047 Reflections on Getting Things Done (GTD): What I Wish I Knew When I Started GTD, Part Two – ProductivityCast

This is episode nine, Reflections on GTD: What I Wish I Knew When I Started GTD, Part Two, and therefore the last in our nine-part series on the Getting Things Done (GTD) personal productivity methodology and eponymously-titled book, from the perspective of the ProductivityCast team–as long-term practitioners, critics and observers of GTD. In this cast, Augusto Pinaud, Francis Wade, Art Gelwicks and I discuss what we wish we knew when we first started or came across Getting Things Done, the book and methodology, as we tried to understand and/or implement it. This certainly isn't the last time we'll talk about GTD, but we had a great time discussing GTD in this series and hope you enjoyed it, too! (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/047 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.) Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening! If you'd like to discuss this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | What I Wish I Knew When I Started GTD, Part Two Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Francis Wade Art Gelwicks Show Notes | What I Wish I Knew When I Started GTD, Part Two Resources we mention, including links to them will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen Getting Things Done Virtual Study Group Zeigarnik effect GTD Fast audio program Todoist Waze (driving navigation app) Raw Text Transcript | What I Wish I Knew When I Started GTD, Part Two Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio). Read More Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling, productive life? Then you've come to the right place productivity cast the weekly show about all things productivity here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:16 Welcome back everybody to productivity cast the weekly show about all things productivity I'm recently Smith I'm joined here with August to pronounce Francis weight in our galaxy. Welcome to the show gentlemen. Augusto Pinaud 0:28 Good morning. Francis Wade 0:29 Thanks Ray. Art Gelwicks 0:30 Morning. Hey guys, how's everything going, Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:32 it's good to have all of us on the show again this week and and we're back at it with a continuation of the conversation we were having last week. And to fill you all in. If you haven't listened to Episode 46, hop on back over there and listen to Episode 46 at productivity cast.net forward slash 046. And you'll be able to hear the first part of our conversation about what we all wish we knew. When we started GTD, some of us are not GTD practitioners now, but we've all been acquainted with the material and have probably attempted to implement it at some level. And these are all things that we wish we had known when we first attempted to go ahead and implement. So I'm going to kick us off here with the first item that I really am thinking about as we continue the conversation from last week. Which is this idea of, of trusting your system. And so David Allen talks about trusting the your system. And and through this concept of trust, you'll be you'll be more comfortable with externalising your tasks and projects. And I'm very curious about what you will also have to say about this. Because when I first thought about that, it was a real game changer. For me. I felt very excited about this idea that if I trusted where I was good to put things, then then I was going to I was going to be able to know where I put things. And what I learned was that trusting your system isn't merely externalising those tasks and projects it really does fundamentally require you to go back to your projects, lists and your task list and work those lists. Right. If you're not maintaining them, then you very quickly erode the system. It's not just trusting your system from the fact that you're trusting yet you're capturing into it, you must remember that you're not just capturing. But you have to also be clarifying. You must also be organizing, you have to also be reviewing and doing the work. If you're not doing each of those stages, then the system can't be trusted. The tools that you're capturing into won't be trusted, because you're not coming back to your your brain basically says, Well, yes, you're putting these things in the system. And they're not getting done. Why should I trust where you're capturing externally, I've got to bring all of that stuff and back into my, into my mind's eye in order to be able to keep keep going. Because you're not, you're not actually getting those things done. Augusto Pinaud 3:22 I came from a heavy or bro heavy, unbroken Seven Habits from the Highly Effective People. When I discovered GTD and there was a lot of things that were happening at the time. But one of them was that the role and the job and the responsibilities on the personal side has changed so much that they ABC one two tree wasn't caught it anymore on I was kind of drowning dot said one. The things that make my transition harder at the beginning was the fact that I trust so much my ABC, one two tree system, it was broken. And I was on I understood that. And I understood I need a better thing. But But when I read that concept on the book, I wasn't completely agreement. Because until you earn that trust, then if you don't have that trust, you are not going to go back and do all the work that is required to maintain that system. And that applies to getting things done CABI put it into your arm doesn't matter. If you don't trust that that system is complete and functional, you are not going to do the necessary job to maintain it. So it stays functional. And what the sad part is, your system goes from fully update fully functional to broken in really the blink of an eye. Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:11 And there's always going to be some level of of information that you retain in your mind, you know that it's not, it's not a complete letting go. It's it's the conscious stuff that tugs at you, that goes away, but there's still an unconscious tug. And and I think that's okay, I don't think there's anything wrong with your brain exercising those those memory muscles, so to speak, Francis Wade 5:37 I think we've talked about the organic effect for for our listeners who might not remember or didn't catch that episode. It's the subconscious way of remaining, or pinging or conscious mind that there's something it's it's not, it's likely to forget, or likely to not remember, or, or is part of the system that's not trusted. So the idea is simple as that when you complete a task, the task disappears from memory, and your subconscious mind no longer holds on to it. But when a task is left incomplete, it keeps sort of sending the signals to your conscious mind. And if anyone has ever woken up in the middle of the night with justice, you know, in a panic that I forgot to do something, and that I remember to send that email to Mr. Smith that I was supposed to send yesterday at the beat the deadline and, and I think I forgot, and that's all those, the garlic effect. And what it does over time is that it It destroys our peace of mind, because it leads to a feeling of overwhelm, as our subconscious mind goes into overdrive and tries to hold on to all these demands on our time. All these promises and commitments that we've made, the good part is that there's recent research from a couple of guys that you University of Florida, which showed that if you have a trust, essentially, is to put it in the language that we're talking about today, if you put your tasks in a trusted system, then the guy Nick effect goes away. That's that was their big fanning. So essentially, it matches what David Allen was saying, in principle is that his he was right and dead on by saying that as as if you can deploy as many tasks as possible to your trusted system and not use memory, you will be doing yourself a great service and avoiding any sense of overwhelm the problem this is a Google said, which can happen in the flesh of an eye. And this is sort of weird David Allen goes a little too far my man is that if you have a huge influx of tasks, new project new baby just bought, the hose car broke down, all of a sudden, you have a lot of tasks demand is and therefore very little free time to manage them with is that you go back to almost as if you are just starting all over again, because of the guy Nick effect kicks right back in just as if you are a beginner who doesn't even have a task list. And at that point, you've got to either mitigate if it's a temporary kind of thing, or change your system to match the number of tasks that you're trying to manage. And that's the part that David Allen didn't mention in his book, he just said, Do this part. And this will create a trusted system for you, I think, a lot of work but other people are no seeing and all the work that we're doing in my shop shows that that's not true in the sort of the end all and be all sense that you've got to change your tactics depending on the number of tasks that you've got to manage. And being flexible. And being aware of this guy, Nick effect is sort of a way to the listen to your subconscious, and then change your tactics accordingly. And that's that's that's the piece that I would add in that he he doesn't mention, Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:09 ...