Getting Things Done

Upgrade, you know if you have any downtime at all, with that kind of backed off time that we have, in the pandemic. It's the situation we're dealing with right now.

This is a time to think, it's part of one of those backlog things, one of those things you may have had in the back of your mind. I need to upgrade my computer. I need to upgrade my operating system. I need to upgrade this piece of software. I need to upgrade any of my technology, and any of my tools.

If you're painting, do you have the right brushes? Do you need to upgrade those? If you're playing the flute, or the piano, do you need to upgrade any of the music that you have to be able to practice with?

So I know this is kind of an off-the-wall question. But, a good idea to sort of access, is there anything that you might want to bring up to current speed? That you enjoy, that you love, or you need to be involved with.

I love Kevin Kelly's book from a few years ago, talking about the inevitable, talking about the inevitable trends that are happening to all of us, no matter what. He basically made the point that, you're never going to get really any good at anything because there are going to be constant upgrades, especially in software. So, I used to think that I could just resist upgrades to my Quicken because I thought I could manage it, but now I can't afford to do that because, who knows, to be able to manage Quicken and my accounting stuff personally I need to have the current version.

So it's kind of like, trust that you're never going to get truly on board with everything, currently and totally, but some of those things might need to be upgraded, and that could be just a process. You kind of get the zen of that. OK, let me just keep upgrading, getting better at, getting more stuff that might work. So, just in case that triggers any kind of a thought. Any kind of a thing you might want to add to your list. Hopefully that's helpful.

How much money do you actually have in your bank account? How do you and the people in your family really feel right now? Really. What's really going on in your professional environment? In your personal environment?

Not generalizing or exaggerating. Most people have a tendency, me too, to generalize. Everybody's leaving. It's so awful. Everybody's leaving the company, what do you mean? Everybody's leaving. It's so awful. Everybody's leaving the company? What do you mean? Well, Sally said she thought she might want to get a new career. And over 35 years of my consulting and coaching practices, I've often seen, And over 35 years of my consulting and coaching practices, I've often seen, all I have to do is to start to address, what is the real current reality?

And there are lots of ways to do that, but I would highly recommend you examine whether you're running any exaggerations or generalizations. That may be creating more pressure than you need. What's really true? What do you know what's really true? What do you know is actually really true?

Not "What do you think is true?", or "What do people say is true?" But, what do you *know* it actually really true? It gives you a grounded base to actually make decisions from.

I could spin on that for a long time, but let me just say if that rings any of your bells at all, notice whether you're generalizing and exaggerating. And if so, stop it!

Just say what's really true right now? Because you need to know what's the current reality so that you can then move from a ground base of reality. Not from some expectation of that, or generalization of that, or exaggeration of that.

I'll steal a play from Marie Kondo's work that she's been doing, by getting people to clean up closets and clean up their environment. And only keep the things you love and that turn you on.

Mine's a little more universal. Look, there's a lot of things that don't turn you on that you still need to keep. There's a lot of things that you need to kind of look at and say, yeah I'm not sure whether I want to throw that away or not. That's fine. But it's not a bad idea, especially in times like these, if you have any kind of extra time at all, to, as I say, bring up the rear guard.

I've mentioned this in several of my other two-minute tips, but this is sort of the universal clean up. Clean up your computer. Clean up your closets. Clean up the boot or the trunk of your car. Your garage, your attic, any spaces that you have. Any rented spaces that you have, to hold old stuff.

The world is just so addicted to hanging onto a lot of stuff, as opposed to being clean and clear. So I highly recommend you look around. What books need to be given away? What clothes need to be given away? What shoes have you not worn for two years? Where can you give those things away that people might be able to use that?

So look around your environment and say, how functional is it? How useful is it? How current is it in terms of the reality of these things and their meaning to you? And that's fine. There's no right or wrong in terms of whatever that volume is. It may be whatever it is that you want, how ever much you feel comfortable. But most people feel slightly uncomfortable about what's still in their closet, what's still in the drawers of their desk, what's still anywhere. So now's a good time, when I say "When in doubt, clean a drawer", it'll help a ton.

Well, you may already have a groove, but I imagine your groove has been disturbed to a large degree by whatever has been going on in the world lately. And especially in turbulent times, it's going to disturb your groove. Get into a new one.

So ask yourself. What about my groove do I need to put into a groove? That I can comfortably now, given the world, and given what's been going on. Whether that's when to take a walk, how often you need to exercise, how often you need to talk to people you need to talk to people about. Any of that. It's a good idea to get into a groove, because some part of us really loves to have a habit, it loves to have something traditional that we do regularly. So that we don't have to be thinking so much about that. But we use that as an opportunity to sort of lift our thinking, relax. Kind of look at the world from a higher perspective of things.

So what's your groove now? Does your groove work? If it doesn't, think about what would you need to do to improve your groove? I highly recommend that you think about that. And think, what are the simple things you could do? They don't have to be complex, or expensive, or anything. What do I need to do to get myself into a more regular, consistent basis? To handle the world that's now changed for me and that I need to be engaging with appropriately.

So, are you in your groove? If not, what do you need to do to improve your groove? And boy that could look like a lot of different things. But give yourself permission to be creative about that. Reflect a little bit on that, and perhaps take any necessary actions you need to take, to make that groove sort of more automatic and easy to do.

I'll quote my wonderful wife Kathryn. Laughter and Soap. At some point you just need to laugh, and you need to clean up. She sort of nailed it brilliantly.

If you haven't done it lately, at least look for a good joke. At least find some way to find something to laugh about. Something funny, something that makes no sense. Those are always wonderful things to do.

And soap, obviously clean up. I've been trained by my wife, when I walk in the door, Wash your hands David! Which I do. And I have to laugh about my hair, which I usually keep fairly short. Pretty soon I'm going to look like I looked in Berkeley in 1970. But that's ok, so I'm kind of laughing about, well David you're gonna have longer hair until your favorite barber comes back in a little while.

So anyway, a small little tip for turbulent times, but sometimes it might be quite healthy just to make sure you sort of plug into your world, laughter and soap, and make sure those are sort of regular things. that you engage in and people around you. I hope that's helpful, I know it's silly but it works for me.

In these kinds of times, that's actually in retrospect when we find out we've learned how to grow. We've expanded. We've stretched ourselves. We've challenged ourselves, we've had to look at things from whole new perspectives.

So my tip is to shorten that time of reflection and introspection about what these times could mean for us. What we could learn. What you might be doing differently after this in terms of relationships, in terms of your systems, in terms of how you're approaching your career. Your world. Given what we've been dealing with.

I'm not saying they're easy answers to that. But again, you won't find answers until you ask the questions. So my tip is, as I have to challenge myself regularly, What am I learning now, given what I'm dealing with? What can I do differently? What will this bring to the plate? In terms of how I could approach my world differently and what I might be able to do more successfully, or more elegantly, more easily, given what I've learned.

Learning happens in challenging times, not when times are easy. So I highly recommend you take advantage as best you can. Understand this is not the easiest thing to do, when things are stressful and things are on you and you're so distracted by a lot of what you may be dealing with. But it's also a good time to sit back, reflect, meditate, relax. Reflect and think. What could I be learning now? Reflect and think. What could I be learning now? What could I be doing differently now? And start to build that into your life and your work.

Out of the box here... I Am Unreasonably Joyful.

That's an affirmation I've actually used for many many years. And when I heard it, or when I thought of it, I thought, what a cool thing to do. To just take me out of the box. I'm unreasonably joyful.

Given the world we're in, and especially the times we're in being joyful about anything seems to be one of the hardest things to do. But if you want a real tip, to just kind of break yourself out of some of the code that we're in. You'll think better, when you're happier, when you're more up, when you have more positive energy. And so creating the affirmation to me, was a useful bandaid to use when things were like insane. When it made no sense to be joyful or happy.

And so it's just a big tip. Give yourself permission, for at least a minute, to just pretend that there are all kinds of things to be joyful about. So, be unreasonably joyful. It's a great thing to do. Also, learn to do that when you're in these kinds of stressful up against the wall kind of times. It's a great great thing to do. It's a great tip. It's a great tip I've used for myself, and still have to use on a regular basis. I'm unreasonably joyful, look at my peonies behind me, they so represent that. Ba Da!!

Actually, it's a tip I'd give anybody any time.

And those of you familiar with the Getting Things Done methodology will know this already. The Two Minute Tool.

The Two Minute Tool basically says, look, any action you've figured out that you could actually complete within two minutes, of where you are in the context you are, in the location you are, you're better off to that right then than to hang up on it, not do it, put it in the backlog or whatever.

Frankly, that's the efficiency factor. It would take you less than two minutes to do it, but it would take you longer than two minutes to look at it again and review it and reflect on it later on. So this is a pure efficiency factor of the Two Minute Rule.

Anything you can do in less than two minutes, if you need to do it at all then do it right then. And people say, well if I spent my whole day two minute stuff I'd never get anything else done. Well first of all, you'd be amazed as to how many strategic things have just a two minute action that are required on it. And not only that, why should these things still be around?

You either delete them, or if they've shown up, then they should be finished in the moment they're there. I never have any backlog of two minute stuff because they're all done.

First of all, the key thing is to decide what's the very next action on something I need to do about any of this change that's happening, any of this stuff I'm involved in right now. What would I need to do next? Once you've decided very clearly and specifically what that is if you can do it in less then two minutes, do it right then. Teflon, boom! In and out. You'll be amazed. I've had many executives tell me that was worth the price of admission. Just for that habit, if they didn't have that already. So hopefully you've built that in, or you will build that in.

If it takes less then two minutes, do it.

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Clean Up Your Computer

Now if you haven't done this already, and you have some down time, or at home time, or whatever. Then, come on guys, it's like when you get your car washed, or your motorcycle washed, or whatever, it drives better. Well very much the same thing with your computer.

Come on, this is like a master tool if you're doing any kind of knowledge work at all. This is reference, this is creativity, this is communications. This is your work. And so it's really nice to make sure that this doesn't become like a black hole. It starts to get clogged up with a lot of old stuff. The more old stuff I found that accumulate in my computer the less anxious, or the less interested I am in looking back for something or going back into that area.

But there's a lot of creativity that will show up if you actually do that. Like email, what's your backlog? The bigger your backlog of email, the more any kind of change or surprise is going to be bothersome, even the good stuff. So clean up email. There's a lot of tips you'll see on my YouTube channel about just dealing with email and that backlog.

I met somebody with thousands of Evernote notes in there, that they never looked at. As they said it's kinda write-only, as opposed to read-only. You stick stuff in, but you never then get back to it. So it's very important that your reference material, and all that stuff, as best you can, is just brought current. So maybe there's stuff you need to move into the cloud, stuff you need to put into Dropbox. Things you need to reorganize, or reframe, or refresh, or whatever.

But a real good idea to just look around, and if you've got some down time, one of the best kind of dummy things to do, is clean up. Clean up your digital world. It will help a ton.

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Areas of Focus, Responsibility and Interests

Revisit or Create an Overview of Your Areas of Focus, Responsibility and Interests It's a different horizon of your commitments. You've got actions you need to take, and you've got projects you need to finish. But the reason you have actions, and projects is because they respond to or they relate to areas of focus and interests.

For instance, you may have a project about your kids, well that's because obviously kids and family will be an area of focus. You may have a project about your health, in which case heath and your physical energy is an area of interest or focus. So it's a next level of abstraction, a useful place to visit, especially when things are changing a lot. Where you might need to revisit these different areas and say, how's everything doing?

This is like being your own CEO, your own executive, essentially, for your life. Looking across all of your roles, and responsibilities, and accountabilities. If you haven't done this lately, not a bad idea just to brainstorm it. You could just do a mind map. Spiritual Life - Relationships - Fun - My Health - Family

It's a way to overview, essentially, sort of the whole context, so that there's a part of you that feels like you're more grounded in space and time, from the larger gestalt. Very helpful thing to do, we've done that over the years, for many thousands of people, who've gone through that exercise. And it's extremely valuable. And it might surprise you, what you'll come up with. If you really identify those things accurately and appropriately and say How am I doing about that?

Some of those may be on cruise control, hey that's all fine. Oh, that reminds me, I need to, I better take a look at that, better look at it from that perspective. So getting grounded essentially from that little longer or larger horizon. Very valuable thing to do, especially when things are changing fast. So that some part of you doesn't feel that you're losing your footing, in terms of the whole game.