not doing anything else, order yourself a labeler, if you don't have one already. You'd be amazed at how much of a difference it makes, to make sure your files look like that, and have nice labels on them. It does make a difference. A lot of people say they had no idea how much of a difference just a labeler would make. In terms of how I manage myself, my information, access to it. Labels can be used for anything, they can be used for file folders obviously, but they could also be used for plastic bags, where you're keeping track of pills, or you're keeping track of electronic equipment, or just wrapping a label around a piece of electronic gear, so you know what it's about. Al