In today’s podcast episode, Todd and Robert discuss the lighter side of life, and the GTD® practice.
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0:00:02.6 Todd Brown: Hello everyone, and welcome to another Change Your Game with GTD podcast. My name’s Todd Brown and I’m here, as always, with Robert Peake.
0:00:12.9 Robert Peake: Hey Todd.
0:00:14.1 TB: Hey, Robert. Our goal in this podcast series is to give you our thoughts on implementing the Getting Things Done methodology that will help you get more of the right things done in less time with less stress. That’s the maybe the pickiest description of the work that we do. And Robert, as you and I were talking about, what we would talk about, one of the things, especially given everything that’s going on in the world, one of the things that we thought might be really, really welcome, would be to talk about GTD and humor and let me just kind of spin my idea on this for a sentence or two, and then maybe you can sort of chime in here. What I mean by that is, I think that sometimes when we think about productivity, we think about this work in particular, right? An awful lot of people come to this work with the expectation that it’s either gonna be dry, it’s gonna be, you know, a lot of furrow brows stuff.
0:01:13.1 TB: It’s gonna be really fraught. It’s going to be, you know, they might have the sense that we’re fostering a sense of guilt because you know, that they require help in this area, right? So there are all kinds of reasons I think, that people come to the table with an expectation that GTD quite frankly would be fun and would involve much levity. And I think it’d be really helpful for us to talk about, you know, maybe our own experience of GTD and humor and also what we’ve sort of seen our clients, you know, what we’ve seen sort of our clients realize around all of that. What do you think? What’s your quick response?
0:01:52.5 RP: Yeah, I think it’s a fun topic. Who knew? You know for me, one of the things I say in my seminars, we talk about the productive experience and what that feels like to really be on your game, and we go into some detail about what those different elements are, what it really feels like and what the experience is so that you can recognize when you’re on and off your game. And one of the things that invariably comes up for me is having a sense of humor is a part of my productive experience. And of course, I caveat in the seminar that it’s not a good sense of humor as they’ll soon discover, but the fact that it exists, right? That I’m not so sort of uptight and overwhelmed and I think humor needs space, and to me, humor is really an indicator of perspective, right? That there is the opportunity to see things in a different way, to have some lightness and levity, to have some hope and joy, whatever the circumstances you’re dealing with. So it’s a little bit of a… Being above it rather than so deeply in it. And to me that’s one of the indicators of having a better perspective and I think GTD as we know, facilitates that tremendously. So, yeah. I’m curious kind of your thoughts either building on that or with what you’ve experienced as well.
0:03:18.6 TB: Yeah, I mean, I think you’re right. And I think the productive experience is a nice frame to put around all that, right? So for those of you who are maybe not that familiar with the productive experience, you know, it’s your sort of state of optimal productivity on the one hand, but also at the state in which you have the confidence that you are focused on the right thing. And we say that, you know, generally speaking the productive experiences is enabled when you’re in control, relaxed, focused, and engaged in the right things and meaningfully engaged as we say.
0:03:53.1 TB: And I think that’s… What you’ve said is right. I think about my own experience of, quite frankly, prior to GTD in a lot of large corporate jobs, and quite often I found that it was really difficult for me to sort of… In myself to sort of inspire levity. And part of that was down to the corporate culture, but part of it was really just down to the fact that I had this sense that I just had so much on, right? I was so bombarded with things that I needed to do and bombarded in the sense both in terms of external inputs, but also in terms of my own, you know, head reminding me about things, right? Distracting me with thoughts about things. I didn’t have space. I literally didn’t have space for much, by way of sort of fun humor, levity, all of that. So in some ways we talk about the fact that that getting things done enables clear space, right?
0:04:55.8 TB: That’s one of the things we talk about. And part of the, you know, what that can mean for people is that they then have this space to experience all kinds of positive things, right? Not to see humor and fun and all of that is one possibility, but you know generally speaking, other things are possible as well. But without it, again, my own experience, I just felt like I was so on the back foot, right, all the time, almost all the time that it was a little bit of a struggle for me to feel like I had the energy and the space for that kind of mindset. I don’t know does that… I’m wondering if you’ve had that experience either for yourself or with your clients, that ring any bells for you?
0:05:40.2 RP: No absolutely not. I’ve never been grumpy, shut down, contracted, frustrated, upset, or lost my sense of humor. It’s been with me every moment of every hour of every day. Yeah that’s absolutely right. And, you know GTD really helps, I think, with identifying the moving parts so that you don’t get ground down by the gears of those parts in a way. I had this wonderful mentor, a poet named Marvin Bell, and he used to say poetry, philosophy and a sense of humor are survival skills in life. And not only survival skills, but I think surviving skills as well too.
0:06:29.1 RP: I had a client and the coaching is always confidential, so I won’t say who, but one of my favorite coaching clients, really keen, wonderful guy, great to work with had a real extensive performance evaluation. The upshot of which he said to me, Robert, after years of business school, leadership training, extensive executive work on myself, the number one positive attribute that came up out of this evaluation process was he has a great sense of humor [laughter] And he was saying it ruefully like, “I should have just gone to improv classes instead of done an MBA.” But the truth is, I think that having a sense of humor, well, one thing we know is people learn better, right? It is why I’m willing to throw my dignity under the bus regularly in GTD seminars.
0:07:24.4 RP: But I think we sort of get the scope of things more appropriately when there’s some tinge of humor and teams that have a sense of humor are more fun to be involved with. It’s part of why I love working with Next Action Associates, frankly, is we’re efficient and effective in meetings such that we have room, frankly, to crack the odd joke because we know we’re gonna get all the right kind of stuff done. And one of the principles of GTD is that energy doesn’t just come from the food you eat, the air you breathe, that kind of thing. But morale really matters. Morale really matters. And how you feel about your work influences how well you do your work and are even able to do your work.
0:08:07.4 RP: So that’s a… I don’t think that’s a surprise to anyone, but we really go into detail about how to start to feel better about your work. And one of the interesting things the other day, I like playing small four-stringed instruments. So my wife sent me an article saying that they had a banjo in Shackleton’s famous expedition where they all got stranded in the ice, and it was the one sort of frivolous thing they allowed themselves to bring on this onboard ship. And it turned out to be an absolute lifesaver. And years later, the crew, all of whom survived miraculously this incredible, being stranded in polar ice, would joke about the six tunes, that the guy who knew to play the banjo would play repeatedly.
0:08:56.5 RP: But that those sing-alongs and that little burst of levity is part of what got them through the incredible adversity. So I think, it’s not to be underrated, a sense of levity about things. And it’s really, to me, a big indicator in a way of your effectiveness, frankly, as an individual and as a leader, is do you have a sense of lightness about what’s going on, or has it kind of gotten on top of you? I don’t know. Does that… It sounds like that matches your experience of stuff getting on top of you as well. But I’m curious, in terms of you, in terms of clients, how you support getting to more of a levity state too.
0:09:44.0 TB: Yeah. Well, and I’ve got some thoughts about something that I did today, some client work that I did today, but before I get there, so did they actually find this banjo? I know they just found Shackleton’s ship…
0:09:54.6 RP: They just found Shackleton’s ship. I think the banjo may have come home with them. I’ll have to look it up.
0:10:00.5 TB: Oh, I see.
0:10:00.5 RP: But I think the banjo actually made it through the trip with them, even though a lot of other equipment obviously didn’t, because that was a critical element of their survival. That was their survival tool, basically, it was music.
0:10:13.5 TB: I just thought it would’ve been a great story if they had found the banjo being played by a king crab or something. [0:10:18.0] __.
0:10:19.5 RP: Picking it with the claws, little bluegrass with the claws. I love it.
0:10:27.1 TB: With all of those legs. You could definitely do some amazing things with the banjo. Anyway, but what I’m thinking back, so today, one of the things I did earlier today, excuse me, was a two-hour presentation, a very high level overview of getting things done. Okay? New client, were curious, right? What’s GTD all about? We had a group of about 30 people together, and what was really interesting for me was, as I was, and this is not unusual in my seminars, but as I’m talking about it, there can be real moments of shared humanity when we get, when we allow ourselves to sort of stop pretending to be perfectly, optimally effective, efficient, productive, right? And that occurred to me again today because one of the exercises that I asked them to do was to think about, what sort of supports their productivity?
0:11:19.1 TB: What kinds of things do they do that support their productivity? And what kinds of things do they do that limit their productivity, right? And very helpfully, by the way, the boss was in the room with this group, okay? And the boss led off, thankfully, the boss led off in the things that got in the way of his productivity. And that just allowed everybody in the room to relax a little bit. But anyway, the vibe as they were having that conversation was wonderful. And everybody’s the, you can… And it’s, again, it’s not unusual. You just sort of feel this common, almost this common exhale, this huge exhale that happens in the room, right? Which is a lot of people, I think, feel a certain pressure to come across as sort of on their game, always optimized and realizing that all of us have improvement opportunities, right?
0:12:13.8 TB: I’ve not yet met anybody who’s absolutely spot on with everything myself included, by the way, right? In terms of my own system and practice. And I think that that, so the tenor, if we do the work right, I think that the tenor of the work can be actually, while we take it seriously and we’re looking for results and all of that. But at the same time, the way in which we do the work can be nimble, light touch, we’re not just gonna beat you over the head with a hammer. The beatings will continue until morale improves kind of approach, right?
0:12:49.8 TB: And I think that’s important. I think that’s important too. It’s not just what we’re trying to enable with getting things done, but it’s also about how, as I say, how we do the work.
0:13:01.5 RP: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s great. And I’ve experienced those, what you called not so appropriately shared moments of humanity as well. It’s one of the great things about the work, you know, we do just someone in a seminar who, I think we were doing an exercise in a breakout room or something like that, you know, where we were starting to clarify all the things that were on these people’s minds. And again, very high performing executive whatever type of people, and came back from the breakout session, went and said, “Oh my gosh, we’re all dealing with the same stuff. I’m not this oddball that is struggling with next steps with some mundane thing in my life, we’re all dealing with the same stuff.”
0:13:44.5 RP: One of the things, you know we’re both Americans living in the UK and one of the things I love about the British is their ability to laugh at themselves, right? And I think it can be taken too far into almost a low self-esteem type of thing, but the ability to laugh at oneself to me is just awareness and shared humanity kind of at its best when really done with that kind of twinkle in the eye. And one of the things we really point out to people that are starting to learn GTD and do have this self image of being already high performing and so forth is the saying from David that basically part of being high performing is acknowledging that you’re not always high performing, that your future self needs help. That your future self makes mistakes that you can compassionately, I would say laugh at that, you know, not a mocking, look at you for forgetting your important paperwork when you went to the office, But a truly compassionate sort of, Hey, well, let’s figure out next time what kind of help you need because obviously you’re not at your best before you’ve had your morning coffee and you’re stressed out about other things and whatever.
0:15:01.8 RP: Let’s help that version of you that is sort of comically and endearingly perhaps needing that help. And time and time again, these vary by all outer standard successful people. When we get into working with them, the stuff that’s on their mind is the, you know, often pretty mundane stuff. But being willing to face that with good humor, right, with good humor about the process is one of the real indicators I think, of people that become successful with GTD. So, I guess part of the message to those of you that are fledgling or even fairly far along in GTD is if you’re being hard on yourself about all of this, if you need permission from me, and I assume from you, Todd, as you know, decades long coaches to lighten up on yourself please, please take that permission from us Now, I think it goes hand in hand with having a growth mindset, having good humor about things. And to me, that’s one of the primary predictors of success with the GTD methodology is that you’re willing to self-assess, to grow, to stretch. And again, ideally that’s done in a way that involves some lightness to it rather than a heavy handed approach.
0:16:24.6 TB: Yeah. Do you know, as you’re talking about it, I’m just reflecting on someone who I have tremendous admiration for. He’s actually a running coach. His name is Tommy Rivers Puzey, and he goes by Tommy Rivs. So that folks out there may know his story, but really inspirational very, very inspirational sort of guy. And he does online runs where if you’ve got a, you know, if you’ve got an elliptical machine or you’ve got a treadmill or something, you can run along with him when he runs through the Caribbean or runs through Madeira Island or wherever. And the other day I was doing one of his workouts and one of the things that he said was, when he is preparing for a race and race day comes, he says to himself, This is not a proving ground. This is a playground. And what we’re doing here is we are celebrating all of the preparations that we’ve made.
0:17:18.4 TB: And I absolutely love that, and I’ve been carrying that around with me ever since. You know, and I think when I think about the times where I have been in some ways most alive in the work that I do, right, it has been in those moments when it really does feel like you reach a state of kind of creative play in that moment. It’s anything but this furrowed brow, someone’s standing over your shoulder with a whip kind of experience. So I’m gonna, I’m not sure what I’m gonna do with that quote. It might go on a piece of paper, it might get printed and put on the wall, I don’t know. But I absolutely love that, and I think that encapsulates for me, one of the ideas that I think is really important, as I say, it does go back to mindset, right?
0:18:10.0 TB: And it comes back to sort of what’s our attitude as we make our way through our day and some people of course get there without GTD, right? It’s not, in some ways it’s not required, but in my own experience I’ll just say one more thing and then I’d be curious to know what if this resonates with you. I do remember when I was back sort of in my pre-GTD life, it was regularly the case that I would be out at a concert or out at a movie or just doing something sort of cultural. And I would really be struggling to, in some cases, not in all cases, but in some cases, just to stay focused because I had so much going on in my head, right? I was distracted by other things. It was really difficult for me to sort of be in the moment and really enjoy, engage with the cultural experience. And so it’s not something that we talk about an awful lot. But again, the space that’s been created from getting things done has meant that, and even if it’s something as mundane as watching television with my wife. I just really do feel like now I have much more capacity to truly engage with those things and much I’ll be much less likely to be distracted.
0:19:30.6 RP: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. No, same experience. You know, very, very much so that getting stuff off your mind in a way that, you know it will be dealt with is lightening and enlivening. I think one of the first tastes we give to people in the work we do is something we call the mind sweep, where we just say, get a piece of paper and a writing implement and just what’s on your mind? What has your attention? Just write and write and start to get that out. And there can be a real moment of relief for some people where they just, they get it. They go, wow, look at all this crazy stuff I’ve created in my life. I’m not it. And I think you said one of the real, kind of profound revelations is when you really got that idea from David that you do your work, but you’re not your work.
0:20:22.9 RP: And to me that’s a space making and enlivening realization, and space, just having space I think can be joyful, can be fun. And it gives you the opportunity to look and go, [laughter], oh my gosh, what a crazy guy, look at everything I’ve taken on in my life. Now, hey, let’s figure out how to deal with that stuff. So that’s one place where I think a lot of people get… Start to get some joy and relief. And yes, though there still is a way, that’s to go, to get through all of that where you really have that off your mind, it doesn’t keep coming back. But the journey’s worth it. And the journey is tinged with, I think those moments of going, “Ooh my gosh, look at me here I go, you know, doing my thing.”
0:21:11.8 RP: And the other place where I get a lot of… And I’d be curious kind of for you, what in the methodology sparks, levity at least, or good humor. The other area that really helps me is that someday maybe right where I can have ideas that I don’t have to commit to, and later I’ll come back to them sometimes and really just kind of chuckle and go, okay, really, you were gonna build a neural network to analyze dog names on a… It’s like, what were you thinking? [laughter] You know what? You don’t have time for that. And that’s also kinda weird and, you know, but how great there was a space for it, a place for it to go to get it off my mind to know that, hey, I wouldn’t totally lose it. And some of those, you know, a lot of things I’ve done in my life have started in someday maybe land.
0:21:57.5 RP: So once you start to get that commitments are serious business to some extent in that you don’t wanna take them on lightly. You can start to have fun, I think, with that concept too, and start to go, well, you know, I’m not committed to that sounds interesting, and have a little bit of maybe distance from the thing of having to sort of feel like you have to jump on everything and be potentially a slave to all the stuff you have to say yes to. So, saying no with a twinkle in one’s eye, and regarding things with a little bit more equanimity and distance, I think is one of the great benefits of the methodology overall. And as I said, I’d be curious to hear kind of what sparked those moments of lightness for you as well?
0:22:45.7 TB: Yeah, I can’t… That’s a really interesting question, and I can’t say that there seemed to be a sort of light bulb moment. Where it just sort of switched. But I do think over time, I guess as I’m thinking about it, there’s a metaphor in there for me, that, or it was very similar to when I was learning foreign languages. So German is my other language. And as I was learning German, at some point, I got to the realization that I no longer need to say only the things that I know how to say. I can now say the things that I want to say. Okay. And that was not a… It was not an overnight thing that was very, over a lot of months and years probably.
0:23:35.6 TB: And the same thing I think comes to mind for me as I’m thinking about my own productivity practice and kind of what it’s enabled for me. And it’s an ongoing thing. It’s an absolutely ongoing thing. I think this is, it’s one of the wonderful things about it is that there’s the potential to continue on this learning journey, for as long as it’s interesting for you really, quite frankly. I mean we’ve got people, well, yourself included you’ve been at it for multiple decades plus. I… Look, I’m… I can’t believe it, but we’re already, coming up to about 25 minutes.
0:24:07.6 RP: Time flies when you’re having fun, as they say. [laughter]
0:24:10.3 TB: Hey, I see what you did there. And I am also a little bit concerned that there may be some people who signed up, who clicked on the podcast and were expecting more or less a comedy routine. Which maybe you and I need to work on for one of our future events.
0:24:26.0 RP: Be funny, be funny, Todd, on the spot. Be funny, say something funny. That’s, apparently comedians get that a lot. You’re a comedian, say something funny. It’s like, gimme a break. Really. [laughter]
0:24:37.7 TB: Anyway, so if you… But let me put you on the spot, okay? I’m not gonna ask you to say something funny, but what if you had somebody who was coming to this… Coming to the podcast and saying, hey, this really does sound good to me and I’d really like to enable them in my life. Where would you have them focus first? What are some sort of core best practices that you could recommend.
0:24:58.0 RP: Core stuff, I look at is what really has the most attention and has been giving you grief? What have you been losing sleep over? How can you get that out in a way so you realize you’re not that. That’s just something you’re dealing with and working through. And to me that’s the starting point for all of GTD is that thing of, “Hey, you know, I’m doing this, I’m dealing with this, but this isn’t me. It doesn’t have to be consuming.” And I think that’s where we get a lot of the the relief and hope. So starting with something as simple as a mind sweep, and then starting to look into how you might clarify what that means and where you might wanna put that so that you can start to move on it rather than have it sort of moving you around in your head. That’s one of the… To me, one of the big entrèe points. What about you?
0:25:52.6 TB: Yeah, no, I think overall it… What I think is really important is just keeping this idea, front of mind or, considering that it’s a… That we are, as I said earlier, the work is all about creating space. It’s about reducing distractions. It’s about creating confidence in your ability to make good decisions. It’s about removing those thoughts that you’re having multiple times. And a very natural outcome of all of that is that you end up with more mental space, and then you can fill that with whatever you want. And if you want that to be humor, great. And if you want that to be spending more time, practicing your four-stringed small instrument, then that can be that too. So, it really is ultimately about the, I think it’s one of the wonderful things about GTD was that, what a wonderful question to ask.
0:26:48.3 TB: You know, if I said to you, I’m gonna enable you to get as much as you’re getting done now in 75% of the time, and that’s the kind of feedback we get from a lot of people. Somewhere at 80%, 80%, 75%, 80%, as much… Takes 75% or 80% of the time to get the same amount of work done. So efficiency’s gone up. What would you fill that extra time with? What a wonderful question. Anyway, we’ll leave it there for now, but you and I should work on a double act, I think, so that we can come back and do a… Like a proper, more commonwise maybe sort of sketch. We’ll have to work on that a bit.
0:27:27.1 RP: We’ll get on it, we’ll get right on it.
0:27:28.9 TB: Okay. All right.
0:27:29.7 RP: Someday, maybe at least. [laughter]
0:27:32.1 TB: Absolutely. Thank you all for being with us for this Change Your Game with GTD podcast. As always, please click, like and subscribe. In case you wanna hear more about these and find out about them as they get published, we always take requests. So please do let us know if there’s anything you’d like to be hearing us talk about. And for now, from Robert, from me, thank you for being with us. We look forward to being with you next time. Bye for now.
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