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David Allen is de wereldberoemde auteur van Getting Things Done (3+ miljoen verkochte exemplaren) en productiviteitsexpert. Op zijn 55e brak hij door met zijn methode en de rest is geschiedenis,
David woont in Amsterdam en kwam naar Utrecht om samen twee mooie afleveringen van Groeivoer op te nemen. In deze aflevering aan we in op de basis van GTD voor jou persoonlijk. Hoe krijg je meer helderheid over wat echt belangrijk is? Hoe boks je meer voor elkaar door slimmer te werken?
Dat en meer in deze nieuwe aflevering.
Veel plezier!
Gerhard
HOOFDSTUKKEN
00:00 Welkom bij Groeivoer!
00:49 Wie is David Allen?
03:24 Directe communicatie
05:34 De grootste uitdaging voor ondernemers
07:19 Is GTD overbodig dankzij AI?
09:42 Crashcourse Getting Things Done
12:33 Chaos vermijden
15:29 Loslaten en reflecteren
18:50 Spiritueel of praktisch?
22:05 Hoe krijg je helderheid?
28:38 De twee hersenhelften benutten
35:53 Headspace vs. tijd
39:21 Hoe zou jij meer ruimte gebruiken?
SHOWNOTES
Relevante links voor deze aflevering
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Transcript
00:00:00 David Allen (guest)
This whole methodology, everything that I’ve uncovered and objectified, is about how do I get clear in order to be clear, you have to decide what’s not clear and deal with that.
00:00:10 Gerhard te Velde (host)
So you’re still trying to have the control and have the overview and have the all the strings you know, but maybe you should just let it go.
00:00:17 David Allen (guest)
Well, I think you need the combination the ability to shift between a high focus and a high control and sort of let the world occur to you as it occurs to you. It’s probably one of the biggest needs for executives and entrepreneurs. You don’t need time.
00:00:32 David Allen (guest)
Room. Well, the difference is if you don’t have any room in your head, you can’t be creative. You can’t be innovative. You can’t be strategic. You can’t be present. You can’t be as loving as you want to be with your kids or your dog or whatever. You’re just distracted.
00:00:32 Gerhard te Velde (host)
What’s the difference?
00:00:49 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Welcome to Groeivoer. My guest today is David Allen. David is the world renowned author and creator of the Getting Things Done.
00:00:58 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Method David publishes original book getting things done in 2001 he sold 3 million copies, so he made a big impact and in 2024 very recent he launched his newest book on how to Get Things Done with a team.
00:01:15 Gerhard te Velde (host)
David, welcome to the show.
00:01:17 David Allen (guest)
Good. Thanks for the invitation. Glad to be here.
00:01:19 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Good. You live in Amsterdam?
00:01:22 David Allen (guest)
I do.
00:01:22 David Allen (guest)
I do.
00:01:23 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Which is quite close to Utrecht and I’m very curious what what do you like about the Dutch and what is something we could still work on or improve?
00:01:33 David Allen (guest)
Well, you know, the Dutch are quite famous for being quite direct.
00:01:41 David Allen (guest)
And I think that’s great.
00:01:44 David Allen (guest)
Don’t beat around the Bush, you say what you mean. It’s great. And and actually the and the Dutch for the most part at least my experience has been you do it very well.
00:01:55 David Allen (guest)
So it’s not like you’re brutal.
00:01:58 David Allen (guest)
You’re just direct, so I I very much appreciate that. I appreciate the practicality of the Dutch, the the we love the Dutch people, their style, the culture.
00:02:11 David Allen (guest)
And these days particularly it’s it’s, you know, a a great country to be in relative to all the things going on in all the other countries.
00:02:22 David Allen (guest)
So and you know, it had like like all countries, it has its issues.
00:02:25 David Allen (guest)
But it’s so global in Amsterdam as it, you know, it’s it’s sort of like the Republic of Amsterdam, so.
00:02:32 David Allen (guest)
Much like the Republic of San Francisco, you know has its own its own culture. And but it’s I I love how global it is, how many languages you can hear walking down the street.
00:02:44 David Allen (guest)
Relatively safe and obviously it’s an eye Candy City, so you know it’s beautiful to, yes, beautiful to be in.
00:02:49 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Kaiser stocks.
00:02:51
Yeah.
00:02:53 David Allen (guest)
But of course, you know we we’re in our 4th location since we’ve been there. We’ve been there 11 years almost and we started out in the centre of the city.
00:03:03 David Allen (guest)
It got a little noisy and a little, you know, raucous. We were very close to light supply and once you learn the city and learn the tramps, you just need to be, you know, along good tram line. So we we migrated a little further South. So we wound up buying an apartment and renovating an apartment right on the South edge of Amsterdam.
00:03:23 David Allen (guest)
Right close to Amsterdam.
00:03:24 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah, beautiful. And is there something we should work on as dutchies? Because you said we are direct. I thought that could be that could go both ways, you know, like too direct or but.
00:03:33 David Allen (guest)
Yeah, they’re good.
00:03:39 David Allen (guest)
Gee, what? How how would what? What would improve? I think there’s more.
00:03:48 David Allen (guest)
More of the ability.
00:03:53 David Allen (guest)
To I don’t know what how to phrase this, maybe to stand out a little bit more.
00:03:58 David Allen (guest)
You know, you’d like to not not stick out, you know, in a way.
00:04:03 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Too modest? Maybe. Or.
00:04:04 David Allen (guest)
A little too modest. Yeah. And. And of course, you know, I’ve been around a lot of the startup culture in Amsterdam, and of course, their whole thing is, how do you, how do you make a pitch and how do you, how do you kind of get it up to sound great and to be as great as you think?
00:04:06
Mm.
00:04:20 David Allen (guest)
Might be.
00:04:21 David Allen (guest)
And that’s probably.
00:04:24 David Allen (guest)
You know, again that goes both ways, that modesty is nice, but at the same time.
00:04:30 David Allen (guest)
The you know, I I know that America has an attraction to a lot of the Dutch entrepreneurs and whatever because.
00:04:37
Mm hmm.
00:04:39 David Allen (guest)
The the the image is you know, just to some degree it’s a myth, but to some degree it’s real that you can. There’s so many things you can do in the United States. You know, if you put yourself out and and and go.
00:04:47
Yeah.
00:04:50 David Allen (guest)
It.
00:04:50 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah. So the the sky is the limit. So we could think a bit bigger maybe or at least stand up and show yourself.
00:04:59 Gerhard te Velde (host)
That could be something.
00:05:00 David Allen (guest)
Yeah, yeah. But again, we love the Dutch. We love the Dutch culture. It is so, you know, almost every Dutchman I’ve ever met who’s, you know, over 25, has travelled the world or travelled some big part of the world and.
00:05:15 David Allen (guest)
And it’s such an open culture in that way. Of course, you know, 506 hundred years ago, that’s how the Dutch sort of rule the world.
00:05:24 David Allen (guest)
Yeah, being quite global and international and open to different cultures, et cetera. So it still has that still has that DNA, which is lovely.
00:05:34 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Want to transition to getting things done? You already mentioned startups, maybe scale ups, you’ve worked with a lot of entrepreneurs. I think in the past years. What is something you observe? Is there like something you observe in, in a lot of entrepreneurs?
00:05:45
Yeah.
00:05:52 David Allen (guest)
Which? Well, one of the biggest issues in terms of entrepreneurs productivity is how many hats they have to wear.
00:06:03 David Allen (guest)
You know, you wear a party hat and you, you know, now it’s a good time and then you have to put on your financial hat and you have to count the the EUR and then you have to put on, you know, and all the different hats and then struggling with which ones do we give away as we start to grow.
00:06:20 David Allen (guest)
And trying to figure that out. And so building the appropriate organisation chart, if you will, what are the different roles?
00:06:29 David Allen (guest)
Clarifying of roles is one of the things we you know, deal a lot with in the in the new book on team because I can very much get in the way if roles are not clear.
00:06:42 David Allen (guest)
And obviously things are moving fast for a lot of entrepreneurs, so the speed of change and the speed of you know, there’s nothing really new in the world except how frequently things are new. So you know, then you have to be ready to.
00:06:54 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Uh.
00:06:58 David Allen (guest)
Integrate.
00:06:59 David Allen (guest)
Whatever the new reality is, quickly and then.
00:07:03 David Allen (guest)
Recalibrate and refocus and you know most all the entrepreneurs are up to here. They’re already they’re already fill up more to do than they.
00:07:12 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah. Swamped you. Yeah.
00:07:13 David Allen (guest)
Do.
00:07:14 David Allen (guest)
And so when they have something new, they have to deal with, they got to.
00:07:17 David Allen (guest)
Go of something.
00:07:18 David Allen (guest)
And that’s tough, you know, for a lot of entrepreneurs to do that.
00:07:19
Yeah.
00:07:22 Gerhard te Velde (host)
What about AI? Because I mean that was that question was on my list very, very low but but now that you mentioned that the world is changing in a in a high pace, yeah.
00:07:34 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Is that a game changer?
00:07:37 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Or is it just another tool?
00:07:37 David Allen (guest)
Not so much a game changer. It’s a game.
00:07:43 David Allen (guest)
You know, it’s AAI in in its best form is just good decision support.
00:07:50 David Allen (guest)
So you don’t need somebody to go do a lot of research and spend a lot of time doing that ‘cause you can just use AI to to get that fast. So it’s, you know and and I don’t know that that’s a game changer you’ve always had decision support.
00:08:06 David Allen (guest)
Capability. It’s just it’s speed it up, you know tremendously. So and you know it’s like.
00:08:07
Mm hmm.
00:08:15 David Allen (guest)
It it, it may be as game changing as.
00:08:20 David Allen (guest)
Spreadsheets and word processors were, you know, up until AII have to say there’s not much. The only the only thing that’s really that really changed with speed and volume of content that the digital world you know was producing or at least made available to you.
00:08:37 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah.
00:08:38 David Allen (guest)
So.
00:08:40 David Allen (guest)
You know, back in the old days you only had two or three channels that you had to check, you know, now. Now you know, people have to deal with what I call channel creep. How many things, how many go. There’s slack and there’s team. And there’s there’s, you know, Google meet. Then there’s.
00:08:44 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah.
00:08:55 Gerhard te Velde (host)
WhatsApp. LinkedIn. Yeah. All these channels? Yeah.
00:08:56 David Allen (guest)
You know WhatsApp and you know and all that all that stuff and that’s that just adds that many more in baskets it essentially for somebody to pay attention to. So having to learn to be discreet about how you manage your channels and how you manage the flow of inputs.
00:08:59
Yeah.
00:09:14 David Allen (guest)
That’s.
00:09:16 David Allen (guest)
That’s that’s pretty new. That’s that’s. That’s changed a lot. You know, in the last three 4-5 years.
00:09:18 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah.
00:09:23 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah, I thought I had it figured out until I.
00:09:28 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Started doing more on LinkedIn, so now I have my e-mail. Now I have my LinkedIn box. Now I have my WhatsApp. Now I have.
00:09:36 Gerhard te Velde (host)
So it’s very relatable that you have all these channels and you have to keep up and you have to do Inbox Zero, you have to clean it all.
00:09:42 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Time, but first, maybe it’s good for for those people that still or or they might have heard about getting things done.
00:09:52 Gerhard te Velde (host)
We might give a little crash course on the steps. Sure. Would you be so kind to go over them?
00:09:57 David Allen (guest)
Yeah, well, that’s, you know, I’ve spent the last probably 40 now, 45 years probably in this space of personal productivity. Anyway, one of the best practises and I didn’t make them.
00:10:10 David Allen (guest)
Up I discovered them and recognised the best practises and then made them objective in terms of what is it, when when you’re really on and things are really cooking and things are really snapping right, what’s what’s going right?
00:10:26 David Allen (guest)
Well, you know, I identified a a basic part of the getting things done methodology or the five steps of how you get any situation more focused and in control and those five steps are capturing what has your attention.
00:10:40 David Allen (guest)
Clarifying exactly what you’re what it what those things mean, and what you’re going to do about them, if anything, organising the results of that thinking if you can’t finish the thing in the moment, it occurs to you.
00:10:52 David Allen (guest)
Organising reminders essentially and then having some sort of a reflection process in terms of the content that you’ve now generated or captured and clarified.
00:11:02 David Allen (guest)
And then Step 5 would be engage. Then you where do you point your activity and your focus given that you’ve captured clarified, organised and reflected on all of your agreements with yourself, it’s really about agreements with yourself.
00:11:17 David Allen (guest)
Many of them include other people, but they’re all things you’ve told yourself you would could, should need to, ought to.
00:11:23 David Allen (guest)
Most people have made a lot more of those commitments than they realise, and they’re trying to use their head as their office and your heads are really crappy office.
00:11:33 David Allen (guest)
Did not evolve to do that very well.
00:11:34 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah. If I reflect on my personal struggle with all these things that that are on my list.
00:11:44 Gerhard te Velde (host)
I think one one step one that’s not the big deal for me. So capture that’s that’s what I do. I make this brain dump. So I have Google Keep. That’s where I just unloads everything that comes to mind.
00:11:57 Gerhard te Velde (host)
And what I feel or think is that I have too much ideas, so I never get past step one.
00:12:08 Gerhard te Velde (host)
So how how could I solve that problem? Or do you have any suggestions?
00:12:13 David Allen (guest)
Well, one way that, that that problem starts to get a lot more solved is get older.
00:12:21 Gerhard te Velde (host)
And 4941 now so.
00:12:23 David Allen (guest)
Yeah, well, you know, I’m 79 now. So, you know, trust me, the older you get, the more discreet you’re going to be about. Which things really matter to you?
00:12:23 Gerhard te Velde (host)
On my way but.
00:12:33 David Allen (guest)
And so yeah, they’re young and you think you’ll live forever and and you could do all the things that you’re thinking about, you know, wrong. That’s the. Yeah. You came on and there’s nothing wrong with having lots of ideas.
00:12:43 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Dream on.
00:12:49 David Allen (guest)
And what you need to do is just make sure that you’ve got a a good way to identify what all those things are, and then manage the inventory of the things that you need to assess.
00:13:01 David Allen (guest)
It’s essentially a menu kind of for most entrepreneurs. It becomes kind of a Chinese menu, you know, with 200 things that they could be doing. But once you’ve been clarified, if you go to the clarify steps, it makes it a.
00:13:15 David Allen (guest)
Easier.
00:13:16 David Allen (guest)
You know, is this really an actionable item or is this a someday maybe, you know, making that distinction?
00:13:22 David Allen (guest)
You know this can wait. You know, this is not that critical right now and or I don’t have the resources or it’s not the right timing for this. And so the someday maybe list is a you know is a is a very useful part of the methodology.
00:13:38 David Allen (guest)
Parking lot essentially being able to park that stuff and so having ideas is nothing absolutely wrong with that. Just you need to make sure you’ve got make the distinction between parking lot stuff and the things that really do need.
00:13:52 David Allen (guest)
Clarification and organisation.
00:13:56 David Allen (guest)
In terms of clarifying the inventory of what your commitments are.
00:13:59 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah, I have the big parking lots and there’s a lot of ideas in there, like for instance, podcasts, ideas. And I’m aware that an idea is nothing. I mean, it will only become something if you execute on the idea and then still you need to make it a success. So.
00:14:05 David Allen (guest)
Yeah.
00:14:15 Gerhard te Velde (host)
I park it for someday, maybe, but the stage I’m in right now there I don’t even have like the full picture. And someone told me, like maybe you should try to control it less. So you’re trying to.
00:14:23 David Allen (guest)
Yeah.
00:14:28 Gerhard te Velde (host)
To have the control and have the overview and have the all the strings you know. But maybe you should just let it go and go with the flow.
00:14:39 David Allen (guest)
Well, I think you need the combination. You know it’s the you need the the sort of the the Zen.
00:14:47 David Allen (guest)
You know, let go. Surrender.
00:14:49 David Allen (guest)
And you know.
00:14:52 David Allen (guest)
Let life occur to you as it occurs to you at the same time. You then need to shift.
00:14:59 David Allen (guest)
And focus. And so the ability to to shift between a high.
00:15:06 David Allen (guest)
And a high control to let go and relax and sort of let the world occur to you as it occurs to you. And so building that in even just on a daily basis, you know you it’s probably one of the biggest needs for executives and entrepreneurs.
00:15:24 David Allen (guest)
Is reflection time? Yeah, you know, stop.
00:15:28 David Allen (guest)
You.
00:15:29 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Know zoom out, do nothing.
00:15:30 David Allen (guest)
Yeah, zoom out. Zoom up, do nothing. Sometimes the most productive thing to do is nothing.
00:15:37 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah. Would you recommend everybody to get a dog and go out without your phone and?
00:15:44 David Allen (guest)
That helps.
00:15:46 David Allen (guest)
I have two and I don’t go out with my phone. So yeah, no, that that helps you know, anything like that, anything that can get.
00:15:55 David Allen (guest)
You know, away from the grind essentially is can be very helpful, but you can’t stay there.
00:16:03 David Allen (guest)
In order to be able to afford to let go, you still need to make sure you are managing your life and your work well.
00:16:11 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah. Yeah. So you cannot go outdoors forever. I mean, I’d like to spend time in nature. There is one hour a day. That’s how I start my day.
00:16:18 David Allen (guest)
Yeah. Good.
00:16:20 Gerhard te Velde (host)
And then I turn off my phone. But.
00:16:24 Gerhard te Velde (host)
During the walk I get ideas. So sure, when I get home from the walk, I turn on my phone, I write them down, so that’s that’s a good thing. But the things you were saying were my.
00:16:38 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Experience more pointing towards a spiritual solution to a practical problem, because the the critique at productivity techniques is.
00:16:50 Gerhard te Velde (host)
It will only get you busier, so the more you can throughput the more you can output and then you you keep working harder and harder. You’ve heard this many times.
00:16:59 David Allen (guest)
Sure, of course.
00:17:01 Gerhard te Velde (host)
But I’m also attracted to this more spiritual well, call it spiritual, but to relax and release.
00:17:07 David Allen (guest)
Yeah. Well, you with spiritual with a small S meaning.
00:17:10 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah, what’s?
00:17:13 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Elaborate enough.
00:17:13 David Allen (guest)
Well, there’s, there’s the the capital S spiritual of which would be more religiosity, if you will and.
00:17:18
Mm hmm mm hmm.
00:17:21 David Allen (guest)
I’m not a big fan of that. I’m not a big proponent of that, but the small S absolutely, which is what can I not see there are all kinds of things that are going on that are important to you. You can’t see, you can’t see emotions. You can’t see thoughts.
00:17:34 David Allen (guest)
Unless you’re, you know, some sort of a psychic and have capability to to do that. But.
00:17:39 David Allen (guest)
So there’s all kinds of things that are not visible and your ability to be able to access those things and be open to those things.
00:17:50 David Allen (guest)
I think is is important. You know there’s an old personal growth axiom that you can never get enough of. What you don’t really need and what you don’t need is.
00:17:57 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah.
00:18:00 David Allen (guest)
You know, and you you mentioned it to your point, it’s like harder the the the more I work, the better I get, the better I get, the more I work, the more I have to do.
00:18:11 David Allen (guest)
Da da.
00:18:11 David Allen (guest)
Da It’s a certain and that’s why I say, you know, get older.
00:18:15 David Allen (guest)
That’ll help.
00:18:17 David Allen (guest)
Or have other things occur in your life, like kids or dogs or.
00:18:24 David Allen (guest)
Ho.
00:18:25 David Allen (guest)
Are things that you really love to do aside from the day-to-day grind potentially whatever your work is. And of course you know it’s if you if you finding something that you love to do that you’ll never work another day in your life as they say.
00:18:40 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Well, you’re still going strong. I mean, you’re still in the.
00:18:45 David Allen (guest)
I’m still in the game. Get that my game looks a lot different than it did when I was 50 or when I was 25.
00:18:45
Yourself, yeah.
00:18:52 David Allen (guest)
But yeah, I I I couldn’t stop doing what I’m doing if I tried because.
00:18:58 David Allen (guest)
You know the getting things done methodology in my experience, is something that doesn’t hurt anybody and anybody who implements any part of it, not necessarily the whole thing, but any part of what I just said is going to improve their condition. They’re going to feel better. They’re going to be in more control. They’re going to be have more clarity.
00:19:16 David Allen (guest)
You know, and if they implement any of this, and I I couldn’t, you know, I’m really probably more of an educator than an entrepreneur myself.
00:19:25 David Allen (guest)
I’d I’d never really planned to.
00:19:28 David Allen (guest)
Have you know a big company or to do entrepreneurial, you know, let me do this and then once that’s done, let me go sell it and then go do something else that’s that has never been my style or interest in doing that. Nothing wrong with that. You know, obviously that a lot of people do that very well.
00:19:39
Mm hmm mm.
00:19:43 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Did you struggle with that?
00:19:44 David Allen (guest)
But sure.
00:19:45 David Allen (guest)
Not really, not really.
00:19:49 David Allen (guest)
I I I’ve just always said what do I need to do so I can keep doing what I like to do?
00:19:53 David Allen (guest)
Do so. That’s been, you know, I’ve been graced to have found, you know, a business that doesn’t do anything but improve people’s condition that and then be able to, you know.
00:20:07 David Allen (guest)
Create enough, enough, enough kind of good business model with it that it allows me to keep doing it.
00:20:15 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah, because there’s a lot of people, especially young, very young entrepreneurs. They want to be billionaires, gazillionaires they they see that the big cars and all the money. But you never went for that.
00:20:27 David Allen (guest)
Not really. I I I like, you know, a nice lifestyle and my wife and I have a nice lifestyle, but it we’re not, we’re not. We’re not out there trying to grab more and more and more you know.
00:20:42 David Allen (guest)
So yeah, I think you need to be comfortable enough and you know my what I need to feel comfortable, you know, has changed a little bit over the years, but not.
00:20:53 Gerhard te Velde (host)
A lot? No, because you you mentioned that.
00:20:58 Gerhard te Velde (host)
If you want to get things done, you also well, you need to pay the the mortgage, the bills, the so you you need to be productive. But on on the other hand you need to zoom out to relax to.
00:21:03 David Allen (guest)
Sure.
00:21:09 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Also, live your purpose. We’ll we’ll get to that. Especially when we go to the teams. But.
00:21:16 Gerhard te Velde (host)
So how how do you balance that? Because if you don’t have money, you have no room to delegate if you don’t have money, you.
00:21:16
Sure.
00:21:23 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Stress your mind goes to how am I going to pay the bills? So how, how how would you say people could balance?
00:21:31 David Allen (guest)
I don’t know.
00:21:33 David Allen (guest)
I don’t know. It’s it’s very it’s. I think it’s quite unique to each individual like what are they?
00:21:33 Gerhard te Velde (host)
How do you how do you?
00:21:38 David Allen (guest)
Wrong, you know, and what is important to them in terms of life and lifestyle.
00:21:44
Mm hmm.
00:21:45 David Allen (guest)
And.
00:21:47 David Allen (guest)
I know some people that are just not interested in building any bigger business than what they’re doing. They’re they’re fine doing that and to.
00:21:53 Gerhard te Velde (host)
A lot of people that’s wrong, you know, you have to think bigger. You have to go go next level.
00:22:01 David Allen (guest)
Well, again, that, that, that could be how that person is wired. And so they need to then do that in order to be able to, you know, be clear. It’s all about, you know, in a way this whole methodology, everything that I’ve uncovered and and objectified is about how do I get clear.
00:22:05
Uh.
00:22:20 David Allen (guest)
Clarity to me is the probably the maybe the most valuable thing that you could have and clarity. You know you can get there.
00:22:30 David Allen (guest)
A lot of ways.
00:22:33 David Allen (guest)
And it’s funny because you need to do both in order to be clear, you have to decide what’s not clear.
00:22:39 David Allen (guest)
In my life and my work and deal with that and then.
00:22:45 David Allen (guest)
How do I get even clearer to be able to stop all that and then lift up higher and have have a higher horizon and higher look in terms of what I am about and you know what’s important to me, what matters.
00:23:00 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Do you have any rituals like?
00:23:06 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Every day or I mean this is kind of a Tim Ferriss question. Like, he likes to tease out the habits of high performance. That’s what that’s his backline.
00:23:13 David Allen (guest)
Yeah, I I don’t really. I plan as little as I can get by with frankly.
00:23:19 David Allen (guest)
And yes, I, you know, practised sort of my spiritual practises, meditation etcetera for over 50 years and so it just became part of my lifestyle more than anything else. So that’s not necessarily that I stop and take an hour to do.
00:23:34 David Allen (guest)
Meditation or whatever I can meditate while I’m waiting for the tram. You know how.
00:23:39 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Does that work?
00:23:40 David Allen (guest)
Or even on the tram. Just.
00:23:44 David Allen (guest)
Quiet, you know.
00:23:45 David Allen (guest)
I’m sure, observe, observe. Enjoy.
00:23:52 David Allen (guest)
You know, not again sort of getting out of the trying to constantly keep doing something. Yeah. And you know, just take up, you know, the old, the mindfulness people these days, you know, just focus on your breathing. Get present.
00:24:07 David Allen (guest)
You.
00:24:07 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Know how do things go with the nasal breathing? Because you mentioned that on the Tim Ferr show that you were experimenting with.
00:24:14 Gerhard te Velde (host)
There was a new book that came out then. Oxygen advantage, yeah.
00:24:17 David Allen (guest)
They have the.
00:24:20 David Allen (guest)
Advantage.
00:24:22 David Allen (guest)
I I still I don’t practise it a lot, but I.
00:24:28 David Allen (guest)
I practise it enough so that.
00:24:32 David Allen (guest)
I’m more habitually breathe through my nose, in and out through my nose than my mouth.
00:24:36 David Allen (guest)
And sometimes I’m more conscious of it than others, but it keeps me from snoring. You know, at night and my wife loves.
00:24:46 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Together. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So there are, I mean, yeah, meditation for me, that’s still the image, you know, like yoga or lying down somewhere or has to be for hours. But you you could do it anyway, you could just.
00:24:47 David Allen (guest)
Really.
00:25:03 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Walk around to look at a tree. Really.
00:25:06 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Really see the tree or really observe it? Maybe to some listeners that might sound a bit vague or.
00:25:14 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Too spiritual, but it’s all about clarity because that that’s what you were referring to. Like, how do you get clear as an entrepreneur? How do you know if you’re doing the right thing and?
00:25:19 David Allen (guest)
Yeah.
00:25:23 David Allen (guest)
Yeah.
00:25:26 David Allen (guest)
Well, you know it’s.
00:25:29 David Allen (guest)
If I would am asked to come into any kind of a situation for an individual or for even for a team.
00:25:36 David Allen (guest)
You know my first question is what has your attention?
00:25:40 David Allen (guest)
Because for the most part, I’d say 98% of the time things that have your attention, you’re not yet appropriately engaged with.
00:25:49 David Allen (guest)
And getting things done. You know, in a way, Productivity’s got a lot of baggage as a word. Most people think, oh, God, I’m already busy enough. I don’t need to be more productive. But productivity, my definition of productivity just means achieving some sort of desired result. And if your desired result is.
00:26:05 David Allen (guest)
Currently, and you’re not doing what you need to be clear, that’s unproductive. You go to a party to have fun that don’t have funds unproductive party for you, you know, or if you go on vacation to relax and don’t relax. That’s unproductive. So.
00:26:20 David Allen (guest)
The getting things done, it kind of has a little bit of that edge to it where people think, oh, that’s it’s about working harder. I I I don’t need. I’ve got enough to do. I don’t need to learn, you know something else to add to my plate in terms of stuff I need.
00:26:33 David Allen (guest)
To do but getting things done is really more about being appropriately engaged with your life and your work, and appropriate engagement doesn’t mean that you go finish everything and do everything. It just means, hey, what that is, that has my attention. Here’s what I’ve decided it is. Here’s where I’ve organised a reminder about something about it.
00:26:53 David Allen (guest)
That I need to see in appropriate time and context and I don’t need to keep thinking about it.
00:27:00 David Allen (guest)
So if things that have your attention are the things that you’re not yet appropriately engaged with, that’s not a judgement. That’s not a bad thing, it just it’s just an indication that there’s decisions you haven’t made yet or you haven’t parked the results in some sort of trust.
00:27:14 David Allen (guest)
System or person you know that in in, in terms of what it means to you.
00:27:21 Gerhard te Velde (host)
One of the three habits you.
00:27:24 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Describe in the book is also outcome focus. Yeah, that reminded me of begin with the end in mind.
00:27:31 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Which is one of the principles very famous, of course.
00:27:36 Gerhard te Velde (host)
How? How? How could I implement that because.
00:27:39 David Allen (guest)
That’s how you do it. You imagine. What would it be? What would Dunn be?
00:27:44 David Allen (guest)
See in a way, I know this sounds a little simplistic, but it’s really true. The way you get things done is you decide what done means and what doing looks like and where that happens.
00:27:55 David Allen (guest)
Those are two different kinds of things, and you know, it was strange to me. I found it curious over all these years, and all the one-on-one coaching I’ve done thousands of hours with some of the brightest people you’d ever meet.
00:28:09 David Allen (guest)
And very challenging for people to take something that has their attention and say what’s your desired result for this thing, this situation could be a small thing. If you go, I won’t have this fixed or I want to have this clear. I want to have this handled.
00:28:24 David Allen (guest)
I want to have. I want to be able to put.
00:28:26 David Allen (guest)
Bed. It could be a big thing. Like wow. You know, I need to buy a company or I need to make sure that we’ve got axe number of of valuation in terms of our company, it could be any one of those things.
00:28:41 David Allen (guest)
All of those things you know, are outcomes. We’re doing outcome thinking all the time. It’s how you get out of the room as you see yourself out of the room and then you go match your picture, right. So you’re we’re we’re we’re constantly doing that. You couldn’t stop doing that if you tried.
00:28:56 David Allen (guest)
You oftentimes it’s by default, you’re just, you know, having outcomes that you are used to thinking about are ways that you’re used to thinking. But they are creating. They’re creating your world. So that’s what done means. What does done mean? And then what does doing look like?
00:29:13 David Allen (guest)
Interestingly, that requires two different parts of your brain.
00:29:16 David Allen (guest)
19 the outcome thinking is the forebrain. That’s the you know, the latest part of the evolution in terms of what happened. And that’s the the part of you that makes decisions that that can think pros and cons that can do.
00:29:31 David Allen (guest)
You know, analysing stuff, it’s that’s the the that’s that part of the brain, the action part of the of the equation. How do I implement? How do I execute is more the limbic part of the brain that says survival. You know, I need to.
00:29:45 David Allen (guest)
I need to do I need to do what I need to, you know, whatever.
00:29:48 David Allen (guest)
So and because it I think that’s why people kind of resist to do both of those at the same time, but that’s actually a muscle. It’s kind of a cognitive muscle you can develop is to take something that has your attention and say what’s my desired outcome and what’s the next step I would need to move the needle on this.
00:29:59 David Allen (guest)
Mm hmm.
00:30:06 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah.
00:30:06 David Allen (guest)
And and training yourself to do those kinds of thinking. And it doesn’t, I can tell you from thousands of hours with working with some of the brightest, busiest people you’d ever meet on the planet.
00:30:18 David Allen (guest)
That that’s not something that comes naturally to people to do. Exactly. You have to train yourself to do that. It’s not hard and like, you know, like hard physical thing or hard mental thing to do. It is challenging.
00:30:33 David Allen (guest)
To kind of exercise both those parts of your brain almost simultaneously, yeah.
00:30:38 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Also, if you’re doing it on your own, which we will talk about in the next episode about the team, if you surround yourself with people that follow the same logic.
00:30:49 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Or you you start building on that.
00:30:53 Gerhard te Velde (host)
But now when we focus on this solopreneur, the person that works alone or is just about personal productivity, do you have any insights when it comes to distractions? How do you?
00:31:08 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Because I I heard an interview with you and.
00:31:13 Gerhard te Velde (host)
The interviewer he he said there was a lot of talk on Reddit about getting things done. And then you said, well, I didn’t read it and I don’t care to read it, which I found striking because if it was my my methodology, I would be very curious to to go there and.
00:31:29 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Just go down the rabbit hole. But you found a.
00:31:31 Gerhard te Velde (host)
To separate yourself from the world. I don’t know how you did it.
00:31:35 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Can you?
00:31:36 Gerhard te Velde (host)
It’s in those little bits.
00:31:37 David Allen (guest)
You know, come on. When you spend 40 years doing this work and and watching the results that are.
00:31:46 David Allen (guest)
Invariable.
00:31:48 David Allen (guest)
And you know it works.
00:31:51 David Allen (guest)
Then.
00:31:53 David Allen (guest)
You know, it’s interesting to it. It it can be interesting and sometimes just my curiosity is like, how do people implement this and what do they do? But the basics are just so basic and fundamental. They don’t change. I mean, when we fly to Jupiter, if and when we do that, we still need an in basket. You still need to clarify what’s got your attention you still need.
00:32:06 David Allen (guest)
Yeah.
00:32:13 David Allen (guest)
That you still need to reflect on the content.
00:32:16 David Allen (guest)
Of you know of your commitments relative to flying to Jupiter and you, then you, you.
00:32:22 David Allen (guest)
That’s that doesn’t change. So this methodology, you can’t poke a hole.
00:32:28 David Allen (guest)
It you.
00:32:29 David Allen (guest)
Know when I I it took me 4 years from the time I pulled the trigger to write getting things done.
00:32:35 David Allen (guest)
From 97 to 2001, when it was published.
00:32:39 David Allen (guest)
And.
00:32:42 David Allen (guest)
You know, I I’m not. I’m not a TADA kind of person. I mean, to me, I was going to put, you know, decades of my work in my career on the line by writing a book about it. And so I put everything in there and I needed to trust that it was really that it was real and that it really worked. And it turned out.
00:33:02 David Allen (guest)
Years that I was writing the book, you know, I I had one of the most challenging clients you could ever have that if you didn’t stand toe to toe with the best and brightest, you know, people in the world.
00:33:15 David Allen (guest)
Planet.
00:33:18 David Allen (guest)
Their immune system would spit you out in about two seconds. They’d do it very elegantly, but you know you couldn’t get, and my stuff went viral inside of that environment. I said, well, if they can’t poke a hole in it, I don’t.
00:33:28 David Allen (guest)
Anybody else can either can you?
00:33:29 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Name this client or.
00:33:33 Gerhard te Velde (host)
So they adopted, they became believers, and then that was like the launchpad, yeah.
00:33:37 David Allen (guest)
Yeah, yeah, that that helped a lot. Now that’s probably they probably wouldn’t like me saying that, but you know.
00:33:46 David Allen (guest)
A lot of people that they’ve used a lot of consultants and lots of training, you know inside of that, but again that that that was true for Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse and and and the big insurance companies and the Big Pharma. And you know we’ve done.
00:33:50
Yeah.
00:34:03 David Allen (guest)
I think we’ve done, you know, getting things done, seminars and coaching and at least 40 or 50% of the of the Fortune 500, you know companies so again.
00:34:12 David Allen (guest)
Yeah.
00:34:16 David Allen (guest)
It’s. You can’t really poke a hole in it, so I’m not, I’m.
00:34:20 David Allen (guest)
I’m. I’m not that particularly interested in seeing if anybody’s poked a hole.
00:34:24 David Allen (guest)
It that’s.
00:34:25 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Not interesting.
00:34:25 David Allen (guest)
Like you know, I don’t have time.
00:34:29 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Maybe a little bit about implementation, so there are always first timers, people who will come across this methodology for the first time. You already hinted that you don’t have to do the whole system or.
00:34:45 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Completely integrate it.
00:34:47 Gerhard te Velde (host)
What would be a first step or a starting point for people?
00:34:51 David Allen (guest)
Well, if you wanted to see, you know, people often ask, well, how long does it take to get value out of implementing this? I say, well, how long would it take you to write down the 10 things that have your attention and decide the next actions you need to take on each one of them?
00:35:04 David Allen (guest)
Two minutes, 5 minutes. I know that’s how. And then do that and then see how you feel. And that’s it. Just doing that with everything that has your attention and keeping on doing that, that can take a while to become, you know, habitual.
00:35:09 David Allen (guest)
No.
00:35:20 David Allen (guest)
For you, but it doesn’t take very long to to do. If you if you just write a few more things down.
00:35:25 David Allen (guest)
Your head then you need are now. You’ll feel better if you just make make a next action decision about something sooner than later.
00:35:28
Yeah.
00:35:33 David Allen (guest)
You’re going to improve conditions around you, so again, you know any one of these techniques that are part of the methodology could improve your condition if you do it all really transformational.
00:35:45 Gerhard te Velde (host)
What could happen what?
00:35:48 David Allen (guest)
Well, it gives you a lot more space. You don’t need time, you need room.
00:35:53 Gerhard te Velde (host)
What’s the difference?
00:35:54 David Allen (guest)
Well, the difference is.
00:35:57 David Allen (guest)
If you don’t have any room in your head, you can’t be creative. You can’t be innovative. You can’t. You can’t be strategic. You can’t be present. You can’t be as loving as you want to be with your kids or your dog or whatever. You’re just you’re. You’re distracted.
00:36:12 David Allen (guest)
And you’re living in a distracted world.
00:36:14 David Allen (guest)
And so, you know, the ability to be able to again, as we’ve mentioned, the ability to be able to get rid of those distractions and get clarity is going to give you a lot more room. You know I coached.
00:36:29 David Allen (guest)
I was asked to come in and coach probably one of the top entrepreneurs in the world.
00:36:35 David Allen (guest)
This guy had built a company and sold it very successful company. You’d know you’d know, named it.
00:36:42 David Allen (guest)
And that’s why he has his own jet. You know, he’s on four boards. He his new startup. When I was started to work with him, it was about six months or 12 months old, already had a $2 billion market cap.
00:36:57 David Allen (guest)
One of the smartest guys I’ve ever run across, and certainly one of the most successful entrepreneurs.
00:37:05 David Allen (guest)
I’ve ever met, and so he he called me, I said, why are you calling me? You know, you’re you’re already by anybody’s standards, probably one of the most productive people on the planet, he said. He said I’m out of.
00:37:15 Gerhard te Velde (host)
You’re well on your way now.
00:37:19 David Allen (guest)
He said I wake up with $1,000,000 ideas. I don’t know what to do with them, who to give them to or how to manage them. And so you know, it’s the space factor. I need more room to do the kind of thinking that I need to be doing and that, you know, it’s a you could call it psychic space or space or mental room or whatever you want to call it, but it’s that it’s that.
00:37:22 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah.
00:37:38 David Allen (guest)
Clarity essentially.
00:37:40 David Allen (guest)
In other words, anybody listening to this right now, if you had nothing on your mind, nothing. It was a total blank slate. How would you? How would you use it? Would you use it to be more creative, more strategic, more loving, more present?
00:37:49 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Son.
00:37:55 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah. Well, it’s one of my top goals. Being a loving person.
00:37:58 David Allen (guest)
Yeah.
00:37:59 Gerhard te Velde (host)
And then, well, I’m not saying it, it doesn’t work, but life gets in the way. You know, you have so much to do. And then sure, yeah.
00:38:09 Gerhard te Velde (host)
You just need more room. Yeah, that really.
00:38:14 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Rings true. And what about accountability partners? Are you familiar with that concept?
00:38:21 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Because my one of my struggles is I know what to do. I know how to do it, but I don’t do it. So for me it could be very beneficial. I actually I already experimented with it to have a partner in crime. Yeah, like dudes.
00:38:36 David Allen (guest)
Somebody hold somebody, hold your hold you accountable for. Yeah.
00:38:39 Gerhard te Velde (host)
On you said the goal was ABC and but you didn’t do it. So tell me.
00:38:45 David Allen (guest)
Yeah, that probably works. You know, my good friend Marshall Goldsmith has done that for many years. He talks about that. That’s how he’s been quite successful written so many books and done everything he’s done. I don’t do it. I just kind of hold myself accountable for doing this stuff.
00:38:54 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah.
00:38:59 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Yeah, you’re autonomous.
00:39:02 David Allen (guest)
My wife holds me accountable.
00:39:03 David Allen (guest)
Certain things, of course.
00:39:06 David Allen (guest)
You know we have we share roles. I’m, I’m, I’m trash man. She’s early morning dog pee and poop person.
00:39:11 Gerhard te Velde (host)
I’m not, not.
00:39:12 David Allen (guest)
So we.
00:39:12 David Allen (guest)
We have our own roles and we’re we kind of hold each other, hold each other semi accountable.
00:39:16 David Allen (guest)
But not hard nosed.
00:39:18 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Hmm, interesting.
00:39:21 Gerhard te Velde (host)
I want to wrap up this interview.
00:39:25 Gerhard te Velde (host)
You get to ask a question to the audience, so instead of giving your best advice or putting something on a billboard, I would like to ask you to propose a question to anybody who’s listening or watching what? What would you?
00:39:41 David Allen (guest)
That I would say back to what we’re just talking about, I would say, how would you use more space if you had it?
00:39:49 Gerhard te Velde (host)
It’s beautiful, David. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening or watching to ruivor. If you want to know more about getting things done or David Allen, please check out gettingthingsdone.com and be sure to subscribe to Khruifour on YouTube.
00:39:52 David Allen (guest)
You’re welcome.
00:40:06 Gerhard te Velde (host)
Or your favourite audio audio channel till next time.
