This is optimal living daily episode 309, how to cross every item off your to-do list in one night, or two, by davidcainofraptitude.com, and I'm Justin Molick. If you're new here, there's a very different podcast than what's out there. The idea is really simple, I find amazing content, mostly in the personal development space, I get permission from the authors, and then read that content to you, just like an audio book. I mostly read from popular blogs, that includes Derek Sivers, Mark and Angel, Zen Habits, The Minimalists, Mark Manson, who I'm gonna read tomorrow, by the way, really great writers, and David Kane is another one of those, but he does more than just write, he does experiments on himself, like being vegan for a month, or meditating for a month, and then writing about that experiment.
It's really cool and makes for fascinating reads. And today's actually a continuation from his post yesterday, it was a little long, and I like to keep the episodes fairly short, so I broke it up into two. So if you didn't hear yesterday's episode, I recommend listening to that one first. And with that, let's continue yesterday's post as we optimize your life.
How to cross every item off your to-do list in one night, part two, by davidcainofraptitude.com. Probably the most comprehensive workflow system is David Allen's Getting Things Done. I have long fantasized about mastering the GTD system and the mine-like water state that is supposed to arise once he properly implemented it. This achievement even had a place in my own bucket list for a while.
The general idea is that you catch all incoming requests on your time in a series of inboxes. Mail goes into an entry on your desk, email goes into its own inbox, notes when you're out and about, go into your smartphone. Any event that causes a feeling of, I should do something about that, in order from your boss, an unsettling knock in your car's engine, or recurring dream about getting your prostate checked, is written down and sent to its appropriate inbox. Every few days, you go to these inboxes and decide what you're going to do about them.
There are four options. Do something about it right now. Decide you're going to do it later, delegate it to someone else, or decide not to bother doing anything at all. If you can capture on paper anything that tugs on your conscience and get it to its appropriate inbox, then you can know that no concern will escape your decision-making process.
Properly implemented, the GTD system creates a workflow that lets you relax in the moment, knowing that every single concern will end up in front of you at your desk when you are alert and prepared to make a decision on it. Your habits ensure it all gets into the funnel at some stage. The system hinges on eradicating escapees. If you have a concerning thought and you don't write it down, some part of you will know that there's a free-floating problem out there that you haven't addressed and which could blow up at any time.
Your personal world feels dangerous again out of your sphere of control and stress returns. Weekly, you review the whole machine for leaks. Presumably, once the crucial routines are established, you reach a point of balance where sharpened habits process the inflow of emerging commitments into completed goals and realized dreams. I envy people who make this complex system work.
When those of us who are attempting to work a system begin to lose control of that system, we end up inadvertently using the other approach, trying to keep all our commitments organized in our heads. Procrastinators and other people without a track record of steady productivity will have trouble with GTD, for a particular reason. The system is unsympathetic to your emotional state. If you have any problems with procrastination or motivation, the system will fall apart quickly for you.
So I got one weekly review or let your inbox pile up for a whole week even once, then resuming the system becomes daunting enough that you wait to do them until you have a clear three-hour stretch and very quickly your workflow system is back to a react-as-it-comes basis. It's still totally worth learning GTD if only so you can use it as a basis for your own system, one that is not so inflexible and doesn't require so many simultaneous habit changes. I am taking a much simpler approach now. Keep all the same inboxes, go through them once a week and put them on a big single category list.
No more subcategories and priority rankings to get lost in. Look at the list every evening and decide what to do the next day. If I need time-specific reminders, I'll set them up in Google Calendar on my phone, a cabinet for files, a regular day, weekly to get up-to-date. The problem is that I've got a six-month backlog to work through before I can bring this leaner system to bear on today's concerns as I arise in real time.
It's something like starting your first job in retail on Black Friday when the closer last night forgot to do everything. How to deal with a stagnant backlog of work in a single evening. In finance, when you need a clean slate, you take the drastic action of bankruptcy. I recently learned of the concept of task bankruptcy, given that you've already delayed on a ridiculously long time on a ridiculous number of tasks.
You just decide you aren't going to ever do those things and you start a list again from zero. As with financial bankruptcy, there are commitments on your list you won't be able to reasonably discharge. But these are uncommon. Identify them and decide where to go from here with them.
Everything else is gone. If learning to knit or selling all those boxes of CDs on eBay or assembling the family tree really were important, they will recapture your conscience at some point later in life. For now and maybe forever, they are no longer important. No need to remember what was once there, what used to feel compelled to eventually do.
You let it all drop and start from where you are. Those emails will simply go unreturned. Those short stories will be allowed to die unfinished and the world will go on. After declaring task bankruptcy, I went through all my old quote-unquote debts with a sense of detachment and freedom and found that most of them didn't seem important anymore.
Some of them still made sense to do. So I put them consciously voluntarily on my new list, but only once I had truly cleaned my docket and only if I felt a fresh commitment to doing them. If it was just lingering guilt, I let them die. It may not even occur to a lot of people that almost all long-standing to-do items can be abandoned without you becoming a disgraced deadbeat.
Dumping them will probably put you immediately into a better position to complete the important things. There will be some repercussions for letting certain tasks die, but they're probably minor compared to the cost of continuing to bleed. Streamline the system and declare task bankruptcy. GTD is a robust system that's designed to catch absolutely everything and it may be just too much personal bureaucracy for a lot of people.
If you've been struggling with it, try to leave about as zen to done, a minimalist rebuttal to GTD and its complexity. If you've got an unmanageable backlog, you're paying all kinds of interest until you're solvent again. Might as well swallow your pride and begin the rest of your life now. You just listened to part two of the post titled, How to Cross Every Item Off Your To-Do List in One Night by Debbie Kane of Raptitude.com.
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They're all sort of on the same page. And the more we hear this type of information presented in different ways from different authors, the more it sinks in and we end up implementing this stuff in our lives without even realizing it. It's happening to me and if you listen to this show daily, I'm sure it's happening to you too. It's really cool that this is possible thanks to the authors that contribute to the show.
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This is like the perfect companion to this podcast. Now it won't be free. These people need to get some type of compensation for doing a year-long course. And if you register through my link, you'll also give some of the proceeds to this show to help keep this going.
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And there's plenty more I could say about that because it's gonna be awesome, but this ending is getting long. I'll end it right there and save it for another time. Have a great rest of your day and I'll see you tomorrow for your optimal life. Oh, wait.
Hey, this is Dan from the Optimal Finance Daily podcast, which is a lot like this show, except more focused on personal finance. Justin hand picks the best posts he can find from blogs and authors like Ramit Sadie, Mr. Money Mustache and more. And I read them to you five days a week.
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