Greetings, SuperFriends!

Today, I’m joined by one of the top names in the world of productivity and time management. As we’ve talked about in a lot of episodes before, a lot of the secret science behind truly becoming superhuman lies in organizing your time, prioritizing, and getting things done.

That’s why I’m so excited about today’s guest – because he literally wrote the New York Times bestselling book on Getting Things Done. If you’ve ever heard the term “GTD” or does even some cursory research into the world of productivity, you know all about him and his method – which has really taken the world by storm since it was first published in 2001.

In this episode, we take a deep dive into the “GTD” system, and begin to understand how you can learn to use it in your own life. But we talk about so much more… including psychedelic drugs, mindfulness, meaning and purpose, accomplishment, and so much more!

As always, please share your thoughts with me on Twitter @gosuperhuman, and if you haven’t already, please remember to leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher.

This episode is brought to you by SuperLearner Academy – home of my exclusive masterclasses. Check out a free trial using the link above today!

In this episode, we discuss:

• David Allen's backstory, and how he became one of the most prominent productivity thought leaders
• What it was like to be at UC Berkeley in the 1960's, during the beginnings of psychedelic exploration?
• What is David Allen's advise for anyone considering experimenting with drugs?
• What is the role of meditation in spiritual awareness (and productivity)?
• Some incredible insights about clear-headedness, and the power of perspective
• What are the two major frameworks that David Allen identified in developing his system?
• What are the 5 steps that make up the “Getting Things Done” or “GTD” framework?
• How long does it take to implement “GTD” in your own life?
• What tools does David Allen recommend for implementing Getting Things Done?
• What are the first steps towards implementing GTD in your own life?
• How has cognitive science validated the GTD system and it's benefits?
• Can you use memory palaces and other mnemonic techniques alongside GTD?
• How does David use his own, modified mnemonic techniques to “capture” ideas?
• Why is “doing nothing” so important as an indicator of success and efficacy?
• Who is David Allen most proud to have using Getting Things Done?
• A special homework assignment from David Allen – which you can complete today

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• David's book, Getting Things Done (Revised Edition)
• The Power of Full Engagement by James Loehr and Tony Schwartz
• David's third book, Making it all Work
• David's Website, GettingThingsDone.com
• Find David on Twitter (@GTDGuy)

Favorite Quotes from David Allen:

Transcript:

Introduction: Welcome to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast. Where we interview extraordinary people to bring you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host, Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: Greetings SuperFriends, and welcome to this week's show, which I think might be one of our best ever. But before I tell you about it and tell you about our guests, let me share with you a fantastic review that we received from someone named stoopsie99 from Germany. He or she says not leaving the house without my iPod anymore.

I've stumbled upon this podcast and must say that there hasn't been a day that I haven't listened to at least one episode, the guests are highly, highly concentrated life medicine that everyone should be taking. Just like your daily vitamin C. Stoopsie, I want to thank you so much for that review, and for the rest of you guys, if you haven't left a review on iTunes, please, please do so. And we will make sure to read it out on the air.

Onto today's guest. Today I am joined by one of the top names in the world of productivity and time management. You guys, as we've talked about on a lot of episodes before, I think a lot of the secret science behind truly becoming superhuman. Actually lies in the simple organization and structuring and prioritizing of the steps and the processes and the tasks that you need to get done to achieve that superhuman level of performance. Whether that's in your personal life or your professional life or otherwise.

And that's why I'm so excited about today's guest because he literally wrote the New York Times bestselling book on Getting Things Done. Now, if you've ever heard someone throw around the term, GTD. Or if you've even done just cursory research into the world of productivity, then you know, all about him and all about his method, which has really honestly taken the world by storm since it was first published in 2001.

Now this episode, as I said, I think is one of our best. And that's because we take not only a deep dive into the GTD system and how you can use it in your own life, but we also talk a lot about the purpose of life and what productivity means, and how you should be going about living your life in a present state and getting things done from this place of presence and awareness and engagement.

We talk about things that you might not expect from LSD all the way to feeding your cat and everything in between. And so I think you're going to take away a ton of incredible, incredible life lessons here. If you do enjoy this episode, I want to encourage you to check out the, Become a Speed Demon Masterclass, where we have tons and tons of great content like this.

Going into all these different, incredible frameworks. And we also have exclusive interviews like this one with other top productivity experts. And in order to check that out, all you have to do is visit, becomeaspeeddemon.com and use the coupon code, BecomingSuperHuman to get a very, very nice discount as a listener of this show.

And now, without any further ado, I want to present to you. Mr. David Allen.

Mr. David Allen. Welcome to the show today. I am so, so, so excited to have you. 

David Allen: Jonathan, delighted to be here. Thanks for asking.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. Yeah. So it is really an honor to have you on the show because I feel like I've heard so much about GTD and about the system that you innovated, whether it's on podcasts, whether it's talking to other productivity experts on the show, I mean, your name has come up so many times, you know, I have to be honest that I've heard so much about the system and very little about how it was developed or the man who developed it.

So I figured we would start out with you telling us a little bit about yourself. I understand you have actually a very interesting and diverse backstory. 

David Allen: Yeah, well, I didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up, not so much floundered, but I just had innate curiosity, innate laziness, got bored with things fast.

But fascinated by the sort of the invisible world and how it related to the material visible world. So lots of different professions, you know, wound up interest in sort of liberal arts in college and grad school studied philosophy and then history, and then studying the historians themselves and studying history of culture and thought.

And you know, even back then, I don't think the word even showed up yet about paradigms, but the whole idea of belief systems, how they affected. You know, perception and performance was something always fascinating to me. And so I wound up in graduate school. I was in Berkeley in '68. Pretty heady time to be there. Go Bears!

Yeah. Basically decided that academia was not the place to get enlightenment. I was studying people who were enlightened, but I wanted my own. So basically hopped off into the big wide world out there and mostly on an inner exploration path. You know, meditation, spiritual studies, and research and explorations of various models and formats about that, martial arts.

So that was, again, I didn't know what I want to do when I grew up, I wasn't particularly interested in the material world. I was more interested in what was driving it. But they weren't paying people to do that. I still had to make a living. Had friends who were aspirational, entrepreneurial, and whatever.

So I wound up being a pretty good number two guy. So I helped a lot of friends start their own businesses who were, had new businesses. And I would just come in and look around and say, how can we improve what you're doing and help it out? You know, now they call that process improvement. But I wasn't sophisticated enough to know anything about that.

But then I get things on to cruise control and under running on automatic. And then I got bored then I just go leave and go do something else. Then what I got discovered they call those people something and they pay them to do it. It's called consultant. So, wow. Now in 1981, I are one hung out my shingle Allen Associates.

Right. So then I got hungry for, well, look, you know, I don't want to have to make it up every time I show up with some new client, I would love to find some models. What could I have and use out there that in case it wasn't obvious when I showed up with somebody to maybe help them in their work. That I could trust could improve their condition no matter what.

So I got hungry to explore that, uh, wound up with some great mentors, one in particular that taught me a bunch of stuff they learned. I used them for myself. I said, wow, that really works, turned around used for the people that I was consulting with, found out they work exactly for them to basically, you know, techniques that can treated more of a sense of control, a more of a sense of focus and perspective in terms of whoever they were or whatever they were doing.

And it was bulletproof. I mean, it worked for everybody. I went, well that's cool. So I started my little consulting practice, starting to use that model. And then one day a big corporation Lockheed showed up and my head of HR there said, hey, we need those things for our whole culture, not just for one-on-one.

Can you design something like a seminar? That we can then reach a lot more people with what you've uncovered here. And so as a, you know, '83, '84, beginning of a very long story for me to just sit there and figure out what I'd figured out and that it was unique and finally wrote a book about it. Right. 

Jonathan Levi: I do want to touch on that. One thing I wanted to ask, I was actually very surprised in my kind of research to find that you actually had a period of time where you had difficulty with drugs, had difficulty with psychiatric medication, and stuff like that. And my immediate question was, was some of the work that you did to develop the GTD framework and some of this incredible paradigm as you called it, did that come out of your recovery and out of a kind of digging yourself out of a really tough situation.

David Allen: Mm, not really. I, you know, all that stuff, like, come on, this is the sixties, this is the workplace. I didn't have difficulty with them. I had sensitivities for which those things were great you know, sort of tools and crutches and so forth, that helped me navigate those. And also I had curiosity. Much more about the curiosity about what are all these things, what are the gateways that these were opening to come on?

This was the early days of LSD and all that stuff called, wait a minute, guys. This was just opening up that there is a world bigger and potentially more awesome and dramatic and fundamental than what we think of as our everyday life. So you're going to have to, this will be your parents, not you, that can remember that.

Absolutely. That was a major, major change. So I just played in that with some pretty sophisticated and interesting people in situations. And then it wound up, you know, getting kind of weird on one end of things, where I kind of walk up the end of the pier a little bit. But then I just discovered, okay, well that just taught me to cooperate with the world instead of trying to really against it.

So I'm as crazy as I ever was it just looking at a high state of cooperation.

Jonathan Levi:  I love that. I wanted to ask you actually, what you think about the kind of Renaissance, which is something, you know, I'm actually really interested in exploring on the show in the future with maps and other researchers. But I think there has been a Renaissance of a lot of these different drugs, as you said, as tools, especially LSD and psilocybin.

So yeah. I'm curious, completely off the topic of productivity, what you think of the idea that our generation is now kind of creating this return to discovery and research and experimentation around these drugs. 

David Allen: Don't. Don't. My last recreational drug was taken in 1971. So I got some information from some people who had a sensitivity to be able to see it in and at those levels, especially grass, it really unwired your nervous system in a strange way. And it takes a long time to rebuild any of that. So it'd be very, very, very careful. So I took me, you know, several years, four or five years before my brain was really back after all that. So be very careful if you're doing any of that.

I would just say, uh, now new research, I just read is just coming out. That it's not as safe as everybody thought they were. 

Jonathan Levi: Sure. That's such a different story, I think, than a lot of, you know, you hear the Steve Jobs and you hear the Timothy Leary and talking about LSD being one of the most transformative things.

And I think it's interesting to hear this counter perspective that as you said, these were tools that were available to you in crutches, but in retrospect, it kind of, the message is don't. 

David Allen: Well, they give you a hint of what's out there, and what's up there. But there's a glass wall between you and that you don't actually get a chance to get into that in a sustainable way until you stop it.

And the way around that glass wall, sometimes there's a long way and that's the spiritual work, you know, that's the more subtle stuff, a little longer, again, in my exploration, I discovered that that was the end game, but I saw the picture. So you can't denigrate any of the rungs of the ladder that got me to where I am.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. I guess they were jumping a bit ahead of where I thought we would go, but I think this is a good tangent as a kind of productivity expert. Do you think that meditation is the way to get to that ladder or, and, you know, without denigrating the rungs, as you said, but is meditation one of those powerful tools that can give us that awareness?

David Allen: Well is going on an offsite with your board or your senior team useful for you to figure out where you're going in your company. And if you said, yeah, I'm gonna go, yeah. Then anything that's going to be able to let you lift up and manage the forest instead of hugging the trees is going to be useful. So yes, anything that helps you shift perspective.

So your perspective as slippery, as the most valuable commodity you have on this planet, you can have what looks like the most successful life and want to take your own. And you could be in the deepest, darkest pits and still get on top of your game because of the challenges you're stepping up to. So interestingly, but all that has to do with your altitude, your attitude, and your perspective.

So that's a very slippery commodity meditation is a fabulous way to stop, take a breath, just focus on your breathing. Come on, that's a universal technique to get yourself present. So those kinds of things, yes, they're very practical tools that help you get there. In terms of productivity, the more that you're not distracted by stuff, the more you're capable of putting your full focus on tucking your kids in bed at night, cooking spaghetti, or writing your business plan, and the more productive you're going to be.

So it's all about clear space. That's really sort of pulling all this together, back to your questions here. That's really why I think what I got so attracted to explore it in these techniques because I, especially in the martial arts. You know, clear your head, you jumped by four people in a dark alley, you got 2000 unprocessed old emails in your head.

You're screwed. Right? So the whole idea of getting a clear head, mind like water as I use the term, you know, for the martial arts, that, how can you be totally present where you are because that then gives you access to the information, the memory, the intuition, the context, the gestalts that you will not have if you're wrapped up around some previous worry problem issue you're not appropriately engaged with.

So I got very attracted that how do I stay clear admits this material world so that I'm not of it, I'm just in it. That's sort of, I guess, maybe more of the prime driver inside of me about how I discovered this, but the truth is you don't have to agree with or acknowledge or be involved in any of the stuff I was involved in.

All I have to do is to walk into you and say, hey, Jonathan, what's that piece of paper doing on your desk? Why is it there? What exactly are you going to do with it? And if you haven't made those decisions, it's running you as opposed to you owning it. So I just put you in the driver's seat of your life.

So it's profound stuff. You don't have to acknowledge that, agree with that. You just have to engage with it and watch what happens. 

Jonathan Levi: Wow. I actually just had an epiphany as you were speaking, or it reconnected to an epiphany that I had in the past, which is all of these tools, as you said, are giving you the power to shift perspective.

I mean, whether you're taking LSD or you're meditating for years, it's giving you the perspective and the ability to look at things from that different angle. And I think you just gave me kind of this huge I'm very interested. Like I said, in these altered states of consciousness. And I think you kind of just helped me understand and synthesize some of my own experiences.

So I have to thank you for that. Yeah. Yeah. Let me dive back, I guess, on the productivity and dive a little bit deeper into the idea of how you develop these frameworks. You said, you know, you started to understand that these people were called consultants. You started to understand that these frameworks were working for everyone.

What are some of the tools of GTD? And if you could, as you kind of outline the different systems and the different processes, tell us how you went about developing them. 

David Allen: Ultimately, I was able to sort of congeal the idea that there's these two frameworks control and perspective. Those are the two elements of self-management and frankly, managing anything, organizational things need to be under control and they need to be appropriately focused.

You're out of control and you can't focus. And if you focus inappropriately, you'll lose control. So those are two elements, but they're two different elements. They're closely related to each other. But you know, basically, I uncovered the techniques about how do you get more in control? How do you get controlling of your kitchen?

Jonathan, have you ever had your kitchen out of control? Oh yes. Then the way you've got it. If you had guests coming over and you were going to prepare something for them, what did you do? Well, you actually went through five steps. It's the five steps of how you get anything under control. The first thing you did was you notice what was not on cruise control, right?

Ooh. That's, shouldn't be there. That's a dirty dish. That's crap. That's what about whatever? And you said what doesn't belong, where it is the way it is. Right. So the first thing you did was you captured or recognized what was off, right. And then what'd you do, you decided what off meant? Ooh, shit. That's crappy food.

Okay. And ooh, that's good food still. Or that's a clean dish. Oh, that's a dirty dish. Oh, those are spices. Right? So then you clarified step two, you clarified the stuff that was not on cruise control and you decided what it was and what it meant to you. Then step three, what'd you do, you organize it. You put spices where spices go.

You put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, but the clean dishes back where they go, and you put the good food in the fridge. You threw away the bad food, right? You organized you based upon how you then determine what these things meant. You put them where they go, then what'd you do well, you stepped back and reflected.

When do I have guests? I've got an hour. You pulled out the recipe book to orient yourself in terms of what you needed. And then step five, you pulled out the butter and started a melted. Now, this is not rocket science, unless you're building rockets, but you know what you did and see, we're all doing that.

Every time you try to get a meeting under control, your email under control, your desk under control. That's what you're doing. I just figured out how to get your consciousness under control using the same thing. Right. So those are very profound. You can read them on our website for free. Just go look.

It's five steps. Capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage. And that's how you do that. So I just made that implicit. I made it explicit. Once you understand those five steps, it's not one thing you don't go get organized. You don't go set priorities. You have to actually do all five things. It's a holistic model.

You can't do one without all the rest of them in order to really get where you're going. So I'd uncovered those and discovered each one of those stages has its own best and worst practices and its own tools. Very different thing to capture a random idea than it is to figure out what the next action on it is than it is to then organize a reminder of it.

That's capture, clarify, and organizers are three steps, not one. 

Jonathan Levi: And I assume that's why it takes really a whole book to explain the proper implementation use of the strategy. 

David Allen: Yeah. And two years, if you're really good to make this habitual behavior. Wow. 

Jonathan Levi: So tell us how exactly you went about. I guess you say that this is an implicit step or an implicit framework that everyone does when they're properly functioning.

What are some maybe early examples where you applied the system with say Lockheed and you said, oh my God, look at how they're doing this? They're capturing, they're clarifying. 

David Allen: And, well, it's a funny question because I had a mentor who taught me two of those basic techniques, three of them actually. But he sat down with me and said, okay, David, empty everything out of your head on separate pieces of paper.

And I did that and I'm like, wow, that's cool. And then he said, take each one of those and decide the very next action you would need to take to move that forward toward closure. And I did that and I went, wow, that's cool. And I watched my life transform simply. I thought I had my act together and I watched this incredible sense of control and focus.

You know, show up for me just using those simple techniques. I turned around and started using those with anybody else. I was engaged in with early on in my consulting practice. And I went, wow. Produced exactly the same result for everybody all the time. And then I built it into a seminar model and everybody in the seminar dumped stuff out of the head, decide the next action on the meaningful stuff.

Oh my God, I feel so much better. And everybody walk everybody. Zero. Nobody does these behaviors that didn't have that results. The big epiphany was this is absolutely bulletproof. Now it took me about 20 or 25 years to actually really realize that and to feel confident that that was true, that I implemented this methodology with truly thousands of hours.

I mean, Gladwell's 10,000 hours is nothing to the time I've literally spent desk-side with some of the busiest best and brightest people on the planet, you know, implementing this technology and watching what happened. So there was no one big gee, wow that really worked it worked everywhere with anybody.

And the results were oftentimes transformative and amazing for the individuals involved based upon where they were and where that moved them to. 

Jonathan Levi: I got to get on this. I have to get on this. I've been putting off reading the book because I don't like to read the books of guests before because then I feel like I'm directing the conversation in a way that maybe someone who hasn't read the book, but I'm so excited that today I'll be able to start reading the book.

I'm literally going to read it today because just this is an incredible story and it's so exciting. I think anytime you can get someone excited about the scary word called productivity, I think there's magic there. 

David Allen: Couldn't you and everybody listen, just relax. Germany, Christmas, come on productivity has a lot of baggage as a word.

Most people tie that in with business or busyness, but have you ever gone to a party and wanted to have fun? Oh, yes. Ever went to that park that day and didn't have fun? Absolutely. Unproductive party, right. See productivity just means achieving desired experiences as a result. Right. So if you go on a vacation to relax, you don't relax.

That's a nonproductive vacation. You go to a party to boogie and you don't boogie. Hey, that's productive party. You know? So in a sense, it's that simple. If some part of you says, look, I really ought to have a more balanced life and you don't have a balanced life. You were being unproductive. Then most people have that wired productivity means work harder, grind a little more, you know, whatever.

And it could for some people, yeah, because your levels of commitment with yourself in order to really get clear, you better get down and work harder or put in more time for something that you've really committed to. It doesn't have to do with the content it has to do with your relationship to the content.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. I teach a course on kind of some of the productivity strategies that I've accumulated over the years. And one of my favorite ones that I talk about is this wheel of life, where you assess everything in this different kind of pie pieces of your life and say, you know, am I being productive in the way I'm going about my friendly relationships and my romantic relationships and my spiritual relationships?

I think that's a really important distinction is, that productivity does not mean work output. It's exactly what you said. Productivity means accomplishing the goal. 

David Allen: Well, here's the secret because also the goals are another poisonous word. Sure. Paul McCartney said he never had a plan or a goal. I'm sure he did in some implicit way, but you know, he did.

Okay. Yeah. So there's a different level of game to think about in that way. So here's the big secret, getting things done is not really about getting things done. It's about being appropriately engaged with all the aspects of your life. So you feel present with whatever you're doing. But appropriate engagement.

You identify, we call that horizon two. What are the areas of focus or interests? Or accountability you have on your life, you know, your health, your relationships, your finances, your whatever. And in your companies, that's your asset management, extra quality control. These things are not things you've finished.

These are all the aspects that need to be managed at a certain level of quality or certain level of standard so that you have a healthy or a balanced enterprise. That's just horizon two. They're actually, you know, six horizons. That you have commitments with yourself about, but that's important to say it's not necessarily about how much time you're spending with your kids.

It's like, are you appropriately engaged with your kids or are you appropriately engaged with your cat? Are you appropriately engaged with your health? Are you appropriately engaged with whatever? And I don't have to go very far to go find what are you not yet totally appropriately engaged with, because all I have to do is say what's on your mind, Jonathan.

What do you have attention on? In other words, what's got your attention. You know, look, you just heard a pin clicking and I went, Oh, okay. I was clicking my pen. I was like, I was making a note. And so what you did was something got off in your world, say, what do I need to do to appropriately engage with that?

Well, I need to take an action. I can do it right away. Boom. You did. So that's at a little micro level, but you can expand that level up to why are you on the planet? How are you feeling about that? Right. You know, and so there's multiple levels that you can then apply the principle of where am I not yet

totally appropriately engaged. What do I need to do to get that off my mind? And those become your key driving questions about how to implement GTD. 

Jonathan Levi: A friend of mine was reading The Power of Full Engagement last week and telling me that it was just this mind-blowing revelation. I haven't read the book myself yet, but based on what he was telling me, I think that's why it was such a powerful book for him.

This idea that driving your engagement properly into the right thing is a revolutionary kind of awakening. 

David Allen: Yeah. Well, those guys are bright guys. And it's good stuff. At the same time, you don't have to go very far. Have you ever had thought twice? Like, gee, I need to get cat food. Oh, gee. I need to get cat food.

If that pops into your head twice, you were inappropriately engaged with your cat. 

Jonathan Levi: And that's where the capture step becomes so brilliant because I can now, as I've heard on different podcasts, a large part of the magic of GTD. I think is that you can now take it out of the working memory and out of the short term memory and move it.

You know, given my background in, in memory, I can tell people that their working memory and their short-term memory are limited. And by capturing, you allow the brain to relax. You allow the mind to relax and say, I don't need to be worried about that. So let me ask this. What are the tools? I think I'm sensing that the framework is so flexible that it could work with anything, but in recent years I've seen different courses.

I've even seen different books adapted around the GTD system. I saw Udemy course on how to use Evernote for GTD and I'm sure a lot of our audience is wondering what are the tools, whether it's a notebook or, you know, Wunderlist or some other software. What are the tools that you personally use to capture and to use the GTD system in your own life?

David Allen: Well, tools are specific to step one and step three of the five-step process. Step one is capture. Step three is organized. The tool for step two, clarify as your head is your brain, and make a decision about the next step on something. The tool for step four, reflect just means pull out the organization you have and look at it and sit back and think at a higher level. The tools for, you know, engage, you know, step five is just going get involved.

But, what people are talking about are those kinds of tools. Are, you need a capture tool or tools and you need an organizing tool or tools. Those are different things. Unfortunately, most people blend all those things together and they think just making it to do is going to solve their life. It doesn't.

So the first tools you need for capture, you can use anything to capture. Mine is again, just a pocket notebook, pen and paper. Know it's the easiest capture tool. My wife and I keep these little junior size pads around where we live. Cause God knows when you know, lightning strikes and get an idea or I need to do something or whatever.

And so we capture all that. We also have physical entries. I see her from here and she knows where mine is. So I'll write a little note and I'll throw it into her in-basket so that's the capture thing. I need a place to be able to capture that. So I walk around in the, you know, with my little notepad in my wallet, basically.

So wherever I am, wherever I carry my wallet and key plastic, I always have a place to capture. But that's not an organizational tool, that's just a grab stuff tool. Right? And you can do that with anything. You can call your own answering machine, leave yourself a message. You can text yourself. You can Siri yourself on your iPhone.

There's a zillion thing you can do that can just get it out of your head, get it into some place, but it needs to be a trusted place at some party who's going to look. So digital captures is okay. As long as you have the discipline of the model to then go back in and make sure you're looking at what you captured it, then move it to the next couple of steps.

Yes, you can write it on your butt. It doesn't matter. As long as you, write it somewhere that you gonna look sometime soon, that's the capture function. So pretty simple record, write, you can even capture if you're the chairman of a billion-dollar company and you've got 45 people just follow you around that just capture all your ideas and then they'd go implement all those things that work too.

So anything where you have a trusted place to take a random idea that is potentially meaningful. See anybody who takes notes in meetings? If you're taking notes on this, whatever, anybody taking notes, that's a capture tool. That's not an organizing tool. You're just grabbing potentially meaningful information.

Then you need to go through steps two and three. You need to look through those and say, okay, what exactly does any of this mean to me right now? What is this? Is this reference? Is this trash I don't need anymore? Is there an action step I need to take about any of that? That's step two. Once you've done that, then anything you've decided that there's an action here or there's a reference or whatever I need to do. And then you need to organize that. So your tools for organizing, just say, well, where do you need to put trash? Do you have a place to put stuff you don't need anymore? You know, recycle, shred, you know, whatever. By the way, where are you going to keep track of phone calls you need to make?

So for the most part, in terms of what most people think about GTD organizing, it just lists its reminder lists. And you need a list of the actions you need to still do that take longer than two minutes. You know, phone calls, stuff to buy at the store, and stuff to talk to your wife partner about stuff you need to do at the computer.

No, those are action reminders. Then you need a list of the projects and outcomes are committed to, Oh yeah, we need the handle the next vacation. We need to hire an assistant. I need to, you know, launch the new ad campaign. I need to research a new cell phone app and those are projects. So a list of your projects, a list of all the next actions you need to do, as well as your calendar.

Those are just organizing tools. And then of course you need tools for where do I keep stuff that I might want to do, but not now a good someday maybe list. So there's not that many categories. There's a few, but once you, you have to put them through the process. Most people's organization is still their capture tool.

If you look at most people's to do lists there's things like that, mom, bank, right or doctor. And what happens is then that starts to create more stress than it relieves. Because you're looking at that call. Oh, mom's birthday's coming out. I don't know what to do about that. Oh, I don't have energy to think and decide right now, stop reminding me I'm overwhelmed.

And so until you take the capture function and move it to clarify and organize, it will temporarily relieve your brain, but not sustainably. So you've got to work these things all together so that the organizing tools become the results of deciding actions I need to be reminded of projects and outcomes.

I need to be reminded of reference material. There needs to be where it needs to go stuff I'm waiting on to come back from other people. Where do I keep a reminder of that? Right. So there are four or five sort of critical categories that once you decide what you need to do, and then for that, you just need, for the most part, just a list manager.

Those managers can show up and low tech, mid-tech or high tech ways, low tech way, but we keep a file folder called phone calls. And in the phone calls folder, you keep a piece of paper for each call you need to make. Believe it or not, I've had very sophisticated high-tech people actually love that because it's in their hands, it's in their face.

They could move that piece of paper around. They can take notes on it. So low-tech does not mean down the food chain. Sometimes it's up in terms of how well that works mid-tech would be to keep a loose-leaf notebook or planner. That's probably the best list manager tool there ever is. And still will be for a long time.

I used one for 20 years. That basically you can just create a list, put a page in your planner called calls to make, put a page in your planner called Steph, talk to my wife or husband or partner about, I put a page in your planner for all the projects you're trying to keep track of. So that's probably the most elegant tool and I've got a lot of high-tech friends that are actually going back to paper planners simply because it actually in a way works much more functionally the way your brain works, than the digital world.

The digital world is cool. As you probably know, as you know, I think at last count there were over 300 apps that have been created to attempt to support the GTD model. Because basically, people recognized, hey, all we need are lists. So they just basically created list managers with lots of different bells and whistles.

Jonathan Levi: So I want to ask the next really obvious question, which I'm sure our audience is as excited about GTD as I am, what would be the first step to start getting into GTD and start that two-year journey to make it second nature. Buy my book. Yeah. I was thinking the same. And I understand that you do have a revised edition that came out not so long ago.

David Allen: Yeah. Last year and publish because after 15 years the methodology didn't change, but some of the vocabulary, some of the way that I have come to understand it in a more deeper and even simpler ways and more sophisticated ways, you know, I was able to put in that book and also I've included a lot of the cognitive science research in the last 10 or 15 years that have basically validated this.

I mean, you should know this Jonathan with your work, that your heads for having ideas, right. You know, about meaningful things, does all your brain evolve to handle. You get more than that, you blow a fuse and you'll drive your life off latest and loudest. Right. That's now validated information. And so the new book, you know, it's even more evergreen and even in the first one.

And so I, you know, I wrote it so I don't have to write it again, just so that, you know, because it is truly universal stuff. And once you understand this methodology, you can make any tool work and the tools will change, but it's really a lifelong lifestyle art and craft of how you manage the flow of life's work.

And that's what the new edition really focuses on. 

Jonathan Levi: Now, I want to point out actually a distinction, because earlier you said it's called getting things done. The secret is that it's not about getting things done. And now you said life's work. So one of the questions I'm really asking is say, I want to use this for my personal life.

I want to get in better shape. I want to better manage my marriage. Is getting things done about all kinds of things, or is it mostly about work and output? 

David Allen: Well, my definition of work is anything you want to get done that ain't done yet. 

Jonathan Levi: That's a fantastic definition. 

David Allen: No, come on. People have such a pejorative about work.

I mean, have you ever used the phrase wow, this thing really works. Well, think about that. So managing life's work is making life work. That's why my third book was called Making It All Work. So if you think about the double meaning of that. 

Jonathan Levi: Right. Making it all work, I get it. 

David Allen: Right. So basically it just says something's not done yet that I would like to have done because we're telling illogical here on this level, you can't stop having intentionality.

You can't just be. And as I write in my first phrases, in my first paragraphs of the book, look, there is a way to elegantly be being while you are doing. As a matter of fact, on this level, if you're not appropriately doing you can't be into your being. So there's a strange relationship here. If you have a commitment with yourself that something needs to happen, that hasn't happened yet.

You know, Jonathan hasn't fully shown up on the planet yet. You haven't fully expressed yourself. You're not totally here yet in terms of your capability, your potential, and some part of you at some level and that's up to what you believe in, you know, made an agreement that you're here for something.

In some way, shape, or form. And so if that hasn't been fulfilled yet. You will feel pulled, driven, curious, you can't stop. There's something that's going to be going on. And so some part of you, interestingly enough, the paradox is even though getting things done is not about getting things done in order to appropriately engage with your cat.

You damn well better get cat food. You're going to have to be done in order to be. And in my life, the people that I've met that are most powerfully into their being are very, very active people and very, very engaged in their life and their work and their world. And in all aspects of it, they're not sitting there unconscious.

They're engaged and engaged could be just in a high state of meditation. Doesn't mean you're moving fast. It doesn't mean you're physically necessarily working hard. It means you're really, really engaged, but at some point doing nothing is actually doing as a matter of fact, the degree to which you are, I'd say a black belt in GTD is how well can you do nothing?

Jonathan Levi: Explain that for me a little bit.

David Allen: Well, if you're a nothing think state call there's nothing going on except talking to me or you. How well, can you do that? How long can you just stop? How well can you just say there's nothing going on. And we know now from cognitive science that you had better stop your thinking and your focus on some consistent basis, because that's a muscle that actually tires out in your head and you'll actually lose cognitive optimal functioning.

If you don't stop, sit back, brainstorm, be spontaneous, walk around the block, and have nothing on your mind. The problem is is that if you're not doing GTD, it's hard to focus on the one thing you're trying to write or the thing you're trying to do. You keep thinking, gee, I need cat food. And then you sit down to meditate to try to relax your brain.

And you say, geez, I need cat food. Well, look, you need to be able to then engage with your life in a martial art way. So, Ooh, that's there, here's where that goes. That's that thing, here's what that goes. Oh, here's what that is, here's what that goes. And most people have not gotten that conscious about this process.

Jonathan Levi: Um, it's funny you say that because in one of our courses I teach, obviously, my main course is the accelerated learning course. And I talk about the memory palace technique, and I talk about how during meditation things will come up. And obviously, you're probably not going to open your eyes, get up from your zafu and write it down.

I will. So, okay. So most people probably wouldn't and I tell people, you know, you can and take that, put it in a memory palace, even a temporary memory palace, and then you don't have to worry about it because there's a 90% likelihood that it's going to stay there. If you properly use the technique. And I'm just realizing that, as you said, this was a, an intrinsic thing that I realized that I have to capture it and I have to feel confident that it's going to be there in 20 or 30 minutes when I'm done meditating to then move to another capture device. I think that's really interesting because it's so effective. 

David Allen: It's interesting that you came up with that technique or share it because it really works.

People often ask gee, Dave, but what do you do if you're out for jogging and get an idea? I add another component to what you did. And yours might work fine as long as you have a trigger that has people, you know, psychologically go back into that chamber or they have the sort of zen freedom to let it go and say, well, if it comes back, it's fine.

If it doesn't, that's fine. Either way. But what I do is if I'm out jogging, what I do is if I have an idea. And I say, I should capture that. What I do is I see myself back in the first place, I could write it down. I visualize that, visualize myself, walking in, going, wow, what a cool idea. So I add some emotional punch to it, and then I forget it because then what happens is the way the brain works is it walks back in.

It sees that thing says, wow, I've seen this before. And then it associates with the thought and it brings it back in. So you can get stuff off your mind, in your mind. Right. Usually too lazy to even go through that rigor. So I keep a pad and pen by me when I meditate. 

Jonathan Levi: Fair enough. Yeah, it seems as if it's essentially a very rudimentary memory palace, the strategy that you outlined.

Very, very cool. David, I want to ask you one question that I think is potentially kind of an interesting one. And it is when you look back on your life's work, who are you most proud to have helped get onto GTD? Whether it's a company or an individual who will you say, I'm so glad that I was put on this planet and able to help X.

David Allen: Wow, that's a good question. Oh, God. They're legions. 

Jonathan Levi: It doesn't have to be one person. 

David Allen: Legions. Well, I'm one person who has been quite vocal and public about what my work has done for them is Howard Stern. Oh, really? Yeah, how cool it changes his life, you know, and basically it gave him space to learn, to paint and do that and keep his business going in a successful way.

So that was really nice to see somebody at that level of game. It's interesting, Jonathan. Strange paradox, wonderful paradox about my work is that the people who need it the least are the most attracted to it. Hmm. It's the most positive aspirational, productive, proactively engaged people that are most attracted to what I do.

It kind of puzzled me for a little while. And then I realized, well, duh, you know, it's a big duh here. What this methodology does is it relieves drag on the system and create space. And who's most interested in relieving drag are the fastest people. Right. You don't need to get barnacles off your boat if you never sail it.

Right. And if you want to go have a streamlined boat, you better get the barnacles off. And what this does is it just relieves those kinds of pressures that mitigate against most optimally, you know, engaging your focus and your energies, where you want them. So I get the best and the brightest folks. I mean, I've coached Jim Kim, head of the World Bank.

Jim's a fabulous guy. And then he's a practicing Zen Buddhist. So it gave him space to actually meditate more. And as he said, when he goes home with his kids, he doesn't want to take the World Bank with him. Wow. So, I don't know their Legion, probably the most dramatic and fulfilling as people that go through major life, what they would consider crises, or certainly major transitions that show up where they would have blown the hell out of their world.

And they said, if I did not have GTD under my belt, I could not have managed this, you know, with the sanity that I did and allowed them to create huge value and to be able to sustain themselves during some of the toughest times in their lives, you know, those are, you know, legion. 

Jonathan Levi: Wow. In terms of testimonies about them.

Wow. So I want to head into our wrap-up questions. I do really appreciate you giving us the time I know we're running towards the end. Typically, David, we'd like to give homework to our audience. Now I'm personally going to assign to them that they all read the newest edition of Getting Things Done. 

So, yeah. That one's already taken and spoken for, but I wanted to ask if there's something you'd like our audience to do, whether it's a thought experiment, read a blog post, read an article, something they can do this week as homework while they wait for next week's episode. What would that be? 

David Allen: People often ask, how long does it take to get value out of this GTD process?

I said, well, how long would it take you to write down the top 10 things on your mind right now? Little big personal professional. Just write them down. And then take the next few minutes and decide what's the very next action. If that's the only thing you had to complete, you're finished right now, where physically would you go on what we used to do? 

Would you go to the hardware store and buy nails? Would you have a physical conversation with your life partner? Would you surf the web? In other words, down to that level of physicality. So write down the top first 10 things that come to mind that are on your mind. We got the vacation coming up.

I need to hire a system. I need tires on my car. I need cat food. I need, you know, whatever, just grabbed them and then decide the next action on each one and see how that feels. That's all you need to do. Wow. I know. Watch how different you feel. 

Jonathan Levi: That is fantastic. I need to do that. I just came back from vacation yesterday.

And like you said, I don't have the space right now to do anything, but run around like a chicken with his head cut off. And I think that's going to be the first thing I do after getting off this call. David, I wanted to also to ask you one last closing question before we hop off, which is if our audience takes away one lesson from this interview and remembers it for the rest of their lives, what would you hope that lesson would be?

David Allen: You're headed for having ideas, not for holding them. 

Jonathan Levi: That is a fantastic one to close on. Thank you so much, David. It's been really such a pleasure and I honestly think this has been one of our best and most enlightening interviews. I'm completely blown away by the amount of knowledge and wisdom that you've shared.

And I'm sure audience is as well. If people want to reach out and learn more about what you're doing, did you have a blog you want to share? Do you have a website, Twitter, something like that?

David Allen: Yeah. gettingthingsdone.com. But I'm GTDguy on Twitter. 

Jonathan Levi: Fantastic, David, again, let me thank you from the bottom of my heart.

And on behalf of our audience, it's been really such a pleasure speaking to you today. And I do hope we keep in touch. 

David Allen: No, it was, it was fun. And Jonathan, I appreciate it. Great questions. 

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. You have a great afternoon.

David Allen: You too.

Jonathan Levi: All right Superfriends, that's it for this week's episode, we hope you really, really enjoyed it and learn a ton of applicable stuff that can help you go out there and overcome the impossible.

If so, please do us a favor and leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, or however you found this podcast. In addition to that, we are. Always looking for great guest posts on the blog or awesome guests right here on the podcast. So if you know somebody or you are somebody, or you have thought of somebody who would be a great fit for the show or for our blog, please reach out to us either on Twitter or by email our email is info@becomingasuperhuman.com. Thanks so much. 

Closing: Thanks for tuning in to the Becoming Superhuman Podcast. For more great skills and strategies, or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit www.becomingasuperhuman.com/podcast. We'll see you next time.