0:08

Hi

0:11

everybody, David Allen here

0:13

with Mr. Dave Edwards again.

0:17

He's my, I don't know,

0:19

what should I call you Dave? You're sort of my

0:21

poke at me kind of guy. Gadfly,

0:24

is that a word that one should

0:26

use? I don't know. People

0:29

have called me worse, so you know,

0:31

pest. Well, it's

0:33

great. Again, you know, again,

0:35

so being for

0:37

so many years in love with NPR and

0:39

anybody could be associated with NPR, I just

0:41

give the benefit of the doubt, you know,

0:44

and great. And so, especially

0:46

from an interview standpoint and a

0:48

conversation standpoint, so yay, back again.

0:52

And we've gotten some pretty good reviews, from

0:54

my understanding from Jon Forrester, they

0:57

kind of like us hanging out together and

0:59

chatting about whatever shows up, you know,

1:02

and GTD-esque and otherwise. So

1:07

okay, here we are. Any opening

1:09

comments from yourself? Oh, I'll

1:11

finish mine. I'm in Amsterdam.

1:13

I'm fine. It's a cool

1:15

spring day here. And

1:18

I'm good. Yay.

1:22

We're glad to hear that you're good.

1:24

We're glad that spring has arrived in

1:26

various parts of the states. You

1:29

know, like I was telling you before, we've had spring

1:31

and summer all in one week here in Wisconsin. So,

1:34

you know, we never know what's going to happen here.

1:36

But I really appreciate you taking the time to

1:38

talk with me. And I guess, you know, if

1:40

you think to, you know, what is our relationship?

1:42

What are we trying to do here? I mean,

1:45

you know, you, of course, were the,

1:47

you're the guru of GTD and I'm

1:49

a mere user. Now, I've been following

1:52

the tenets of GTD for well

1:54

over a decade, but I'm far

1:56

from an expert. And

1:59

I always find that my use of

2:01

GTD evolves and I keep thinking of

2:03

new things and I

2:06

try new things and I like to

2:08

use these conversations as you

2:10

know kind of a grounding point with some

2:12

of the things that pop into my head

2:14

and I've been grateful that some of our

2:16

viewers have even sent me emails with

2:19

questions or posted on Connect questions which

2:21

I've tried to incorporate in some of

2:23

our videos so I thought the

2:25

place we would start today is is

2:29

email you know I

2:31

mean you're still

2:34

getting email you're still

2:36

getting emails? Okay yeah I haven't

2:38

I haven't turned it off you know I David

2:40

I like to tell the story and but

2:43

but when email first kind

2:45

of came on the horizon I had a

2:47

boss who took me into his office once

2:49

and he said Dave let me show you

2:51

this really cool thing I now can sit

2:53

at my computer and send you a message

2:55

and then when you get back to your

2:57

office it will be on your computer and

2:59

I thought how dumb how why would I

3:01

ever need to use that and

3:04

of course hundreds of emails now

3:06

pour into our into it that's

3:08

why that's like Kevin Kelly you

3:11

know the first

3:13

you know founding editor of Wired you know

3:16

initially when the internet said who

3:18

would ever use this you know

3:20

in his book that the 12

3:23

trends that you can't you

3:25

know that the 12 trends book that you

3:27

can't stop he was he

3:29

was humble enough to admit

3:32

his lack of prescience you

3:34

know well I mean I the irony

3:37

of course is that I don't get

3:39

any voicemail anymore nobody calls me anymore

3:41

which is okay but but now everything

3:43

comes in via email or

3:45

other printed sources but I wanted to

3:48

talk to you about processing email and

3:50

because I think that that this gets

3:52

to be a stumbling point for a

3:55

lot of people when

3:57

you know they open up their email box and

3:59

oh boy there's another 100 emails and

4:01

where do we put it and what do we do?

4:03

So I think maybe the first thing I should ask

4:05

you is keeping GTD in mind. I mean like How

4:09

should we be reviewing what pours into

4:11

our inbox on a daily basis? Like

4:14

you review your mail in your mailbox? What's

4:17

the difference? I don't get mail in

4:19

my mailbox. It's all junk in my my regular

4:22

Yeah, but you have to decide that it's junk

4:24

when you open your mailbox. You don't leave it

4:26

in there. Oh, that's true. That's right

4:29

So you empty out your physical

4:31

mailbox, right? So,

4:33

you know, what's the difference except

4:36

volume now? I understand the question to me

4:38

believe me They're a gazillion people for years

4:41

have asked that question like how do I then

4:43

manage that I say well how

4:45

do you manage your physical inbox and You

4:49

know, the question is if you're if you've

4:51

got a hundred emails you open it up. How much of that

4:53

is your work? Right,

4:55

you know how much of that is your life? And

4:58

if you say well, I don't like my work or I don't like my

5:00

life Then sure just hit control

5:02

a or control a control X and

5:05

just dump it all You

5:07

know, I mean that's

5:10

I know that's an exaggerated statement, but

5:12

I go well, we'll push back on

5:14

that statement Why would you

5:16

even get those things if they're not relevant

5:18

to you in some way even

5:20

like junk mail? I love junk mail, you

5:22

know, I don't a lot of it I throw

5:25

instantly but sometimes they go Well, that's kind

5:27

of cool. Well, that's a neat little thing

5:29

and whatever. So I Don't

5:31

mind I just empty at all, you know

5:33

on some consistent basis and I've yet

5:35

I've yet to have anybody give me

5:38

any rational intellectual cognitive cognitively

5:40

rationally argument Why

5:42

not to do that? Mm-hmm.

5:45

I think that the I think that the the

5:47

issue though is Not

5:50

so much. Okay. Yes, we got to review it

5:52

all but okay now once we reviewed it It's

5:55

it's so easy to spend so

5:57

much time on the urgency of

5:59

the You know some some email comes

6:01

in and like oh, I want to respond to that

6:04

But that kind of pulls us away from the

6:06

plan we had from the day Yeah,

6:08

well screw the plan for the day He

6:11

had something that no really you came up

6:13

with something more important than what you have your plan

6:15

for the next life Daily to-do list I haven't used

6:18

I can't ever remember using that You

6:21

know, I plan as little as I get by

6:23

with but I understand hey, you know You know,

6:25

I got a lot of you know serious GTD

6:28

mature people that the

6:30

night before they go through all of their lists

6:32

all their stuff and make a An

6:36

index card with the three things they want to

6:38

get done tomorrow if they have the time to

6:40

do that and nothing else shows Up that then

6:42

takes precedence. That's fine because that gives you the

6:44

freedom and flexibility to go This

6:47

card sucks because this email came in I'm

6:49

gonna spend four hours with this because this

6:51

is like critical way cool Surprised,

6:53

you know Leverage the

6:56

heck out of this new input that I've got so,

6:59

you know That that's why it's very

7:01

hard to generalize very easy

7:03

to exaggerate very hard to generalize you

7:06

know about You

7:08

know how to deal with all that stuff?

7:11

I just suggest, you know Sometimes

7:14

I'll let right now I probably got

7:16

let me look I

7:18

probably got who

7:25

I have probably 30 35 emails that I may not be able

7:27

to clean up You

7:33

know Before the end of the day,

7:35

but that's okay. It's you know, it's it's barely a screen

7:37

full And that's

7:39

okay. That's like taking notes, you know

7:41

as I take notes His

7:46

little note that I took and I want to handle today,

7:48

but you know, I'm not doing that right now But

7:51

there you know, I think we we get inputs that

7:53

we don't want to do in the instant So

7:56

training yourself and learning that you've got a

7:58

system enough that you're not gonna lose any

8:00

of those hundred emails or anything that might

8:02

be relevant to you. Finally

8:04

do an emergency scan. I do it too. I

8:08

often times when I'm doing an emergency scan,

8:10

I do the emergency scan and I go,

8:12

okay, let me dump that one. That was

8:14

easier. Let me handle that one. That's a

8:16

two minute thing. Let me go

8:18

have a little bit of fun with that one. It's

8:21

been a little time with it. I just have

8:23

the freedom to just decide to do what I

8:25

feel like doing. The inventory

8:27

is just not overwhelming to me. It's

8:30

easy to assess the whole gestalt. I

8:38

think that some of our viewers and certainly I've

8:40

run into this over my

8:42

career is that the emails

8:44

come in with a sense of urgency.

8:48

Everybody thinks that their email, they

8:50

star it as urgent and

8:52

they expect you to respond to them quickly. As

8:56

a result, what is somebody else's priority

8:58

may not be your priority, but the

9:00

expectation is that, oh, it's an email.

9:02

We've got to do it right away. Yeah.

9:05

Well, that comes back to what your relationship

9:07

with those people. If

9:09

those people are on some sort of a team,

9:11

a team meeting a group of people that have

9:13

agreed to work together towards something, do

9:16

you have protocols about that? Ed

9:19

Lamont and I are writing a

9:21

book right now, Getting Teams Done. That's

9:25

one of the key issues out there

9:27

is the fact that there

9:29

are very unclear principles that

9:31

have been decided about people who are working

9:33

together. How often are you

9:36

expecting people to respond to you relative

9:39

to the nature of your team and the nature of

9:41

the purpose of your team? You

9:43

may decide, hey, we

9:47

expect you to come back within 24 to 48 hours with at least

9:51

a, I got your email, I will respond as soon as

9:53

I have some time. Coming

9:56

up with criteria like that or protocols

9:58

like that is, I think. probably

10:00

really important. Most

10:02

people are just sorry

10:06

just not I

10:10

didn't want to say immature enough but

10:13

they're not immature in the

10:15

process yet enough to get clarity with

10:17

all of those people so

10:19

that you can manage that input. I

10:22

understand that's not necessarily that easy. You

10:25

know, you get it from your boss and you're like, okay nice

10:28

to have a conversation. I'm like, hey boss, you send

10:30

me an email how often do you think I should

10:32

respond to this? What do

10:35

you expect? It's really nice

10:37

to have gee, got your email I'm

10:40

kind of buried or I'm under the weather

10:42

right now and I'll probably get

10:44

to it on the weekend or

10:48

by the first of the week. That's

10:50

nice to have those kinds of responses

10:53

easy for you to express.

10:58

See, I I

11:00

think I used to be guilty like a lot

11:02

of other people who would check email like almost

11:05

as quick as they were coming in. I was

11:07

always on my email. In fact, for a while

11:09

I had a second computer screen which had my

11:11

email client

11:14

posted there and I've evolved

11:16

to the point where I really checked my

11:18

email once in the morning, once

11:22

while I'm maybe eating my sandwich and then I

11:24

carve out a little bit more time later in

11:26

the day to actually go

11:28

through. The first two times I'm just looking

11:30

for landmines. The last part of

11:32

the day I'm looking for the things that I

11:34

really got to read or move

11:36

into my system or delete. But

11:39

it's hard to convince people that

11:42

you're being efficient because

11:44

everybody expects that instant response. I've

11:47

had to just train people to say, look, I'll get

11:49

to you but it's just not going to be in

11:51

the next three hours.

11:55

Yeah. I understand. And who

12:02

was her guy at Zappos, Tony

12:05

Shea, had a

12:09

next day inbox or something like that. He

12:12

didn't respond to any emails except total

12:14

emergencies until the next day because

12:16

he said by the end of the

12:19

day, he would then see how many

12:21

emails he needed to respond to the next day. But

12:24

then he could then allocate appropriate time the

12:26

next day to then deal with

12:28

the email inputs. Smart.

12:31

Yeah, no, that's very smart. And

12:33

actually, the other thing that I found out is

12:35

that the item that is marked urgent on

12:38

a Monday, by the time you get

12:40

to it on Tuesday, the person solved

12:42

that problem. They don't need that. No

12:44

kidding. No kidding. That's why

12:46

a lot of the executive thing is,

12:48

wait, this thing will handle itself. But

12:56

not necessarily. So

12:58

the emails that you get, if you look

13:01

at an email and say, well, this is

13:03

going to take longer than two minutes. What

13:06

do you do with it? Where do you put it? Do you put it

13:08

on your list? Yeah. Okay.

13:11

I will. Yeah. I'm not

13:13

keeping a to do email inbox,

13:15

but that's because my life as a whole,

13:17

I'm simpler now and less complex and less

13:19

voluminous in terms of stuff. There's

13:22

still important things, you know,

13:25

but maybe he sent me a couple

13:27

of draft chapters as

13:31

we're writing the book. And

13:33

I know that's not going to take me two minutes. Trust

13:35

me. I'm going to need to handle that.

13:37

So oftentimes what I'll do is take those

13:41

and then put those in my pending basket,

13:44

my physical pending basket. That's why

13:46

plenty. I don't want to get rid of

13:48

paper and come on papers. Coolest

13:51

tools you have and be

13:53

able to then, you know, externalize and

13:55

express digital information in a way that becomes

13:57

a lot more easy or like.

14:00

easier to assess, evaluate,

14:03

review, reflect on, or whatever

14:05

in physical form than it

14:07

is in digital. That's

14:10

my personal preference, but again, that's because I'm

14:12

76 maybe, and I don't

14:16

do work on my phone or my iPad. No,

14:19

actually, I've talked with a fair number

14:21

of people who are far younger than

14:23

me who are in their 30s and

14:25

40s who are now, they're

14:27

carrying paper planners, which I

14:29

don't even do, but I mean, there

14:32

is a value to paper and I think

14:34

people are starting to see that. Sure.

14:38

I mean, I'm interested now, tell me about this book

14:40

that you're writing. I don't

14:42

want to tell you too much. Okay.

14:45

Because we don't know yet with early

14:47

stages, but we've contracted with Penguin

14:49

already, so they bought the idea. I

14:53

think as we move down that process,

14:55

as you're getting closer to publication, which

14:57

I realize won't be for a while,

14:59

I'll be very interested to talk to

15:01

you about the process of writing that

15:04

book and how you do

15:06

that in conjunction with staying organized and

15:08

everything. I

15:10

went through that when I wrote my book and

15:13

I know how crazy it can

15:15

be, so we'll come back to that subject.

15:18

Sure. Let me

15:20

raise a totally different subject here that

15:22

I've been thinking a lot about. You

15:26

do have a lot of meetings, I'm sure,

15:28

that are on Zoom or maybe some that

15:30

are in person. I

15:33

presume that you are a note

15:35

taker, that you're always writing

15:37

notes from meetings because you

15:40

always say you have notepads around you to just

15:42

jot an idea. I'm sure when you're in a

15:44

meeting, you're doing the same thing. To

15:46

what extent are you writing extensive notes when you're

15:48

in your meetings and what do you do with

15:50

that? Depends on who I'm talking to and why.

15:53

These days I'm not

15:55

doing a lot of stuff in meetings that then I

15:58

didn't have to capture a bunch of stuff. need

16:00

to do a whole lot about. I

16:02

was in a meeting, a virtual meeting,

16:04

you know, early

16:07

this afternoon in my time with

16:09

a new

16:12

client that I'm going to be doing a

16:14

remote keynote

16:18

for their senior team. And

16:20

I took three or four notes that

16:23

I needed to about what that was about, but

16:25

some of it was just so standard. So I

16:27

knew once we set the meeting, she was going

16:29

to send me the invites for whatever

16:31

all that was. And I got

16:33

enough information that was pretty obvious to me

16:35

anyway. I only

16:38

wrote three or four things. I obviously wrote

16:40

something, an article that I agreed

16:42

that I would send her. So I

16:44

obviously wrote that down. I mean, that's why

16:46

this, you know, these things are right here.

16:50

Right here. Yeah. Because God

16:52

knows even when you and I are talking, something

16:54

may occur to me now that has nothing to

16:56

do with what you and I are talking about.

16:58

But so I can keep my attention focused on

17:01

our conversation. I need to grab it quick and

17:04

stick it somewhere. I'm

17:06

still, you know, a note taker just I

17:08

don't need to take the volume of notes that

17:10

I used to years ago when I had to

17:13

manage a whole lot of detail with a client.

17:15

Yeah. And manage all that

17:17

stuff. Let me take you back to

17:19

those days because I think people

17:22

like me are in that scenario

17:24

where the notes that we

17:26

take in meetings are important for us to

17:28

remember what happened in the meeting, what we

17:30

promised to do, what other people have promised

17:33

to do. When you were in that game

17:35

on a much more regular basis, what did

17:37

your notes look like? Were they complete thoughts?

17:39

Were they mind maps? What did you do?

17:44

It was all over the map. It depended

17:46

on the nature of the client, the nature

17:48

of the project, the nature of whatever it was. Ultimately,

17:52

if I

17:55

was going to do a presentation, I had

17:57

a mind map template about all the questions.

18:00

I need to ask a client and

18:02

I would pull up mind map, mind

18:04

map. Yeah, I'd

18:06

pull up mindjet, I'd pull up my mind

18:08

map for that client and I

18:10

would then label that file for the client and

18:13

I'd start a mind map with the

18:15

template itself that said, okay,

18:17

here's all the stuff I need to ask

18:19

about the presentation. What's the tech like? You

18:22

know, how about dress? Who's going to be

18:24

there? You know, what are your objectives? How

18:26

does this, you know, right? So I

18:28

had my sort of brainstormed, here's

18:32

all the questions that I probably need to ask or

18:34

find out about. What

18:36

are the key phone numbers I need

18:38

in case there's something, some

18:40

glitch shows up in my travel? So,

18:45

you know, I

18:47

had that template, that checklist

18:50

already figured out and that was a mind map

18:52

itself and so when they, I would use that

18:54

in our conversation on the phone usually and I

18:57

just have that up while I was talking to them and

18:59

I was just feeling the blanks while we were talking. Well,

19:02

I can type fast enough to do that. So

19:05

that was probably for the major

19:08

events and major things I needed to keep track

19:10

of. You know, what are your key things you

19:12

want to accomplish with this? What do you, you

19:14

know, who are the key people that you want

19:17

me to be aware of, you know, in the

19:19

audience or that are involved with all this? So

19:21

again, that was just based upon a checklist that

19:23

I had, but that was digital and

19:25

I just used it as a mind map and then I just,

19:28

at some point I just printed out that mind

19:30

map and took that with me, you know, printed

19:33

it out. I printed it out, I heard that, yeah.

19:36

Yeah, because believe me, when

19:38

you're, you know, in a meeting or you're walking into

19:40

an event, you don't have to boot your computer and

19:42

click, click, click, you know, to be able to see

19:44

something that you need to see what I could just

19:46

have in my hand. There

19:50

are people watching this who are going, oh, funny,

19:52

duddy. I

19:56

would still do that. No,

19:58

I would still do that. You know, come

20:00

on, I'm supposed to create an invoice

20:03

for some folks. I'm, I'm, I'm doing

20:05

a, you know, a major

20:07

presentation for a group in, in, in

20:09

Germany. And so they

20:11

sent me, uh, general information about

20:13

the event and also the invoice

20:17

because Germany has a, they're

20:19

kind of tight-assed about all the stuff they

20:21

need now with all the EU regulations about

20:23

how do you send an invoice to these

20:25

people. So they sent that, believe

20:27

me, I'm not going to have to go back to the computer to

20:30

figure that out. Thank you. That's

20:32

a whole lot easier for me to than

20:34

craft on the computer. What I need based

20:36

upon this data. Sure. Anybody

20:39

who thinks you're going to get rid of paper just needs to grow up

20:41

a little bit. So,

20:44

but there are a lot of people who

20:46

are literally, you know, nine to five, they're

20:48

in one meeting after another. And,

20:50

and they're taking presumably a lot of

20:53

notes, things they're committed to. Um,

20:55

and they probably drop them in the

20:58

inbox throughout the day. Uh,

21:01

and it's, it's, it's tough to

21:03

find time to process and remember what those

21:05

notes meant when you come back to

21:07

them, when you, when you really need to process them,

21:10

invite you. When you say, when you say it's tough

21:12

to do it, I go, that's because you're immature. Well,

21:14

you maybe even forgot what the words meant in your.

21:17

Yeah. No, no, no, I know. I know. I know.

21:19

You know, oftentimes I can't read my own writing. And

21:24

that, that may be soup, meta

21:27

maturity. So, uh, you know, short

21:29

term memory just went, you know,

21:32

went out the window. Yeah. So I

21:34

understand that. But I think, I

21:36

think you just do what you need to do, but quite

21:39

frankly, I don't think it can be paper

21:41

and pencil for just taking random

21:43

notes, informal notes. It

21:45

couldn't very well be that you have a system and

21:47

you have checklist and you have things on your computer.

21:49

Like I did that best to

21:51

have that in front of you in order

21:53

to make sure that you'd go through all the stuff

21:55

that you need to go through in your meeting. But

21:58

even agendas, if you're keeping track of agendas for. meetings.

22:00

I mean, I would do those, I would print those out.

22:03

It does a whole lot easier to then print

22:05

out that page. And then while you're in the

22:07

meeting, take physical notes, you know,

22:09

on that printed out page of the

22:11

agendas, and then go back, throw that

22:13

in your entry. And then before

22:16

the end of the night or within the

22:18

next 24 hours, you pick up those notes

22:20

or go, okay, here's what I need to

22:22

capture about that. Here's what I need to

22:24

put in my CRM or whatever, about whatever,

22:26

about whatever happened. You know, I'm,

22:29

as you mentioned, my, my association with

22:31

public radio, and so I started my

22:33

career as a journalist and I, so

22:35

I'm trained to just take notes. I'm,

22:38

I'm always writing notes down. It helps

22:40

me to remember things, but I am

22:42

absolutely horrible when people say, would you

22:44

take minutes of the meeting? Cause I

22:46

don't take notes like that. I

22:48

take what's important to me as opposed to

22:50

trying to do transcripts of the meeting. Yeah,

22:53

understood. Well, sometimes it's

22:56

best if you recorded the meeting and then

22:58

have that hand that to somebody, you know,

23:00

that's paid in a lower pay grade than

23:02

you say, would you please transcribe all

23:04

these? All right. So

23:07

I want to move to one other area

23:09

here. And this, this came up, as I

23:11

was talking to a friend who has really

23:14

got into GTD in

23:16

a big way, he's doing a tremendous job and

23:19

he's finding it to be of great help. But

23:21

he says his greatest frustration is that the people

23:23

he worked with, he works with, have

23:25

no concept of GTD or

23:28

any kind of productivity system.

23:30

And he feels he's hitting his head

23:32

against the wall as he's trying to put

23:34

this system in place. And, and I told

23:36

him, I would ask for your advice. Does

23:39

he manage these people or is he peers? Both.

23:43

I think he manages some, but I think some

23:45

of them are, are, you know, his peers. Thank

23:51

you very much. you