David Allen: GTD methodology, AI in productivity, and achieving mental clarity through external systems

welcome to another edition of CEO slash founder wisdom podcast today with us we have a legend David Allen he's founder at David Allen Company you probably know him from the getting things done AKA GTD movement which I've been following since a decade from now started my career as a young founder didn't have much Direction I would just open my computer and go in all types of directions

I discovered GTD I think it was a plug from Tim Ferriss or something like that and things have changed since then I've been way more focused way more productive so really honored to have David on the Pod here he's been kind of a mentor of mine without knowing it which is a funny thing that authors and um permanent podcasters CEOs do um and we're gonna have some

questions for David about that but David can you start by introducing yourself and tell us what you're up to nowadays sure Charles well you know I've spent 40 years trying to figure out one of the best practices that we and engage in so we get more done with less stress and less effort I'm Mr lazy I'm the laziest guy you probably ever met so I've I just

figured out how do you make sure that you can stay as productive as you can be without being distracted without having a lot of stuff in your way and uh you know I had a background of martial arts and meditation practices and so forth so uh I was interested in clear space I've always been aware of how cool clear space was uh clear space you know physically

obviously but obviously mostly more most important clear space in your head so you have room to be creative strategic uh of service uh just more present with whatever it is you're doing it's healthier way in a a safer way to live and so I discovered piecemeal I didn't wake up one morning with this whole methodology it was piece by piece for a few years and began to

put it all together and uh it took me Charles it took me about 20 20 25 years to figure out what I figured out and then nobody else seemed to have figured it out the same way and that it was bulletproof anybody implemented any of the stuff that I've found out and you know that I started out with my own Consulting practice and then somebody had a big corporate training girl saw what I was doing I said Gee David we need that in our whole big Corporation can you design some sort of a training around the model you've come up with and so I did and that then threw me into the corporate training world where I've been trained hundreds of thousands of people mostly in the U.S corporations and a lot of my Consulting

just turned into coaching of 101 to Mid to senior level people at their desk they wanted to they wanted my assistance to help them Implement what I'd come up with so they could stay kind of on top of their their game instead of being buried by it so that's what I did and finally you know I got some good advice they said David you ought to write the book it's like oh okay or gee I got run over by a bus I guess it'd be good to write a manual about everything I'd come up with in case anybody was interested and so that's what I did that's the first edition of getting things done was published in 2001.

and then you know that sort of changed the game because it became a bestseller and then spread around the world 30 languages you know three billion copies now have been sold you know around the world and so the world then began to knock on my door and say gee David how can I coach this train this heck when I do this and so trying to figure out how to scale what I'd come up with was you know the next part of the game which we're still in but we're pretty far down that road so we're you know we have now certified master trainers around the world and you know and a number of licensees that that we've uh partnered with to know you know implement the training and coaching around this methodology so it is

a very short version of a very long story Charleston thank you for that my first uh double question for you is how you started describing your background art martial arts and mindfulness so we both um share that background are both interrelated maybe to me martial arts it's been mostly a story of discipline handling the pain um fighting my fears during sparring I did my time still doing

it actually broke my nose last year uh doing so um and mindfulness so how have these two elements been fundamental and what parallels can you draw between this and GTD well GTD is a martial art it's really it's like how do I manage all the stuff coming at me as it's coming at me you know if four people jump you in a dark alley you don't want a whole lot of distraction on your head you need to be right so how do you be clear without poor people jumping in a dark alley how about 200 emails coming at you in a day you know and the emails don't tell you what they mean they just show up and then you have to decide what they mean and what you're going to do with them and

what it means to you and whether you need to do anything about it or not so it's really a thought process that I uncovered what is how do I need to think about that email how do I need to think about this stuff that has my and so that it doesn't have my attention anymore and you don't have to finish things to get clear you do need to be appropriately engaged with them so appropriate engagement is really the the game of GTD how do I appropriately engage with my health my life my career my dog my relationships my computer what it was that I need to do so that that's on cruise control and nothing is grabbing my attention about that so I just figured that out I figured out how you get stuff off

your mind without having to finish it and so that allows for the clear space right which is a you know aesthetically anyway I love clear space I love you know sort of the Zen idea negative space and you know less is more yeah meditation I want to get on to that topic I'll do this Segways kind of rough but um I obviously meditate um 15 to 20 minutes a day sometimes my meditations have been uh not so profound nowadays it is um somewhat a deep Zone maybe because I'm taking care of my health maybe because my mindset is there it's kind of the dismantled noise you know which I think a lot of CEO have and the greatest sign of that is that they go in the shower right without technology and nothing and they

get all their ideas there it's like unblocking uh meditation can do that A Long Walk what does your um meditation practice look like nowadays and you still get like very deep insights from blocking out all the noise or is your full date like zero noise and full mindfulness which would be pretty impressive it's pretty much no noise you know in my life you know I I eat

my own dog food as they say I I practice this stuff as well I hate having stuff on my mind that doesn't need to be there uh so I know how to get rid of it uh and you know I I I capture stuff that has my attention I clarify exactly what it means what I'm going to do with it I have an organization system a trusted brain externally outside of my head so I can be reminded of the things I need to be reminded about without giving my brain that job it doesn't do that job very well anyway and so uh so I do that so you know kind of it's kind of a walking meditation Charles anyway right there's no yes there are times I stop and just don't do anything uh and

then let happen whatever happens and that can go deep it can be shallow it can be all kinds of different things it is whatever it is so you have a lot of free times kind of a zen garden so my question is what do you do with that free time and you also correlate that current state of Zen with your happiness levels well happiness is overrated I think as happy as you get this as depressed as you'll get I like the word satisfaction I'm satisfied I'm satisfied look if you if you look at somebody who's highly productive do they look happy no they're engaged they're on if you ask them are they having fun they go well I guess you might call this fun but it's not that that's not the game that's not what

they're doing what they're doing is they're highly engaged in what they're doing and there's nothing wrong with being happy I like that I like to laugh I like to I like to do that as well but you know that's that's essentially the aim is to have a clear head what you do with that is quite unique to you right you know you want to be happy you want to be present you want to be creative you want to be strategic you know all those are what people do when they have more space in their head so you know my methodology is how do you create that space it doesn't tell you what you need to fill it up with it's up to you right 100 so my um productivity background has been quite uh the

chaos and funnily enough I feel good in that chaos I feel productive and and all of that um chaos there is some kind of method to this madness so there's GTD in there there's Thiago Forte which I really like um and I've tried various uh things my first was a gke ish GTD ish method which was a Trello board kanban style um let me tell you what I remember from it so there's my brain Dam right so I just take my notes in there um there's to be done um in the next seven days I would say and then there's the to be done in the next 30 days which is kind of really not that much important and then there was the eventually I'll have these things done my kind of Moon shots um

I went from that to a simple um Google Docs I also became less obsessed about like writing down everything because that was the Thiago Forte method and that will lead to a next question among about AI but I went through all this chaos and through measuring obsessively everything and to not measuring um stuff and I can even say that I'm more productive from a broad kpi level

nowadays so do you often deal with these these CEOs that are kind of ADHD like um like myself and have tried the method and have ocd-ness in them have not got the exact results that they wanted from it and then they kind of Incorporated their own um Soul into the method and became a bit more happier or relieved is it like a hard method or is it flexible is the question no you can do you can customize this all over the place the principles are intact if it's in your head it's in the wrong place that's a principle how you get it out of your head where you keep it that's up to you you know a good million different ways to do that you know at last count there were over 300 software apps

that were built around the GPD model Trello and and thiago's work and all that stuff GPD started all that really started the life hack movement you know and but the principles and you also need to decide sooner than later what you're going to do about stuff that has your attention you know how could you fault that right that's that's a basic principle otherwise you haven't finished your

thinking and you haven't there's decisions you haven't made or thinking you haven't finished yet about something if you haven't decided the very next action you need to take about should we adopt should we get divorced should I hire a vice president should I you know should I get a new cell phone you know all that stuff that has people's attention and most people have a whole lot

more on their mind about that than they realize so a lot of my stuff is about come on become much more conscious about what it is that has your attention and then here's the algorithm or the the the formula you need to apply in terms of what you need to think and decide about that stuff and then you have to then figure out how you want to organize the reminders of those things if you can't finish those things right away so that you then build whatever kind of reflection system you need to look at the look at your list to look at whatever the stuff is that you've come up with so you manage the inventory of your commitments most people have a lot more internal commitments than they have any clue about and so

a lot of this is just becoming conscious about what are you committed to do what are you committed to do about your health what are you committed to do about your dog are you committed about your relationships what are you committed about your career what agreements do you have with yourself about any of that and I don't tell people what that should be I just I just

figured out what the process is that you need to do if you want to get that stuff off your mind if you don't mind having that stuff on your mind Hey be my guest I don't care that's up to you I just define i define the game if you want to play the game that's up to you right and Hyper ambitious um CEOs like myself we we want to reach the top we constantly have new data over or or hands and or heads uh every day so the market changes um your product changes your Target customers change how do you how does one deal with all of that data because me I would be um I would take the technological way you know to have some kind of AI give me all of that information

a very summery uh kind of bullet points uh in my inbox or some somewhere in uh in a software and I I'd use this broad information in my brain and I'd use my human capabilities AKA creativity or my leadership skills to make use out of that so my question for this is do you think there's a technological uh solution to these hard data problems in the age

of information or uh is it like pure um systematic GTD weight like um not philosophical way but there's like a couple of principles um how how does GTD integrate with um the Techno the latest technology wave we've been seeing with AIS and so forth are you guys into that or it's mostly like the the same you just have to curate what you get it's all decision support

the telephone was decision support the automobile was decision support wow look at how many things I could now experience wow what do I do with all that you know the the telegraph the you know smoke signals you know the pigeons delivering you know messaging it came on there's nothing new about technology is adding new input and data and I think that's the cool thing about technology is

it's providing decision support it's not going to decide what to buy your mom for her birthday it'll give you a lot of data that may help but you're the one suit who still has to decide you're going to buy your flowers you're going to give her a party what are you going to do so the first issue you're going to have is what question do you want to ask AI right and you you need to be smart about your question to begin with and then it it could be some cool stuff that you can find out from there some some perspectives that you may not have had before that's a lot of what I've seen that you know chat GTB it will would do is give you some perspective that would look at something in

another way or look at something and say okay oh I hadn't thought about that or hadn't thought about that but you still need to think about those things once you see them so it's all about curating the the data that you get and the and the the collateral material that you can now develop you know that helps I mean come on just mind mapping you know just

getting stuff out of your head just you know going to a whiteboard just doing a big core dump about a project is going to teach you a bunch of stuff you're going to see things you never saw before simply by externalizing your thinking in that way so all that's good stuff if you know what you're doing it's a great time to be alive if you don't you're

toast right and I guess most of the decisions come from who you are as a person your values and all that that kind of is up to yourself and certainly not GPT to put on paper yeah for sure it might ask you some good questions that wouldn't then maybe get you to dig a little deeper in terms of your own self in terms of what really is Meaningful to you so yeah good stuff where do you think um so there's a lot of talks about bcis and neuralink um how do you think this is gonna change the game when it comes to productivity and getting things done I don't know what BCI is brain computer interface chip basically in your brain so basically that if if you could uh communicate uh with someone mentally or

just not like instantly all the data of the market how will that change the landscape of productivity uh and the future who knows you know I I don't know I you know I look you can know intuitively what somebody's thinking across the planet right there you can um yeah it's kind of so it's kind of it's kind of all out there anyway I don't know who called

it the the I honestly or whatever it is it's like it's all it's all sort of going on you know it's like if if you don't want the world to know it don't do it you know so to transparent world to begin with so you know I I suppose all that stuff might be helpful but I don't know I haven't seen anything about it a lot of that stuff is just kind of G whizzy you know that but it how long did it take before you were comfortable with three-way dialing on your phone a lot of people never did why they didn't trust it they thought wow I might lose the connection if I hit if I if I hit the the button again and yet three-way calling was so hey wait a minute let's

see what John thinks about this great hold on let me get him on the phone click ring John's on the phone there are three of us talking I mean there are a lot of people listening to this right now that even never knew that or ever never even tried it because they didn't trust it so you know and and teleconferencing are you kidding how long did it take you know the technology of having a a phone on the in a conference room that people could all hear and talk and hear other people how how long did it take the world to get used to that it's called years now everybody you know now we're zooming or whatever and everything's cool because the pandemic would sort of sped all that up in terms of people getting

comfortable with virtual Communications but those things take a while I don't know what would you do with a chip on your brain well I do a bunch of things um first I think everything is just accelerating uh with Ray kurzwealth um prediction about Singularity Moore's Law is certainly still on track to to do a um to accomplish a bunch of project progress and basically what I would

um do with that I I think the dichotomy here is that there's more and more information on a daily basis uh being thrown at us but there's also tools that help to kind of simplify it but this world uh for most it's really overwhelming um not not just from a business perspective but like all the the news and big news trying to hijack our brains um your

methods are like still very much relevant to to get that Focus I'm just afraid that well I'm a technologist and I can see like mostly technological solutions to to these problems I think like on a short term yes the people they need to be mindful and be to have a little simple um structure that is like if this than that right but as stuff gets more exponential

and um let's say that in in the brain chip uh context so that would be like way more data in my brain it would be classified and then the the conversation nowadays is is human um and how will will they be complementary with AIS um so me my feeling is that the productivity game will be mostly handled by an AI in the next uh five to ten years because things are are accelerating really really quick as of now and humans will will they be left with the creative part um that that is a question that they'll certainly be remaining with the cortisol system mean that the the chip could eventually neutralize uh cortisol and bring like full Focus I'm a very strong belief in the biochemical Theory of Everything as well um with cortisol and

serotonin in your brain but yeah I do think most humans um it's just too much for brains right we haven't evolved quick enough and there I think is is where your your methods um come in and I think they they help a lot to a lot of people to remain the to to keep the focus on a daily basis especially CEOs which um is my next question like how do you see that GTD system uh behaving differently or being kind of modified when it comes to CEOs vs a Founder that's just starting his company or versus an employee is my next question well first of all you think too much uh and is it but to be simple look a CEO or anybody trying to manage anything has two major issues first of all I'm

like clear is my head clear enough so I can think appropriately about this and secondly do I have a process once I've thought about this that I can Implement to make sure that the implementation of what I think about happens so you have a lot of CEOs that are charismatic and you know a big you know and they're reading all the leadership by the way they're 2

000 books of a year in the US that have leadership in the title oh God there's no lack of of information about how to be a more charismatic leader but the fact is a charismatic leader still doesn't handle the process that the team needs to implement what the charismatic leader comes up with charismatic leader can come up with all kinds of stuff but they're oftentimes what I

call a crazy maker they just come up with an idea and an idea and here's an idea go make that happen go make that happen and they don't they don't spend time with the process that needs to be in place and in play so what GTD does is a it gives if if a if an executive actually implements this it'll give them more more clarity in their head about whatever they want to think about strategically creatively innovatively or whatever and it also gives them clues about the best process to install so that what they come up with actually happens see the the productivity equation boils down to two things the zeros and ones to your technology Point are outcome in action what are we trying to produce and how do we allocate or reallocate our

resources to make sure that happens so outcome and action become the the core elements and they're the core element of GTD thinking when did you ever go to a meeting that the outcome of the meeting was not clear and you ended the meeting without people being clear about who was going to do what out of what just got discussed so just outcome and action thinking you're not

born doing and it's actually something that you you have to train your Cog it's a cognitive muscle you need to trade what am I trying to produce and then what's the next thing I would need to do to move the needle toward a closure on that and believe me I spent literally tens of thousands of hours desk side was some of the busiest and brightest people you'd

meet on the planet walking them through that exercise so that all the stuff they had their attention on they emptied their head and then we went through everything that was on their head and went through that okay so what's the next action you need to take if that won't finish it what's the outcome you need to then keep track of until it's done and changes people's lives

just to do that so my methodology is not like some new technology or some foreign language it's like stuff people actually know how to do they just don't do it right it's concrete stuff and I I do agree um structured organization and just uh in and out type of process and yet I'm I'm pretty obsessed with AI nowadays um for example I'm not sure if you heard

about Auto GPT but um it's basically an agent that creates his own tasks and right now they can't execute on their own tasks right because for example if I ask it to find the the 10 best productivity expert for my podcast would find your email it won't email them because it doesn't have access to my outlet let's say on my Gmail but it would actually execute the

task for me you know so I'm seeing right now that the future of productivity as a small team or a CEO like like myself for example with a bunch of Agents um having these agents creating their own task and having these agents are getting these things done so how how will that modif and I I see that like very reasonably in the next five years there's like

uh you know when are you going to trust them I'm just going to let you what's going to let you trust their decisions if they actually start to implement it right so there will be competing companies um and I will test the tools right and there's a stop button um obviously but if you want to test like five of them and see which one has the best results or the which one doesn't burn my reputation for example um that's how I would select it because just like right but again Charles it's decision support it's not doing it it's just giving you support for you to make a decision about what needs to happen um as of now like they limited the their ability to implement but this is going to be deployed in the next

few months and I think this is really gonna change the landscape uh in terms of me like dealing with humans uh by the way vs robots so my my hypothesis is that managers brain are gonna drastically change and go in a different direction yeah sure will still uh be in charge of our own decisions and but how do we make decisions you know with with more data

uh quality data that is it's not like more more is better um so with this landscape uh changing under us like the the questions um I have for a product the productivity expert for you that has been in in the game for for many years and again I'm focusing on the the technology Point here but I I really think that the or human creativity will be like most of our energy spent it'll be most of our Focus um so with with these change um with these changes coming up um how can I navigate this this new landscape as a CEO with so much uh noise with that technology uh coming in uh you've probably heard about the AI anxiety thing that's going on right now really prominent in the Silicon Valley how does that change

um the landscape and and GTD and how it's implemented I don't know how did word processing change writing how did spreadsheets change accounting 85 of the companies in the US use Excel to manage their companies and believe me those were those were real game changers look you know I I partnered with Charles simonia you know an experimental and Charles Bilt word he built word he built Excel

he built office right and those were game changers believe me you know because word processing allowed you to have an idea before you then it had to be good because you could then you could then you know change it so that changed the that changed productivity significantly and the spreadsheet changed you know in relational databases and and all that that were spreadsheets sort of came from change

how allowed you to think about all kinds of things strategically and creatively that you wouldn't have before because you had to have 25 accountants to do what Excel could do for you now by yourself so those were real game changers they really changed the name of the game and probably AI in some to some degree may be that same kind of change uh in that way I

just haven't seen it yet you know it's still not trustworthy yet it's still not something that that people would suddenly use and suddenly now now I can do a lot of other things because of that I haven't seen that yet right you talk about satisfaction when we started the interview I guess that's um or fulfillment kind of um I guess that's the feeling we're all seeking at

the end of the day um what would you advise for entrepreneurs CEOs that um kind of lose track and end up end up at the end of the day and say oh I didn't accomplish enough today and and can you also segue that into the burnout rates that we've seen uh go up and up with all that that anxiety of not being enough nowadays well come on what's new there's nothing new except how frequently there is and how much right uh change Always produces stress because even if you've set a new goal for yourself you're going to have to undo a lot of other stuff you were doing so you can do the new thing so there's a constant of change that then requires you to step out of your comfort zone and move move

somewhere that may be you know at least relatively uncomfortable for you so that's there's nothing new about that it's just what's new is how often that's happening for you how often did your parents Charles ever have to reconfigure their life and lifestyle not nearly as often as you did right and you still are right probably so you know once they got under cruise control they could they

could then Coast for a long time without having to make hard decisions and whatever most people these days don't have that luxury because we now live in a 24 7 Global the world doesn't stop it's on and so a lot of people are trying to work harder and faster do more do more do more taking more taking more ticket more but there's an old personal growth Axiom

that says you can never get enough of what you don't really need what you don't need to do is work harder and you can never work hard enough there's no way you could ever do enough you know in terms of what you think you ought to be doing or taking into consideration or whatever so you have to start to build your own filters you have to start to build your own okay what do I need to pay attention to right now and the simpler the better you know and so you know if you've got if you've got a team that has eight things to do they're not going to do any of them very well you need to skinny that down to three and do them really well you know and then at least and

then you know what's the purpose of the team what's the purpose the company what's the purpose so you always have to go back to you know the basic questions that that GPD gets people to ask well why am I doing why am I doing this you know Charles why are you why you have this podcast what's the purpose this podcast what's the purpose of the company that

you're in if that's unclear you're gonna you'd be splattered all over the world trying to catch up with you don't know what right so you need to get really clear about what you're trying to do and so that's where you know in GPD it's kind of the Hidden part of GTD most people don't see is all the six Horizons that I identified that you have commitments about

purpose and values vision of where you're going the goals you need to accomplish to get there the the the the the the things you need to maintain so that you've got a good engine that can work to get you there as well as all the projects you need to finish about all that as well as all the action steps you need to take about all the moving parts and I couldn't get it any simpler than that but all those are very real things that people need to be aware of if they want to be conscious about how they're doing in this world and once you do that it doesn't the the speed of the world the volume of the world doesn't matter right it makes it that much more important that you do this because

you can't you can't stay on cruise control very long before you have to rethink recalibrate right right right um I use also very much the 12-week year method for productivity Hondas GTD integrate with that one I don't know what that is uh 12-week year it's um basically that you take track of um the the year as as if it was uh 12 weeks so three months for

example um so they're also prominent authors um in the field and I've been pairing that with uh Thiago Fortes uh method as well which um jaggles methods um what I'd love yes is is kind of a variant and there's um strong technological side to it but basically I'll just go out with my with my next question which is on the weekends I want to just eliminate all

mental noise and not kind of be in word work mode and tell my brain look it's fine for you to chill a little bit I have a small to-do list but I tend to try to remove any productivity method to separate business from personal life what do you think about that I haven't separated those in my life ever which is what to do you if you want to call it work if you want to call it professional if you want to call it personal or call it what do you want which is called what's next I don't make any of those distinctions I find productivity methods to kind of induce my brain into work modes and getting things done mode well I think that life is more on autopilot and odds to be lived well

can you think getting getting things done how about relax that's how relaxed are you if you're trying to relax and you don't relax that's unproductive right right if you want to have a quiet weekend and you don't have a quiet weekend that's unproductive see people have productivity's got a bad you know trappings around it you know everybody thinks no work hard or whatever you know product Humanity

just means producing what you want and that could be an experience it could be an emotion it could be a physical thing you go to a party to Boogie and you don't Boogie it's an unproductive party right you know so if what's what are you trying to get done if you what you're trying to do is have a balanced life that's a good project that's a good value to have and what's your next action that you would need to take to make sure you've got a more balanced life than what it currently is that's all so GTD is just asking you all the hard questions you need to answer based upon what you want to do but it doesn't tell you what you should do it just says it's asking you what do you want

right um I I call it kind of giving the brain at a top Tree items um you know memory spend is kind of limited and sometimes we forget a lot of things so for example oh just to remind myself to go swim uh this weekend or go for a hike you know and think that the brain depending in what state it is it can forget especially when we're not in good States um which leads to my next question um as a martial artist and as a mindfulness um focused person I could say how does the the state of the brain matter to plan and execute um in the whole productivity scheme of things well what you're talking about are habits and also biohacking most probably for example uh come on I I empty my end

basket and do a weekly review of all my stuff for the same reason I take a shower and brush my teeth if I don't it feels bad you know I got I got stuff banging around my head I don't like that so what do I need to do I need to I need to clean up I need to you know capture clarify and organize the new stuff that's come into my life and my world the last few hours or days I need to then get that zeroed out I then need to you know make sure I take a look at what's coming up and see the larger landscape and locate myself in space and time so that then I can go walk the dog or you know have spaghetti with my wife and you know

whatever and and or work on the business plan you know we just I just finished the last draft of our new book coming up which is you know getting things done with others you know how do you apply these GTD processes in teams which has been a big lack out there of a manual for people to help do that you know once you've got this you go why why can't I get everybody else around me to do this if I did life would be so much better and so we've never really had a manual for that but we just wrote them so that'll be out first of next year tell us a bit more about that one because yeah getting a hold of yourselves already a 10 on 10 difficulty tasks for most uh I

guess trying to have others do it is 15 on 10 difficulties so tell us a bit more about that well the principles apply to teams that they do to individuals there's my work and my books have been mostly focused on individual productivity that you need to capture and clarify and organize and reflect on the stuff that that you have your attention on so the same is true

with the team if I walked into your team if you have it do you have a team Charles Streeter yeah I used to manage 200 employees nowadays it's way less because of AI amongst other things but yeah I still manage my lovely humans yeah and I'd walk into your lovely human team and say what's got your team's attention right now what's not on cruise control for this

team in other words we're going to need to capture what's off or not right on yet and we would need to capture that then we're gonna go great okay well that's that thing tell me about it is there a project there is there something needs to happen what's the outcome that you what would you like to have true about that and then you're going to define the

project and say who owns this who gets this project and they don't have to necessarily come up right there with what the next action is but they may be that accountability for them to do that so hopefully they have gdd under their belt personally so they would then know how to then manage that conversation that happened at the team level but there's no there's no difference there

it's like what's got the team's attention why something's not on cruise control great what is it what do you need to do to get that onto cruise control right so but it's just this is not a cult this is a good business decision why would you not have that discussion and most people have it they don't have those discussions until the thing blows up or until they

have to have to make some hard decision under stress that's not the best time to make those decisions right so that's a very broad level aspect of it but yeah um depends on the the Department's right the vision the mission of the whole company and so forth so I can't wait to to actually see that book a quick quick one for you when it comes to habits

um I consider myself quite good at adopting new habits um from doing Iron Man's to meditation they're all unnatural stuff for me um and and learning most importantly I consider myself quite good at learning and adapting to new Landscapes um what do you recommend for people to adopt habits as quick as they can I think that my reference in the last couple of years has been Atomic

Habits by James Clear any any comments or thoughts on habit building and how to incorporate the GTD habit into the whole into the whole scheme of things yeah well the biggest issue most people have with implementing my stuff is your addictions of stress you're you're willing to tolerate ambient anxiety as soon as you're not willing to tolerate ambient anxiety you'll do what I do you you know

if you if you if you like being waked up at three o'clock in the morning oh I should have then I go then well how would you like to get rid of that so people have to then first of all realize that they could get rid of that so there actually is some place to get to that actually has Clarity and has focus and has all that all the good the golden goodies of GTD actually producers but you're not going to get people to go do this stuff just for no reason there's going to be some reason that they would want to do this or not and so you know I've looked for 40 years to try to figure out how do I how do I motivate people to do this basically all I have

to do is you know what I've basically come down to is I just model this people meet me and they go oh my God you're nothing like what I thought I thought you're going to be tightened up tight and ocg and corporate and whatever and he said then you're dying out you know spontaneous kind of guy I go yeah that's why I came up with what GTD is all about because it allowed me to then maintain that and to have so people have to buy into that as an outcome to begin with I mean all the habits you built are only because you wanted something at the end of that habit being implemented that would give you whatever Iron Man or whatever those other things are that you did that you built into that you

wanted something about that so you have to then first of all buy that and then if you want to build a habit yeah you know um tiny habits uh you know all that stuff is really good stuff you know little things at a time you know don't go try to do the big thing find some little piece of that you start to do on some consistent basis and then that gets you to a next level of game where you go oh okay let me now take on the next level of game that I need to do so habits I mean kind of generating serotonin in your own brain of like um is one of my favorite for example if I do this 15 minutes hit I finish with um a nice meditation um that would

uh that would like be stacking meditation and then I finish up with a nice yoga let's say so that these are one of my favorite um for yeah I've been checking whoever did tiny habits uh uh fog yeah BJ fog yeah DJ you know he said every time he took a pee went and did put you know push-ups so he wouldn't take a pee until I say he did a certain number of push-ups so he'd do push-ups because he you take a pee every morning that's right so whatever it is that you do regularly you tie something into that that you would then like you just said okay when I do these kind of things I do those kind of things yeah right that's a great way to that's a great way to build a

habit yeah just to segue out of um the interview here I had like personal uh questions when it came to your books you know um is it fair to say that it completely changed your life when um the book kind of got viral and can can you speak as per the process of getting a perennial piece of work out there that will make it through the times I just did that and you know I I you know after 25 years I I knew this stuff worked I had tested it in the toughest environments where it went viral inside of some of the corporations that you go and anything you know a corporation would spit you out in two seconds if you couldn't stand Toe to Toe with the best and brightest people with your stuff

and my stuff went viral you know Goldman Sachs an example right if it goes viral there you know I don't think anybody else is going to be able to punch a hole in this so once I was confident enough that this stuff was very real and you know the cool thing about it is I didn't have to change anything I say because the principles in there are they'll be true 100 years from now we fly to Jupiter you still need an in basket you still need to decide what's got our attention what's the next action who's doing it where do we park reminders that we need to see so you still are going to have to capture clarify organize reflect so that you engage appropriately that's true it's old as dirt and it'll be true

200 years from now so it was really cool to have uncovered something that was essentially Universal like gravity you you you're not going to not do this and then find out that the world doesn't know it yet and then build some sort of business model rather so I could keep teaching it you know so it could have fooled me that was not my plan I would I'm

not an aspirational entrepreneurial person I'm more of an educator than anything else and I mean you've got top CEOs of Fortune 500 companies reaching out to you like a magnet kind of on autopilot um While most people struggle to even get one client in a year um you already had a corporate career behind you but how did that change your life you know like did it added

any value to it or was it more of the same not really more the same just cooler people that I got to meet some of the brightest and best and busiest folks you know and most creative folks could ever meet and then then sort of the folks who bought into my stuff and then came to me you know come on one of my biggest Fanboys was Howard Stern you know it kind of changed his life he'd tell you and he broadcast that on the radio for six months so I can use his name but you know people like Will Smith and you know Robert Downey Jr these people are big champions of my stuff because they're running businesses in addition to their acting careers and their entertainment careers so these are busy busy folks but

you know once you get enough of those kind of things coming at you you go well that's cool and you know I do about I've done over 2 000 podcasts since the book the first edition of the book was done you know so I think at some point somebody's going to run out of anybody interested in what I've done but it turns out they keep showing up so I just keep engaging with people as they might want come and I'll be 78 this year Charles so yeah I I couldn't stop doing what I'm doing if I tried because it's the best stuff anybody asked me and again I'm an educator and and in a way of ministers I'm I'm happy to help anybody that needs help in this open to say how do I get

more how do I get where I want to go better than what I'm doing and if I have any potential answer for them I couldn't stop doing that if I tried what do you have in plans for the next 5-10 years of your life by the way you look very good for for 78. thanks I don't know I'll see what com I'll see what shows up I'm in the new book you know showing up you know beginning of 2024.

we'll see what that's probably going to produce a good bit of we already have uh you know a couple of countries that are already you know wanting the book and and talking to penguin that we get their rights to it so that's going to be popular I'll probably do a lot of talking with my co-author you know Ed Lamont in the UK you know about that so that's probably going to take up a good bit of time but you know come on you know I love to cook we love good wine we love good food we you know we we have we just bought we bought a a wonderful apartment here in Amsterdam and renovated it and you know just living here and enjoying life and and and following what shows up and sort of

asked me for my participation I do a lot of pro bono work around here around the Netherlands anyway uh for universities and so for people wanting me to come and and you know and talk and give keynote presentation so that doesn't seem that doesn't seem to be stopping so we're probably still going to be doing that as long as I can right and you were really gracious

to come in the the Pod so thank you for that one last question I I consider my uh performance on this interview to be sub-optimal uh whether it was from lack of prep or my current biochemical States um or state of focus you've been on 2000 podcasts you've also been in my seat what's uh how could I improve as an interviewer I don't think you need to Charles you know you've been authentic and just being authentic is the key you know to success with anything we do so as long as you're honest and upfront and there you know I I wouldn't have any suggestions other than what you've done although you know you you mentioned um probably half of the bud that it's important to have a goal in a vision and for this podcast

it's for me to get insights first so that I can share it to the world and somehow although I did not do the the best of jobs here and I'm not too harsh for myself I learned tons because you you brought me to places which I'm not brought before just kind of in a jiu jitsu match or something um so thank you for that that was a really wonderful David and yeah really honored to to have you here where can people find out more about you or your next book yeah Namaste uh just go to get it www getting things done.com and if you want to see little slices of me doing my stick you know in two or five minute things as well as my tedx talks go to getting things done.com slash YouTube

and you'll see a whole bunch of stuff if you want to see little small Snippets and you know of that kind of thing and obviously you know the book getting things done the new edition you know in 2015 in English uh is a manual you know I've had people read it reread it for dozens of times they say it's a totally different book every time they read it so there's a lot in there but that's obviously a way to stay in touch with this methodology and know what it is