Unlocking Stress-Free Productivity: The Real Flexibility of GTD

Robert Peake (00:05)
Hello, welcome everyone to another Change Your Game with GTD podcast. My name's Robert Peak. I'm here with Todd Brown. Hey Todd. So the purpose of this podcast series is to help you understand how you can reduce friction in your work and life, reduce stress by getting the right kind of things done, moment to moment. And that accumulates into achieving the things you want to achieve.

Todd Brown (00:11)
Hello, everyone.

Robert Peake (00:35)
having a sense of accomplishment and all the good stuff in life that goes with knowing you can hit your goals effectively. So people sometimes think those things are a bit at odds. They sometimes think that in order to achieve more, you actually have to admit more stress into your life. You actually have to power through friction, know, friction-filled situations and through sort of

sheer force of will and amount of time, you know, spent behind a computer screen or wherever it is you work and live, you know, just sort of get through it that way. That stress and success are kind of married or a one-to-one correlation. And our point of view, having practiced and coached and taught seminars on this particular methodology called getting things done or GTD, ⁓ is that actually the revelation is there's a smarter way to do it.

There's a smarter way to do it, there's a better way to do it. And through this comprehensive set of best practices and through working with them across an incredibly wide range of not only industries, but types of individuals and the ways that their minds work, we found that these are some pretty universal principles. So that said, we have ⁓ a ⁓ request come in from someone named David, incidentally, not.

not the David who invented the methodology, but one of our listeners saying, you know, ⁓ when I talk to people about GTD, I guess the results or the artifacts of it, you know, the things like calendar or lists or whatever ⁓ that are the results of implementing these best practices and the ways of doing that, often people are repelled by that because they feel like it's too structured.

It's too organized. It's gonna maybe squelch their creativity, their spark, ⁓ or it's gonna be just too much for them or something they're not able to do or whatever. So the sort of question I guess is, is GTD too structured? And ⁓ if not, how do you communicate that to other people? How do you communicate more of the essence of it being a way to actually create more freedom and less stress in your life?

Todd, do you wanna kick off the, we were talking beforehand about this is a topic that comes up kind of from time to time. Why do you think that is? Why do you think people have this perception and what have you found that helps in helping them have a more accurate perception, I guess?

Todd Brown (03:16)
Yeah, I think that part of the part of the issue, you're right. First off, you're absolutely right. People do some people do have ⁓ a reaction to the things that we recommend in GTD, ⁓ which is, that's that's not me. That's that's just way too much structure. That's way too much. You know, being ⁓ being a person that I'm not and

And I think that's a really interesting, you know, I think the misperception comes from what people think we want them to do differently. And this is where I suppose the reassuring idea from getting things done is that when it comes to the methodology, there are lots of suggestions about best practices, right? Loads. And we can get very detailed and we can get into the tech and we can get into the

how does this all work together and how would you think about your work differently? But the number of things which are sort of required as it were, or things where we say, you gotta do this, that's a very small list of things, right? And so I think what a lot of people are doing when they say this is not me is that they're reacting to whatever they've seen by way of somebody showing their system.

or showing what it is that they do to make their day as productive and as friction-free as possible, as you said. And they look at that and they go, well, that's not me. There's no way that I could do that. And again, I think one of the reasons that getting things done has been so successful for so many years is that, and this is a point that we've made in previous ⁓ podcast episodes, it has space for you, right? It has space for...

your preferences for your tool set for the ways that you like to work, right? So it's not like, it's not like we're selling, you know, forms that you need to fill out and you need to fill out all of the forms exactly the same way as everybody else on the planet is filling out the forms, whether they're digital or paper, you know, no, that's not what we're asking. We're asking you to think about how would you work in ways that would, yes, absolutely lower your stress levels.

and increase your productivity. As I say, that's not the same for everybody. I'll just say one more thing, and that'd be curious to know your thoughts on this, but quite often, when I'm, one of my roles in the business, some of the folks listening in will know this, but I'm what's called a master trainer. So I train people to be trainers. And one of the things that I find with a lot of people who are going through the certification process is they,

they get really enthused about showing their own system, right? They almost wanna do that straight away. ⁓ let me just show everybody my system. And I say to them, you need to be really careful about showing somebody your system. I'm not saying it's a never don't you ever do that, but it can be really off-putting, right? To somebody who looks at your system, which you know and you love and you've developed over the years and you've refined and all of that.

But somebody else might look at it and go, what in the world? No way. You know, that's not me. So again, I think that's maybe another reason that we run into this, you know, objection, if you want to call it an objection is because people, you know, forget about people going through certification, people who get enthused about GTD, right? They might just say to their, you know, colleague, friend, partner, whatever, Hey, let me show you what I've done. Right. And that is maybe not.

the right place to start. if you're really interested in having that person, you know, get enthused about GTD, the place really to start, I would recommend would be more about what does this enable? What does this really look like in terms of the advantages that it brings to my life? Don't focus on the structure. Don't focus on the system. Don't focus on the tech straight away. Just focus on, hey, how has my life changed in terms of, you know, what I can get done and how I get it done.

Robert Peake (07:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

Todd Brown (07:31)
There you go. That's a little

bit longer riff than I sort of imagined it might be, but interested in your thoughts.

Robert Peake (07:37)
Yeah, I know that's a great riff, I would say, and a lot to dig into there. As I was listening to you talking, I was really thinking about how sort of no two brains are alike, right? And increasingly, that's something that I've really discovered in decade or more of coaching individuals. And so absolutely, when you say, you know, someone with all this enthusiasm says, here's my system.

People look at the particulars and go, well, that's not quite right for me. And I think, you know, our formative years are spent in an educational system that's really right for some people, but is enthusiastically applied and rigorously applied to everyone. So if people have had experiences, and then, you know, in a lot of corporate environments, you know, the training, the approach, the structures, whatever, if people have had the experience of, all of this external structure isn't,

for me because it doesn't really suit the way that I work best, you know, it's not the ideal environment for me, then obviously one more thing that looks like external and post structure, you're gonna have this very much an allergic reaction. And yet the irony is GTD helps those individuals who have a unique way of doing things tremendously. It's actually...

often those individuals that really catch the spark and understand once they understand the principles, how incredibly valuable this will be for them because the stock standard, you know, sit down and write a list approach doesn't, you know, isn't the best way for them in terms of the way their mind works. They need to go out for a walk with a tape recorder and unload a bunch of ideas, you know, and they're going to unload some better ideas than the person who may be writing the structured list that has really tight parameters on it.

But then they need a way to clarify that. Then they need a way to organize that. Then they need a way to bring that back to them so that they can actually ⁓ work with that effectively. And the principles are incredibly adaptable to a wide range of people. So I think you're absolutely right. People are looking at outputs and going, my gosh, I've had systems and frameworks imposed on me all my life, some of which were great, some of which weren't. This is what works for one person's brain. And they're very enthusiastic about it. And I need to push back.

basically because my brain isn't an exact match of theirs, no two are anyway. So one of the things I found useful to get in under that identity level conversation of are you ⁓ a structured person or not or whatever is to point out that all of us, just about everybody in adult life has some externalization and some ritual with that that helps them. the foundational one is a calendar.

just everybody at some point, you know, after uni has learned that you can't just remember that there's a party on Thursday and you need to do laundry on Sunday and that's it for the week. Like, you gotta have an external calendar. You gotta be consulting that. You gotta be referencing that if you wanna show up at the right time for the right things, ideally prepared to actually do those things as well, right? With your swim trunks when it's time to go to the pool.

And so just saying, GTD handles all the stuff that's not time specific in a way that lets your mind relax. I think is one of the, you know, quickest elevator pitches kind of that I found that people can go, okay, well, that sounds interesting. Cause yeah, I do trust my calendar. I would, you know, get in a fight with you if you wanted to try and erase it off of all my devices. You know, that wouldn't be good. I'd be missing stuff that's really important. I think it wouldn't be great to not miss the stuff that's really important that you'd

that you don't absolutely have a set time for, but also not be faking it on your calendar that you're supposed to do so and so at 9 a.m. because 9 a.m. shows around, you don't feel like it, there's an interruption, whatever, calendar's not appropriate for that. So I think there are some ways to look at the physical manifestations of what we're all doing and extrapolate from there. So they have at least some idea of, yeah, this isn't totally foreign, but it's so important, I think, to guard against the...

the one size fits all and so many methodologies are one size fits all. They are something that works for a certain type of team, a certain group, a certain individual. We've seen this with things like Agile being imposed on big corporations that aren't startups that aren't looking for iterating as fast as possible and would have done much better with waterfalls and Gantt charts and other things, right? We've seen the zealous imposition of things that work for some people and others.

⁓ really backfire. And so that's where, you know, that's where my mind goes hearing you talk about, you know, how important it is to understand the spirit of it is actually very much about accommodating the individual.

Todd Brown (12:37)
couldn't agree more. I think what you've taken me back to is when I first got started in this work all those many decades ago now, one of the things that I remember from an interview with David Allen was exactly the example you've just quoted about. If you ⁓ think what we're recommending is too much structure, then throw away your calendar. That was more or less a direct quote of David's. And I think that's a great little thought experiment for anybody to do who's thinking.

I'm not quite sure this is for me. Just imagine what your life would be like if you did not and you were not allowed to, whatever, keep a calendar, right? And just think what that would mean in terms of your ability to meet the commitments that you have in your life, right? To yourself, to your colleagues, to your family. And so once you get that, that can be maybe the foundational idea. Okay, well I do need...

something by way of externalizing the commitments that I've got and, and, you know, my calendar. And of course, this is one of the reasons that for a lot of people, the calendar gets abused, right? The calendar, because as you say, pretty much everybody's got one, right? And so what they do is they say, okay, well, since this is, since this is in, in essence, my trusted system, right? Everything goes in there.

Right? So they block time for things that are going to take, you know, 32 seconds. That gets a half an hour block in the calendar. You know, it's, put in at a time where they'd say to themselves when the time actually shows up, you know, when, when, when that time, when that time arrives, they go, man, not really going to do that now. So then they're dragging things around and they're rescheduling and that sort of thing. So, so one of the things that we do in GTD, you know, as you applied is, is sort of say, Hey, the calendar is great for some things and it's not

for other things and let's talk about for the things other than the time specific things, how you would best handle them. So again, I just can't, ⁓ when I think about the people over the many, years that you and I have both been doing this work, the people that I've run into that have been, there's an incredibly broad spectrum, right? I can think of clients who have been ⁓ really like,

Absolutely, they were on point with all of the best practices and they were, and you could sort of go through their system and just sort of go, okay, well, if somebody was going to implement all of the best practices and all of these things in a very structured way, here's what it would look like, right? I have absolutely worked with those people. But at the other end of that spectrum, I've had people who've said, you know what I did? I got my calendar.

under control, so I've got the right reminders there. I've got a waiting for list, which I absolutely love and make sure that I have, that keeps track of the things that I'm waiting for other people to do for me. And I've got a list of next actions, which is maybe it's not even organized by context, as we say in the business, it's not even organized by location or person or tool, ⁓ but this has just changed my life, right? And then they just go, well, that's it.

that seems to be what I need. again, what's interesting, I'm just taking back to a coaching I did. This was a few years ago now, but I showed up, you know, I showed up with, it was a flight to get there. I showed up in this person's office at someone that I had coached before. And I went into his office and he was just bouncing off the walls. He was so excited. He was like, this is so great. This is made.

such a positive difference in my life and thank you so much. what a great thing you've sort of brought to me and to us. so I was like, this is great. How can I help? What would you like to focus on today? And he opened up his system and it was a dog's dinner. I mean, it was just, in terms of best practice, it was like very few things that we would sort of go, yep, that's clean. That has clean edges. That's the kind of thing that we're looking for.

But, but compared to what he had been doing, right, it was a huge upgrade, right? So he had, I guess, if you think about it in big picture terms, he was ticking the one box that we say, this one box should always be ticked, and that is, don't keep things in your head, right? Now, beyond that, he had not done a great job of sort of organizing the results of that in a way that really supported him in terms of keeping him

undistracted and stress-free. But that was part of his journey. And that comes to mind for me as well, is that people who, I think the people, and I would include myself in this, some of the people who've gotten a lot of the methodology over the years had brought with them this attitude that, okay, well, this is my system for now, but I'm open to the possibility that next week, next month, next year, this may change.

and I may implement it in a different way.

Robert Peake (18:00)
Yeah, absolutely. That adaptability. And I too have had that experience of looking at someone else's system and going, hmm, okay. The phrase dog's dinner stood out to me because I think I saying beforehand, our dog has had some teeth out and we're giving her a special dinner. And this morning I served her her, well, breakfast, I guess, not dinner. And it was smelly. It was not my thing. But I put it down there and she just yummed it up.

She just thought it was the best thing ever, you know, and I had to go and give myself a moment before I poured out my own muesli because it was still, I was still reeling from the smell of it. So it's just amazing how what's absolutely delicious, you know, to one person will be odious, you know, to another. And to be fair, when we give her the upgrade, you know, when we, every once in a while she gets a little bit of our roast dinner or whatever, she goes, oh, oh, this is, this is all another level of culinary experience. So.

That's not to say there isn't improvement opportunities, but also one person's dog's dinner is another person's gourmet feast, too, in terms of how their mind works and in terms of how they relate to what's externalized and what it means to them and how it works. And I think, too, we sometimes lose sight of the higher horizons, the fact that things like areas of focus and being able to externalize those and being able to see

how the different parts of your life interrelate and then go into creating the desired outcomes for that and the next steps and executing on that is another way in that a lot of people find incredibly helpful ⁓ and doesn't look like a very structured or rigid thing at all. It looks like a big scattered wonderful mind map that you can sort of range around and roam around in to understand your life a bit better. So there's a lot of elements of

think of the GTD practice that can apply to different people in different ways and different styles that they use to live their life. The final thing I was just kind of reflecting on as you were talking, as we were talking about this idea of identity and I'm not that kind of person is I some people equate mess with sort of, you know, creative fertility in a way, like that having a kind of...

messy environment or messy life or whatever is fodder for, you know, being creative. And others too, I think, in order to either be creative or be ambitious in any way and work as well, as well as doing sort of creative pursuits, kind of get a sense of a kind of monomania about the one thing they're doing and sort of letting all else fall by the wayside, if you like. And what's funny is GTD doesn't say you have to be

clean and neat and tidy, right? I mean, if that's working for you, that's working fine for you. You don't have to use GTD to have work-like balance if you don't want that. If you just want to, you know, go after that one great thing that's really the burning desire for you, GTD will help you structure that and really do that well. But also, the reality is most people find that the clutter, that the residual stuff distracts from their ability to really focus on the thing that's most important to them.

as well. You know, and so this, it's a bit of a false, it's a bit of a rationalization, frankly, I find with a lot of people that this idea that, well, you know, I like it like this, or, you know, it helps me, you know, fuel the one thing I'm passionate about. The reality I've found is when you strip away that stuff that's getting in the way of your passion, you actually are able to go faster and further and to focus on it more guilt-free, right? That you're not just having to

push the world aside. The world is stable. The world is okay with you just really focusing on what you want to focus on. So that's, think that's, and that's, you know, some, some people will get that and some won't. Ultimately, some people will be really invested in, I'm the, I'm the nutty professor trope and that's how I am. And, that's, that's what makes me, you know, good at what I do. And others will get that actually, you know what, with, with, ⁓

you know, with a ⁓ quieter environment comes a more focused mind and an ability to actually do the professorial things a bit better.

Todd Brown (22:24)
Yeah, you know, it's funny as you're describing that, I'm just thinking back about the number of people over the years that I've dealt with who have been in what we would call the creative industries, right? Musicians, ⁓ artists, folk, you people who are from the theater world, right? And what's I think one of the common threads that those folks have brought to the work is this idea that, you know, to your point, it's not about

Robert Peake (22:34)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Todd Brown (22:53)
It's not about being tidier or being organized somehow. But what they wanna do is they wanna, I'm thinking about one person that I worked with who's a very, very successful musician in the jazz world. And he was telling me that when he, jazz, and those of you who've heard the podcast from time to time might know this, I'm a very keen jazz musician myself, but I'm not a professional.

But my, you know, one of the things that he sent to me was, look, when I'm getting ready to play a solo, right, and solos are all about improvisation, he said, the last thing I want to be worried about is whether I need to buy milk. He said, I want a clear head. I want to make sure that in that moment, I'm able to focus 100 % on what's going on in the music with the other musicians, you know, what's coming next, right? Just to allow myself to really be 100 % focused on that.

Robert Peake (23:34)
Hmm. Yeah.

Todd Brown (23:51)
And GTD helps me to do that. yeah, I mean, think so to your point, we're not recommending that people are sort of rigid in their ways of working in a sense. But the important thing is to create, is to use the best practices that we talk about to create that sense of mental clarity and that lack of distraction that can get in the way of

Not just getting the right things done, but enjoying it.

Robert Peake (24:20)
Yeah,

yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's amazing how much it really asks you as a quality of life kind of thing. And I wish I could just say to people, as you said, think about a really high quality experience you had. You're in the zone, you're doing that great jazz improvisation, whatever it is. Want more of that? Let's find the GTD principles that help you get more of that and more of that and more of that over time.

But, you know, not everyone, you know, kind of, I guess, realizes that that's, that there's some universal principles to that, that don't have to be universally or rigidly applied. So we still have work to do, Todd. We still have work to do to get that message out to help people have a taste of that experience. ⁓ And those of you out there who have gotten it have work to do as well. So.

Todd Brown (25:04)
Thank

Robert Peake (25:15)
Top tips for those who are wanting to spread the good GTD word without, ⁓ you know, causing people to cringe or break out in hives. What would you say if you're counseling someone who really gets it, really loves it, really wants to help? What should they be doing and not doing?

Todd Brown (25:34)
I would say,

yeah, so again, think top tip number one, don't crack open your system and say, give a demo. What I would say, though, is focus on what GTD enables. And that'll probably be some combination of here's what it allows me to get done. Right. And here's how I can have the confidence that I'm focused on the right stuff. And ⁓

Robert Peake (25:41)
Yeah, yeah.

Todd Brown (26:05)
Here's how it allows me to keep a clear head, right? To focus at any given moment on whatever it is that I choose to focus on without any, as we use this phrase that we use quite often, without any mental residue, right? Other things, things that come to mind that are distracting in that moment and are not really terribly helpful. So those would be my top tips. How about you?

Robert Peake (26:08)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm. No, those are great. Those are really great. And I agree about don't crack out, open your system and say this is GTD because that's really the, the artifacts, not the spirit. And so to me, the spirit of the thing is really, ⁓ you know, something around the quality in, in your life, the quality that comes with, ⁓ also getting the things done that you want to get done. So for me, being curious, being curious, like, you know, so what are you doing to kind of have.

have a better life? What do you do that helps you? What are your rituals or things in your life that make your life have more quality to them? And what do you want? What's kind of the deeper cut? If it's not about productivity, it's about really having those quality experiences, what would you do with more headspace? What would you do with more quality of attention?

You know, what would you do if you really knew that there was a better way to do what you're doing that was less stressful, that was more purposeful, that you could end the day really feeling like, I got a lot of the right stuff done. I'm on my way to even better things. What would you do with that? And so that, that curiosity, that opening up the spirit of the thing, I think really helps.

It really helps people kind of understand the intent rather than the manifestation, which has to be unique. Thank you, Todd. Great conversation as always. Really, really fun to riff on this stuff. And it reminds me too of why we do this, right? You know, the real heart of the matter. So if this sparked interest in any of you out there listening, first of all, thanks to David B for kicking this one our way, this ⁓ conundrum. And hopefully that's helpful.

for you in having some ways that you can approach colleagues who are resistant to a lot of structure and help them get that GTD is about a lot more than that. If we can ⁓ help you, if you have thoughts, questions, future podcast topics, or if you're on this journey too and would like support with understanding how it can map to you in a better way or to your team or to your organization, do get in touch. ⁓ Info at next-action.org.

co.uk, again, the website next-action.co.uk. Check us out. We're doing lots of good things every day to try and bring this, or to bring this rather, ⁓ to people's lives in a meaningful way. But for now, from me, from Todd, thanks for tuning in. Be sure to like and subscribe if you're getting this in one of those formats that allows that so you can get more of this kind of thinking coming your way regularly.

Robert Peake (29:19)
this was useful to you. We'll see you next time.

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