YouSaid · the spoken record

David Allen

lines on the record: 103
first: 2019-09-03
most recent: 2019-09-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“For that price, I went, oh, this might be a sign. So we got out from under the house and we said, but 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 business. And so we said, well, let's kind of get trainer wheels. So we then got a townhouse in Santa Barbara that we were at for three years. And we sort of got trainer wheels for Europe. We got Dutch bikes and we lived in a townhouse close to town. We could walk into town and so forth. So 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.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So basically we just built a huge garden around it. We had one acre and we just built outdoor fireplace. We had a stunning garden. We had a fabulous friend who's a landscape gardener and so we just had a great time. We just lived outdoors. So that was wonderful. Then the termites started to win. And we said, you know, with Catherine and my style and our inclinations, we would have rebuilt with glass and concrete and iron in that environment. It would have been just gorgeous there. But we didn't have the money to do that. So we said, you know, let's just put a price on the house. And the market was crap at the time. We said, you know, probably nobody is going to 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 figured maybe one or two years from now, who knows? And two weeks later, somebody walked on and said, I want it, right?”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're done. It kind of was a four or five year move from sort of someday maybe to, yeah, let's kind of start to see if we can get real about it. We had built our own little sort of jewel box office building in Ohi. So we needed to kind of unhook from that. Our house that we bought in 1992 was so gorgeous. It was like God's little 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 funny. But it was kind of a tear down house to begin with.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and for 22 years, and we loved that. We thought we were going to be there permanently. It was a beautiful place, wonderful place, great people, you know, a great style of a sort of a country place to live. And so it kind of surprised us that all of a sudden we just felt like we were done. 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 at all. It didn't really change. Quality of life here is just so nice. I mean, that's nice to do it. There are no straight people and no straight dogs here, as opposed to California.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It really is. And it works. You know, we haven't had a car in five years. It just works. And we have Catherine and I both have two bikes apiece. We walk gorgeous parks. It's a very dog-friendly city. Our favorite restaurants allowed dogs. That's worth moving to Amsterdam.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Legal and get legal residency in any place. There's a lot of hoops to jump through. And it turns out that, and we just kind of threw a dart at Amsterdam. It was warmer and not quite as dark as Copenhagen or Stockholm, a little more foreign and adventurous than London. And everybody here speaks English. So, you know, that was easy. And once we were here at 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 going to be, we love the Dutch. We love the country. Now, golly, it's just an oasis of global thinking and openness of whatever. That's kind of rare in the world these days.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, 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 U.S. centricity in terms of thinking. And we thought about, we love Kyoto, we love other places, but Europe seemed to be the place to go. Catherine, my wife and I don't have kids. And so 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 in Santa Barbara was. And we'd been to the city a couple of times and fell in love with it. We loved the city. It's an eye candy city and it's just gorgeous. And it's lovely. And we kind of naively thought, well, let's spend three months there and six months in Milan and six months and whatever because now my work was becoming so virtual. We had the ability to be able to do that. Of course, once we found out what it takes to be.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The truth. Those are all things that are either conscious or not. They're still at effect for everybody. And so being aware of what your content is on all those different levels is going to help a lot. Help a ton. On a more simple, practical level, I just set priorities by saying what's most got my attention. Let's both got my attention right now. What most do I need to handle so I get to clear space again? And so at this point in my life, I got that kind of simplified.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then the ground level. We use ground and then one, two, three, four, five, lake elevators in Europe as opposed to the US, since we're so international now. So we had to change. In the first book, I called 50,000 feet and 40,000 and so forth, but they don't use feet in Europe. And so anyway, so then the ground level is what all the things you need to do. That's the actions you need to take. And most people have 100 to 200 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? They say, well, which one of those horizons is not clear enough to you, 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 big conversation, as you can imagine, for most people to try to figure that out. But I tried to get it as simple as I could, but I can't lie to anybody. That is the, that's.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You just need to make sure that they're up to par in terms of getting you where you want to go. So that's Horizon 2. In your organizations, that would be your job description. What are the things you're accountable to do well asset management, staff development, customer service, project design, 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 going to help you decide a little bit more about what's the most important email you need to send. Then you get more operational and say, well, what are all the things you need to finish about any of those things above projects? And most people have between 30 and 100 get tires on your car, handle the next vacation, hire the person, get a dog, research whether I can give my kids karate lessons or not, yada. So then that's the project level. That's Horizon 1.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, purpose would be Horizon 5, Horizon 4 be vision, Horizon 3 would be goals and objectives. Horizon 2 importantly is all the things that you need to maintain 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 relationship?”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is down from that, which is goals and objectives. So if you wanted that vision to actually come true, what do you need to accomplish over the next three to 24 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, you know, that we set up this new division. I want to publish the book, whatever those things are. Those would be goals that emerge as a way to get to your vision.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You don't want to be off purpose, so that's the top level. Of course, knowing your purpose is not going to help you decide which email to write first. A little bit. 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? I'm sure living in New York as opposed to Silicon Valley was some part of a vision that you had as opposed to 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'd be three, four, five year long-term plan or vision in terms of where does a company want to be. Knowing the vision that you have in terms of life and career and lifestyle, is that going to help you decide which email is most important? Yeah, a little bit more. Then there's a next level operationally, which...”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. I got a bunch. One way to think about it is from a hierarchical standpoint of priorities. You know, one of the things that 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 it on your company or any enterprise you want, but let's talk about personal. So why are you on the planet? What are you here to do? What's your purpose? Obviously, that's going to set your priorities, right?”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In our case, it would just be your capture list. Captured. That Then you need to throw those in your entray and then go through this decision making process. Is it actuallyable? 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 inbesket 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 otherwise, you just need to clarify. And then step three would be organize the reminders in some appropriate place.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And most people have tons of stuff. Anybody listening to this right now, just pull out your to-do list, and I'll show you what I'm talking about. And most of the things on your to-do list are not 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 by whatever action you need to take. So it's funny that zeros, ones of productivity, people are avoiding. I mean, getting things done, you need to know what done means. You get to market off as complete when what's true and what is 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's kind of a duh Tim but it's something that most people need to train a cognitive muscle to answer those questions about stuff because it requires thinking's hard.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you look at most people's to-do lists, you see things like mom and bank. I'm sure you had a mom, so why is that on the list? Well, her birthday's coming. What are you going to do about her birthday? I don't know. So taking something like that and then, well, you captured the idea. Great. So that's step one. But then step two is you need to then clarify what exactly you're going to do about that. What's the final outcome? So give Bomb a birthday party goes on my project list and call my sis to see what she thinks we ought to do for mom's birthday as 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 of the things that have their attention. Go to fool me. But there are very few people that are exceptions to that.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They do. Could have fooled me, but it takes 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 next thing you need to do about cat food, about vice president, about get a life, about should you get divorced or not? What's the next thing? And it takes people actually have to think to make those decisions. It's not hard. There are actually two aspects of getting clarity 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?”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. Well, When we talk about next actions, that means 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 a 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? The very next action. If you had nothing else to do but that, what would you go do? If people avoid that decision like the plague.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Offer actualization is life spring, insight, you know, things like that were suddenly being brought into the corporate world. It was a little dangerous because you had to be a little vulnerable in most corporate cultures were not that open for all of that kind of stuff, but it was an interesting experiment and foray into that world. And so I worked with Russell. We created the Insight Consulting Group and we started to do these what I had learned both from Dean and my own work, we started to do versions of this stuff in the corporate world. And that's where Russell was my partner for many years. That's where a lot of that started.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of their head and having them make next action decisions, the very specific next action. So I learned the minesweep and the next actions from Dean. And those are still core elements that anybody needs to get clarity, get your head clear in terms of your commitments. And Russell Bishop was the co-founder of Insight Seminars, which was a sort of personal growth self-development thing that I got involved in in 78. And, you know, I love that. I love that training. And a large part of that training was about commitments. So I learned about commitments there and how powerful that was. And it was transformative experience for me. And then I actually became a trainer for Insight Seminars working with Russell. And we were designing some sort of personal productivity workshops and we were being brought into the corporate world. Back in the 70s, late 70s, early 80s, a lot of the corporate world was starting to be interested in sort of what the personal growth had to.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There were two, and I just had them on stage in Amsterdam because I invited them 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 GTD started. One was Dean Acheson, the other was Russell Bishop. And Dean had been a 25-year consultant in executive consulting in organizational change. And he had uncovered the techniques that were critical to be able to loosen people up so they were able to make check of having a lot of old business prevent them from being able to do that. So the whole idea of a minesweep, 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 spending 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.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd say, what are you smoked? Are you kidding? But it turned out that it happened to be the audience that was most attracted to what I had found out. Because 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 clients that were interested in actually paying for training and coaching and so forth that would assist people in those roles. So that's how that's a very short version of a very long story. I got there.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I found some stuff that worked for me. I 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 turned around and used 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 own consulting. We didn't call it coaching back then, which is consulting. And then a head of HR and 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 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 1983 and 84. And that worked, hit a nerve. And I found myself thrust into the corporate training world. It could have fooled me. If you'd told me as an American intellectual history major in Berkeley in 1968 that I'd be in the corporate training world.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then fast forward all the stuff that became ultimately GTD and getting things done 20 years later. But there was no grand epiphany. There were just little small epiphanettes along the way that I began to cobble together in a system, in a systematic approach.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Make that work. But then again, because I didn't want to have to work so hard, I thought, well, I'm really interested in models that would work in case I can't see 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 really love the idea of being clear in my head. you know, I had a lot of training in the martial arts about how do you clear your head, you know, so you can fight appropriately. But then my life got more complex and I said, well, that's kind of screwing up my clear head. So both my interest in keeping a clear head as well as good models to help people had me start to get attracted to and pull in piece by piece.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So just have a good job. I helped two guys start a New Orleans style restaurant in LA. I helped a friend run a landscape company in San Fernando Valley. I sold mopeds. You could read the list in Wikipedia. That's a lot of stuff that I did. But I was just basically I would go in and say, 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? then I'd help improve their, now we call that process improvement, but I was just trying to, you know, not have to work so hard. 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. So 1981 hung out my shingle. Alan Associates couldn't spell it now I are one. So then I said, okay, well, let me see if I can sort of just throw myself out there project by project with people.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll make a very long story, very short. I got into graduate school in American intellectual history. Now, again, this is Berkeley 1968. They say if you can remember being in Berkeley in 1968, you probably weren't there. But that was head eight times to be there. At some point, I realized wait a minute, I really wanted to get my own enlightenment instead of just study people who had theirs. So I just figured that academia was not the place for it. And so I jump ship, you know, left that, said, okay. And then I went on my own personal exploration path. You know, lots of things. You know, lots of drugs, but also more.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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, understanding a model. If we could understand a model that could help the world make a lot more sense, I've always been somewhat attracted to that. I've always also been attracted by how the invisible effects the visible. So if you look back in my career, you know, my first job was a magician at age five on the sidewalks of Palestine, Texas. I charged five cents for my magic show. So you could trace it if you kind of stretch it a little bit, but you could trace it all the way back to there. I've always been fascinated by how if we could understand what's going on invisibly that's affecting everybody and get a hold of it, that could make a huge difference in how you manage your life.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I went to a crazy little college in Florida that would design your own education, no grades, independent study called New College, and got bored by the philosophers. They wound up proving their original hypothesis using their original hypothesis. That's kind of a circle thing. But what was 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. And 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 hundred over 100 years ago, talking about cultures having their own psyche, their own geist, and how that affected art, philosophy, math, science, medicine, and everything because there was kind of a thumbprint or a signature in the various cultures that you”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Soon as I could. Nothing against that. I still love Louisiana still going back and seeing the culture and the food and the bayous and so forth and all that. But certainly my world had expanded by that point. And 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 in the liberal arts philosophy and so forth was much more interesting to me. When I got into college, that was my focus.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you ever looked up John Holmes, John Cullen 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 really young, and my mom, when I was nine, took me to visit Shirley and John, her husband. And so I got introduced to probably the hippest of the hip in terms of intellectual culture, New York City, Manhattan beat. Matter of fact, my brother-in-law, John and Kerouac, coined the term beat together, you know, watching somebody kind of beat themselves, walk down Central Park. Anyway, so I got introduced early on to a whole new different world of sophistication and culture really back then. So I wasn't kind of blindsided by the fact that the world was a lot bigger than my world I was growing up in, in Louisiana. So I kind of wanted to get out of there.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, 6364. I was over there when Kennedy was shot, which was quite traumatic for most of the Europeans anyway, you know, when that happened. But, you know, I went to basically the high school that the boy in the family went to. It wasn't an academic program. It was more social, live with the family and see how they live and so forth. So I went to Real Gymnasium Zudigberg, which happened to be a block up from the Kunsthaus in Zurich that had Monet water lilies all over the walls. And I was three blocks from the Odeon Cafe, which is where Dadaism started, where Jung and all kinds of, you know, so I was thrust into the middle of European history and culture just by being there. And that kind of opened my eyes a good bit. Also, it turns out I had a half-sister, much older than me, who had wound up marrying one of the intellectual chroniclers of the beat generation, a man named John Clellen Holmes.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In that line of things, you either sold cars or insurance or something like that. That was pretty much it. There weren't a whole lot of other consultants. What's that? Actor? No, go get a degree so that you can have a job. So there weren't a whole lot of options, basically, in my head. It turns out I actually had the opportunity. We had an exchange student at our high school that I was going to from Germany. And that was of interest to me. And so I actually applied to the American Field Service, AFS. And back then there were not many Americans that 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 the whole year. I said, what the heck? And turns out I was able to, I got chosen by a family in Zurich, Switzerland, and I went and lived with the Swiss family for a whole year.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I have to rewind take quite a bit. Let's see, high school. Well, first of all, I was an actor as a kid right before high school when I was 10, 11, 12 years old, I took an acting lessons and actually became sort of the child star in Shreveport, Louisiana, where I pretty much spent most of my growing up years. And so that was always kind of a love was that. Then in high school, I became a debater and state champion debater, regional champion debater, whatever. So I enjoyed, I loved debating. That was fun standing up and trying to make it up, you know, kind of while you're on your feet. And I thought I was, you know, come on, we're talking the 50s and early 60s. And in Shreveport, Louisiana, if you had any brains at all, you were either a lawyer, a doctor, or a teacher. If you weren't necessarily...”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 there are too many clicks. And out of sight, out of mind, 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. You can't beat it because you can see all of that sort of a relationship to each other much easier. There are no clicks. There's no battery, no Wi-Fi required. It has all the downside. I mean, I'm a kind of a high-tech end user anyway. I like all that stuff because of connectivity and so forth. You really need to know what you're doing. Otherwise, the tech world can really be quite overwhelming.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. If you don't, it's a black hole, and you're likely to throw stuff in there that you uncover a month later and go, oh my God, I should handle that, whatever. Do you put it in Dropbox? Do you just take a Nevernote? You want to put it in Outlook? You want to put it in WhatsApp? Where are you going to stick this stuff? So the plethora of options has made it almost more work. You know, come on. 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.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Digital capture called Brain Toss. Great little program that two GTDers in Amsterdam actually built Because what it does is it doesn't put it into the black hole of my iPhone. It automatically transfers it to my email. So if I care to digitalize anything that I'm capturing, some thought, some idea, what picture I want to take or something, whatever, it automatically goes to email, which then I clean up like I clean up an email regularly. But those are the main places.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Primarily two and a half places. One is obviously email. Right now, 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 too much for my comfort zone, but that's okay. I'll clean it up sooner than later. My physical entray that I'm staring at right now, which happens to be empty, you know, while I was waiting for the construction site to slow down a little bit out there, I was processing a bunch of receipts that my wife and I collected the last 24 hours, putting them into Quicken. So that's all zeroed out right now. And the other half place is my little note-ticker wallet that I carry around with me that has one note in it that says chiropractor. Okay, so I just throwing that into my entry right now. So those are the places I capture, really. I don't capture much digitally. I do have an iPhone.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so most people then can't truly renegotiate for themselves because they're not sure what are all the things that they would, could, should, ought to do. That's why, Tim, I mean, to another point, but 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, and that could be good, bad, or indifferent, but when that thing hits, if I've got a big backlog of unclarified, uncaptured, unorganized stuff I'm going to 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 going to be missed? What's going to fall through a crack somewhere? So that's why I'm keeping it clean, you know, keeping the backlog as minimal as possible. It's just a fabulous way to just make sure that you're clear about what are all the agreements that you have renegotiated with your.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But 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 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.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just say, hey, you know, that's a cool thing. I don't mean this is not bad about you, not even bad about me. Life, you know, life changes. And sometimes we just have to renegotiate stuff in that way. 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 call with you and be present here, Tim, not long ago, I looked at every single thing I might would, should, should, should, be audit doing today and say, no, this is it. Maybe I made a mistake. We'll find out.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, there's probably, I could probably think of a dozen, but one of the most interesting ones and useful ones sometimes is to make it really politically correct. It's like, wow, you know, what you're asking me to do or what I've committed to do is going to require so much more attention than I have the bandwidth to actually give it the attention it deserves right now. Can we renegotiate that? Of when it's due or how are we going to make it happen, or if I even need to do it at all. So that's one way to do it”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If I made an appointment today, for instance, Tim, as 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 and reschedule this talk with you. And then I don't have a broken agreement if I don't do it because we renegotiated it. But you can only feel... And most people I don't think have really understood or certainly managed themselves with an understanding of that dynamic.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But you don't have to finish the thing to keep your agreement. You do need to get it out of your head. See, agreements, and this is one of the things I learned back in the old personal growth days, agreements, 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 have a broken agreement, you have three options. One is don't make the agreement called no. I'm not going to do that. Move it to someday, maybe, or something. Keep the agreement. Go buy the cat food. Go hire the VP. Go finish the thing. Or, most importantly for most people, is renegotiate the agreement.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going to reverse engineer it a little bit. come back to the fact that you're breaking 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. So that part of you, that little sublong part of you, thinks you should be buying cat food 24 hours a day. Vice President 24 hours a day. That's why it wakes you up at 3 o'clock in the morning. Oh, shit, cat food. Oh, what am I going to do? 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 you should be doing all of that all the time. So talk about a ton of broken agreements”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's what we're going to 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 them down, and say, okay, what's on your mind? 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. Daddy, yadda, 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 toss that into their entry. Be surprised, by the way, first of all, how many people don't have an intra if they do have one, it's petrified because it's just been sitting there with crap in it for weeks.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, aside from establishing rapporteur, which is high. And 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 about who I am and kind of what we're going to do. But ideally, and over the years I discovered the less I tell people about what we're going to do, the better. Surprise. So if I just walked in cold, the tabla raza here is first thing I would do, Tim, with you would be let's make sure you have an entree, a physical entry. Some place to throw stuff until we can make decisions about what it means and what you're going to do about it, but we need to collect a bunch of stuff first.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And find out what's going on in their head and help them frame that in a way that's useful. And so I just figured that out. And I don't know how long I'm going to be preaching this to. 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 it gives people a false sense of control to keep it in their head. And control is the master addiction. 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.”
2019-09-03 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #384: David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done (GTD) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT