EntreLeadership - #184: David Allen—Getting Strategic With Personal Productivity

Episode Date: January 30, 2017

If “overwhelmed” seems like the best way to describe your day, listen in. Because the leading authority on personal organization, David Allen, joins us to discuss how to get things done. This best-selling author shares new insights on personal productivity and how you can become more effective, organized and focused, plus how you can plan projects like a pro.   entreleadership.com/podcast Goal Tracker Tool Infusionsoft's 2017 Strategy Kit EntreLeadership Summit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. We are broadcasting from the Music City, and this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, and for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Back in 2016, we put out a listener survey, and over 2,500 of you responded, still grateful for that. And we wanted to know what content that you wanted. And I've mentioned this before, but it's important to point out for this episode.

Because in the top five was a topic known as productivity. That's right. You said we want personal productivity. We want productivity all the time. Bring it to us. Bring it to us. Bring it to us. So we did.

Interestingly, as we looked back on 2016 of our most popular episodes, Charles Duhigg's episode on productivity, habits and so forth and so on, was the most. played in 2016. So the point I'm making, we get it. We know you like productivity topics. So here we go. This episode, our feature conversation, David Allen. This guy is a legend in this space. His book, Getting Things Done, The Art of Stress Free Productivity, has been a runaway bestseller, millions of copies sold. So here we go. We're hitting a topical bullseye this episode, and you're going to love this. By the way, I've got to tell you this, David Allen has one of those pleasing voices of anybody I've ever interviewed. So it's really fun. So if you notice my energy

dipping during the interview, and I don't know that it did, Eric, the producer's laughing at me behind the glass, the guy just has a great voice. And I meant to tell David that he should do a series of children's books, you know, on audio, and I can play them, and the kids will fall asleep, and I'll fall asleep. It'll be great. So I didn't mention that. I should. But here's the deal. The art of stress-free productivity. We're going to dive into that. I ask him right out of the gate. How is it an art? Oh, boy. It's good stuff. Hey, speaking of good things. We recently asked you all, would you respond to us with some stories? How is our wildly popular goal tracker tool helping you? So we got a lot of those in and I picked one that was kind of my favorite. I

chuckled when I read this. By the way, there's a word we should use more. Chuckled. The next time you that made me laugh. No, say, that made me chuckle. It's a good word. I like words. So there you go. There's a little bonus content today. All right. So my favorite email that we got was from a guy named Vladimir. And again, we said, how is this helping you win? We're not looking for something that you can say nice about our productivity tool, our goal tracker tool, if you will. We just want to know how's it working. And so the reason I picked this one is because it's personal. And sometimes I think on a leadership podcast like, this. We think, oh, we're helping these people win in business, but we're also helping you win in your personal life. And Vladimir says that he committed to write and track the consistent goal to help his wife every day with simple things. One example, dishes. Now, that's why I chuckled. I think of myself, you know what? I like that Vladimir said, how am I going to take this goal tracker tool and win at home? Because if you're winning at home leaders, you've got a great chance of winning in the office. But I can tell you, the converse is absolutely true and devastating.

If you're not winning at home, very hard to win at the office. So way to go, Vladimir. Here's what he said. He said after two weeks of holding accountable using your goal tracker tool, my wife noticed the changes and praised me for it. It's my favorite quote of his email. If only I knew earlier, this was so easy. Thank you. So, Vladimir, congratulations. You got so much needed and crazy valuable honey-do points. Way to go. Keep up with the dishes. And to the rest of you, let this be a lesson. Don't just use the goal tracker in the office. Use it at home. Use it with your kids. Hey, get your kids involved with it. Let them use it. Make some copies. It's a free tool, folks. If you haven't gotten it, you need to get it. Literally, tens of thousands of people have

jumped on this. It's our goal tracking tool. You can get it very easy. Two ways. You can text the word goals 2017 to 33444. Text goals 2017 to 33444 or the link is in this episode's show notes. Now hey, before we wrap up the free stuff, don't forget InfusionSoft. They're giving you the 2017 planning kit. InfusionSoft started absolutely with one or two dudes. Now, $100 million business. What they do great is they share what they've learned. in their experience and other experiences with all the small businesses that they help and they have been helping for years and they give it to you. This is an amazing resource. This is not a Chachkey.

It's a 2017 planning kit and it does all the hard work for you. Hey, in a little bit we're going to talk about David Allen in his book and stress-free productivity. This is one thing that will help you be productive without stress because Infusionsoft does it for you. Go get it. Infusionsoft.com. 2017 planning kit infusionsoft.com slash 2017 planning kit. All right, folks, it's always fun when head coach John Falcons from our All-Axcess community comes in the studio. Coach John Falcons, good to have you here, pal.

Thanks for having me. I'm doing good. Thanks for having me, Ken. You look fantastic. Thank you. You too. All right. So here we go. You're ready to answer some people's questions? If they're easy. If they're easy. All right, they're never easy, but they're always good. First up is John. He says, how do you draw the line between promoting a strong culture without asking your team to become defined by their jobs? You know, Ken, I think this is really more an issue of how you're defining culture and how people define their job. Around here, as you know, we hire people that are motivated, people that are competent, people that are high-quality people. And And like our head of HR said to me, when I was interviewing here, he said,

John, if you come to work for this organization, you will become a better man because you work here. And I thought that was a little bit weird, honestly. I never heard that. Certainly bold. Yeah, it was bold. And you know what? It was right. I have grown as a result of being here.

So I don't think that you having a culture of people that take responsibility, that are competent, that are confident, that are hardworking. That's a problem to be defined that way. This question gets at, you know, do you want people to their whole identity to be, well, I work for this company? No, that's not right. But that's not a company culture issue. And so go ahead and do everything you can to foster a phenomenal company culture. Just don't expect people to identify themselves as your employee. That's not what matters.

Yeah, that's good. Thank you for that question, John. Okay, another culture question, this is from Jacob. is it an unfair question to ask your employee how they view your company? Would that be an effective way to gauge what your company culture is? Two questions there, right? Number one, is there something wrong with asking them how they... Is that fair? Yeah, is that fair? Yeah, that's fair.

I mean, that's weird for it to... I kind of feel like this person is asking this question because they've gotten some pushback from somebody on their team, and that person, they probably got some kind of issue that they need to resolve. Yeah, I mean, get feedback from your team. You should have that. kind of sounding board with your, how are things going? What do you guys think? Is this where you want to be? Can you see yourself here long term? Are you liking working here? You know, Ken, we were just talking before we went on this segment. You're on a road a gazillion hours a month, right? If you didn't like being here, how would that work? That would not be good. So we need to hear those kind of things.

Then what was the second question? Well, would it be an effective way to gauge the company culture? No. By simply asking someone, what do you think about the company? I don't think that is the most. effective way. I don't think it hurts to ask, and I think we should be open to the feedback, but the best way to gauge the company culture is to watch the behavior of your team, to just watch and observe and listen and do the management by walking around approach where you just have your finger on the poles. People are diving on a ball when somebody drops a ball. People are helping each other out. People are taking responsibility. People are going the extra mile.

When you see those kind of things, that's a great gauge of company culture. Good stuff there. Thanks for the question, Jacob. And hey, if you'd like to send your question in for Coach Falcons, you can do it. It's very simple. Just email us, podcast at entreleadership.com. That's podcast at entreleadership.com. Coach, it's always good to have you in the studio.

Hope to see you soon. Thanks, Ken. All right, folks, been telling you about it. David Allen was a absolute treat. I could have talked to this guy for hours and hours. So much good stuff here. As you're taking notes and listening to the book is Getting Things Done, the Art of Stress-Free Productivity.

We break it down so that you can. You can digest it and use it. Here it is. Well, David, it's a treat to have you with us, and our audience is all about personal productivity. So your book, Getting Things Done, The Art of Stress-Free Productivity is where we're going to spend a lot of our time. I know words matter. I'm a little bit of a word nerd. And one of the things I want to start with is, before we dive into the book and so much of the great truth in there, is the idea of the word art.

You chose that word. Somebody chose that word as that subtitle, if you will. the art of stress-free productivity. So as a context, why choose the word art and how is that play out for us as we begin to look into this process? Why the word art? Most people work, but don't realize that there is an art to work, much like there's an art to writing. There's an art. You could call it a craft, I suppose, but I think it's more of an – I like the word art simply because it's more expansive and more –

inclusive of the infinite levels of subtlety and sophistication that you can take this. Managing the flow of life's work is really what this is about. It's not a one-time time management tips and tricks. They're sure plenty of tips and tricks that sort of have emerged like cream to the top of this methodology. But it's really about how do you manage through your life and all the stuff that winds up, that you wind up being involved in and staying clear of. it and not creating residue. So that's, that's really an art. It's much like learning the tango or

the art of music, the art of all kinds of things. So it just seemed to be more of an inclusive way to describe this much broader thing that I got a hold of. Yeah, I think it works perfectly, especially because you mentioned the word flow, and this is not a one-time thing. This is a flow. And so let's get right into the current reality. Here we sit, 2017 is upon us. One of the things you mentioned in the book early on is that there really aren't any boundaries, aren't any set boundaries by, you know, the universe on work. It just with technology, work is always sitting there. I want you to talk about that and how that's important to understand boundaries to be able to do what you prescribe in the book. Well, there's a strange paradox that in a way you don't want anything on your

mind except whatever you want on your mind. And people make a pretty artificial distinction between work and personal life. I mean, to me, it's all the same thing. I use work in a very broad sense called anything you want to have to get done that's not done yet. So get tires on your car, handle the next vacation, hire the assistant, buy a company, get a dog, research whether your kids should take karate or not. That's all stuff to do. And so as you get engaged with this world and those kinds of commitments, then how do you manage

through those as opposed to have them bury you? And there's no distinction. You know, when I'm, if I made a distinction, I don't. But if I did between my personal life and my work, I don't want to be worried about more than one thing in my personal life or concerned about it or focused on it. I want to be present with my dog when I'm playing with her. I want to be present with the email when I'm writing it.

I want to be present anywhere. So it is a bit of an artificial distinction in terms of, well, there's the work stuff and then there's the personal stuff. So again, using work in the very broad sense. And of course, my third book, making it all work, has a twist to the title, even that itself. It's all work. Let's make it all work.

Because most people think of work as a pejorative. Oh, I have to work. Oh, this is really hard work. As opposed to when they say, hey, this really works. So think about it. Same word. Hey, this thing really works. And so making it all work, meaning, hey, this is the art and craft of living your life

and being engaged with the things that you're engaged with. All right, David. So this is perfect because we've got a doer audience, their personal growth junkies, a lot of entrepreneurs and you understand entrepreneurs. I mean, just by nature, they got a lot going on right there. They're that kind of ready fire aim. And, you know, this conversation, stress-free productivity can seem almost like a pipe dream. Oh, you know, okay, so the cynics out there are listening to us. But one of the things I think that you do so well in chapter three of this book is you kind of draw this beautiful distinction between how our brains are already naturally wired.

And you lay out, there's five processes that when you start to think about a new project, and you call it the five phases of project planning, I want you to draw that parallel from how our brains already naturally work. And if we can somehow begin to tie that into our output, physical work, we really set ourselves up well at the start. Years ago, I was scratching my head, there are so many different project planning models and ways to think about project plans and project planning. I said, there's got to be some universal way that no matter how big or little, how complex or simple the project is, there's got to be some simple model that is a universal model. So scratching my head, scratching my head, and then, you know, I had the big, uh-huh. Wait a minute,

we're planning all the time. We can't stop that. I mean, if I ask you to stop planning, you plan how to do that. So your head is constantly thinking, as soon as you have something, as soon as you want to get out of the room. Hey, I need to go take the dog for a walk. You're already planning. You're going, okay, outcome, dog for walk, dog happy, me happy, whatever. And then you start to go through this little process. So I thought, well, how exactly, what does our brain actually do when we go do something like that? And it goes through this actually fairly simple five stage thing. First of all, it says, well, why am I doing this? I mean, there's a purpose that drives everything. You know, I use the example of the book of going out to dinner. Well, why do you, you know, I'm hungry, I want to sign a

business deal, I want romance. There's nothing to eat in the fridge, you know, survival, whatever, but you have a purpose that drives it. There is a natural purpose that drives anything that you actually want to do, that you want to take any initiative about. So purposes first. And, you know, within that, you also have the principles that you operate within. I don't want to go out if it's too cold or I don't want to go to dinner whether it's too expensive. I want to make sure I have good food, et cetera. So purpose and principles are basically the prime drivers of anything. You know, you don't often think about them, but they're there and they operate for us all the time. And then, of course, the first substantive thoughts you have are not Roman and rule A, B, C, or plan

one, two, three. You go, well, wait a minute, what am I trying to do here? And so you have an essentially a vision, some outcome picture. You know, what am I trying to accomplish? And so then you have the vision. That's step two is to draw a picture. What would it look like if my purpose were fulfilled. And then assuming that you have a picture of something that's not true yet, that you create a distance. You want to be out of the room. You're not out of the room. You automatically start thinking, well, how do I get out of the room? And so then there's a, there's kind of a how part A and a how part B. You start thinking going out to dinner, well, what time would go? What's the weather like? I'm not going to have to call for a reservation,

et cetera. So you do brainstorming. So first you've got purpose that drives it. Then you have a vision of some outcome. And that automatically starts some sort of brainstorming, meaning your mind starts thinking of potentially relevant things, but in somewhat random order. But then you don't, you can't leave them in random order. Then you automatically start to do how part B, which is, okay, how do I get that? Which is first, what's most important? What are the biggest things I need to think about? And that's the organizing step.

So once you brainstorm and generate raw data, essentially, then you assume you want to go out to dinner, you'll start to automatically start to sort the stuff in terms of priority sequence or components. And then what's the next step? Do I pick up the phone and call the restaurant? Do I just go ahead and put on my jacket and walk out the door? What's the very next thing I need to do? And then how do I actuate this thing? How do I activate it?

So those five steps called purpose, vision, brainstorm, organize next action is how we pretty much do everything. The weird thing is that's not how most people actually plan a lot of their bigger stuff. That's right. And for leaders, this is huge, especially small business owners who may not have a ton of resources as it relates to staffing. And somebody think of that in the early days. a lot of entrepreneurs who, some are not gifted administratively naturally, and they can't rely on somebody. This is a real good process for just running the day-to-day business, running your life, making sure you're not out of control, and then launching new initiatives. How have you seen business leaders use this process to decide yes or no?

Oh, all the way, almost invariably, because everybody uses this process anyway. If you're going to decide to take an action, you're going to have to go through some version of the step. to begin with. But walking yourself through the model makes you more conscious of it and makes you more confident in terms of your decisions. You know, most people, when they think about planning, usually go to the organized step, which is phase four, which is I need to sit down and create a plan and they start to organize, but they don't even stop to ask them to say, wait a man, what's the purpose of this software? You know, what am I actually trying to do here? What's the purpose of hiring a vice president of marketing? What's the purpose of having an assistant? They don't

stop and ask themselves a very simple but a very profound question. And also what really matters in terms of the standards or practices in terms of their values about all that. And they oftentimes then don't think, what would wild success be? What would my best VP of marketing look, sound or feel like? If I could just make it up, what would wild success for that be? And people don't often give themselves permission to actually paint that picture and find out exactly what would this software really be if it was wildly successful? How would my business be if it were wildly successful six months from now, you know, or two years from now. And so just asking that question. And sometimes, you know, you come up with some pretty interesting answers. If you give yourself

permission to do, it doesn't take long, but you do have to stop and think because it won't necessarily automatically just show up by itself. And then not many people sit down and actually spend time giving those sales permission to brainstorm. Give me all the potentially relevant things that pop into your head about this VP of marketing or about the software you want to build or the company you want to have successful. Give me all the potentially relevant things. Give me all the potential. all the potentially relevant things that might be that we might need to consider. Good, bad, big, little indifferent, doesn't matter. Let's get it all.

Empty that out of your head. And people oftentimes don't do that process. Oftentimes just that process itself gives people a big ahas and things that they had thought of before but forgot they thought of it and then realize they need to consider that. Then the other piece of this is oftentimes they don't come up with the next action. Okay, so you've got a great plan. What's the very next step? You had nothing else to do.

but start on that right now. You know, where do you go? Do you go to the phone? Do you go to the computer and surf the web? Do you go to your partner and have a conversation? What's the very next thing you need to do? So four of those five steps are oftentimes, if you just add the purpose, the vision, the brainstorming, and next action thinking, as opposed to just trying to organize something,

I've seen any one of those questions and any one of those answers change people's minds about things and give them big ahas about much more confidence about their decisions. I want to talk about that confidence issue because, again, the stress-free is, I think, tied a lot to the confidence. And I want to ask you about this planning process. Because for entrepreneurs, if they walk through this process and they do what you just laid out so beautifully and so simply, there's terrific confidence that even if it fails, you've planned for the potential that it fails. And it doesn't wreck your life. It doesn't wreck your business. Is that true?

And that's the power in this? Sure. No, I just read somebody who was quoting Winston Churchill, you know, quotes that says, Success just means going from failure to failure with enthusiasm. That's right. So it's like, hey, as you say, ready, fire aim, you know, take a shot and then come back and reconsider and reconfigure, you know, as you're thinking, as you get better data. You just don't want to keep making the same mistakes and keep having the same non-thought about something.

So you just get as smart as you can get as quick as you can and then start to take action on it and then come back and recalibrate. as soon as you get better data. Yeah, let's stay there for a second because you, Chapter 8 is all about reflecting, keeping it all fresh and functional. I want you to kind of teach us a little bit there, this idea of reflecting, because a part of the game of success is you're going to lose. And you've got to figure out how to filter that and move forward. And I think that's what you're encouraging us to do here.

And I think that's really important for folks to filter it well. So teach us a little bit on this idea of reflecting, because it's one of the major points in the book. Yeah, and it's forest management instead of tree hugging. So we all have to hug trees. You and I are doing that right now. We're down to the dirt here. We're doing an interview.

This is a specific thing. We're doing our work right now. But whether this is the right interview to be doing, whether I should be spending time doing this with you, all that really backs itself back up to. Well, what am I trying to do? Is this part of the bigger game? What's the importance of this to me? Do I allocate resources to it?

and how do I do that. And so that requires some sort of a reflection process. Now, anybody who looks at their calendar is doing a reflection process. If you looked at your calendar and say, oh, I got this interview with David Allen, you just step back and did some version of a lift up a little bit, look across space and time and say, okay, here's now where I need to be and what I need to be doing. That's a reflection process. But, can, quite frankly, it is the biggest need for executives, for senior people, for entrepreneurs,

is to give themselves time to stop and hold the world back. Walk around the Rose Garden, stare at your day, we'll figure out your life purpose. Yeah, that's good stuff to do too. But I'm talking about more of an operational kind of a review. That's probably the most lacking thing. But, you know, I talk about the weekly review is we've discovered over all these years

is probably the most critical kind of a review to build in. A lot of people review on a daily basis. They look at their calendar and they look at their to-do list, et cetera. And a lot of people have big goals and so forth in a longer horizon. But it's that in-between thing, all those projects that most people have in terms of checking status on that. How are you doing about hiring the VP? How are you doing about planning the next vacation?

How are you doing about reorganizing your senior team? And those kinds of things, which we call projects, that are going to take more than one step to get closure on, and stepping back and reviewing that inventory. And most people listening to this have somewhere between 30 and 100 of those things that we've seen over all these years. very few people have that list or have that inventory, and even fewer people are actually looking at that on a regular basis and keeping that current. But man, that makes such a difference.

That's a game changer in terms of you feeling comfortable about your priority decisions. So you don't have time to think. You need to have already thought. That's right. You need to have built in a thinking process. And, you know, we suggest it two hours a week. You know, you really need to close the door and stop doing social media,

stop, don't answer the phone, don't check email. take two hours and step back and take a look at the inventory of all of your commitments, all the stuff that's going on, check status on all that. Easier said than done. You know, it's quite a habit to build in if you don't have it already, but a critical one. Hey, folks, I want to take a quick time out and talk about something that David just mentioned, this reflection process. I think a part of reflection for me is getting fresh perspective.

I can't just reflect on what's in my head and heart and my experiences. I've got to have some perspective and then put that, if you will, an overlay on my experiences, on my feelings, on my thoughts. So how do you get fresh perspective? I think live events are absolutely catalytic moments. They've been that for me. I've seen them be that for so many people as I get to host the Entree Leadership live events. We've been telling you about our summit event.

It is the crem della crem. It is, I think, the best business event in America. It's huge for your development. And if you need a breakthrough moment, to give you some fresh perspective that you can plug into your world and give context to where you're at with your experience, your thoughts, your feelings. I can't recommend the summit event enough. And here's the deal. You've got a lot things going on and you've got to be super, super strategic with how you spend your time. I can't think of better time spent that I believe will

not only save you thousands and thousands of dollars, but will make you thousands upon thousands of dollars. It's the perfect combination. The Entree Leadership Summit's only four months away. May 21 through 24 in Orlando, Florida. Dave Ramsey is asking and they have said yes. Simon Seneca, John Maxwell, Robert Hershevik from Shark Tank, Pat Lynch-Yoney, legendary coach Lou Holtz, Chris Hogan, Christy Wright, and myself are joining Dave for an amazing four days. It's going to be unbelievable. And I believe it can change the trajectory of your leadership career and your business. Now, it's a big ticket price, all right? But think of the investment and how much it pays off. We hear this from our sold out audience every year. Go to entreleadership.com slash summit. Entreleadership.com

slash summit. All right, let's get back to David Allen, teaching you about building your reflection and thinking process for a weekly review. This was so good for me. I know you're going to love it. So there are three things that David really outlines beautifully for us. I'm going to list them out and then we'll talk through it because I want to make sure that you write these down because this idea of the weekly review, he says we've got to do three things to really make this weekly review really pay dividends. And that is you got to get clear, get current, and get creative. Now, David, you kind of gave us an overview there. But this may be such a new idea at a lot of people to say, I'm going to take two hours. and I've got to begin to build that habit as you just suggested.

So getting clear, getting current, and getting creative. I want you to take us a little deeper in those three buckets, because those are disciplines that will help this weekly review really pay off. Well, getting clear is really about all the miscellaneous stuff that's shown up in your world over the last seven days, you know, cleaning it up. We have kids nine years old doing weekly reviews. They're cleaning up the pack, their pack, all the stuff they've collected and they're packed during the week in school.

A CEO, I just coached, his getting clear is the pile of stuff that he took on his own jet to read that he hadn't finished reading yet or the ones that he's read that he needs to then tear articles out and has ideas out of those that he still needs to process big piles of that stuff. And so getting clear just means catching up, if you will, pulling up the rear guard for all that stuff. Ideally, having your in baskets at zero. In other words, your in baskets and your in baskets could be digital. They could be physical and probably both. that you've collected all the stuff that you still haven't yet decided what to do with it yet, but then you get those empty, and you go through them and make decisions about them. You know, I elaborated the book, the five-step process you use to get your in-basket

empty and get your head empty. But that's the get clear part. You know, catch up. I mean, if you're trying to make decisions about stuff, but you've got 500 unprocessed email sitting in there, they're yelling at you. It's kind of hard to make good strategic decisions about how to spend your next week and where you need to put your focus. So that's about the getting clear piece is just sort of catching up.

If you already have the habit of keeping lists as we recommend and keeping your inventory out of your head, making sure that that's cleaned up. You know, when I do my weekly review, I sit down and look at all my action list and my project list and say, hey, that one's done, that one's done. I haven't finished that one yet.

And so it's just reviewing all the stuff in my inventory and making sure that I, if I start to then add things to my list, which invariably I will do in a weekly review, I don't want to be adding them onto old lists, that still have a bunch of, you know, dead wood in there. So I need to clean out the dead wood. So that's really what the get clear piece is.

A friend of mine is a high-level executive and a big not-for-profit. His Thursday night is his clean-up everything. So that first thing on Friday morning, he likes to do his weekly review of the first couple hours on Friday morning. But Thursday night is when he cleans up. He zeroes out his email in basket, zeros out everything else and gets everything cleaned up so that his two hours is spent not trying to catch up with a whole bunch of backlog. A lot of people listening to this, it would take them 20 hours to clean up their email in baskets, much less only a few minutes. But that's the idea, not having a bunch of residue around that's still unprocessed, that's still kind of yelling at you.

Wow. All right. So you just mentioned your friend who does Thursday evening. I just want our listeners to hear from you. What's your suggested right time, right place that works for you? Or maybe it works for other people because I think this is something that we need to begin to try to do. I'd love to know what you think, the right time and right place is for a weekly review. Whenever you can do it.

Believe me, it's always helpful to build in rituals that makes these, you know, that makes it easier to make these habitual. If you have a typical time and place and space, I've got another friend that he does his weekly review on Sundays because he takes his girl to choir practice in his church. And then on Sunday, you know, while she's practicing up front, he's got his little pew back in the back of the church. And that's where he sits and does his weekly review. A whole lot of people do their weekly reviews on Saturday mornings at Starbucks. They figure that's their office away from their office and away from home, and they like that kind of buzz in that environment to do that in. I like to do my weekly review is usually in an airline club that's got good Wi-Fi.

I like to do it when I'm connected to the web because a lot of times when you do the weekly review, there's some things that would just take 30 seconds or two minutes to go check something on the web, just as a researcher to look something up and see what somebody's talking about in an email as I'm cleaning that up. So I like to be connected, wired in in some way, but some regular basis. A lot of people like to do at the end of the week, you know, probably the most typical way people do it that start to build this habit is kind of the end of their work week, but not at the end of Friday night. You know, you need to do it, you know, sort of midday while you still have some cognitive

horsepower. So I know a number of executives that I work with wind up setting up like a noon to two or a one to three and they call out for a sandwich and then close the door, you know, on a Friday afternoon and that's the really hard meeting they don't let anybody bother then they just hold the world back a lot of executives that i've worked but also then find it's very very valuable to do the last part of that review with their assistants or chief of staff because boy you kill a lot of birds with that stone because you know you get to catch up you get your priorities clear you get caught up and then you bring in the people that are critical to you to help you implement and then catch them up

and it makes it much much easier to then spend the next week and you know sort of let them make trusted decisions about what your priorities are and so forth. So I've got another good friend, a chairman of a company that does his weekly review on Monday morning because he likes to start his week kind of with the buzz. So he catches up. Kind of likes to hit the road running as he goes into his work weekend. He does that. I had another friend who he's now retired, who was senior executive at Boeing, McDonald-Deglis

and Boeing. And he did his weekly review on a Sunday night where he was waned into his office and, you know, he'd get a good bottle of red Tuscan wine and set up. down and wired in and then process all the huge pages of notes he'd taken in the meetings all week that he was in and then delegate handoff and get cleaned up with the will of all that. So it really ranges. I'd say either probably the beginning or the end of a work week are pretty typical times that people tend to do this. But it needs to be time when you truly can hold the world back. Some people like to have an active environment around them when they do this.

It makes it easier for them to focus. And if you were in a totally quiet room with nothing going on, you can oftentimes get too distracted by your brain. So sometimes it's actually easier to be in a more active environment like people that do a weekly review and, you know, at Starbucks or their local coffee shop. Sometimes that kind of environment or an airline club or something like that. I see those often. I'm taking notes and listening and thinking along with our audience here. And it's a Friday as we record this.

And David, I got to tell you in our audience, I'm thinking of that red Tuscan wine now and a cigar. And a breeze on a porch. That's kind of my space. Dude, yeah. Yeah, you like that? That's where I can do it. Hey, we've been talking about a personal context. But if I might, I want you to talk to our leaders and people that are leading teams here.

How can they transfer everything we've been talking about in this weekly review to a team environment? Have you seen that? And just tell us, obviously, you've laid out how to do it. But how valuable would it be if on some level people who are leading teams did some form? of a weekly review that's different than a normal team meeting? Or is that necessary? I just want your thoughts on that. Well, the principles that I talk about of getting things done,

both the five steps of how do you get things under control and the five steps of how you think through projects and situations, they apply it to an enterprise as equally as they do to an individual. So if I walked into your team, my first question is, what's got your team's attention right now? Because the team will have its attention on something. or if you have a life partner and say, what do you and your life partner have your attention on right now? And that's where you start to see that kind of data show up.

And then you make all these critical decisions call, okay, great, what's the next action on that? What outcomes are you committed to do? It is true that most teams are lacking some version of a review process together about things that are potentially relevant to the team itself. In other words, what projects does the team need to review? It's the status of as a team. What has the team's attention about that? And how often do you need to relook at that? And at what level of granularity do you need to see the details and check the status about?

And that is an ongoing, ever-present improvement opportunity for virtually every team. Are we meeting too often? Are we meeting not enough? Do we have the right content in that meeting so that we feel comfortable? How do we get this stuff off our mind as a team? Because the more it's on your mind, the less it's happening. What's got a team's attention are things that decisions have not been appropriately made about them or you don't trust the action steps and the allocation of who's accountable for them or the system that you've set up to be able to check in on it on some consistent basis.

So those are the critical factors about how do you get stress-free as a team. And so you're right. It's a huge improvement opportunity for most everybody. And so to think about that, and what you don't want to do is try to over-structure this. You don't want Nazi wear with this. What you need is how often do we need to get together and speak and who needs to be in that room, how often? And at what level do we need to be reviewing the commitments that are relevant to this team or this group? Those are good questions to answer, and not a lot of people are that conscious.

Chapter 14, you dive deep on the cognitive science that obviously supports this book, getting things done. and we talked about the word flow, the very first part of our conversation. We were talking about it when it comes to art. And this is fascinating to me, and I think it's going to be helpful to our audience. In Chapter 14, you talk about flow in a similar setting to or a similar feeling

to what we hear athletes sometimes refer to as being in the zone. I love sports. So I love sports analogies. This audience knows that. But we've all seen it before. We've seen athletes just, it's almost something they're in an uncanation.

any performance zone, and we've heard that phrase. The flow experience is so, so important for an organization to operate at such a high level. I mean, when we're talking about companies and organizations, whether it be nonprofit, for a profit, at the end of the day, they are teams, and if they're going to win big, they have to be high performance teams. So I want you to talk a little bit more about the science behind this so that our leaders can say, this is where we want to be, and we want to operate at such a high level. Yeah, it's a good question. Essentially, it's no different than my coaching to anybody, both personally, as well

as organizationally, which is how do I get things off my mind so that I create space internally to be free to focus on what I want to focus on the way I want to focus on it? So, you know, the cognitive scientist has basically just validated what I discovered 30 years ago and have validated for thousands of hours working with some of the best and brightest people on the planet, which is your head is a crappy office. It's just a crappy office. It's so true. You keep things in your head. Anything you've got just in your mind, whether that's should I get a dog or should I buy the company? And if that's only in your mind, you will give it either more importance than it deserves or less importance than it deserves if it's in your head. It will bang

around like a pinball and a bad pinball machine. Your head just is not designed for that. Your head's for having ideas but not for holding them. Yeah, hey, I want to interrupt you. I want to interrupt you and tell the audience one thing. This is a call out of this chapter because it's so beautiful what you just said. You say you can only put your conscious attention on one thing at a time. If that's all that has your attention, your in flow. Sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to interject it in there because that's what you're driving at. Right. And the problem is, is most people are trying to do something, but something else is bugging them. Something else is bothering them. Something else is on their mind. They're worried about it. They're taking home to work. They're taking work to work

to home, they're taking one meeting emotionally into the next. I mean, people are walking around with just this, the old cartoon, the old pig pin, you know, that's walked around with this cloud of stuff just going around. I mean, people are just, that's my experience with most professionals out there. They're just walking around all those flies buzzing around in their brain. And I just figured out the algorithm about how you quiet that noise without actually having to finish those things, but you have to be appropriately engaged with them. So creating appropriate engagement is really how you get into flow.

are you appropriately engaged with your health? Are you appropriately engaged with this interview right now? You know, are you appropriately engaged with your parents? Are you appropriately, you know, what does appropriate engagement mean? It means we'll start to pay attention. Is this on cruise control or not? One way to think about flow in a much bigger sense. You know, I'm Chick-Sempti's work on flow is brilliant.

He's a bit more specific about, you know, the athletic where you've got just the right amount of challenge and not too much so that you're not bored, but you're also not overwhelmed. And that state, which is where people tend to operate highly, and I agree with that. You know, I know that too. But my sense of flow is even a much bigger one than that, which is, look, if you're sitting there and playing with a dog or just making a fire and staring at it and just loving, appreciating the peace and quiet in your head, that's flow. So just being aware, if you can watch your daughter play soccer without having to be on

your iPhone, that's flow. You don't have to go very far to start to get there. you just have to start to pay attention to what has your attention. Wow. And why does it have your attention? And what do you need to do to get that off your mind? You don't get it off your mind by drinking or meditating. You know, believe me, you know, I do both.

I know, I'm pretty experienced in both of those. Right. You know, one of them will let you leave your mind and one of the other one sort of nums out your mind. But that doesn't stop the static. Yeah. What stops the static? I say, why do I have my intention on this? What does this mean to me?

What action steps do I need to take to move the knee? needle on this so I can start to feel like I'm appropriately engaged with whatever this thing is. Have I parked reminders of those in appropriate places? And that's what you have to do. And that's the algorithm I figured out. There is a way to get stuff off your mind, but it's not free. Yeah, I just wrote down, if I'm fully present, fully present, in the present, then I'm in flow. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. That's just for me. I don't know how everybody else has taken that, but that's the challenge. And I want to stay on this because in this same chapter, you talk about behavior-focused strategies.

I'm going to just read the list, folks, because I'm driving towards one specific one that I think will help me, and I think if it helps me, it'll help you. So he talks about behavior-focused strategies. And you say that these strategies place an emphasis on doing necessary but unpleasant task. This family of strategies includes self-observation, self-goal setting, self-reward, self-punishment and self-kewing. Now, I get all of them. I'm a little fuzzy on self-punishment, and I'm fascinated by that.

How do we self-punish? Because that seems to me to be maybe a breakthrough. I don't know that I would be good at self-punishing. I don't know that I am. Maybe I am. I don't know it. But I want you to talk about that particular strategy. I think it's more just becoming aware of how you punish yourself

when you do things that are offline or off course. You just start to pay attention to how. do I feel when that happens. I always feel terrible when I overdrink or overdo something or when I get into my addictive processes or whatever and then I feel bad about that. You know, people look, people don't need to beat themselves up anymore than they do. Most people beat themselves up much more than anybody could ever beat them up. Right. And so just becoming, just sort of to recognize, you know, when you have that feedback mechanism going on internally and saying, hey, you know, as soon as you get sick and tired of being sick and tired of being sick and tired about being sick and tired about doing that, at some point you'll quit. Okay, I get it. It's when we do stupid, which we all do, and it hurts, and that's what we need to be able. Okay, I got it. I love that. So then you go into natural reward strategies, and this I love, because it's positive. It's positive psychology, obviously, and I think it works well. I want you to talk to us about that, this idea of how do we work in natural reward strategies that will then, of course, hopefully get ourselves into that habit of true flow. Well, people love to complete. I mean, there is nothing.

like completion. I mean, how does it feel? Your car drives better when you wash it. That is true. I've never thought of that. No, it does. It does. It does. So, you know, when in doubt, clean a drawer, you know, at some point, by the way, everybody, and I'm sure you do too, everybody has their electronic crap drawer, where the thing died, but the charger you might use again, and so you throw that in the drawer. And I've got one of those, too. Yes. I got to ask you this. Do you notice that the wires when you shut the drawer, they somehow in the middle of night come together like spaghetti? How does that happen?

Of course. Well, it's like your apple buds. You always have to unwrap those things. I want to put a GoPro inside of my bag and see if those things take on a life. I swear they're alive. I didn't put them in the bag that way. Well, that's why I digress. By the way, it does help to have a labler and it does help to just use baggies.

You know, I take a baggie and take all that wire that said, well, that belongs to this thing and whatever. I just wrap it all up and then label that baggy and stick that. And a drawer full of baggies, you know, make you feel a whole lot better. So again, that's sort of the reward thing called clean up. Actually, when you do any of these, any of these behaviors, they're automatically going to give you a reward. People say, how long does it take to experience the value of getting things done? I say, well, how long would it take you to write down the 10 things that pop in

your mind that had your attention right now? And they make next action decision about each one, watch how you'll feel. And you're going to feel, wow, everybody without. exception is going to feel more focused and more in control. And focus and control are the two ultimate, you know, zeros and ones. They're the ultimate. If you boil down personal self-management, it comes down to, do you have things under control and are you appropriately focused? So anything that improves control and focus for you is going to be both an emotional, a psychic reward that moves you in that direction. So I don't know if that answered your question, but that's great.

Well, it leads us to what I want to discuss next in the same chapter. Honestly, chapter 14 to me, is just a goldmine in and of itself. But you talk about psychological capital. And this is a beautiful dovetail to what you were just talking about. But you say it consists of four definable aspects. Self-efficacy, optimism, resilience, and hope. I want to just tee these up for you to just give us a brief breakdown of these because I think this is so good.

Self-efficacy. By the way, if you just learned to say that smoothly, you'd feel better about yourself. But this is the confidence to take on and devote the necessary effort to succeed at challenging tasks. Yeah. It just says, hey, I can do this. I can build a fire. I know how to buy a dog. I know how to do this.

Or I feel confident enough to be able to do it. You know, I say 51% confidence factor of anything that you think you might be able to create with your company, with the project, or whatever. Give yourself enough sense that it is possible. I could potentially do that. So, you know, the strange paradox about getting things done is, the better you get at this, the better you better get at this. Because the better you get at this, the more optimism you're going to have that you can take on pretty much anything and get it done. That's right.

Then you're very, very likely to super overwhelm yourself with all kinds of weird, strange, ambiguous, and huge things to do, the more confidence that you have. But your ability to know, for instance, the self-efficacy really comes about that I can let me, my life just back up on me like crazy, you know, and get things really out of control. And I just pile up all the notes about all that in my end basket. But even when I look at that, I go, well, that's okay. It's all in there. And I know how to get to the bottom of that.

And that lets me be crazy and in my flow and in my zone without actually having to go through all the figuring out what I need to do about all the crap that's happened in the last week that I've collected. And that's what I mean. That's the self-efficacy thing. that I have the confidence that I know the game. See, a lot of people, I had a guy, took one of my seminars at the end. He was so excited. He said, David, this is so great.

I said, well, tell me about it. He said, well, he said, David, it's like, you let me know that heaven exists. I don't think I'm going to do what I need to do to get into heaven, but I'm really glad to know it's there. So the fact is that getting things done defines the game. It defines the wagon that you fall off of, but at least there's a wagon.

At least you now know what you're not doing, and you know that you could get there if you want to, to. So years ago, I had to get past my own potential frustration of how little of this many times people actually implement, even once they see it, just because of the habit change and whatever. And then finally realizing, look, it was just good enough that I let people know there is a way to get control and to get focused if it gets bad enough. And so that confidence, you know, the confidence that says, hey, I have an instruction manual. You know, if I forget how to do something, I pull out the manual and figure out how to do it. That gives you the freedom to go take your new camera and go out

and play, you know, because you know you could fix it if you had to. So that's the self-efficacy aspect of this. It's called, I'm not feeling like I'm totally out of control and being battered around by the winds of the universe. Which builds on optimism, gives us optimism, because we make positive attributions about succeeding not just in the now, but in the future. And that makes sense. So I want to skip forward to my favorite. two of the four, which is hope. This is so huge. Hope is like the wonder drug for people who just want to get things done. I mean, at the end of day, I think that's what fires our engines. And you write hope means, and I love the language here, persevering toward goals and when necessary,

redirecting paths to those goals, that is a guarantee. You are going to have to redirect at times. And hope is what gets us through redirection. And you know, what's really good. cool about all those things. And, you know, Sycap is, was interesting sort of word and concept that I came across that describes all of this, that basically these are not personality traits. They're actually conditions. So you can be in high levels of self-efficacy and hope and all that stuff on, you know, in the morning and fall off of all of this in the afternoon. So it's, it's really not about, you know, who you are, how you are personality-wise. It's about the state that you're in based upon how you're engaged.

with your world. So this is something you can change any of that. You can move into this state of high psychological capital at any time if you're engaged in the right behaviors. And it's not about having to change yourself or transform yourself personally. And resilience. One of my favorite words. I love stories of resilience. They're my favorite type of movies. And again, just as valuable as hope, they go hand in hand in my mind. Again, I'll just tee you up. Resilience involves bouncing back to an original or even better, and I love that distinction, involves bouncing back to an original or even better state of being after facing adversity and problems. Yeah, you fall off, you say, hey, I know how to get back on, and the confidence that you can do that.

And all these things really wrapped together. So it's really sort of one gestalt about what this is about, and those are just four ways to describe aspects of it. By the way, that's a fabulous word. We should all try to work that into our sentences in the next week and a half. That would be a challenge. Gestalt. I mean, that's a word we just don't use or hear enough. Can I just say that?

Yeah. That's a good old German word called hate. Yes. Sort of the whole context of things, if you can see it from the larger game. Yeah, I love it. Well, this has been so much fun. Before I let you go, I want to do something that I do quite often with our guests. And I just want to give you a framework to encourage, to equip, to challenge our audience.

If, David, you could sit with every one of these listeners and there's hundreds of thousands and have coffee or tea or lunch with them and just share one thing from your head or heart or both as these are people who are entrepreneurs, they are leaders, they are go-getters. What would you say to them to encourage them and send them out of the coffee shop fired up? Your heads for having ideas, but not for holding them. That's huge. stop using your head as your office and build the external brain, whatever that takes to get all this stuff out, keep it out. See, you are not your work, you do work.

You're not even your life. You have a life. And so who's the who? And so if you're not managing your work or your life appropriately, they will run you. And you need to step back in the driver's seat. That is empowering. So good. He is David Allen, again, written more than just the book we talked about today.

but David, I got to tell you, this was terrific fun. I learned a ton. I've got a ton of notes. I know our audience did as well. We are better for it, and we thank you for spending time with us and having a great conversation. My pleasure. Hey, this was fun, and everybody have a great rest of your life. All right, folks, to learn more about David Allen, and quite frankly, you should.

Go to his website, getting things done.com. Getting things done.com. Well, it's always fun when John Falcons, our head coach of all access, comes by. I want to say a big thank you to him. And of course, David Allen. Thanks to all of you who gave us your replies on the goal tracker. If you want to keep sending us your feedback, please do. Podcast at entreleadership.com.

That's podcast at entreleadership.com. And folks want to tell you this, we've got a new team member on the podcast team, and I couldn't be more thrilled. He's fantastic. He was actually a listener. His name is Will Rudder. He is our engineer. Of course, I want to thank our awesome, esteemed producer.

producer, Eric the producer, and of course the entire Entree leadership team, and to you folks. We appreciate you. Thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.