Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPClassic: David Allen on Getting More Sh*t Done

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

Do you feel like you just can’t seem to get things done? Like your productivity is at a standstill, constantly distracted, and you can’t possibly accomplish all you set out to? A world-renowned expert in creativity, David Allen, holds the key to boosting your productivity. David’s “Getting Things Done,” or GDT, the methodology helps you capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage your way to productivity. In this episode, Hala and David go deep into the five stages of GDT, talk about David’s background and expertise in productivity, and give advice on how you can start being more productive today.  Topics Include: - David’s background and early jobs  - Why productivity  - Defining GDT - Five Stages of GDT - Importance of “clear space” - Best advice for a clear head  - Defining “mind like water”  - David’s “no problems, only projects” philosophy  - Bottom’s up philosophy to productivity  - Best practices for “outcome thinking” - The Law of Attraction  - What David means by “put things in front of the door” - Tips and tricks for getting creative  - Productivity blockers and how to manage interruptions  - And other topics… David Allen is recognized as the world’s leading expert on personal and organizational productivity. He is the engineer of GTD®, the popular Getting Things Done® methodology that has shown millions how to transform a fast-paced, overwhelming, overcommitted life into one that is balanced, integrated, relaxed, and has more successful outcomes.  David’s thirty-year pioneering research and coaching to corporate managers and CEOs of some of America’s most prestigious corporations and institutions has earned him Forbes’ recognition as one of the top five executive coaches in the U.S. and Business 2.0 magazine's inclusion in their 2006 list of the "50 Who Matter Now." David is the international best-selling author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life, and Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life.  Sponsored By: Jordan Harbinger - Check out jordanharbinger.com/start for some episode recommendations Indeed - Start hiring NOW with a $75 job credit to upgrade your job post at Indeed.com/profiting Offer good for a limited time. Credit Karma Personal Loans - Go to creditkarma.com/loanoffers to find the loan for you Resources Mentioned: YAP Episode #21: Getting More Sh*t Done with David Allen: https://www.youngandprofiting.com/21-getting-more-sht-done-with-david-allen/  YAP Episode #5: Getting Sh*t Done & Improving Your Productivity with David Allen: https://www.youngandprofiting.com/5-getting-sht-done-improving-your-productivity-with-david-allen/  David’s Books: https://www.amazon.com/David-Allen/e/B001ILIG4C/  GDT’s Website: https://gettingthingsdone.com/  GDT’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/2328651/  GDT’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/GTDtimes  GDT’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtdtimes/  GDT’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gettingthingsdone  Connect with Young and Profiting: YAP’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting/     Hala’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/     Hala’s Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/yapwithhala/     Hala’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/yapwithhala  Clubhouse: https://www.clubhouse.com/@halataha   Website: https://www.youngandprofiting.com/  Text Hala: https://youngandprofiting.co/TextHala or text “YAP” to 28046 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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stores. Taxes and other fee still apply. You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halla Taha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world.

My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast, and that's on purpose. I'm here to uncover value from my guests by doing the proper research and asking the right questions. If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of XFBI agents, real estate moguls, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and bestselling authors.

Our subject matter ranges from enhancing productivity, had to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button, because you'll love it here at Young & Profiting Podcast. This week on YAP, we're chatting with Productivity Expert and creator of the popular Getting Things Done methodology, David Allen. Before I introduce this episode, I did want to take

a quick moment to ask if you've joined our text community powered by slick text. If you have a question for me or any of our YAP guests, that's the best way to get in touch. What are you waiting for? Just text YAP to 28046, that's YAP to 28046. Alright, so I've hosted Dave and Alan on the podcast twice. He joined me back in episode number five. Yep, that's when I first started the podcast. And I'm so thankful because he was one of my first big guests. And it helped me land future big guests.

So I'm very grateful. He's a really nice guy. And then he came back on for episode number 21. And so this is actually a replay episode of number 21. We've cut it down. We've made it short and straight to the point so you can boost your productivity even faster. So while this episode was recorded over two years ago,

it feels like a lifetime with everything that has gone on since then. I mean, oh my gosh, we live in a completely different world now compared to March of 2019. But the content in terms of productivity-related material is still super relevant. And that's one of my favorite things about the show.

You can scroll back from years ago. I've been doing this podcast for four years, and the content is still gold, because I don't talk about news and point in time things. I talk about things that are relevant for a really long time. So feel free to scroll back and listen to old, young and profiting episodes if you guys are a new-ish listener. So David Allen is widely recognized as the world's leading expert on personal and organizational productivity.

He's the international best-selling author of Getting Things Done, or GTG, which is one of the most famous productivity frameworks in the world, and has helped millions of individuals and organizations bring order to chaos and unlock their peak performance. In this episode, David and I talk about how you can become more productive through using the five stages of GDD. We talk about why David takes a bottom-up philosophy to productivity versus a top-down approach, and we'll cover the law of attraction and the best practices for outcome thinking.

If you're looking to level up your productivity with one of the greatest who's ever done it, you want to perk up your ears for this one. All right, well, enjoy my conversation with David. So you've had a very fascinating life. It's a known fact that you've had 35 professions before the age of 35. You were a magician, a karate teacher, a cook, a travel agent, so many different titles, all seemingly unrelated. You're into new age thinking and Zen Buddhism.

And nobody would have guessed that you would become the business guru that you are today. So tell us, what was life like as a young adult for you? By the way, I would not have guessed, I would be doing this either. Trust me. Believe me. I was an American intellectual history major in graduate school in Berkeley in 1968.

If you told me then, I was going to wind up thousands of hours with executives and corporate training and some of the biggest companies in the world. I would have said, what are you smoking? Come on. Who? What? That's not me. So yeah, it's been a very interesting path. In retrospect, I look back and I can see and say that there were some common themes that

actually ran through all of that. But yeah, it's a long story. Again, that 73 years, I've been graced with having just a ton of different experiences, which have been quite valuable in my life. Yes, so why did you end up taking on so many different career paths? Was it hard for you to determine what your true calling was? How did you land on productivity? Oh, yeah.

I didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up. For a while in college, I thought I was going to have an academic career. So I was a history major, and what else can you do as a major in history other than being academia, maybe right right or whatever. But then I started studying people who seemed to be enlightened and then I got kind of hungry to find my own and I didn't experience graduate school as a place that I could get that. This is the 1960s in California.

So I decided to hop off and jump into personal growth, personal exploration, spiritual work, meditation, martial arts, all kinds of things, mostly to sort of explore God truth in the universe. You know, what was it that we couldn't see that seemed to be affecting all of us? So that was basically a common theme as I looked back. I couldn't have told you back then, but as I looked back my first job, and they weren't really professions, those 35, they were just different jobs that I added up. And my first job was actually being a magician at age five in Palestine, Texas on the sidewalk. I charged a nickel for my magic show. Well, that's kind of interesting because I looked back and they go, oh, magic was sort

of the, gee, if you could kind of make things move without having to physically do it, wouldn't that be cool? You know, I'm Mr. Lazy, so I was always interested in trying to find out what were the key drivers of our experience and how to get a hold of those. Because if you get a hold of those, and if they seem to be really affecting everything tremendously, I said, well, that'd be a neat thing to do to be able to find out what that truth was. So it was really more of an inner exploration, but they're not paying people. I mean, I'm rice bowl and cave was not my style. I like good wine and good looking women and things like that. And I didn't want to kind of give up this world. But again, not knowing what to do as a profession or a career at that point, I just had to pay the rent. So it turned

out. I had a number of people that I knew and friends and so forth that seemed to know what they wanted to do. So they were starting their own businesses or running small businesses themselves. And so I just helped them out. I became a really good number two guy. I helped a couple of friends start a New Orleans style restaurant in West LA. I ran a vitamin distribution network for some friends. I had a good friend who ran a landscape company in San Fernando Valley, and I wound up managing a lot of his crews. So I was just basically helping them, but I would just

show up and look around and say, well, how much easier could we do this? Because I'm Mr. Lazy. I was always looking for how could we get stuff done with as little effort as possible. Now they call that process improvement, but I was just, hey, come on, can we make this easier? And then I would make it easier in terms of their systems and whatever they were doing. And then I'd get bored. Then I'd leave and go find something else that was more interesting. And then I'd discover they actually pay people to do that. They call them something consultant. So 1981, I hung up my shingle, Alan Associates. And I started my own little consulting practice. I said, okay, well, let me see if I could just kind of sell myself on a project, my project basis. So that's what I started to do. Also, I got very hungry to say, well, okay, if I'm going to be a consultant,

it'd be nice to know what consultants do. Now, again, I'll be self-disclosing here. I've never had a traditional business psychology or time management course in my life. You know, all of my stuff was from experience and just seeing what worked, what didn't work, how could we work it better? And so I started looking for what are some models? Is there a procedure that in case it's not clear what I could do with a client or a customer

to improve their situation? What if I had something in my back pocket I could pull out as a process that would improve their situation. So that was one vector that caused me to start looking for those kinds of things that were universal. No matter what the business was, no matter who it was, if they applied these principles or these techniques, they would improve their condition.

At the same time, because of my inner work, I was very attracted to clear space. In the martial arts particularly, a very practical reason. Lots of really good techniques. Now they call it mindfulness. You don't focus on your breathing, but I did that 40 years ago, laying the martial arts because that's how you get present and clear your head. For people to jump you in a dark alley, you don't want two thousand unprocessed emails banging around in your head.

You need to be totally clear. So, how do you get clear? So I love the idea of clear. So a lot of those kind of things came together and I wound up one of my first mentors. As I started my consulting practice, was a guy who had been in the consulting business for quite a number of years. And he kind of took to me and he wound up sharing a whole lot of his techniques with me and we did several clients who worked together.

But he had come up with some stuff that helped executives that he worked with clear their head so they could focus on the organizational change they were interested in doing. Whereas if they were distracted and had a lot of old business hanging around, it was kind of hard for them to make those kind of changes. So Dean had come up with the technique of getting stuff out of your head and then deciding next actions on all those things that had your attention. And he did that process with me.

And I wasn't in pain. I was pretty organized guy. I kind of had my act together. But I said, well, okay, let me see what that process is. And he took me through that process. And I went, oh my God, this is so wicked cool. Because it suddenly gave me a sense of clarity, a sense of stability, a sense of focus and control

that I had never experienced before. So I went, well, that's really cool. So after then we were using that with clients and then I turned around and started to use some of those same techniques with my clients and it produced exactly the same results, more clarity, more space in their head, more focus, more control, more stability.

So that's really cool. And then at one point, I had a human resources for a big corporation, Lockheed, saw what I was doing. He said, wow, David, those are the kind of results we need in our whole culture. Can you design a training program around this instead of just one-on-one model that you're using in your consulting? So I said, okay, so I spent a couple of months and designed a two day personal productivity training program. We did a pilot program for a thousand executives

and managers in Lockheed, 1983 and 84, and it worked. It hit a nerve. Wow, they thought this was the best thing since sliced bread. I didn't know what I'd come up with. It just suddenly hit this nerve and then I found myself thrust into the corporate training world. And that also forced me to hone what I had come up with

and uncovered as a set of best practices into a more rigorous, well-defined sort of model just so that we could do that in training seminars. So that's kind of how it all started. But then it took me another 20 years to figure out what I'd figured out, nobody else had done it, and that it was unique and that it was bulletproof. That's when I wrote the book Getting Things Done.

So it was a long process, literally thousands of hours. My coaching and my consulting really turned into one-on-one work with a lot of executive senior people in these organizations that wanted to implement this methodology themselves personally. So that's where a lot of this experience came from, a lot of what I wrote in Getting Things Done and the model itself really came from those many, many years and thousands of hours I spent just doing this work. Wow, that's very cool.

Thanks for sharing that whole background. I hope I didn't bore everybody to tears. No, that was great. You know what? I've been doing research on you and everybody always focuses on GTD, but I think it's important to understand how this even came about because there's lessons within that itself. So you earned a black belt in karate around your college years. You briefly mentioned your interest in martial arts, and we spoke about how you're also interested

in Zen Buddhism. So can you talk about how those interests help shape your perspective on productivity and maybe some of the core concepts involved with Zen Buddhism? Well, I didn't go out to implement Zen, and I'm not a rigorous practitioner of it. If people who are real practitioners of Zen that sit for hours and meditate and do all that good stuff, lovely stuff, I had read a lot of the Zen writings, Alan Watson and Suzuki and those folks back when I was even in high school. So I've always been attracted to the aesthetic, which is sort of minimal stuff that transmits

something rather interesting and powerful. My wife and our big Japanophiles, I mean, we love that aesthetic of the simple and ordinary that's down to the simplest forms that have an elegance to them. And so I think I've always been attracted to that in a way. So maybe that's what helped a lot with me trying to just find what is the minimal amount of stuff you could do to be as organized as you need to be, to give you the freedom you need, because I'm a real freedom guy.

To me, a lot of people think that I'm an organizing freak. I'm actually not asked my wife. I only get organized so that I don't have to rethink anything. You know, so that I'm so lazy, I like to not asked my wife. I only get organized so that I don't have to rethink anything. You know, so that I'm so lazy, I like to not have my mind bothered with trying to remember and remind. So I'm organized just so that I get clear space. So I kind of, it's kind of like Zen or a lot of other people came up with the same conclusions I did.

So it wasn't like trying to take that and put that into some form. I just did the form that was attractive to me and then I looked around and go, wow, I guess there's a similarity there. Hey, young and profitors, have you ever listened to one of my commercials and wished that you had a promo code on hand, but you just like couldn't quite remember it? Well, now all you got to do is just text deals, DEALS, to 28046. And we'll send you all the deals of the month directly to your phone. Again,'ll send you all the deals of the month directly to your phone. Again, if you want all the deals of the month directly to your phone, just text Deals Dea.al.s to 28046 and we'll send it to you right away.

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Because your mind did not evolve to remember, remind, or prioritize, or manage relationships between more than four things. We know now, given cognitive science research, that if soon as you try to keep track of five, six, seven, eight things in your head, not to mention the dozens, if not hundreds of things, most people are trying to keep in their head. You're going to be driven by latest and loudest and not by strategy or intuitive intelligence. So the whole idea is being able to empty your head and then get all that into an external brain. So there are really five stages we all go through. And you first of all, you capture stuff that has your attention, what's on your mind, write it down. And then you need to clarify, what does that mean? You wrote down mom, what does that mean? Well, or birthday is coming? Well, what's the next step about that?

And what's the outcome you're committed to? So outcome and action are the two key things that most people still need to think about and decide about the things that have their attention. What's the action I need to take? If that won't finish, whatever this commitment is, what's the commitment, what's the project? So clarify is the step two.

So I've captured stuff that has my attention. And then I start to clarify those things. What I've got to do about that, what am I committed to finish about that. And then step three would be to organize that. If you can't do those activities right then, then you need to organize some reminder about them. What are all the errands you need to run? What are all the things you need to talk to your life partner about? What are all the things you need to do at your computer? what are all the websites you need to surf, etc. And so just then creating appropriate, for the most part, lists, reminders of work that

you've already defined that you need to do, putting those in some appropriate trusted system, which is the organized step. So you capture, clarify, then you organize, you're thinking in appropriate places. And then step four is to then make sure you're looking at your Aaron's list when you go off of Aaron's. Make sure you're looking at all the 35 or 82 projects you have on some maybe weekly basis so that you make sure you're not letting

something fall to the correct, it's important. And that's step four is to reflect a review stage. Step five is then to engage. Once I've captured, clarified, organized, and reviewed all of these different commitments of these multiple levels, then if I decide to take a nap, if I decide to write a business plan, if I decide to, you know, cook spaghetti or, you know, whatever the heck I decide to do, it's because I've looked at the whole game and said, this is the best thing to do right

now for whatever reason. And so moving yourself into a trusted choice place that you're trusting what you're doing is really the end game of GTD. And just for everybody listening, GTD is the most popular productivity methodology out there. David has like a cult following. So he released this book, GTD, back in 2001. He's had another iteration of that.

But if you're interested in that, go check out his book, go check out episode five. So a little birdie told me that you're having a GTD summit in Amsterdam, June 20th and 21st. I read that there's gonna be two main themes at the event. And I thought that both of them would be great discussion points. So the first is the strategic value of clear space. And the second is there are no problems, only projects. So let's break these down starting with the strategic value

of ClearSpace. Now this is fundamental to GTD. It's something you always talk about. I've heard you say in one of your books that productivity is directly proportional to one's ability to relax. You preach that your mind is for having ideas, not for holding them, and you advocate for a mind like water. So tell us more about the importance of clear space. What do you mean when you say mind like water and what's your best advice for achieving a clear head and a relaxed mind? Well, all of that could be wrapped together just to be present.

A lot of the mindfulness of these days is just about how do you get present? How do you keep yourself from running into the future or regretting the past? How do you get present? That's my focusing on your breathing is a key element for that kind of practice. It wasn't for me the martial arts as well because your breathing is present. If you could just focus on your breath,

you're not in the past or not in the future, you're right here right now. And that happens to be the most productive state to be in. The best state to hit a golf ball from best state to cook spaghetti from best state to have a difficult conversation from if you need to do that is to not have your brain distracted or pulled away that you have essentially all of your cognitive resources available to you in the moment for where you want to put it. So you can't have nothing on your mind if you're conscious. But what you want is to have what you want on your mind and not have it distracted by 60,000 other things

that are likely to pull you away. And most people are not that aware, frankly, of how many things are potentially distracting to them. And you really won't find that out until you actually go through the GTD process and unload everything that's got your attention, little big personal or professional, and get it out of your head. It creates quite a different experience for most people once they actually do that. And then building into practice so that that becomes your normal state.

A lot of people get into their zone, but they don't know kind of how they got there and then they fall out of it, don't know how to get back into it again. But being in your zone, that is where you're totally present, there's no difference between work or play. It's just what's next. So there's no distinction about work, life, balance. It's just balance period. You know, because balance may be working 23 hours a day. Maybe that's what you need to do

in order to get clear who knows. So GTD doesn't tell you what your content should be. I think what's unique about GTD is that it focuses on where you are, not where you should be. Because if you can't handle where you are and if where you are is somewhat out of control or unstable, trying to focus on where you want to go or what things you should be doing is just going to create more guilt and frustration. So getting control of where you are, getting clear where you are,

is going to open up a lot more space to be able to focus on the more meaningful things that are more meaningful to you. And you could do this from an artistic or creative standpoint. You know, we have a lot of the people in the creative industries that would tell you that GDD was absolutely critical. I mean, people who've made public

their championing of GDD or people like Will Smith and Robert Downey Jr. and Howard Stern, these are all big champions of my stuff. And of course, they're all running, you know, rather significant business enterprises in addition to their artistic and creative endeavors. So opening up space and just being clear, nice place to be. And once you taste it, if you're like me, you just do whatever you need to do to get back there.

Yeah. So what do you mean exactly when you say mind like water? Well, that's a metaphor that's from the martial arts. So I think Bruce Lee's sensei was the one who gave that to him. And the idea is water looks like it's kind of weak, but it's very powerful. Once it's parnished in the right way, and also water doesn't overreactor underreact. It's totally appropriately engaged with its environment. It may be rushing, it may be a calm pond, whatever it is. It's not confused. So the analogy then is your mind clear enough that you're not over under reacting? Are you taking one meeting into the next in your mind? Or are you taking home to work in your mind or

work to home in your mind? Then you're not into really a mind like water state. If you're going to the soccer game to watch your girl play soccer, but you're on your smartphone because you're distracted by all that stuff. Come on. How un-present are you? And some of the most dramatic testimonies we have are for parents and with, oh my God, I could actually watch my kids play soccer and not be on my phone. How cool is that? So all of those are just examples

or just different lenses that are looking at being clear and being present. Let's talk about this second theme for your upcoming event in Amsterdam. You talk about there are no problems, only projects. What do you mean by that? Yeah, well, that's a toughy for a lot of people because a lot of things show up as problems. But you only consider something a problem if you assume that it can be fixed or should

be fixed or improved. So you didn't wake up this morning probably and say, gee, gravity really sucks. It's really terrible. It's killing people and it's causing body parts to sag, right? Because that's what gravity does. But nobody really complains about gravity because you know you can't do anything about it. So what do you do with gravity? You accept that ignore or play with it, which is what we do with gravity, right? So the things that people tend to complain about, things that are bothering them. There's something off. There's something whatever. It just means, okay, well, what would you like to have true about that? And, oh, well, I got a problem with my neighbor, and they're complaining about that.

We planted a tree too close to that. Any any any any any. Well, what would you like to have true? Well, I like to get this resolved with my neighbor, fabulous. Now you have a project, you know, optimize resolution with neighbor relative to tree. Right? Right? Great. And then what's the next action?

Oh, God, what is the next? I don't like any bit. And so most people do, they're using complaining as a way to avoid hopping the driver's seat and actually doing something about the things that have their attention that they think ought to change. So this is really a tough admonition, because it gets pretty subtle.

Should I get divorced or not? How do I handle my mom's elder care that's showing up out there that we need to manage? How do we deal with this depth thing that we're trying to resolve? And those things become pretty subtle. You need to say, okay, what's my desired outcome? See, outcome and action are the zeroes and ones of productivity. What are we trying to accomplish? And how do we allocate our resources and our focus to move the needle toward

getting resolution on that. So all it is is just making sure people hop in the driver's seat you know about all that stuff and makes a huge difference. We do in our training programs with our second level of GTD trainings that we do you know worldwide has a lot to do with focused on getting people to really identify the things that really ought to be identified as projects for their project list. It's quite powerful when they do. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Hear that sound, young and profitors. You should know that sound by now, but in case you don't, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that's revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide.

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She's been a guest on YAPP. She was a former social client She's a podcast client and I remember when she came on young and profiting and she talked about her conviction marketing framework It was like mind blowing to me. I remember immediately Implementing what she taught me in the interview in my company and the marketing efforts that we were doing and as a marketer I really, really respect all Kelly has done, all Kelly has built. In the corporate world, Kelly secured seven promotions

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much time at the top won't get us anywhere and that we need to master the mundane. What's your argument for that? Well, as I said earlier, what this methodology does it starts with where you are, not where you should be? If where you are, is it these high horizons? Absolutely. We'll start there. Wow. I am trying to figure out what to do with my life and my career.

Fabulous. What would your desired outcome be? And what's your next action? So, it's not that we only deal with the mundane. It's just that if you don't tie whatever you're thinking is to the mundane, then it's just blue sky stuff. And it's not grounded. And so we tend to start with where people are. I guarantee you, by the way, we've trained thousands of thousands of people around the world. And one of the exercises is actually initially, and in the first seminars is to get people to actually empty their head,

and just write all the stuff that's got their attention. And it's funny. I often, I've asked, I say, how many of you in the first 10 things you wrote down wrote fulfilled destiny as human spirit on the planet and everybody laughs? That's not what they wrote down. They wrote down, get a new babysitter. They wrote down tires on my car. They wrote down higher the vice president. They wrote down increased my credit line. They wrote down deal of bombs birthday. That's where they are. So that's where we start. No matter how sophisticated our subtle or high up, the horizon is that you're focused on. So your strategic plan, your life purpose,

your core values, your short-term goals, your job description, areas, and your life that you want to maintain, and all those are appropriate commitments to identify. We just tend to start with where you are, so you get control of that, and then you're able to then lift to any higher horizon much more easily with a clearer head. Okay, so while GTD is a bottoms-up approach, you just mentioned that you don't always start from there, and you're actually a strong proponent of visioning. So how does visioning work with a bottoms-up approach?

Can you share with us some best practices for visioning and outcome thinking that you've acquired over the years? Well, how would you like this interview to wind up? How would you like lunch today? share with us some best practices for visioning and outcome thinking that you've acquired over the years? Well, how would you like this interview to wind up? How would you like lunch today? How would you like to sleep tonight? How would you like your conversation to go? So we're outcome thinking all the time.

That's how you get dressed, how you walk out of the room. You see yourself out of the room and then you match your picture. So we're doing this all the time. It's not something new. You're visioning essentially all of your self-talk are kind of pictures you're giving yourself and you're talking to yourself. I am too about 50,000 times a day. I have no idea how they counted that, but you know, that's a lot. So you can't stop essentially focusing on something. So whatever you're focused on has a lot of

power to it. So when we're talking about visioning or affirmational thinking or ideal scenes and those kinds of things, it's just saying, okay, let me structure the advertisements that I'm giving myself in my own head. So it's kind of like writing your own billboard. You're looking at billboards when you drive down the street anyway, when you write your own. So I just discovered that back in 1981,

I think was when I ran across those models, the affirmational model, and I've been using them ever since. Most of my life got created with drafting out and crafting some sort of a vision of how I'd like things to be, even though I had no idea how to get there. But describing the there was the first step. So speaking of affirmations, in your second book, you say, a change in focus equals a change in results. An infinite number of things in the universe are held back from you only by your altitude and your attitude.

So this led me to believe that you believe in the law of attraction. So what are your thoughts on that concept? I couldn't agree with myself more. That actually does work. It's kind of like, you don't get what you need to get what you put out. Which actually is what you need. Because the University of Design, to give you feedback based upon the choices you're making and the focus that you have. And you'll learn from that, but learning how to craft that, so you can kind of take control of that as opposed to just being driven by latest and loudest in your life, it works. If the results you're

getting is absolutely fine, then don't worry, you it works. If the results you're getting is absolutely fine, then don't worry, you're fine. If you want something different or something new or something expanded, then good idea to sit down and say, what would that look sound or feel like if I had that? And then see what happens. Can you talk a little bit about how energy attracts like energy? Well, I think it does. A good example. I mean, who do you take the most expensive presence to when you go to house, warring, and parties? The people who need them the most? I don't think so. You say, wow, they have a real nice house and lots of expensive things. We have to give them some more. Why? Well, they've sort of created their entry price. I mean, why don't you

take all those cool gifts you're going gonna give them and give them the money to people who really need it? You don't do that. People tend to attract, whatever they're putting out, it tends to be what they will tend to attract. And that's what people around them will tend to bring to them. So if you're a uplifted person positively focused, you'll find the people doing that around you.

It's kind of like you create your own barrier or you create your own entry price. That's why there are people in the corporate world and organizational world out there. There are people who you know you won't walk into their office without your act together because their act is well together. But you walk into somebody's out of control,

unfocused, gut clutter all over the place and you'll drop some of yours there. I mean, where do you drop a gum wrapper? I'm gonna clean lawn, or one where there's lots of gum wrappers already. Yeah. You know, that's why Disney I heard years ago, Disney would fire any of their employees

at past a gum wrapper on the ground without picking it up because they found it was so much cheaper and took so much less energy to keep it absolutely clean because then people don't throw stuff on the ground. So there's lots of examples, I think, of where you like attract love. Very cool. Okay, so the next one is centered around focus. You give the analogy of putting things at the front door so you don't forget.

So for example, if you're about to go on an international trip, you'll probably put your passport and important things at the front doors. There's no chance you'll miss it. So how does this analogy relate to our minds and the assurance that we get the most important things done? Well, put them in front of the doors. It's just not the door of your house. What's the door of your mind?

What do you need to look at to orient yourself before the board meeting? What do you need to look at? What are the things you need to overview or think about or put in front of your face before you spend the weekend with your family? What are the things you need to look at? Basically, they're just maps.

So orienting maps that orient you in space and time. If you or anybody listening to this has looked at your calendar on the last two or three days, you already did that. You looked at a calendar, which lifted you up to see things from a little higher perspective, locate yourself in space and time. So it's just those things.

And so as an infinite number of checklists that you could have travel checklists, any recipe that you'd cook with is a checklist. All of those things are just help you orient because your mind is really a bad office and it's really terrible that we're remembering and reminding. You don't until it becomes just totally habitual, the way you don't have to think about it. But until then, boy, I need checklist, I have dozens. And so any of those kind of things that help your brain relax and know that when it's in a certain context,

it will be reminded of the right things at the right time. It lets it relax. So one of the things that you actually get some pushback on with GDD is that some people say it's not conducive to getting into a creative state. But then you hear other sides of the coin where people say it's great for getting into creative state. So, can you talk about some of your tips and tricks for getting creative and maybe some

best practices when it comes to brainstorming and when it comes to creating something specific? We're all being creative all the time. We're producing what you're experiencing all the time. We can't stop being creative. I use the example. I say, well, what do you think about the line down the middle of the road out there? Is that a constraint or does that allow you more freedom? So I think you only need to get as organized as you need to be so that it optimizes your

freedom. So maybe that's yannanya, I don't know the best way to describe that model. But it's kind of like Einstein says, you need to get things as simple as possible, but no simpler. Right? So you want to get your life as simple as possible, but you need to have it organized appropriately to match the complexity of what you're engaged in out there. So, you know, my system has changed over the years just because my life is a little less complex than it was 20 years ago. But I still have the same principles that I still apply.

But I plan as little as I get by with. And then putting yourself in a context where you start to trigger creative thinking also as a big key. I started acrylic painting about a year ago. So I'm staring at now a blank canvas in front of me right now, as I look at it. And this sort of challenges me, okay, David, what's next? But I have it there. So again, it's like putting it in front of the door, which is a creative door.

Well, I think it was Picasso. We said, inspiration is for amateurs. If you really want to paint, just sit down and friggin paint. Don't wait to be inspired. In other words, write, but in chair, boot computer, hit key. So any good writer will tell you ultimately that's where the creativity comes from is getting engaged. So oftentimes, you just need to put yourself in a situation that makes it easy to engage before trying to just wait till you're motivated.

Got it. Cool. Okay, so the last question we're going to ask before you go is about productivity blockers. So interruptions are, you know, one of the worst productivity blockers. They slow us down by an average of 23 minutes each time they happen according to science. And it can take longer if an interruption has made us upset or excited. And one of your motto is, how ready for ready are you? So can you talk about why it's important for us to be able to refocus quickly and maybe some of your tips and tricks to reduce the amount of time it takes to be ready to work on the next thing after an interruption? Well, there are no interruptions, there are just mismanaged inputs. You either should not be getting the interruption because it's not something that's important to you

or you should because it is something you're committed to do in terms of either your job or you're committed to respond and communicate with people who are communicating with you. If you're in customer service, or an IT consultant internally in a company believe me, you're going to get interrupted all the time and that's your job. The problem is that people get interrupted. And if you can't finish whatever it is that you're being interrupted about right then

and you have got a system for place holding that thing so that you could leave it and then come back to it later on, then some part of you feels like I have to go do that, but now you get all pissed off because you feel like that's not what I should be doing, but you're going and doing it because you don't trust your system to manage it. So if you came in and say, hey, David, could you do X, Y and Z? If I'm doing other things, I'll make a little note or ask you, hey, send me a text or send me an email about that. I don't have the attention that it deserves right now.

I'll get to it. But you have to trust that I now. I'll get to it. But you have to trust that I trust that I'll get to it. So once you're actually in that state, you can switch tasks much more easily because your brain is not wrapped around the thing when she leave it. You've got a placeholder for it. So that's what kind of being ready for ready is really all about. That's why when I'm not doing anything else, of course, I'm cleaning up my in baskets and my backlog to zero Because there is a surprise coming toward me stuff. I don't expect Good bad in different. I don't know what is coming and so when that hits I want as little backlog as possible in terms of uncaptured

Unclarified stuff so that I can evaluate the new situation from a much clearer space About whether to spend time on it whether to put a a much clearer space about whether to spend time on it, whether to put a place mark on it, or whether to just ignore it. So it's a lot easier to navigate those kind of things if you've got this act together. Now isn't David just the best? There's a reason why he's known to be the greatest of all time when it comes to productivity. And after each of my conversations with David, I've taken some of his advice and implemented it in my own life. After all,

who doesn't want to be more productive, we can always get better at that. So some big takeaways for me was the idea of creating a clear space. This one really works for me, and here's how I do it. When I'm prepping for an interview, I make sure I have designated time and space to be fully engaged and present in my research. So I'll go for a walk, right? I'll go for a walk so that I can completely concentrate and I'll make sure that I go by myself. I don't go with a friend. I go by myself or I'll take a bath and I'll just listen to what I need to listen to or you know read what I need to read. I like to be alone and have that clear space. I go as far as to mark myself unavailable on Slack. I put a big X by my name saying leave me alone. We're a totally virtual office. And so that's my

sign on the door that says bug off. And I'll even turn off my phone. I put it on do not disturb mode. I've got all the different like do not disturb modes on my phone and settings because that's really important. You don't want to be distracted by all the pings and rings. These are some of the ways that I'm able to separate myself and eliminate that feeling of, oh, I should be checking in and I need to figure out what's going on with the team where I need to chat with my producer about this or that. It allows myself to set aside my sheds for the time being and focus on the task at hand learning about my guest. And it helps me be able to really focus in memorized,

go deeper and really absorb all that I'm discovering. And if my brain fires back to something during this time, I make sure that I just write it down. So if I get distracted and I start thinking about something time, I make sure that I just write it down. So if I get distracted and I start thinking about something else, I make sure that I write it down. And this is step one of the GTD methodology, capture. This way, I'm no longer holding space. I don't longer have those loops in my head

that just won't leave me alone. It's down on paper, it's out of my head, and then I can focus on what I need to focus on and be present. Now that sounds pretty simple, but this is such a great hack. So again, if you guys have something that you're thinking about, just write it down and keep it in a place where you know where to find it later, and you can systemize it later. But truthfully, getting my system down for staying present has taken years of practice, and it has shifted with each role that I play, whether it be CEO of yeahAM media or HalataH, the podcast host or even, you know,

HalataH, the girlfriend. Listen, productivity is trial and error. If David's idea of being like water sounds like it's gonna work for you, try it out. If you like these five stages of GTD, capture, clarify, organize, reflect, engage, then try that out. What's most important is finding

what works for you and boost your productivity. So give some of David's tips and tricks a try and make sure you go grab his classic getting things done. It is one of the most sought after productivity methodologies in the world and in every adult, people still use it to this day. And young and profitors, if you enjoyed today's YAP Classic, make sure you take the time to drop us a five star rating and leave us a review on Apple Podcast. If you don't have a phone, steal your moms, steal your friends phones, steal your brothers' phones, just do anything to drop us a review on there. I know a lot of you guys are listening on Castbox and PlayRafem, but dang, I could really use

some Apple Podcast reviews. And we actually just received an awesome review. Well, in fact, we received like 50 reviews on Apple Podcasts this month, so thank you so much for everybody who did take the time to drop a review. But we did receive a recent review from the inner search that reads, I love the show, especially App Snacks as it gives bite-sized tips from so many incredible experts on the topic. I love how Hollis simplifies those tips and adds her own take on it. Well, thank you so much for that kind, kind review and all those kind words. And if you're out there tuning in, again, drop us a five star review. We'd really appreciate it. Always

makes my day. And we're going to actually have some new Yapsnacks drop in soon in the coming weeks, so make sure you stay tuned. And if you haven't yet, you can follow me on LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Hala Taha, or you can hit me up on Instagram or Twitter at YAHPSwithHalte. Let me know where you're listening from, and let me know if you have any productivity hacks of your own. I'd love to hear them. All right, well, thanks so much for listening, and thanks to my awesome YAHPS team for all their hard work. This is Hala, signing off. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Ruben, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben Podcast.

My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits. Every week we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness without spending a lot of time energy or money. Suggestions such as follow the one minute rule. Choose a one word theme for the year or design your summer. We also feature segments like Know Yourself Better where we discuss questions

like are you an over buyer or an under buyer? Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever. And every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick easy shortcut to more happy. Listen and follow the podcast happier with Gretchen Rubin. Our friends Jeff and Tiffany Sebastian have officially added Buick GMC and Hummer to the classic E-Leap family. If you're wanting a new Buick or GMC look no further than Classic E-Leap Buick GMC. If you're not a Classic E-Leap Bu GMC, you are at the wrong place.

Shame on you. Make sure you're at classic elite location for a VIP red carpet experience. Remember, it's classic elite, our friends Jeff and Tiffany Sebastian winners of the GM dealer of the year for 12 years in a row now. Classic Elite dot com. you