Robert Peake (00:03)
So welcome everyone to another Change Your Game with GTD podcast. My name's Robert Peake, and I'm here as always, and once again with Todd Brown.
Todd Brown (00:12)
Hello
Robert Peake (00:13)
Hey Todd. So in this podcast series, our goal is to help you help yourself to get a bit more of what you might want out of work and life via this methodology called GTD, getting things done.
Very popular, it's kind of taken taken the world of knowledge work by storm, versed in the kind of big wave of email overwhelm, and now increasingly with all the interesting things that are showing up in the AI world as a way to get more of the right things done with less stress. So if you're already bought into that or if that sounds like an intriguing idea, stick around. but in this one, we kind of very deliberately said, you know, let's
challenge ourselves to see if we cannot use the letters A and I next to each other in a podcast because there's just an awful lot of that going on out there, which is great and which is fine. But there's so much to the methodology. It's so rich and so helpful in so many aspects of life. And frankly, despite what you might be seeing in the news, not all of life is a
one-to-one overlap with what's going on in the you know what world. the two letters that shall not be named. Right? That's there's all kinds of stuff going on in our lives that that we can be more effective and intentional about, that we can do in more elegant ways rather than simply working harder at it. And that's so much of what the spirit of GTD is is about. certainly for me as a long, long time practitioner and I think I
probably speak for you as well there, Todd. So we thought we'd talk about one of the most analog things kind of we could think of, which is being messy, being messy in the physical world, but also being messy sort of digitally is increasingly, you know, a thing, a thing that we do. We have desktops in various devices as well as desktops in our physical environment, that are either messy or neat or whatever. And so yeah, I think it's a it's
kind of an a different ac slightly different angle. and I'm excited to see, you know, what we what we can unpack with this. Todd, any kind of leading us off thoughts on the topic of messiness and order?
Todd Brown (02:44)
Well, I I think that one of the things to say straight away is we are not gonna spend the next, you know, twenty X minutes telling you that if you're messy, you're bad. Right? That that messiness is not evil, messiness is not is not always a problem. Sometimes it can be and sometimes it isn't. But but messiness I think is an interesting
An
interesting thing because some people, I'm that you know, thinking back on all of the coaching that I've done over the years, some people describe themselves as messy, right? They just say, I'm I'm messy. and and quite often because they've asked us in to do a bit of coaching, right, they're saying this is a problem that I need to solve. I think I'd I I I would encourage us to have a little bit more of a nuanced view of messiness. I think David Allen, right, who who wrote the book.
getting things done all those years ago. David Allen used to say that he he likes to work messy, right? In other words, when he's engaged with a particular project or when he's, you know, when he's thinking deeply about something, he likes to have a lot of physical things around him. You know, individual pages that he might have printed out or other artifacts or whatever. So for him, messiness was actually a way in in the doing of work.
For him to bring his best self in a way, right? But, and this was the thing that that that was always you know the the the coded of that idea, it was important that he knew how he could get out of the messiness, right? That there was a, you know, that that when the messiness you know went over the line from being sort of supportive of whatever he was doing in the moment to being noise, right, being psychological noise, he had a way to do that.
And so I think again, we're gonna talk, I hope, about messiness as you know not something not something to be avoided per se, but something to be engaged with in a conscious way, and also to n to sort of help people to understand or maybe reflect on you know what what
What function does messiness play in my life if it does? And if so, how can I how can I optimize that? So those would be some some some kickoff ideas for me.
Robert Peake (05:08)
That's great. Yeah, that's great framing and helpful. yeah, I was thinking particularly about what you said the phrase, I think psychological noise. I think that's a really interesting and relevant relevant idea to our our times, maybe to all times, but certainly it just feels like there there's a lot of potential for psychological noise.
The moment we open a browser, the moment we pick up a phone, the moment we, you know, do whatever, engage with our our world, so externally. And then to me, the question is: to what extent am I promoting unnecessarily more psychological noise in my environment? And to what extent am I instead, you know, getting out what I need to do my best work, which my work isn't necessarily
Highly linear in my approach to to looking at things, but finding associations and patterns, reaching for a new or or different tool and seeing how it can imply in a certain circumstance. That's part of the rich creative aspect of my work. And in a sense, I can very much resonate with what David says that you kind of need to be messy to do that, to, to get that going. And also for some reason was kind of prompted me to think about, we're not long.
off of World Cup sort of season and all of that. And one of the things that sort of stood out from that was Japanese fans clearing out the stadium, cleaning up the stadium. And then Japanese players leaving the locker room impeccable when they when they left a game away. Obviously all the games were away. It wasn't hosted in Japan. and of course there were some quips from
From some women in Japan saying, well, that's all great, and I wish they would tidy up at home. You know, it's a bit of a public display of that. But also the fact that that goes straight back to the education system, where you get out the materials you're going to use for your education that day. And at the end of the day, it's very much just a natural part of the curriculum, in fact, that you clean up, that you tidy up. And so you see Young's
school children from a very young age, you know, sweeping, sweeping up and tidying up and doing, leaving the classroom you know, just as the way you'd like to find it the next day, and doing that themselves rather than relying on on someone else to sort of clean up behind them. And so I just thought that was a very interesting and and some people really find that quite a contrast to in in the West, you know, it's like a lot of us make messes and sort of expect someone else that that's their job is to do the cleaning up.
part for us. But of course, not all of us have that have that luxury or privilege, certainly within our own, let's say, office space, our own homes, whatever, that, you know, that that is an outsourced function. And even if it were, it's not necessarily going to be put back in the way that you'd really want, you know, want it to be, and in the place where you're most likely to, to know to go to get it again, if it's not done by you. So I just thought that was a very interesting sort of
The idea that there is a a time for, you know, getting out what you're going to use and really making a mess with that, and there's a time for reset in a sense, that kind of reset. And that's very inherent, maybe, or built into some cultural training and not not to others.
Todd Brown (08:50)
Yeah,
I think I I think that's really some you know some helpful perspective. I'm where where that takes me is thinking about this whole idea, and and this varies obviously from person to person, but you know, I'm thinking about some of the things that we typically do during a coaching. And one of the exercises that we'll do if we're if we're physically, you know, working with somebody in in their workspace, you know, wherever that is, is we'll ask them to go around that workspace and identify
anything that you know that that basically isn't where it belongs forever, right? and unless it's things like, you know, office equipment or decoration or plants or whatever, something, you know, something that's something that belongs where it is. And the and what's really interesting, I think, in those, in those moments, is quite a lot of people do recognize that
The things that they have then gathered, right? There'll be some paper probably, and there'll be some, you know, who knows, you know, something something with something physical that that needs new batteries, or you know, they'll there'll be some things that they've gathered, captured, as we say in GTD. And they do recognize, I think a lot of them that, hey, this the fact that this was sitting there in my workspace without
Without a a sort of an agreement about what it meant to me and what I needed to do about it, that's that was, you know, pulling on my attention. Now maybe not in a huge way, right? Maybe not in a huge way. But they were willing to put up with a certain amount of of you know sort of cognitive static, right, because of that. And I think this takes me back to
You know, again, going back to a coaching that I did many, many years ago now, but one of the things that came out of the coaching was this person said what they were missing, and this is what the coaching brought to them was the sense that I need to make some conscious decisions about what things mean, okay, number one, and then where they go. And I mean it sounds it sounds kind of straightforward, right? But I think for an awful lot of people, the
What does it mean to you is a really interesting and and not always intuitive question. And again, this is where I think one of the strengths of GTD comes in. We we talk about clarifying things, right? Now clarifying can be done of digital things, right? Can be emails, can be can be WhatsApps, can be, you know, but it's also done with with physical things. And we give you some very specific questions to ask about those things, right? To to give you
The opportunity to to get clear about what those are. And then, so that's the clarifying bit. And then, and then the organizing bit, right? Where do those things go in my organizational system? And that's a that's a very it sounds like a maybe a bit of a grand a grand term, but it basically just means, you know, where where do things go for you? Where do things that have that meaning for you go? And that's something that
You
know, again, coming back to this whole idea of cognitive friction or cognitive, you know, static, I think an awful lot of people will have the sense that, hey, I'm I'm living in a world with a fair amount of this, this this cognitive cognitive static, but I haven't really until now had a had a way to figure out how to solve for that. You know, I I think so for example, I think about
You know, Marie Kondo comes to mind, right? Who's obviously been a voice in the last five or ten years about tidying, right? And the and the benefit of tidying. And I'm completely with that. I mean, I think, you know, there's some there's some really interesting ideas in the work that she's done. But at the end of the day, I think, you know, one of the things that that we bring to the table is a little bit more of a holistic view of
What does need deciding about? Right. She uses the phrase, what sparks joys, but that's primarily about physical things, right? And and GTD brings you a comprehensive framework for asking and answering questions about anything in your world. So again, it could be emails, could be WhatsApps, could be paper, anything in your world that that feels like it's not in the right place. So so yeah, that's
That's where your your thinking kinda took me. Any of that make sense?
Robert Peake (13:29)
Makes so much sense and it makes for me kind of lived lived sense when I came across this idea that there really there's four types of things that belong permanently in your working environment. And you mentioned you know, them in summary, but very specifically reference material, equipment, decoration, and supplies, those four things, which I remember through the mnemonic reds, you know, shades of the color red.
I really haven't found anything that belongs permanently that in my environment that isn't one of those four four things. And I have, by contrast, found anything that's not one of those four things that's in my immediate field of vision does demand of me a certain amount of a sort of cognitive attention or or create a certain amount of psychological noise that we were talking about earlier.
And whether that's noise or whether that's value depends on whether I'm engaging with that consciously. And I so I think that's the kind of the key to good mess, bad mess, if you like.
Todd Brown (14:36)
Yeah.
Robert Peake (14:37)
good mess, part of what I'm choosing to engage with. Bad mess, taking energy from what I'm choosing to engage with because it reminds me of something.
it's it feels undecided about. it's not in a place where the meaning matches that location. There's a dissonance or a friction about it, a little tiny tug. And I think one of the great things you're pointing out about the getting things done approach and the work that we do with people in relation to the physicalities, it gives you something to do about that little tiny tug. As you say, I think we often
Just kind of go numb to it, kind of filter out, kind of build up these these, you know, ways of shielding ourselves from that little bit of demand. And I've I've actually encountered people who've taken that sort of build-up of the the shield and made it a sense of identity. People that say, well, I'm just I'm a creative person, therefore I'm a I'm a messy person, you know, and I go, well, you know.
That's fine. If you have someone else to go clean all that up behind you, off you go. Be creative, you know. And a very young child sometimes, you know, will have that. They'll have a parent kind of sweeping up behind them as they go off exploring life. But most of us have found, I think, that it's more actually more effective and healthier to be the person that can respond to those little those little signals yourself. and
And have a way. And this is that way of taking care of those things that ultimately distract you psychologically from what you're engaged with. And don't get me wrong, when I'm fully engaged with a woodworking project, anything I'm doing, you will see a big mess. You will see, you know, clouds of sawdust and tools all over the place and and whatever, because all of that is part of me figuring out, you know, what I want to do and how I want to do it and having that available in two hand.
i is part of the joy of just fully giving myself over to that. And frankly, seeing an email inbox or checking my phone or whatever else, that would be the distraction from the necessary physical chaos of full engagement.
Todd Brown (17:05)
Yeah. I I think that's so right. And you know, it's funny as you're talking about, I'm just thinking about my workspace here, right? Which I redesigned a few years ago now. And one of the things that I felt very strongly about, you can see it behind me here. That's a very large, flat space. Okay. It's got some plants and some, you know, some a few books on it and things. but I designed that very explicitly because I wanted to be able to just spread stuff out.
Right? When I'm working on something. you know, those of you who are who are l regular listeners may know that I'm a recall that I'm a musician, I'm I'm I'm a jazz musician and I play and I play a lot of jazz. And when I'm getting to know a new a new song or if I'm you know if I'm practicing something that that needs some focus, yes, I want to have, you know, whatever the song is in front of me maybe on the music stand, but there are other resources that I want to have to hand. And I don't want those
in
a binder in that moment, you know, sort of on a shelf. I want those in within arm's reach. And so I think it's an interesting, it's an interesting you know, I I go through the same thing, I guess is what I'm saying. But as we're talking about this, and I'm aware we know we've probably got maybe five more minutes, it's I think we do need to broaden the conversation a little bit to talk about messiness in the digital world because I think there will be a fair number of people out there who are going
Guys, my physical world doesn't feel like it's all that out of control. And maybe they might not, right? We're quite reasonably they might say, well, look, my world is digital, right? More or less everything is digital. So I think it would be helpful for us to talk a little bit about what does digital messiness look like? Is it distinct? Is it different really from physical di messiness? Is it is there something you know different that we need to consider when it comes to that? What what do you reckon?
Robert Peake (19:00)
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting one because we use all these analogies with the physical world. And so much of our work we focus on the inbox, the email inbox, or that idea of having inboxes, which of course comes from the very physical analogy of that. But another one on nearly every computer operating system out there that's graphical by nature is the desktop. And the number of people who I have a look at their
desktop of their computer. And I think to myself, if that were your physical desktop, the physical space that you work in, there the piles would be so high. You know, you would you absolutely would not tolerate that level of, you know, physical disorder and disarray. And so the idea that the desktop is a place that you can bring things into temporarily while you're working on them, just as you would
get something out to work on in the olden days on a physical desktop and then put it away as appropriate, I think we've really lost lost that part of the analogy, which is, you know, staring at it and not being able to see your wallpaper of the picture of your kids or whatever it was anymore, right? Because it's just completely obscured by file icons, was I think never the in original intent of the the graphical operating system
Creators. So I think that's an interesting place to start because I think a lot of people just don't have the same digital habits that they would have of necessity physically. About, hey, you know, what do I need to do to, in a sense of the word, put this away so that there's space? And it really is a strong analogy too with the headspace, too, right? One of the ways to describe GTD is.
We help you close all the tabs that are in your mind, right? You know. Or we help you sweep up the the the crazy desktop so you can see the picture of your kids as wallpaper again, right? I mean that's that's another way of putting it. So
Todd Brown (21:08)
Yeah. I th you know it's funny as you're describing it. I think it reminds me of one of the core ideas I think of GTD and I've over the years really internalized this. It's it's the idea is that I am
One of the things that I've learned is to be very, very is to be a guardian of mental clarity, right? I really want to make sure that whatever I'm doing is supporting mental clarity so that I can focus where I want to focus. And and as far as possible, I'm not distracted, and as far as possible I can really bring my best self to use that phrase, to whatever it is that I'm focused on. And I think for an awful lot of people.
That kind of if the modern life is so full of distractions that it's difficult, right? It's really difficult. So I think I I come back to that a lot, right? It's it's it's kind of in some ways it's GTD 101, right? It's it's you know, if it's on your mind, it's in the wrong place, right? It's it's
But at the same time, I think it's something that, you know, jel jealously guarding your mental, you know, your kind of mental free space, I think is an important thing. And being aware, coming back to the messiness point, and being aware that your messiness can, whatever messiness there is in your world, can get in the way of that, right? And this, you know, we're we're doing this recording in the early part of August of 2026, and and
this time of year for quite a few people, the world starts to slow down, right? The August is not as busy as other months. And what I found with myself and with clients is this is a great time.
to be doing this kind of work, right? So, you know, go through your you know, block out a couple hours and just go through the all of those files that are on your desktop and just make some decisions. A lot of them will probably be trash. Just get rid of them. A lot of them will probably be reference. Okay, figure out where those go, right? Do they go in a folder somewhere? Do they get w where? You tell me, but you know, they they need to they need to be in a in a place where they're providing less, again, less mental
noise than they are. And and it's funny
You know, I've been doing this obviously for a long time. The, but the, the, I always feel after doing that exercise, and I only do it a couple times a year probably, but ever after I do that exercise, the sense of relief is palpable. You know, it's like it's it's almost like you don't realize how much mental static there is that's generated by these things until you actually grapple with them. And grappling with them doesn't need to be, doesn't need to be anything terribly difficult. It's just make some decisions.
Right?
What is this? Is this actionable? Okay, great. What's the next action? Is there a project? And then if it's not actionable, what is it? Is it trash? Is it reference or is it incubation? And incubation for us again, for those who might not be that familiar with the methodology, is you know something that I'm not doing something about now, but I might do something about in the future. Someday, maybe, is the kind of phrase we use for that. So, you know, just decide what's the nature of this thing, and then put that thing in the place where you
you'll be reminded as it's helpful. And that can make, yeah, again, my experience and I think over the years, a lot of my clients as well, that can make a huge difference in terms of their ability to stay mentally undistracted and focused.
Robert Peake (24:37)
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely my experience too. Great. So if you've been needing that nudge out there to encourage you to go put some stuff where it belongs, physically, digitally, psychologically, consider the gauntlet thrown down here and now. this is your this is your summer challenge. Go put some stuff where it belongs, where what it means matches where it is for you.
I'm gonna add another little mini, mini challenge, one that I've issued myself and and I'm struggling with, but it's a it's a worthwhile struggle. I too have a flat surface like you, Todd, a nice big flat surface. And I put one of those signs that's like official traffic sign in front of it that says loading and unloading zone only.
Todd Brown (25:28)
Brilliant. Perfect.
Robert Peake (25:29)
So I encourage
you, if you don't have a loading and unloading only area in your house, you might want to see if you can jealously defend one flat surface for loading and unloading only. It certainly has been a struggle, but a worthwhile fight for me to keep that one clear. So anyway, as we're coming to a close here from me, from Todd, again, that encouragement to go create some psychological quiet for yourself.
via the the putting of what it is to where it means. If you found this helpful, useful, or if you have thoughts or or questions or ideas, suggestions for future podcasts, would like to you know be involved with this more in some way, see us at next-action.co.uk. Again, next-action.co.uk. There's a hyphen in there. Meanwhile, from me, from Todd, hope you have a lovely summer and hope you can catch a little bit of that.
psychological quiet and the joy of being free to create a mess and free to decreate that mess and come back to the order that you need and desire and frankly deserve in in your life and in your work. For now, we'll see you next time.
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