This is episode two, on Step Two of the Workflow Diagram / Map, Clarify (formerly Process), in our nine-part series on the Getting Things Done (GTD) personal productivity methodology and eponymously-titled book, from the perspective of the ProductivityCast team--as long-term practitioners, critics and observers of GTD.

“Without a next action, there remains a potentially infinite gap between current reality and what you need to do.” ~David Allen

In this episode, we discuss how we all define Clarify and how we process/clarify in our own systems today, as well as what challenges we see GTD practitioners face and how to overcome those issues in day-to-day productivity.

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In this Cast

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Francis Wade

Art Gelwicks

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Voiceover Artist 0:00

Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life? Then you've come to the right place productivity cast the weekly show about all things productivity here your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:19

Welcome back everybody to productivity cast the weekly show about all things personal productivity I'm recently Smith i'm joined with my co host Augusto Pinaud. How's it going? Good morning, Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. How are you gentlemen? Great. I'm doing well, we are going to be talking about the second stage of the workflow diagram within getting things done by David Allen. And this is the stage that he calls processing and the first edition or clarifying in the second edition. And so for the rest of our discussion today, just know that we may note processing or clarifying as, as the terms sort of equally, okay, so I wanted to start off the discussion with how each of us defines the term processing or clarifying in the context of GTD, what we remember, say, from what David Allen told us, it was in in our readings of the book, and how we determine or define that in our practices today, and our productivity systems today, because they obviously change over time, I don't think that the term processor clarify is immutable, just because over time, the way in which we do it is so fundamentally different, because if we do it, and we do it well, long enough, it changes, we become better at it. And therefore processing clarifying becomes a different process for each of us. And so I'm open to discussion on that as well. But let's start off with defining processing or clarifying,

Augusto Pinaud 1:45

you know, as I said, you know, that collecting assumption that for me was Oh, super clear, super cool. The processing part to me a lot longer to understand, okay, now, I have old days what I'm going to do, and to really slow down enough so I could really process this stuff, you know, the beginning was like, Okay, well, I get this envelope with papers of new car. Okay, then file and I, my default answer was, when in doubt, file,

what produce in many cases was a ridiculous big file cabinet.

And me going back to all I forgot to register the car. So good. I knew now where the papers were, that he was a big win to comparing the day before. But I did not really process some of those stuff on some of that stuff, went back to the inbox multiple times, until I understood what that process in mean, and really slow down and ask enough questions to understand what was what the action that I needed to take, so that they never did not come back to the inbox was required. So I think, I think it's a matter of time, it's not incentive collecting is a really easy to understand. Now, clarifying processing, it takes a little bit longer to understand

what are the good questions that you need to ask yourself to really get that thing out of the way and to really get that thing moving forward.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:30

Francis, how do you define clarifying or processing in your day to day productivity world?

Francis Wade 3:36

Yeah, I see a little bit differently. But it's only really a difference in language I, I can see visual as capturing. But I can't visualize processing or terrifying in terms of it being, like you said, a physical action. In retrospect, before I even knew about GTD, the other system that I I picked up, it led me to think of it as emptying. So that's the term I use in my work is capturing and, and there's empty capturing is putting tasks or time demands into a capture point. And then at some later point, emptying of the boat, removing them. And in the process of emptying these capture points, there is clarifying, processing, prioritizing, deciding, choosing and all these other actions. But I prefer to think of it as emptying a capture point, like an email inbox, leaving it void of commitments once you're done. So that's a lot of seed read differently,

Art Gelwicks 4:41

how about you are, for me, the processing part, or the defining or refining is really a two step process. One is to identify all the stuff I didn't actually capture about something when I initially initially captured because let's be realistic, a lot of times when you start to capture things, you don't get all the details, because you're in a hurry. So the first part of that refinement is making sure you have all the information that you need to add to us to act on that second for me, is to set myself up for processing that item. So not only is it all the information I need about it, but anything that I need to know or that I know I'm going to need to effectively execute on that item, or their related connections or their related things that I need to go look up, is there a piece is there another task that's going to be triggered by this for it to be able to be successfully completed. So it's, it is a little bit of a cycle that each thing goes through. But it's literally just to make sure that it is set up to be successful when I go to do it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:43

When I think about clarifying and processing, I do appreciate the the new term clarifying over processing. And there there is a minor error in the new version of the of the print edition, which has the workflow diagram. And it shows it says process at the bottom of it. And instead of clarifying, but he he does otherwise talk about it as clarifying throughout the second edition. But and actually that that's a change of perspective. Because before I really liked the term processing, I felt like it was a a, a very physical act. But then I recognize something about the workflow diagram, and GTD which is that you kind of toggle between thought based actions and physical actions. As you go, you as you basically vacillate between these different stages of the workflow, these different skills that you have to do. And so capturing is a physical action. And clarifying is actually all mental action. And so organizing, when we get to next week's discussion, where we talk about organizing, I really start to think about processing is that organizing function is actually the physical placement of of things that you finally identified the next action and the projects for those things. So for me clarifying is that is really founded on and right within the structure of what David Allen says, which is the the next action principle, and we'll talk about the next action decision decision concept in a little bit. But the idea is, is that as something comes in, you decide what it is. And, and so it's sitting in your inbox, you know, one of the many in boxes that we talked about last week, right? your voicemail, your email inbox, your physical entry on your desk, your mailbox, at home, or at the office, and you now need to decide what it is, you have to, like, really determine, you know, is this a, is this a, an invitation to to a wedding? Is this a mortgage, you know, financing document that tells you that you've been pre approved for X amount of dollars to buy a home, what is it and once you determine what it is, then you can start to make some actions upon it in terms of Okay, well, is this thing actionable? Well, what is the action, right? If it's Yes, then what is the action, if it's no, then it needs to go into some state of incubation, trash or reference, right. So we know that he needs to go into one of those places. And David Allen, rightfully so puts things into trash, first, incubation, second, and reference, you know, third, and I think that's also very helpful for people kind of take into account. So that's really clarifying. So I want to talk about some of the fundamentals of how we position ourselves for, for good processing, David Allen gives three guidelines. And I'd like to hear from you all about your tips and tricks for being able to do this. But it gets three kind of best practices, I think of them as ideal practices, because because the world is not ideal. So process the top item, first process one item at a time, and never put anything back into n. So basically, he says, whether it's a life over five foot process last in, first out or first in first out process,