#384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD)

Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. And I'll do a personal question. No, it's in the time. A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal and the scale. No

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Slash Tim. Well hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. Good day, good evening, good afternoon, wherever you may be, my gorgeous little magwai. My guest today is David Allen. You may know of him, the man, the legend, you may worship his systems, or you may not know who he is. So I will tell you.

who David is. One of the world's most influential thinkers on productivity. David's 35 years experience as a management consultant and executive coach have earned him the titles of Personal Productivity Guru by Fast Company Magazine and one of America's top five executive coaches by Forbes Magazine. The American Association has ranked him among the top 10 business leaders, full stop. His best selling book is Getting things done subtitled The Art of Stress Free Productivity has been published in thirty languages and the GTD methodology, as it's known, that it describes has become a global phenomenon being taught by training companies in sixty countries, probably more at the time of this reading. David, his company, and his partners are dedicated to teaching people how to stay relaxed and productive in our fast paced world. You can find him on Twitter at GTD guy, G T D guy, G U Y, and at getting things. Done.

And without further ado, Please enjoy. A very wide ranging, very unexpected in some aspects, conversation with David. Alone.

David, welcome to the show. Tim, delighted to be here. Thanks for the invitation. My pleasure. And it has been a very, very long time since since we've had any contact. I know we were chatting before we we pressed record. It was probably just a few weeks Maybe a month after the four hour work week came out in two thousand seven, that I found myself

being interviewed by someone uh alongside you virtually on the phone and I was A nervous mess. I was very intimidated because I was I felt like I was stepping sort of into the arena uh with the literal and m metaphorical Black belt. in the productivity space because

Also at that time in two thousand seven. GTD getting things done was ubiquitous in Silicon Valley. I mean it was The talk of the town And forty three folders, Merlin Man and all these other outlets, life hacker. seem to talk about GTD every day. Uh so it's nice to it's nice to have a conversation where I feel more comfortable asking questions.

Catching up. Well, you know for Folks like you and me, time time is somewhat irrelevant. Well that's what good friends are for, you know. It's like you show up and go Hey, what's new? I don't two years, ten years. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I I was thinking back to that time frame two thousand seven was a a very uh important inflection point for me if if if I want to look at it that way. And uh Uh a around the same time, somewhere between I want to say two thousand seven, two thousand nine, a friend of mine actually interviewed you at South by Southwest in a format that is

With that very Difficult, I think, in some cases for both sides. Inside a car. His name is Chase Jarvis. Oh I remember that. He's a a phenomenal guy. Uh brilliant photographer. and he was trying to Do his best to squeeze out.

Uh and you of course you're very good at providing this, but some type of nugget that he could extract in say a minute or two minutes or however many min minutes it was. And I thought we'd begin there because the answer as I remember it was Your mind is made for having ideas, not for holding ideas. And I think this is is so

important. I would love to Here you just expand on what that means. Well Your head's a crappy office.

And you know, most people are still using their head as their office, and your brain did not evolve to Remember remind prioritize or manage relationships with more than four things. That's new Cognitive science data. By the way.

So You know, how many people are trying to keep track of more than four things. and manage the relationship between them and prioritize between them. It's like excuse me, how about ten thousand? Fourteen hundred or however God knows however many. And you know, I just sort of uncovered years ago, more practically and just on the street.

how critical it was to empty your head. And again, you know, what the what then the You know, in the early days of the new cognitive science field they call distributed cognition, called get it out of your head. And so I discovered that and and then discovered you not only just get it out of your head, but there are other things you need to do to clarify Dr. Peter Drucker, like define what the work is that you're getting out of your head and what your case is to it. So So You know, I that's I spent

thirty the last thirty five years trying to figure out what that algorithm is. and then spending thousands of hours, as you probably know desk side, but some of the best and brightest and busiest folks on the planet. actually implementing that process and watching this Transformational hap stuff happened. Yeah, I'm

You know, come on, if you're y you've done a l a ton of coaching and and advising, I'm sure, and best advice is not to tell people what to do, but ask them the right questions. what's going on in their head and help them frame that in a way that's that's useful. And so I just Yeah, I just figured that out. And i it you know, I don't know how long I'm gonna be preaching this to him.

Yeah, folks, your head is not Don't do that. Don't leave your stuff in your head and it's such a huge habit. I think it's because You know, people have this I think it gives people a false sense of control. Mm-hmm. To keep it in their head.

And control is the master addiction, you know. So so You know, you've got to feel vulnerable enough to unload everything that has your attention and take a look at it. That's daunting, I guess, for most people. You mentioned coaching, so I'll I'll jump to that next. I'd love to hear you describe What you do.

With a Say corporate client. Past, present, hypothetical. When you come in to meet with, say, executives And they're

individually very high performing. people nonetheless carrying far more than four items in each of their heads. And You sit down. questions you ask or exercises you do when you sit down with high functioning but

None the less overwhelmed. people to work with them. What were what are some of the first things that you do with them? Well, aside from establishing rapport. Right. Why do you why did you bring me in here? And what is your presenting issue as best you can describe it. And you know, and here's a little bit of about who I am and kind of what we're gonna do. But

Yeah. ideally, and over the years I discovered the less I tell people about what we're gonna do, the better. Surprise. So Uh i i if I just walked in cold. you know, the the the tablerosa here is first thing I would do, Tim, with you would be Um

Let's get let's make sure you have an entry. A physical entry. We have some place to throw stuff. Until we can make decisions about what it means and what you're gonna do about it. But we need to collect a bunch of stuff first. So that's what we're gonna do first is get some sort of a material version of collection.

Or capturing stuff that has people's attention. So we just get a big stack of printer paper. A favorite pen or pencil. Sit him down. Okay.

Mm. What has your attention? Oh, I need cat food. Oh I need a life. Oh I need to do vice president of marketing. Oh our next vacation is coming up. Oh god, my cell phone just crapped out. The printer broke. Uh dead yet yet. And we literally start writing. They write.

Each one of those items that has their attention on a separate piece of paper. And they tossed that into their entry. You'd be surprised, by the way, first first of all, how many people don't have an entry or if they do have one, it's petrified because it's just been sitting there with you know crap in it for weeks. So we need to have some sort of clear space to just collect all that stuff to begin with. That process, Tim, takes usually in my experience over all these years for the mid to senior level professional that we actually coach with this process, it takes one to six hours. Just to capture.

what has their attention. Not to organize it, not to prioritize it, not to make decisions about it. Just to identify it. Yeah. It's so impressive and horrifying uh at the same time. And I I was doing prep for this conversation. I found one paragraph uh that struck me as important that's related to this, I think, in in some capacity. This is from an an older piece in Wired, but it reads as the following. So at at a seminar, Alan asked the audience to try to capture all their stuff by writing a list, and at the end of a few minutes tells us to look at the list and think about the way it makes us feel. He guesses that our feelings include and feel free to fact check any of this, by the way. Uh a mixture of grief and relief. The relief he suggests comes from the simple fact of making the list, but where does the grief come from? And this is the the quote that

really caught my attention. These items represent agreements you haven't kept with yourself, Alan says. What happens when you break an agreement with yourself is that your self-esteem plummets. Could you speak to this a bit, uh because I I I would imagine a lot of folks would say I feel guilt. uh perhaps about all the things I haven't done for myself or for other people. But this grief and agreements that you haven't kept with yourself. Uh

struck me as as important, at least got my attention. Could could you speak to that? Well I'm gonna reverse engineer it a little bit and come back to the the fact that you're breaking of the agreement is because you're keeping track of it in your head, and where you keep track of that has no sense of past or future. Mm-hmm. So that part of you, that little sublime part of you, thinks you should be buying cat food twenty four hours a day or our vice president twenty four hours a day. That's why it wakes you up at three o'clock in the morning. Oh shit, cat food. Oh my god. Because that thing has no sense of past or future. So because it doesn't, you can't do it all. You can't do more than one thing at a time.

And so there's a part of you that thinks all of that all the time. So talk about us. Yeah. So You know, but but you don't have to finish the thing to keep your agreement. You do need to get it out of your head. See, ag agreements and this is one of the things I learned back in the old personal growth days.

You know, agreements you uh there's an automatic price you pay when you break an agreement is you disintegrate trust. either with other people or with yourself. Or both. So if you don't want to If you don't want to have a broken agreement.

Uh you have three options. One is don't make the agreement. Call no. Not gonna do that. Move it to somebody, maybe, or something. Uh keep the agreement. Go buy go buy the cat food, go hire the VP.

You know, go finish the thing. Yeah. most importantly for most people is renegotiate the agreement. If I made an appointment you know, today, for instance, Tim, as you people may hear ambient noise out there, there's a construction going on. If that was too loud, I would probably have to try to renegotiate our and reschedule this this talk with you. Um And And and then I don't have a broken agreement.

If I don't do it. Because we renegotiated it. But you can only feel good about what you're not doing when you know what you're not doing. So most people just have just made so many more agreements than they're aware of. So all we do in our coaching is get people aware of what are all the agreements you've made. What are all the wood, could, should, need to's, optos? And that's one of the reasons people feel good when they make a list is they look at it and go, Well, gee, I can't do all this right now. No kidding. Right. And so

You know, th th that's the that's the it comes back to externalizing the stuff out of your head. That's why it's so critical to do that. And most people I don't think have really understood or or certainly manage themselves uh under s with an understanding of that dynamic. to underscore and maybe dig into a word that you used that I'm certainly in my own life trying to pay more and more attention to, which is reneg renegotiate. Could you uh do could you share

Perhaps uh Any recommendations that you give or Uh perhaps language you use yourself for renegotiating when need be. What do you say to someone, whether via email or otherwise, when you need to

Remove a commitment. Whether it's forever or simply for another time. Is do you have any particular suggestions or thoughts related to the well I there's probably a I could probably think of a dozen, but one of the most uh interesting ones and and useful ones sometimes.

is uh To make it really politically correct. It's like wow. You know What what you're asking me to do or what I've committed to do is gonna require so much more attention than I have the bandwidth to actually give it the attention it deserves right now. Can we renegotiate that in terms of when it's due or how we're gonna make it happen or if I even need to do it at all. So

That's one way to do it. You just say, Hey. You know? That's a cool thing. I don't mean this this is not bad about you, not even bad about me.

Like You know, life changes and sometimes we just have to renegotiate stuff in that way. You know, I think it's important to tell yourself. As I say you can only feel good about what you're not doing when you know what you're not doing. That's why in order for me to be on the

The call with you and be present here. Yeah. I not long ago I looked at every single thing I might could should be audited doing today and say no, this is it. Maybe I made a mistake. We'll find out. But at least at le at least for now, this is the coolest thing to do. It's the best thing to do. It's the only thing to do right now. But I I just looked at everything else. But it's hard to do if you haven't seen everything else because you don't know what everything else includes. And so you're not quite sure. What you're not doing.

And so most people then can't truly renegotiate with themselves because they're not sure what are all the things that they would, could, should, oughta do. That's why, Tim, I mean it to another point, but it it ties very closely to it. When I'm not doing anything else, I'm cleaning up my backlog to zero. Because there's a surprise coming toward me I can't see. And when that surprise hits That could be good, bad, or indifferent, but when that thing hits If I've got a big backlog of unclarified, uncaptured, un organized stuff. I I

Yeah. I'm gonna be disturbed by any input, even if it's good, because I don't know what else I'm missing that if I decide to put my attention on that new thing. What's gonna be missed. What's gonna fall through a crack somewhere. Mm-hmm.

So that's why keeping it clean, you know, keeping the backlog as as minimal as possible is just a a fabulous way to just make sure That You know, that you're clear about what are all the agreements that you have renegotiated with yourself. Yeah, that makes that makes very good sense. Uh on the uh whether this will turn out to be the best use of your time you Give me give me a Perhaps another half hour to disappoint. We'll see how it turns out.

On the backlog, uh As minimal as as as it may be, where does that physically live for you? Currently. What is the what what is the The holding pen for that.

Uh primarily two and a half places. Uh one is obviously email. You know. Right now, I'm Uh just because of some other stuff that's going on I have about a screen and a half full of email.

Which is a little Little too much for my comfort zone, but that's okay. Um You know I'll I'll clean it up sooner than later. Um

My physical that I'm staring at right now, which happens to be empty. You know, uh while I was waiting for the construction site to slow down a little bit out there, I was processing a bunch of A bunch of receipts that you know my wife and I collect in the last twenty four hours. Uh Putting them in the quick and

So that's all zeroed out right now. And the other half place is my little note taker wallet that I carry around with me. That has Uh one note in it that says chiropractor. Okay. So I'm just throwing that into my entry right now. So those are the

Those are the places I capture really. I don't capture much digitally. I do have an an iPhone digital capture called Brain toss. Uh great little program that two GTDers you know in Amsterdam actually actually built. Because what it does is it doesn't put it into the black hole of my iPhone and automatically transferred there.

transfers it to my email. So if I care to digitalize anything that I'm capturing, some thought, some idea, um what or picture I want to take or something. Whatever it automatically goes to email. Which then I clean up like I clean up my email regularly, but those are the main places. What are the benefits of

Uh minimising The Digitizing, so to speak. Are are there benefits? Is it simply a habit that you have continued over time since that's where it started? Or are are there are there features to Using

Physical picture. Yeah. Yeah, there's two sides of the coin to the digital world. I mean, first of all, it's a great time to be alive if you know what you're doing and you've got a little discipline. Uh.

If you don't, it's a black hole. And you're likely to throw stuff in there that you uncovered. You know, f uh a month later go, Oh my God, I should handle that. And it's do you do you put it in Dropbox, you stick it in Evernote, you wanna put it in Outlook, you wanna put it in WhatsApp looking what are you gonna stick this stuff? So the plethora of options. Has made it

Almost more work. You know, come on. Well I don't know if you've seen all the studies that say that basically productivity hasn't gone up at all, though technology has gone through the roof. You know, and a lot of that is because the technology hasn't necessarily improved productivity, it's actually complicated people's lives a lot. I know a bunch of high tech people that are going back to paper planners.

Especially the ADD and ADHD type because th there are too many clicks. And out of sight, out of mind, you know, I've got a thunderbolt screen, but I still don't have the real estate on there that I used to have with my time design paper planner. Okay, 'Cause you can see all of that sort of a relationship to each other much easier. It's there are no clicks, there's no battery, no wi fi required. It has all the downside. I mean I'm a I'm a kind of a high tech

end user anyway. I like I I like all that stuff because of connectivity and so forth. But if you really need to know what you're doing, otherwise the tech the tech world can really be quite overwhelming. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And um

I I think what I'd love to do is is rewind the clock a bit. Uh to get a better understanding of how you became the the current version of of David Allen. Could you Uh

Describe where you were In high school. what you were focused on at the time, if anything, and and what you want it to be. what you thought you would be when you grew up or what you wanted to be when you grew up. Yeah.

Yeah, well I have to rewind take uh quite a bit. Um Let's see, high school. Mm. Well first of all I was an actor as a kid.

Wait, before high school. When I was ten, eleven, twelve years old, I I took an acting lessons and and actually became sort of the child star in Shreveport, Louisiana, where I I pretty much spent most of my growing up years. And um So that that was always kind of a love. Uh w was that.

Then in high school I became a debater. and state champion debater, regional champion debater, whatever. So I enjoyed I love debating. That was fun. uh standing up and trying to make it up, you know, kind of While you're on your feet. And uh I thought I was you know.

Yeah, come on. We're talking the fifties and ear and early sixties. And in Shreveport, Louisiana. If you had any brains at all, you were either a lawyer, a doctor, or or a teacher. You know, if you

Weren't necessarily Okay. You know, in that line of things, you either sold cars or Insurance or something like that. you know, there w weren't a whole lot of other op consultants. What's that?

You know. Uh actor? No, go get a degree, you know, so that you can Have a job. So there w there weren't a a whole lot of options basically in my head. It turns out I I actually had the opportunity. We had an exchange student at our high school

And that kind of thing. That was of interest to me. And so I actually applied to the American Field Service AFS. And back then they were Not many Americans that that that

of foreign families or international families would actually take an American for a whole year. Usually the Americans went for the summer. But I applied for a whole year. I said, what the heck. Uh And turns out. I was able to I got chosen by a family in Zurich. I went and lived with the Swiss family. For a whole

for a whole year. And that was eye opening. How old were you at the time? Seventeen and eighteen. Wow. Actually sixty three, sixty four, I was over there when Kennedy was shot.

Which was quite traumatic for most of the Europeans anyway. You know, when that happened. But uh you know, I went to the h basically the high school that the the the boys in the family went to. There w it wasn't an academic program, it was more social, live with the family, see how they live and so forth. Uh so I went to Real Gymnasium, Zurichberg. Which happened to be a block up from the Kunsthaus in Zurich that had Monet water lilies throughout you know all over the walls.

And I was three blocks from the Odeon Cafe, which is where Dada is and started, where Jung and you know all kinds of you know, so I was thrust into the middle of European history and culture. Just by being there. And that kinda opened my eyes a good bit. Uh also I had a it turns out I had a I had a half sister.

Much older than me. who had wound up marrying one of the the intellectual chroniclers of the beat generation, a man named John Clellant Holmes. If you ever looked up John Holmes, John Colin Holmes, you know he wrote some very interesting books. And they lived in Connecticut. They were very, very hip. My dad died when I was young and my mom

When I was nine, took me to visit surely and Jan, her husband. And so I got I got introduced to the probably the hippist of the hip in terms of of intellectual You know, culture.

New York City, Manhattan. Uh beat. Matter of fact, my brother in law, John and and Carouac Coin the term beat. you know, together. You know, watching somebody

kinda beat themselves, you know, walk down Central Park. Anyway, so I got introduced early on to a whole new different world of sophistication. And and culture really back then. So I wasn't I wasn't kinda blindsided by the fact that the world was a lot bigger than you know, my world I was growing up in in Louisiana. So I kinda wanted to get out of there as soon as I could.

Uh nothing nothing against that. I still love Louisiana. I'm still going back and you know, sort of seeing the the culture and the food and the bayoues and so forth and all that. Yeah. Um but I certainly my world had expanded by that point and you know I was interested in sort of pursuing that. So I didn't know I thought law, maybe to begin with, but then after being in Switzerland being around all that culture, then the interest of the liberal arts philosophy and so forth was look

So When I got into college, that was my focus. And what uh what for those who aren't familiar with uh the the career path uh

So to speak. What did that what did that look like? Uh Well, I went to crazy little college in Florida that would design your own education, no grades, independent study called New College. And uh kind of got bored by the philosophers, they wound up proving the original hypothesis using their original hypothesis.

Uh But what's more interesting was the philosophers themselves. And I had a great friend, he turned out to be he was my academic advisor, turned out to be a good friend, who was an intellectual historian, history of thought. So he turned me on to history of culture, history of thought. I thought that was really cool. And we didn't even use the word paradigm back then, but that's what I got introduced to. I read Oswald Spingler The Decline of the West, which is one of the earliest books, you know, hundred over a hundred years ago, talking about cultures having their own Psyche, their own geist.

And how that affected art, philosophy, math. Science, medicine. you know, in everything because you there was kind of a a thumb print or a signature in the various cultures that you could see through all of those things. So I was fascinated by that. So I guess that was kind of the early stages of me being interested in models. You know.

If we could understand a model with that that could help the world make a lot more sense. I I've always been somewhat attracted to that. Always also been attracted by how the invisible affects the visible. If you look back at my career. You know, my first job was a magician at age five on the s on the sidewalks of Palestine, Texas. I charge five cents for my magic show. So

Yeah you could trace it if you kinda stretch a little bit, but you could trace it all the way back to there. I w always been fascinated by how if we could understand what's going on invisibly that's affecting everybody and get a hold of it. Uh that could make a huge difference in how you manage your life. Mm-hmm. It uh it it seems like you tried

uh your hand at many different types of jobs. And uh we we certainly don't have to trace through all of them, but how did you end up uh teaching say corporations or productivity, which which are and and that may not be the Yeah. Uh

I got Um I got into graduate school. um in American intellectual history. Now again this is Berkeley, nineteen sixty eight. uh they say if you can remember being in Berkeley in nineteen sixty eight you probably weren't there. So so so but that was headache times to be there and

Um Them You know, at at some point I realised, wait a minute, I really wanted to get my own enlightenment instead of just study people who had theirs. So I I just figured that academia was not the place for it. And so I

Sure. You know, left that. Said, okay. And then I got went on my own personal exploration path. You know, lots of things. You know, lots of drugs, but also martial arts. Uh spiritual th stuff. You know, come on, this is the sixties. This is Berkeley.

you know, in the early seventies. So as I studied all of that, I was more interested in finding out who I was and finding out about God, truth, and the universe than having a job. But of course. Rice Bowl and Cave wasn't my style. So So I said, Okay, I gotta pay the rent. So how do I do that? Well

So then I had a I had several friends who themselves kinda knew what they wanted to do and they were starting their own businesses and you know, running small businesses and so I wound up being a good number two guy. So just just have the job. I Help some I helped two guys start a uh New Orleans style restaurant in LA. I helped a friend run a landscape company in San Fernando Valley. Um I sold mopeds, I you know,'cause you could s you could read the list and Wikipedia is a lot of stuff that I did, but I was just basically I would go in and see, well, how can I help them do what they're doing. And how much easier can we make this?

Because I'm just a lazy guy. And and you know, then I'd help improve their p now we call that process improvement, but I was just trying to You know, not have to work so hard. And And then I went fix it and then I get bored. So then I go find another job.

And then I discovered one day they call those people something, they pay them. They call consultant. You know, so Nineteen eighty one hung out my shingle, Allen Associates. Couldn't spell it now, I or one. So then I said okay, well let me see if I can't. sort of just throw myself out there project by project with people and, you know

Make that work. But then again, because I didn't want to w have to work so hard, I thought well, I'm really interested in models. that would work. You know. obviously how to help somebody in their process. It'd be nice if I had a model in my back pocket to pull out and be able to help them that would somehow improve their condition.

So I got very hungry for those models. Also because of my meditation, spiritual work, martial arts work. I I really love the idea of being clear in my head. You know it's sort of been I had a lot of training in the martial arts about how do you clear your head. You know, so you can fight appropriately. Uh

And But then my life got more complex and I said, Well that's kinda screwing up my clear head Um so Both my interest in the Keeping a clear head as well as

you know, good models to help people had me start to get attracted to and uh pull in piece by piece. you know, then fast forward all the stuff that became ultimately G D Dings done, you know, twenty years later. But uh there was no grand epiphany, uh there were just little small epiphanets along the way that I began to cobble together in in a system in a systematic approach. And you know, I found some stuff that worked for me. You know, had a couple of mentors teach me some of the key elements of these things, and I went, God, that's really cool. And then I turn around and use those techniques with my own clients and it produced the same result. More clarity, more focus, more

Meaningful space in their head. And I thought well that's cool. So that became a key part of my My own consulting. We didn't call it coaching back then, which is consulting. And then a you know head of HR in a big corporation saw what I was doing and said, Wow, we need that in our whole company, David. Can you design a training program? you know, with this methodology, so we can reach a lot of people with this stuff.

So I spent a couple of months and designed a two and a half day personal productivity training and we did a pilot program for a thousand executives and managers at Lockheed in nineteen eighty three and eighty four. And that worked hit a nerve. And y I found myself thrust into the corporate training world. Could have fooled me. If you'd told me as an American intellectual history major in Berkeley in nineteen sixty eight that I'd be in the corporate training world, I'd say, What do you smoke? Are you kidding? But it turned out that that they happen it happened to be the audience that was most attracted to what I had found out.

'Cause the world they you know, the mid to senior level professionals were just starting to get hit with stuff like email and the tsunami of stuff that was starting to hit the corporate world. And they were also the the clients that were interested in actually paying for training and coaching and so forth, you know, that would assist, you know, people in those roles. So that's how I that's a very short version of a very long story. I appreciate the uh the the background. I would love to hear A bit more about

Your mentors. Are there any uh particular mentors who were particularly important to the formation of GTD? There were two, and I just had them on stage with me at Amsterdam because I invited them to to you know we just did the GTD Global Summit. And I wanted people to sort of hear some of the original DNA of where G D started. One was Dean Acheson, the other was Russell Bishop.

And uh Dean was a had been a twenty five year consultant and in executive consulting in organizational change. And uh he had He had uncovered the techniques. that were critical to be able to loosen people up so they were able to make change instead of having a lot of old business prevent them from being able to to do that. So the whole idea of a mind sweep getting stuff out of your head, I learned from Dean, he had figured that out.

that that was absolutely critical for executives, particularly because you know, if they had all this old business spinning around in their head, for them to buy into some new goal and vision was like swimming in quicksand. So he discovered that getting that stuff out of their head and having them make next action decisions, the very specific next action. So I learned the mind sweep and the next actions from Dean. And those are still core. Core elements. that anybody needs, you know, to get clarity, you know, and get your head clear. You know, in terms of of your commitments.

And Russell Bishop was uh the co-founder of Insight Seminars, which was a sort of personal growth self-development thing that I got involved in in seventy eight. And you know, I love that. I love that training. And a a large part of that training were was about commitments. So I learned about commitments there. And how powerful that was. And it was a transformative experience for me. And then I actually became a trainer for Insight Seminars working working with Russell. Uh we were designing some sort of personal productivity workshops and we were being brought into the corporate world. Back in the 70s, uh late 70s, early 80s, a lot of the corporate world was get starting to be interested in sort of what the personal growth had to offer.

Actualization is life spring. Insight. You know. things like that were suddenly being brought into the corporate world. It was a little dangerous'cause, you know, uh you had to be a little vulnerable and you know, most corporate cultures were not You know, not that open for all of that kind of stuff. But it was an interesting

you know, experiment and and foray into that world. And so I work with Russell. We we created the insight consulting group and we started to do you know, so these you know what I had learned both from Dean and and my own work. We started to do versions of this stuff uh in the corporate world. And that's where

You know, Russell was my partner for many years. That's that's where a lot of that started. Love to dig into next action decisions. Uh this is this is a really powerful Uh

that uh many people do not uh ha have a whole lot of clarity on. Uh s could you talk about next action decisions and how they perhaps differ from what a lot of people put on their to do lists. Sure. Well

When we talk about next actions, that means as granular as where ph physically visibly are you going to go to do what, to move the needle on this thing. on this commitment. Uh is that at your computer to write an email? Is that at your computer to surf a website? Is that at the hardware store to buy nails? Is that at your life partner to have a conversation? What is the very, very next thing you need to do? to get clarity on mom's birthday or increasing your bank credit line or hiring a vice president or getting a life. Very next action. If you had nothing else to do but that's

What would you go do? People avoid that decision like the plague. They do. Could have fooled me, but you know, it takes You know, when we coach people, it takes one to six hours for them to identify all the stuff they have attention on and then the rest of the day or two to go through each one of those and say, Okay, what's the very next thing you need to do about cat food, about vice president, about get a life, about should you get divorced or not? You know. What's the next thing?

And You know, and it takes People actually have to think. To make those decisions. It's not hard. There are actually two aspects to of getting clarity that that you know that I have to tie together.

is what's the very next action and if one action won't complete whatever this commitment is, what's the project? You know. People if you look at most people's to-do lists, you think you see things like mom, you know, and bank. I'm sure you had a mom, so why is that on the list? Well her birthday's coming. What are you gonna do about her birthday? I don't know.

Yeah, right. So You know, the so taking something like that and then g well, you captured the idea, great. So you that's step one, but then step two is you need to then clarify what exactly you're gonna do about that. Uh

And you know, what's the final outcome? So give Mom a birthday party goes on my project list and call Cis my sister see, you know, what she thinks we ought to do for Mom's birthday is the next action. As simple as that sounds, outcome and action are the zeros and ones of productivity, but most people have not actually identified the outcomes and the specific actions. You know, of the things that have their attention.

Could have hold me. But there are very few people that that are exceptions to that. And most people have tons of stuff. Anybody listening to this right now, just pull out your to do list and I'll s show you what I'm talking about. You know, and and y you most of the things on your to do list are not the the very next action you need to take about those. And probably the things on your to-do list are not the complete outcome that you're trying to achieve.

action you need to take. So it's funny that that that zero zones of productivity people are avoiding. I mean getting things done, you need to know what done means.

You get to mark off as complete when what's true. And what does doing look like and where does it happen? Oh, that's a phone call, or that's a thing to buy at the store, or that's a conversation I need to have with somebody. So I know it ca it's kind of a duh, Jim.

But it's uh it it's something that most people are uh need to train a cognitive muscle to answer those questions about stuff because it requires thinking. Thinking's hard. Yeah. It's it's it also requires a uh

Sort of a reframe as to What? a an effective to do list or next action list.

looks like even the label itself, right? Should I be using the term to refer to mom bank, et cetera, as a to-do list. What does that actually mean when applied to bank in all caps? And uh in in our case it would just be your your capture list. Mm-hmm. You've captured those. Good. Then you need to throw those in your entry. and then go through this decision making process. Is it actionable, yes or no? If no, it's either reference or trash or incubate.

If yes, then it is okay, so what's the next action? And if one action won't complete it, what's the project? So as simple as those questions are, that's how you get your in basket empty. Not by finishing everything. Yeah, anything you can do at two minutes, you should finish right then. That's the two minute rule, but

Uh but otherwise you just need to clarify and then you know step three would be organize the reminders in some appropriate place. Yeah. I I would love to talk about Uh And and please feel free to to rephrase this or take a different angle if if better, but sort of top down versus bottom up.

uh systems and specifically uh I looked at a number of uh listener questions that uh that were posed and one was related to after doing a mind sweep and sorting the results into do it, discard it, delegate it, defer it. Some people. still having an extremely large list. after discarding aggressively. And not being sure of how to then

Eliminate more if if uh I if there are Tasks or items that they can simply discard things that are not worth doing. I was just gonna say how you help people to if if they say I don't know what is important or I'm not sure how to

prioritize things if if if you have any ad advice or thoughts for those people. Sure. I got a bunch. Uh one way to think about it is is from a

um hierarchical standpoint of priorities. You know, one of the things that that you know, I uncovered over all these years is the six horizons that we actually have commitments. And they're at different levels with different content. The top horizon would be what's your life purpose or what's the purpose of your and you can do this iterate iterated on your company or any enterprise you want, but let's do it let's talk about personal. So why why are you on the planet? What are you here to do?

You know, what's your purpose? Obviously that's gonna set your priorities, right? You don't want to be off purpose. So that's at the top level. Of course, knowing your purpose is not gonna help you decide which email to write first. A little bit. You know, but then the next level operationally, and I say down not as less, it just means it's more operational would be what's the vision of your purpose being fulfilled successfully. Five years from now, Tim, where do you want to be? What does your lifestyle look like?

you know, I'm sure living in New York as opposed to Silicon Valley was some part of a vision that you had as opposed to You know. You know. Just day to day. So you had some sort of a picture about hey

If I really want to do kind of what I want to do, here's what it would look sound and feel like. So that's the vision level that people have in companies that would be three, four, five year You know, long term. plan or vision terms of where does the company want to be. Now knowing the vision that you have in terms of life and career and lifestyle Does that gonna help you decide which email is most important? Yeah, a little bit more.

Th then there's a next level operationally which is uh down from that which is Goals and objectives. So what do y if you wanted that vision to actually come true, what do you need to accomplish over the next three to twenty four months? That'd be usually what people. talk about in terms of annual plans and so forth. Yeah, well I need to make sure my kids get into college. I need to make sure that we um you know that we set up this new division, I need to you know, I want to publish the book, uh you know, whatever whatever those things are. Those would be goals that that are emerge.

uh as a way to get to your vision. That's So purpose would be Horizon five. Horizon four would be up, you know, vision, horizon three would be Uh goals and objectives.

Horizon two Importantly Is all the things that you need to maintain. uh that are important to you to maintain so that you get there, that you're balanced and you're moving in the right direction. So personally this would be how's your health, how's your finances, how's your relationships, how's your spiritual life, how's your dog, how's your

fun factor, you know, whatever all those things are that you say I need to maintain these. You don't finish that. You just need to make sure that they're up to spark. I'm just getting you where you want to go. So that's Horizon Two. in your organizations that would be your job description. What are the things you're accountable to do well.

Asset management, staff development, you know. You know, yada yada. So that'd be looking at those levels there and saying, Okay, well once you defined your job description or once you looked at your aspects of your life That's gonna help you decide a little bit more about it.

What's the most important email you You need to say. Then you get more operational say, well what are all the things you need to finish about any of those things above Projects. You know, and most people have between thirty and a hundred. Get tires on your car, handle the next vacation, hire the person.

Yeah, they are. So Then that's the project level. That's Horizon One.

And then the ground level. Um We use ground and then one, two, three, four, five like elevators in Europe as opposed to you know, US since we're somewhat international now, so we had to change in the the first book I called five thousand fifty thousand feet and forty thousand and so forth, but Uh they don't use feet in Europe. And so anyway, so then the ground level is is what all the things you need to do. That's the actions you need to take.

And most people have a hundred to two hundred of those. Emails to send, stuff to buy at the store, stuff to talk to people about. Et cetera. So When you say how do I set my priorities and say, Well which one of those horizons is not clear enough to you needs uh needs more work or which one do you need to refer back to to then decide.

What's most important on your list. So that's a and that's a big conversation, as you can imagine. For most people. to try to figure that out. But I didn't you know I tried to get it as simple as I could, but I can't lie to anybody. That is the th that's the truth. Those are all things that are either

Conscious or not, they're still not going to be able to do it. They're still at effect for everybody. And so being aware of what your content is on all those different levels is gonna help a lot. Help a ton.

On a more simple practical level, I just set priorities by say what's most got my attention. What suppose got my attention right now? What what most do I need to handle so I get to clear space again? And you know, so it At this point in my life I got that one kind of simplified.

Uh And think about a fair amount. I'm in New York right now for writing because I have a very set writing routine here in New York and it's I'm also pretty isolated in rural New York. Uh the the move that I made from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas was Certainly. dependent on my

answers and descriptions to those higher levels that you described. Mm-hmm. And Uh I I I'm sure this is written somewhere, but um I didn't want to try to research everything before the conversation. Amsterdam why Did you move?

to Amsterdam. What were the drivers or the reasons behind that? Well, uh there's kind of a perfect storm of a lot of factors. One is we wanted to get out of the US. We were a bit tired of US centricity in terms of thinking. Um And we thought about w we love Kyoto, we love other places, but Europe Europe seemed to be the the the place to to go. My Catherine my wife and I don't have kids so

You know, we're a little freer to do that. my work was becoming much more virtual and actually much more global. And Amsterdam is much more the center of my world these days than Santa Barbara was. Um

And we'd been to the city a couple of times and fell in love with it. We love the city. It's it's an eye candy city and it's just gorgeous. And it's uh And it's lovely. And we kind of naively thought well we' let's spend three months there and six months in Milan and six months in whatever,'cause now that my work was becoming so virtual. You know, we have the ability to be able to do that. Um Of course, once we found out what it takes to be legal and get legal residency in any place, you know, there's a lot of hoops to jump through.

And it turns out that and we just kinda threw a darts at Amsterdam. It was warmer and and not quite as dark as Copenhagen or Stockholm. uh a little more foreign, you know, and adventurous than than London. And

Everybody here speaks English, so you know, that was easy. And you know, once we were here, the quality of life here is just so wonderful. And we just fell in love with the city even more so and still are five years later. So we intend to stay. As a matter of fact, we want to immigrate. So Yeah. Gonna be. We love the Dutch, we love the country.

Now. Golly, it's just an oasis of you know, global thinking and openness or whatever. That's kind of rare in the world these days. It is it is definitely one of my favorite cities in the world. Uh you mentioned a lot of wonderful places, but Amsterdam really does

Check. So many boxes. It's uh it's a marvel of a city. It really is. It really is. And it works. We haven't had a car in five years. It just works. Yeah. And and y you know, and we have Catherine and I both have two bikes apiece.

Well we walk out. Gorgeous parks. It's a very dog friendly city. Allow dogs. No, that's worth moving to after that. Uh

state of being. Yeah. If it differs at all to differ being, say, in Amsterdam after uh a number of years versus being in California.

Not really that much. Come on, Santa Barbara's a gorgeous. Not exactly right. Actually we lived in Ohio. The heart the hard streets of Ohio, yeah. Yeah, and you know it didn't for twenty two years and we loved that. We thought we were gonna be there permanently. It's a be beautiful place, wonderful place, great people, you know, great style of a of a of a sort of a country place to live. And and so it kind of surprised us that all of a sudden we just felt like we were done. You know, I call it Dharma, Karma, Destiny, whatever it is. It's like somehow just You know, there are times in our lives when just things just are over. And so we haven't missed anything uh at all. It didn't really change. Quality of life here is just so nice. I mean that's nice to do it. I mean there are no straight people and no straight dogs here.

As opposed to California. So W was it a A lingering desire over time, maybe we should move. Maybe we should move, or was there an event or a day or a conversation where it

You just said this is it. We're done. It it it kind of was a four or five year uh move from sort of someday maybe to yeah, let's kinda start to see if we can get real about it. We had built our own little sort of jewel box office building in Ohio. Uh

So we needed to kinda unhook from that. Um A house that we That we bought in Nightin Nighty Two. was so gorgeous. It was like gonslittle acre out on the east end of Ohio. It's just a beautiful little property and it had old oaks in it and it was so for it, but it was kind of a tear down house to begin with. We just couldn't afford to tear it down and rebuild. And we discovered the termites don't move that fast.

So basically we just built a huge garden around it. Yeah, we had one acre and we just built outdoor fireplace. We had a st stunning garden. We had a fabulous friend. It was a landscape gardener and there was just Yeah, so we just had a great time. We just lived outdoors. So that was that was wonderful. Then the termites started to win. And we said you know.

with Catherine and my style and our our our inclinations we would have rebuilt the with glass and concrete and and and You know. And iron. you know, in in that environment. It would have been just gorgeous.

Yeah. Uh so we said, you know, let's just put a price on the house. And it would the market was crap at the time. We said, you know, probably nobody is gonna show up. But you know, come on, let's just put a price on it. What the heck? You know, it'd be an emotional buy anyway. And we s we figured, eh, maybe one or two years from now, who knows? And two weeks later somebody walked on and said, I want it right for that price. I went, Hm, this might be a sign. So uh so we got out from under the house and we weren't quite ready to move to Europe at the time. There was still more work I needed to do sort of there and locally with the the business.

Um And So we said, well let's kinda get trainer wheels. So we then got a townhouse in Santa Barbara that we were at for three years. And uh you know, we we sort of has got trainer wheels for Europe, we got Dutch bikes and we l lived in a townhouse close to town, we could walk into town and so forth. So Yeah, that was kind of our transition move there. And then at a certain point we said, Okay.

Let's throw the dart. Time to go. And that's what we did. Off you went. Yeah. Yeah, it is uh it it it seems to be landing on the radar of more and more of my American friends as a as a possible Uh home base.

It's it's it really is a wonderful choice. It's a terrible place. You'd never want to come to stay, stay away. It's full. It's full. They hate dogs. Stray people everywhere. Uh decisions, at least i in my life, I would imagine in your life, that are are real chapter changes and uh end up informing many, many things that come there after.

I I Asked You w what is one of the most Worthwhile or the best.

personal investments you've ever made. And I'll I'll explain what I mean. That could be money, time, energy, anything else. So for instance, uh If if I asked Tony Robbins that, he would point to a Jim Rohn seminar that he paid for at the time when he was working as a janitor. If I talk to Amelia Boone, who's a four time uh world champion in uh obstacle course racing, she'd say the first time she sort of cobbled together the fees to pay for uh one of the larger competitions, which then ended up showcasing

How well Built and designed she was for this sport. Does does it Does anything come to mind as a particularly Important.

investment that you made that sort of had long Standing ripple effects. Okay. You know, yeah, I mean there probably a dozen. Uh, but I'll tell you one that comes to mind. I don't think I've shared this with many people.

But as you mentioned, the what c what pops to mind is Um I had a guy that became a very good friend of mine and a mentor of mine many, many years b ago that I met in Berkeley. And he was the guy who offered to teach me karate. Uh and he was quite an interesting guy. Uh he he was a Olympic fencer, uh he was a formula racer, he had a black belt and karate, he was just a fascinating guy. He was also psychic. He was studied by the University of Pennsylvania.

Um just because of experiences that he had and things that he saw and things that he knew. And back in the early days when, you know, universities were starting to study this psychic phenomenon and where it came from. And um you know, Michael became a very close friend of mine, and as he started to teach me karate Um

I found my life started to change. I and And I suddenly I kind of Been doing. all the things that were that that were cool to do and that sort of were expected of me to do. You know, I'd been a straight A student, I'd gone to a very hip and cool college, obviously I got it to graduate school, you know, had good grades, uh married You know beautiful woman.

I mean this was you know, as cool a life as one can have. And then one day I woke up and realized this wasn't the life I wanted. that there was adventure that I w that I was holding myself back from. that there were things I wanted to explore and expand and so forth that I I wanted to to do. And

That sort of changed me. You know, one day I just decided to not go back To school. And I have no idea what kind of records the University of California Berkeley has of me, but I just didn't go back. I said, Not not for me. So left my marriage, left my life, left all of that, and then

So you know, embarked on a uh inner and outer adventure that was quite adventurous. Um You know, I I I I ran into you know, he can read a lot of stuff about me out there. I ran into a lot of false starts and a lot of things that didn't work very well, but it was all in my exploration. It wasn't really escape. I was just looking and exploring an awful lot of things. And then found more and more stable ways to and more inner ways to to, you know And uh

Um with a much much more consciousness and stability than kind of random and ad hoc. So I kinda grew up from that, you know, over the years. And and sort of my outer life became a lot quieter, even though my inner life was still quite rich. So I I suppose that that was that was a hallmark event. you know, was for me to make that decision to sort of leave. what people would probably consider would you know, one of the best and coolest kind of lifestyles you would have and you know, go on my own trip. Yeah. Was that a difficult decision? I mean and I I hate to sound like a broken record, but was was this a

Kind of one day. I'm done, or was it something that developed over time? I mean that's well a lot of people don't leave situations that I can't remember exactly whether it was days or weeks or months, but it was certainly wasn't. I don't think it was months. Think it was probably weeks.

That I had that thought. But you know, I'm I'm Mr. Approval sucker. I mean, I like people's approval. I don't Yeah. You know I don't I don't like

Being the rebel and being out. You know I like People don't like me. And so that was That was tough.

What was the conversation like with uh your your wife with your partner at the time. Not fun. Yeah. I mean, was it just short like I'm leaving today or was it more of a lead time more lead time than that? Yeah. Yeah. No, it was short.

You know, I just I didn't know I didn't understand myself well enough. you know, not comfortable enough in my own skin to know how to engage with that. So it was kind of a Yeah, radical, you know, God bless her. She she she endured it as well as anybody could, I suppose. Uh but it Yeah.

I was not a class act in terms of how I did that. The the mentor that you mentioned earlier, uh my my listeners will kill me if I don't return to at least one description of of this mentor. The uh the sort of psychic abilities or extra sensory abilities that uh led to him being studied by Uh as you mentioned the University of Pennsylvania, did you observe were you able to observe any of this? Uh or to

What what types of things did you observe? Well, it he would see certain things. In other words, he would have a vision of something and say, by the way, I know this person did X, Y, and Z, and they indeed that's exactly what they did or what they were going to do. So he just had an extra sensory perception ability. Um for that. You know, uh i in in his own story. Uh he's not dead, but uh you know, if he if he told the story, you know

Um and didn't know he just had was so sensitive and didn't understand where people were doing what they were doing and so he did all kinds of things to try to compensate for that. You know, all these sports things that he would was Extremely good. And then one day he went to sleep and was taken out of his body.

And you know, was shown other levels of why he'd been going through all the experiences he had and who was gonna be coming toward him. And that uh he would have this job essentially. uh the karma of being able to share what he had learned with them'cause he owed them. So

Uh it turned out I was one of those people, at least according to him. Mm-hmm. So That's you know, that's kind of the in woo woo land, but you know, there may be some people listening to this that know what I'm talking about. Yeah. No, I appreciate you sharing the story. I uh

Yeah, this is this is something we could talk a lot, uh much longer about. Um but I I will try to sort of keep the thread of the the last question in the sense that many of the uh listeners who asked questions they would hope I would explore with you as something along the lines of What uh Nick Dobo's act which is asked, excuse me, which is how does he deal with things like mental fatigue, motivation, and mood's role in productivity.

I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna uh approach that from a From a The sideways angle. And kind of related to my last question, which is uh could you describe a particularly

uh difficult period that you face because it's it's very You've done a lot of incredible things. You have GTD being taught, as I understand it, in sixty plus countries probably at this point. Massive success on so many objective levels. I I really like to humanize guests by asking about tougher times and how they got through it or found their way through it. Would would you be open to describing Yeah.

Any particular tough or dark period. uh that you went through and how you made your way through it. Sure. Well, you know, back in my early Berkeley days I had a uh a really uh interesting time where um

I I was having my own kind of sort of psychic or spiritual experiences and didn't understand where they came from. And didn't understand why other people didn't understand them. And so You know, though I've been sort of Mr Nice guy, suddenly I found myself Outcast.

And that was You know, quite painful. So I wound up. uh you know involved in sort of aberrated behavior out of my frustration of all that and they put me away in a Middle institution.

Yeah, which I thought was kind of interesting because uh at the time I could see as much about what was going on with the people who put me there as as anybody in there. And I thought well that's kind of fascinating just to be able to see all that. And I'd read You know

much of of the literature about the you know, is crazy really crazy or you know are you tapped into something, you know, very different. So I knew I was tapped into something very different but couldn't get anybody to understand that. So Uh anyway. became quite painful and at so at certain point I said well You know, this is too painful. I think I'm gonna

Uh. decide to cooperate instead of rail against these people that can't see what's going on. So As I say, I never really got cured. You're just looking at a high state of cooperation. So I managed to to get and it wasn't very long, but it was you know it's How long how long were you in? Oh a couple of weeks. Couple of weeks.

Uh if if I could if I could interrupt for just a second, what were the behaviors that led you to end up there and uh how how did you end up there? I mean, was it uh family, friends? No, I got really pissed off at my at my mentor friend. And he knew that, you know, I was I would kinda had gone off the rails. And um And I threw a brick through his window.

And so he called the cops and the cops put me away. Anyway. But that's a it's a much longer, more intricate story than that, but that's the simple version. And so you decided to cooperate. And you Get released.

What what What did your life look like for the the the weeks following that experience? Well, I got a job, uh, you know, and you know, s sort of straightened myself up and started to cooperate with the world. And uh then that's when I discovered, you know, a whole lot of I wasn't sure what had happened to me.

Uh but Uh I was walking down the street in Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and walked into a store called Shambhala Bookstore. And I walked down I don't know why, just intuitively and I looked around and I looked down on the shelf. And I saw this book that said The Gateways to Spiritual Science. By Rudolph Steiner.

I said. I wonder if there are people who actually know what all this stuff is really about. And so I spent the next one. Oh, three or four or five months exploring. huge amounts of the esoteric literature.

of the occult and uh the you know the the White Brotherhood and all kinds of stuff that I didn't know anything about But there's a whole body of literature the theosophist to begin with in the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds in Europe. um that we're sort of studying the science of spirituality, essentially. And dug into that like crazy. I said, Oh my God, you know, I'm not so crazy. You know, I tapped into something that there was something to tap into. So then started to go on an exploration to see if I could find somebody who knew a lot more about that than I did.

And that's when I discovered a guy named John Roger, who then wound up being my spiritual coach. I said so I hung out with him. I said, Well I'll I'll s see how much I can learn from him. And that was you know Forty five years.

And he was just further down the path than I was, but had a lot of that information. So that that's when my life sort sort of my outer Might outer life you know got much simpler and much more calm and and traditional. My inner life, you know, got quite rich. Yeah, at that point. What uh what does the word

Spiritual meaning. mean to you in in this context. Or for for people who are stuff is Yeah, stuff you can't see. you know, that's affecting us. And you know, we all exist on many different levels. Like you can't see your mental, you can't see your thoughts. You can't see your emotions. I mean yeah there are people who can sort of see your energy field around that, but there's a lot of stuff you can't see that's affecting us.

And I use spiritual with a small s. There's a lot of worlds out there. Um You know. it's possible to experience those worlds. Uh you know, if you If you meditate, if you practice certain practices, you can

you know, quiet yourself enough to be able to tap into a lot of the other levels that we actually exist on. So this level is just a schoolroom. You know, but we're much bigger than all of that. So you can call it whatever you want, your soul, your spirit, your your intuition, your gut, whatever you want to call it, there's the still small voice essentially inside of all of us that's tapped into all of this and it is part of it. So

That that's a huge universe. What what does your meditation practice look like? These days. Or for people who want to develop a mediation practice but don't have one, what do you recommend? Maybe those are two different things. I don't know that I have a recommendation other than follow your intuition. I think I think there's a perfect timing for all that for everybody.

Everybody's on a spiritual path, whether they know it or not. doing what they're doing. you know, as a way to fulfill, you know, something that they're trying to complete here on the planet. So You know, and it's all around. It's it's it's in everything. So whatever is gonna allow you to be quieter and listen to

As I say, the universe is always on. So meditation is not like stopping the universe or stopping anything. It's just quieting this sort of material loud world out here, so you can pay attention to the more subtle voices. W what what have you taken from that uh if anything from that initial experience. that landed you in hospital, as you said, you weren't cured, but you be just

became more cooperative as a uh as a as a strategy. that has informed Uh What you've done. later or or even what you do today. I mean were there particular insights or realizations that have translated the strength to get through all that.

You know, and to and to come out the other side and Uh You know, and and make life work. You know. And the way that it works for me. So

I I can't I don't know that there was any other You know, particular aha that happened. Other than Um Well, I think I will

change my attitude and and shift my approach so that it's much more effective. And uh Yeah. That helped us. I mean having gone through that there's not a lot There's not a whole lot that scares me out here.

Hm. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Uh I mean once you've Yeah, that's particularly true, I find, with people who have

been uh sort of taken to task in the sense of Dealing with all that is in here uh in addition to all that is out there. If that makes any sense. Uh

Do you ever feel overwhelmed or unfocused? And if so, what do you What do you do when you feel either of those things. Yeah, that was you kidding. I just don't want to make assumptions regularly. Every vision you have, every creative thought you have, everything you decide to do is gonna throw you out of your comfort zone.'Cause you're you're gonna have to undo what you were doing before and reconfigure everything for the new game. So

You know, it's not like I'm You know, totally feeling overwhelmed. I just don't let myself go very long before I fix it. Yeah. You know. This huge project I had, the GTD summit was quite

I could you know there were many times that I felt somewhat overwhelmed because I wasn't quite sure what was gonna happen over a lot of unknowns and so forth that I that I didn't feel like I could control that well. And so You know, but You know, I eat eat my own dog food, as we say. Sit down. Write it down.

Make next action decisions. Say what can I handle, what can I not handle. Yeah. Yeah. So you you know, y everybody it's it's like surfers. You you're always gonna fall off. You just want an ankle tether on so you can get back on real quick and allows you to surf bigger waves. Uh are there any new beliefs or behaviors or habits that have

uh materially improved your life in the last Handful of years. Any any that come to mind? Nothing comes to mind except just our wonderful dog that we had to put down a few months ago that we're gonna need to get another

you know, walking your dog and just being quiet. I think that was very cool. Uh. I'm actually reading I'm reading a brand new book right now. That I was getting um

I was getting shiatsu. Uh uh a spa And uh My Shiatsu master who was working on me said, By the way,'cause I went to sleep.

By the way, you have a little bit of sleep apnea. Uh. He said you must read this book. So I am halfway through this book called Uh

The oxygen advantage. The oxygen advantage. I had no idea how critical it is to do nasal breathing instead of mouth breathing. It is amazing stuff. Anyway, so that's there's there's a new habit. Sleeping with you know actually he he suggests

Um Going and getting uh adhesive uh Clock tape. a four inch piece and putting it over your mouth when you go to sleep. So that you

you train yourself and you know, you build the practice of actually sleeping With nasal breathing. Fascinating stuff. The oxygen advantage. Uh

So that that that that's you mentioned it, I that's a brand new brand new habit. I just started Forty eight hours ago. Uh are there are there any uh particular books. that you have um outside of of your own that you have gifted or recommended Often to other people.

One of the latest ones called The Antidote. Oliver Berkman. Fabulous book. Totally fun. It's happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking. Oh you'd love it. Uh it's uh the the content is is a good bit more serious than what the title sounds like. He's really into

Uh Kind of. poo-pooing the people that just say, Oh, don't have any negative thoughts, just go think positive thoughts, just and not not accepting reality. And so he He goes into quite a bit of exploration of stoicism.

And the the you know, I couldn't agree more with actually his hypothesis and h and his thinking. Anyway, it's a fun book. My wife just broke out laughing regularly if she was reading the book. It's it's very well written. So that's That's one of my latest recommendations. The antidote. All right. Note taken. Uh if do you have a consistent say morning routine of the first hour or two of your day, uh w uh when you are outside of uh a gigantic event like the summit that you just completed, but when you're in the sort of in between spaces Around those larger competitors.

Y you know, uh uh Tim, what I do regularly is the night before. I look at what my hard I look at my calendar for the next day or two and see what my hard landscape is, meaning What are the things I gotta do? You know. No choice that uh in terms of uh commitments that I've got.

So I know how long to sleep. I'm a huge fan of sleep. Um You know, I used to think I was just lazy. But now, given the new cognitive science, I'm just smart.

We all need eight to nine hours of sleep a night. You know, unless you're really an exceptional person. So I love sleep. So that's my first thing is the night before, just to see how long I can sleep. And when I get up in the morning, first thing I do is a glass of lemon water. Well it cleans the system. Uh French press. Cap coffee. Uh sooner or later a protein drink.

If we have a dog, the dog goes. Uh I read the New York Times on my iPad. Uh European version. And I'll probably play a game or two of Words with Friends'cause I like to get my brain sort of going. I just

you know, doing scramble with people around the world. Um And then Whatever I feel like doing next. Take a long bicycle ride by those canals in Amsterdam.

Usually I go out Catherine and I usually go for we have a beautiful park about a an eight minute walk from where we are that that we love to just walk around. You know, just uh the nice Thing way to clear your head. Even when we don't have a dog, we you know Get out, get outside. And it's such a beautiful place here.

That uh that helps too. What um what do you find what do you wish Uh GTD Uh adherents or people who were say have read the have read your books once once through each would pay more attention to are there any particular

Aspects or concepts or Or details that you that you wish more people would pay attention to. Well, I'm not into having anybody change any of the behavior they don't want to change. You know, my my job was just to give people information, whether they want it or not. I'm I'm not gonna beat anybody up about it, or I'm not even gonna proselytize about it very much. I just say, look, you want a clear head, here's how you get it. Well, and you can do it or not. I don't care.

Well, I I care, otherwise I wouldn't share this information because it's it's potentially transformational and life changing for people when they actually get this methodology and capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage with their stuff, you know, if they do that. But people can fall off on any one of those. A lot of people just don't write everything down, so they don't trust their head or their lists. A lot of people don't decide next actions on outcomes for stuff and so their lists are, you know, when they look at them creating as much stress as they relieve. And a lot of people don't have a trusted organization system that they trust that they their their head can absolutely let it go, knowing they're going to see the right thing at the right time, be reminded of the right stuff. An awful lot of people don't

step back and reflect, you know, what we call the weekly review or or any kind of a regular reflection review, where you step back and take an hour or two, at least once a week. And bring up the rear garden. And you know, and get current. You don't get clean again. Yeah,'cause life's like that. And th those are all the

the the the steps that people don't take. So I'd say, Hey guys, read the book again. Somebody read the book twenty times. He said a different book every time he read it. Because you're ready for a different cut on the stuff when you when you read it again. So there's all you know. It sounds like it's pretty simple, but it's it's you know quite a habit for most people to change. Th the weekly review. I'd love to spend uh just a a few minutes on that. Could you could you describe what the weekly review

Might look like For someone, what is what are the steps of the weekly review? Well, uh first of all let's step back a a second and say if you don't if you haven't captured, clarified, organized and reviewed most of the stuff of your life, you don't have the whole thing to review yet. So it it the weekly review, the the ideal weekly review means that that your system is relatively current, at least it's only a week old in terms of maybe stuff that you haven't brought. Brought current yet.

Uh Then again. even if you haven't set up a system just to take an hour a week and step back and look at your life, you know, and say, Hey, what's happening in the last week? What do I need to do about that? You know, just any kind of a thinking, you know, and a more reflective process is gonna help anybody, you know, at any time. And not just go zone out. you know, drink or or even just meditate, but to really focus on your

You know, it's a different focus. Uh it's you where you're thinking about well, what did I commit to? What's new, what do I need to be aware of? If nothing else, just look at your calendar for the coming up the next two or three weeks. You know, I everybody's gonna go, Oh god, that reminds me. Yeah, no kidding.

You know, so any of that kind of uh stuff, and again the more that you have externalized your life and your your work the more valuable this review is going to be. When do you tend to do your weekly reviews? Oh, is there a You don't have a standard time.

No, I don't really. Just just when sort of ambient anxiety sort of creeps up on me. But it's usually about every seven days. You know, years ago I actually read somewhere, Tim, that the That'cause we've always said we always knew just practically anyway that a weekly review was really kind of critical to keep your system current, alive, and well. You know, and then it grows. If you don't do that, it gets it gets out of date. You'll fall off the wagon pretty fast and pretty coherently.

So But then I read one somewhere that Your brain actually If if you try to recall something that happened within the last seven days, you can pretty well recreate the context in your mind. after about seven or eight days it's kinda like there's a part of your brain that does a control alt delete.

And it's like just trying to recreate a something that happened two weeks ago. It's like Can't find it. Wha what? Where? So there seems to be some sort of a natural cycle of a seven day cycle. Uh you know, in in in So

You know, I that is it it's probably one of the most challenging habits to set up. Uh but certainly the most rewarding if you if you do. Do you have uh anyway? Rules or Commandments for yourself forth.

types of things that you categorically say no to. Uh and and the the re the reason I asked this is that I I, at least in my own life, have have really tried Uh and found quite valuable. Figuring out. trying to figure out the single decisions that remove many, many, many decisions. So for instance, no to all speaking engagements outside of Austin for X period of time, whether it's six months or twelve months, whatever it might be. Are there certain categories of things that you simply say no to as a default? Not really, except unpleasant people. You know, that I that's that's about it.

I don't know. I I I am I I suppose this will change, but still at seventy three, I still take advantage. of every I think there's probably two or three or maybe five. interviews or podcasts that we've refused because the the sleeve factor was just too high. But I've done two thousand since the since getting things done was published in two thousand and one.

I just I say hey, anybody wants is interested in this. Sure. I'm I'm here to share it with the world. Here we go. Um And You know, I I don't have really, really that deep a pocket. I haven't been that entrepreneurial or aspirational to go, you know, build this huge fortune.

You know and so I still take advantage of work that shows up. And if it seems interesting, it seems like you know. Like something that people are interested in me doing. I go, Yeah, you know, my price has gone up. So I'm not doing as much.

But that's okay. Let's return to the unpleasant people for a second. What f if there is feeling

is a person you want to avoid or is it more looking at them online, doing a little due diligence and deciding this is not the the tone of of person I want to interact with. Filter those people out. I don't have to do much of that these days, Jim. I mean I guess th given where I am in my life, people usually don't contact me unless they're nice. You know, or at least fun to you know, and I I'm uh I have a little bit of the Of the um

Oh what's his name? I never met a guy that I didn't like, you know. Um Bill Rogers. You know, I have a little bit of that in me. You know, I think most people are good people to begin with. And most people just don't come to me with Negative stuff. And it I you know, I I guess maybe in the old days I uh I w a little bit. But I kind of just made a joke. I I don't like unpleasant people, but I have a blessed life and I

have nothing but, you know, pretty much pleasant people around me. Uh read a short quote and ask you to uh elaborate if if if you're able, because it it seems to allude to something very important. Uh

And this is from a a fast company piece some some time ago. Uh This is a a a quote of of yours that they may have gone wrong, so you can correct it if if need be. People assume that I'm a hard working, left brained, results oriented, O C D A and O retentive kind of guy, he says with a laugh. In fact, the reason that I was attracted to this work was that it allowed me to be more creative, more spontaneous, freer. I'm a freedom guy. Uh Could you

Explain. What you mean by that? It's it's self explanatory. at at face value someone might say that there are a lot of rules. This doesn't and this is this is what some people ask like while it seems like GTD is very rigid and has a lot of process. I want to be able to use my intuition and creativity. So that that so it m it may be self explanatory.

But I'd like you to explain it anyway because it doesn't seem totally obvious to everybody. Yeah, well I think it was Flaber that said be steady and well ordered in your life so you can be crazy and spontaneous in your work. That was a hundred and twenty years ago that he said that. It's funny people say, I don't want to be so structured. I said, What do you think about the middle line on the road out there? Yeah, it's a constraint.

It's a limitation. No, but center line is great. Why? It lets me think about other things while I'm driving. As opposed to someone who's gonna hit me. So Just enough structure.

To give you the freedom. So I don't I don't structure anything more than I need. Yeah. But you do need a certain rigorous structure. You know.

Uh well throw away your counter if you don't like lists. Come on. It's just the price of missing an appointment is so is emotionally pretty high. That's why people you know, maintain that structure pretty well. Right. So

You know. Ask anybody out there. It could have been. It sounds like Picasso. Yeah, I think that I think that was so like as opposed to No, but in chair. Paintbrush. Paint the canvas. Stare at it, you know.

Discipline yourself. Anyway, so I I think there is a the the the degree to which Um that

Well I don't know. Most of the people that that that I know, some of the most creative people I know. One of the most creative guys I know. And he just spoke at the summit, by the way. He sent it sent in a video, so I I know since he since he was public about it, I can make him public. Um probably the most One of the most successful entrepreneurs he just won actually the the EY world entrepreneur of the year for twenty nineteen.

Uh Brad Kewell and Brad's He's on five boards. He teaches entrepreneurialism at the University of Chicago. Uh he built group on and sold it before he has his own jet. Um His new startup.

Now it's like now it's four years old, but even two years in had a two billion dollar market cap. This guy is so smart, so creative. You know he collects modern art. He's You know.

He runs the Chicago Ideas Week. He started it. So This is probably one of the most creative people you would ever meet, certainly one of the most productive people you'd ever meet. And I spent a year with him. People say, Well why would he bring why would he do GTD? I say, Well his presenting issue with David, I'm just up to here. He's uh he was twenty seven, he said I'm just just getting my traction, but I I I wake up with million dollar ideas but I don't know what to do with them or where to put them or who to give'em to.

So he just needed more room. So you know, this what what GTD does is it provides space. Invariably. If you Capture c you know, if you Yeah, capture.

Clarify, organized. and reflect on all the things that have your attention, it will give you more room. What you do with that room is unique to you. Some people use it to be more creative. Some people use it to be more strategic, some people to be more innovative, some people to be just present, you know, with whatever they're doing. One of my biggest champions is a guy named Howard Stern.

Can't find a more creative guy than Howard. Yeah. Gave'em the time to learn to paint. Which you always wanted to do, as well as keep serious radio going. So

You know, or or people like Will Smith or or Robert Downey Jr., they've big champions of my stuff. I can say their names'cause they were public about that. So so you know if it's a If people think the creative people, you know, can't use G T D, I'd say, Mm, there are a few people you ought to meet. Yeah.

A a nitty gritty question about the weekly review, as a few people ask this, uh, and and I'm curious as well, is is the weekly review inherently a solo process, or do you ever involve your staff? in weekly reviews. Well I know people that We do weekly reviews with their families. Very cool to do. I think you need to do your own private one in any case, no matter what. But then you if you have groups of people to say what are the things that we are all interested in as a group that we can share and update each other with. So absolutely.

Yeah, that's a great It's a great time to do that. Probably wouldn't necessarily frame it so much as a weekly review so much as let's review all the things that have our attention as a team, as a group, as a family, as a couple. Mm-hmm. Do you uh manage your email in a task manager or is it's is it its own system? Is it simply the email client that you happen to be using? Um Did you have any?

Could you describe how the the tools you use for For processing email. Well I still still use IBM notes, the old lotus notes. But we still use that in our company.

Um And I actually had my CTO for See, fifteen years, uh Eric Mac. Built.

Uh Uh an app. That sits on top of or within uh notes. that lets me use email as my task manager. Uh but you'd have to be using notes to use it, so it's not publicly available unless you want to

It's publicly available if you wanted to set up Lotus notes or IBM notes and then get e productivity stick on it. But that's the right. You know basically. Um

as I look at my screen, for instance, uh I have navigator bars. On the left hand side. And they have my action list. There's one of them says projects, one of them says agendas, one of them says calls, one of them says computer, one of them says creative writing. One of them says errands, one of them says home.

One of them says online. One says someday maybe And then waiting for. And so I can actually drag an email into any one of those and it becomes that. Or I can just open that.

folder and then add anything to that folder that I want. So it's both an email manager as well as a task manager at the same time. Do you use any particular app or program for pulling material like articles or references Uh off of web browsing into

A system of any type? No, not really. I use Evernote and uh you know I've I've used the Evernote You know. little function. Yeah, the web clipper. But I still don't use it that much. I don't I don't

I don't have that much stuff that I want to do about that. You know, the problem with things like Evernote somebody described it as as Right only. In other words, they spend all their time adding stuff in there and don't even go go in and look at what they've got. Yeah. It's a risk with a lot of digital technology. Right only. Yeah. Addition, uh addition and not uh sufficiently

Uh well at least subtraction from an intentional perspective. Uh any of those things will work. You know, all you need are lists, basically. And you just need something to be able to cut and paste reference material in. I've got reference material all over Lotus Notes. I've got reference material all over Evernote. of reference material and you know, and just in word files. All over. I don't I don't have any particular template or any particular suggestion other than you know probably not a bad idea to every once in a while maybe yearly curate all of that stuff. So you don't have a lot of d old dead wood in there.

Uh y you've mentioned uh uh quite a few quotes. You seem to have a good memory for for quotes of various types. in in this conversation so far. quotes that you would consider you try to live your life by or think of often. as a as a mantra slash reminder of sorts. Are there any quotes that come to mind uh as being particularly important to you? Well my screensaver just says let go. Let go.

Yeah. Mm. control is the master addiction. So not always it's always a good idea. Hey, drop it. Okay. What life.

Just, you know, be what it is. Mm-hmm. You know, I I often ask people if you could you could if you could have one gigantic billboard, metaphorically speaking, to get a message out to billions of people, or could be a question, could be a quote, could be a word, would that be let go, or would it possibly be something else for you? I don't know. Let me see let me see what shows up. I need to let go to be able to see what showed up. As opposed to try to preconceive that.

I mean your head's for having ideas not for holding them's not a bad one. You know, just you know prac practical, you know, GTD esque. Well. You know, I was reading th uh a piece in the Atlantic, um Uh which which which which I f I've found some of it that very fascinating. And uh this was before you had applied the new labels to the uh

various vantage points. So i this was back when we You were using the uh the thirty thousand foot view and so on. But Uh y you mentioned at one point in this and uh again feel free to fact check, but Uh. he talks about beating you for dinner after a seminar in Washington. And there's a portion here that that says you know, back in the old days, this is quoting you, I had this naive idea that people would see this cool tool or offering and say, Okay, what else? We'd have this great big Trojan horse that would march into state corporate world and let us find people who were interested in how life was really

lived and they'd say, Hey, let's go discover X, Y, and Z truth reality that sits behind all this stuff. But of course that never happened. Do you still have that hope that people will do something with the space that is created. related to Bigger questions.

Um no, it's not really hope, you know. Come on, a after all these years I go you know, I'm not a proselytizer. I'm really not. I just think You know,

What I what I've Yeah, I've I've had the The good fortune to uncover something that that allows people to create more space.

And again what they do with that space is up to them whether they want to use it to be able to do their spiritual practices. People who often say is this a spiritual thing. I go I guess everything is, but no. But if you're in a If you're in a This gives you a lot more space to be able to do that in a quieter way. Um but again it's you know, I I don't I I

People will do whatever they do. The people are already spiritual. They just may not be that aware of it, but you know, I don't have any I'm not out trying to get people to be something that they're not. Or to You know, uncover something that they're not in.

You know, again. You know, I've been doing this for thirty five years. You know, so at a certain point you go, Yeah, people just do what they do. Let me just do do the best work I can do. And you know, just with what's in front of me, complete it with as much elegance and excellence as I can.

And then the next thing's gonna show up. No, that was a big freeway ah aha moment I had years ago when I was agonizing about what I should do with my life. And this little still small voice inside of me said, David, you don't don't worry. You have created so much in this life and probably many others. You don't have to worry about that. Just complete whatever's right in front of you with as much excellence as you can and the next thing will automatically show up. And I haven't turned back from that. That's That's constantly been what's happened.

Well, David, I appreciate you making space for this conversation. We're many, many time zones apart and I don't want to consume too much of your finite time. Uh but I I very much appreciate you making space for having this conversation. And Oh this was fun. Uh nice to chat with you, Tim. And connect connect again. Yeah after all these all this time. After all this time. It's been a while. No, I I'll uh I'll let you know when I'm when I'm headed to Amsterdam because I do absolutely love that city. And uh people can find you, of course, on on Twitter at GTDguy.

uh getting things done dot com. Uh is is there Uh anything else that you would like to say or share or mention to people as we as we wrap up? Mm, you know, the new edition of the book that came out, you know, two or three years ago is if you haven't got the new edition, it's really worth reading, I think. You know, I've I've updated a bunch of stuff and and you know, sort of uh tweak the languaging a a good bit. A lot of people really appreciated that. And read it a second time. If you ha haven't read it but once, believe me it'll be a whole different book.

And we're coming out with the G T D workbook in September. Penguins doing that. It's kind of the ten moves to trust free productivity.'Cause you know, the getting things done can be quite daunting for people. They pick up the book and look at it and go, Oh my God, too much to do. So Kind of in the you know, in the in the genre of the the workbook for the seven habits that was written and the workbook for some of the other sort of business guru books I don't know Tim have you written work books for the four hour work I I haven't but workbooks are really, really helpful. So I think that'll that will really aid a lot of people uh And I've certainly found the Morning Pages workbook and other things like that to be s personally very helpful. So I will I will definitely check out the GTD workbook and you said that's coming out in September.

Yeah. Perfect. Uh any other any other closing comments or recommendations for people, uh, David or or No. If if there's one thing most people could probably do more of, it's relax. Enjoy life. Very little downside to at least physically relaxing. Let it go. Is it uh is it let go or let it go that's on your screen saver.

Yeah. Let go. Let go. Yeah. Good advice. Uh

Everybody listening, I will have links to everything that we've spoken about in the show notes, as per usual at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. Uh so to everybody out there, thank you for listening. And David, once again, uh really appreciate the time. This has been a real pleasure and uh I have I have a I have a whole extra set of notes here uh to follow up on myself. And uh really appreciate it. Thanks, Tim. My pleasure. All right. Until next time. Thanks. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with

my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com that's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Fresh Books. I've been talking about Fresh Books for years now, the all-in-one invoicing, payments, and accounting solution. Many entrepreneurs I know, as well as many contractors and freelancers I work with all the time, use it all the time. So I get to see FreshBooks on a weekly basis. FreshBooks makes it super easy to track things like expenses, project time, and client info, and then merge it all into great looking invoices. FreshBooks can save users up to 200 hours per year on accounting and bookkeeping tasks. I don't know about you, but I like to do as little of that as possible. So 200 hours is a lot of hours. FreshBooks is always releasing new features that make running your business easier.

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from the basic to comprehensive, from small to big, and it all starts at just$15 per month. Right now, they're offering my listeners, that's you guys, a free 30 day trial of FreshBooks. You can try it out with no credit card. No credit card is required. Just go to FreshBooks.com slash Tim and enter Tim Ferris. It's two R's two S's in the How Did You Hear About Us section. That's freshbooks.com slash Tim and enter Tim Ferris in the How did You Hear About Us section. Check it out, freshbooks.com slash Tim. This episode of The Tim Ferris Show is brought to you by 99 Designs. 99 Designs is a global creative platform that makes it easy for you to find an amazing designer and create designs you'll love.

from logos, to branding, to packaging, to books, you name it, they have it, and I've used them for just about everything. 99 Designs is the go-to creative resource for any budget. I've used them for years now for book covers, for instance mock-ups of the Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number one New York Times bestseller. Illustrations for the multi volume Tower of Seneca. including the cover, and many other creative projects. I've been very impressed by the quality of their work. Most recently I used 99 designs to update the illustrations and layout of my Five Morning Rituals eBook. The illustrations work out great, I loved working with the designer we selected, and I plan to work with him on more projects in the future, and that's something you can do. You don't have to start from scratch every time.

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