← Getting Things Done
Getting Things Done
Ep. 293: Slice of GTD Life with Jens
00:41:16
Jens Hynne Petersen is a longtime GTD enthusiast. He recaps his GTD journey, with the 2019 GTD Summit a highlight. He has been interested in paper systems, but discusses his preference for using a digital tool. His participation in the GTD community...
Loading summary
Transcript94 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:10]
B
Hi everyone, this is John, John Forester here. I added an S to the end of my name. That's because I'm interviewing Jens, who is who's here with me and he spells his name J, E, N S. So I'm in, in collaboration with him. I added an S to the end of my name for the pronunciation. Thank you for being with us. So, good afternoon. Where you are? So where are you? And tell us a bit about yourself.
- [00:38]
A
Yeah, I'm Jens and located in Denmark just on top of Germany and I live one hour drive outside of Copenhagen, the capital in Denmark where I live in the countryside in a very small village.
- [01:02]
B
All right, well I've heard of you for years of course, but most recently you sent me a whole set of pictures from the GTD summer camp that was held recently and I wanted to talk with you about that. But before we get to that it's probably better if I start with a couple of the standard questions like how did you hear about GTD and what are you currently using for your keeping your lists and your calendar and some, some things like that. So anything you'd like to tell us about that would be very welcome.
- [01:37]
A
And, and as you know GTDs love to talk about that and usually when you've been around the GTD community you, you get to, to know your GTD origin story and because people ask how did it started? And for myself, a colleague, I work in IT and a colleague posted in the company newsletter 2, 3 pages praising the work of David and I was quite inspired and I signed up for the David Allen Company newsletter the 17th of January in 2006. So I consider that as my GTD birthday.
- [02:40]
B
2006. That's quite a long time.
- [02:43]
A
Yeah. And then later on brought the book and started very early alone with the newsletters coming in and trying to figure out what was up and down this GTD stuff and so you didn't have.
- [03:07]
B
Anything like a course or coaching to get used, you were self taught?
- [03:13]
A
Yeah, yeah. TTD didn't came to Nordics, Denmark, Sweden, Norway before Morten Warwick introduced it and later came to Denmark with NASA watching. But I, I actually went to to the DTD Master Class in in London in, in 2014 and very, I remember that. I remember briefly senior there.
- [03:50]
B
Yeah, right.
- [03:53]
A
Very inspired. So so when when, when Lars wrote in the Danish LinkedIn group that he he has started, I apparently he was starting some fiscal meetups GTDs meeting and using the meetup.com website to organize that and apparently he told me that I called Lars and said a perfect idea and talked to him for 20 minutes. I have a very good memory, but this little event slipped my mind. But yeah, we then started the meetup group. 10 people meeting at different companies to talk about GTD. And we had the first Danish meetup in 2015. And then we got more and more people. We got a Facebook group started and now we have over 400 people in the Copenhagen meetup group and 600 people in the Facebook group.
- [05:22]
B
Wow, that's quite a number for. I thought you were going to say in more throughout some part of the Nordics, but that's just Copenhagen again.
- [05:31]
A
Yeah, that's the. Yeah, the Norwegian group is even bigger and was started by Morton before. Yes, more than a thousand members. But we also have a group in, you know, who's covering the other part of Denmark, Jutland and the island of where Lars is located. We also started a little meetup group there just before we went into lockdown. So it's a smaller group.
- [06:16]
B
Well, I'm glad you kept it going during, during that period.
- [06:20]
A
Yeah, but we, we then went from, from a meeting physical to. To meeting online. So we had had around 10 Nordic meetups where we.
- [06:39]
B
We.
- [06:40]
A
Oh, I, I organize with, with, with Morten and Lars set up the meeting. So we meet Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland. There's quite a few of these meetup groups. The online group has visitors from, from, from abroad. So we have some, some, some Germans and some from the Netherlands joining Estonia, also the US and of course some of us joins the, the Amsterdam group and the group in Estonia.
- [07:18]
B
I'm, I'm pretty familiar with most of the groups you're talking about and the, and some of those people too, because. Well, two of those people were interviews that we have here on GTD Connect before. One with Sebastian Feiler in Germany and another with Timothy Howes who is in the northeastern part of the United States. And I think he's flown over to go to summer camp a couple of times.
- [07:44]
A
Yeah, he did. And, and he was able to, to join and meet up in Amsterdam where I, I saw him. So, so when I had to pick him up from the train station, I saw something, some, somebody coming and so, oh, this is Tim. Of course I knew Tim was coming, but could see his face and it was so funny to say hi Tim to him. Oh, right.
- [08:15]
B
That's my pickup just in the train station there. When he, you hadn't met him in person before and you just said, hi Tim.
- [08:21]
A
I said hi Tim because I, I could remember his face from, from, from the the meetup group in, in Amsterdam.
- [08:29]
B
Okay, well so you've been at this a long time and it seems as though you really took to it instantly. Did you try anything else for your productivity before you got to this or was there some moment when you just said I I really need something or.
- [08:47]
A
I, I always been been fascinated by, by calendars and, and also the Dane that, that made this the system time.
- [09:03]
B
I, I, I'm so surprised you know that I was going to mention that in a moment here. Go ahead, finish. I didn't mean to interrupt you.
- [09:10]
A
Yeah, I, I, I actually have the.
- [09:12]
B
Box.
- [09:16]
A
But it was too, too expensive for me so I, I was never able to, to get around. I, I've seen it many, many years ago but, but I never, I only got the, the empty box as a, as a souvenir for holding papers.
- [09:37]
B
So for folks that, that went past a little quickly back in the oh gosh, 1980s.
- [09:45]
A
Yeah.
- [09:47]
B
David and lots of us applying his methods were using a system called in the US it was called Time Design and in Europe Time System and that originally came from Denmark.
- [10:01]
A
I know that system and was, it was yeah too expensive and high end. So I had small calendars and notes.
- [10:13]
B
Yeah.
- [10:15]
A
And starting, I think the first system I started using was Remember the Milk? On a website. I had something else on my Android phone but I was very determined that I shouldn't switch to an iPhone. But then I heard so much praise for the Omnifocus. I finally caved in and bought one and then used Omnifocus for ten years before I two and a half year ago went to Apple Reminders.
- [11:01]
B
You were an early user of Omnifocus too. I don't remember exactly when that came out but I think you were one of the earliest versions.
- [11:09]
A
I bet it was a version one but not, it's been around for some time before I started using it.
- [11:23]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Well thanks for orienting us about not just where you are in the world but the significance of where you are in the world to the kind of the development arc of productivity from paper up to digital too. That's you, you've captured a whole lot in a short amount of time.
- [11:42]
A
Yeah. And, and I've been thinking a long time of, of going back to paper. Ah. But it's, it's kept with the thinking about it but, but I, I, I like using paper of course but, but I also like being able to edit, been able to edit fast and I've seen that. I love beautiful notebooks and pens. But for me using a Used copy. Just turn the paper around and reuse it for my thoughts. That keeps my thoughts flowing. But if I have this very nice pen, very nice notebook I really struggle with, then it should be a very good thought. I should write down.
- [12:47]
B
Yes. If I have high quality paper and pen, I have to be putting high quality stuff on the paper.
- [12:54]
A
Yeah. So just to avoid that I use digital tools. I can always rewrite. I use used papers or a very cheap paper just to, to be able to. Yeah, write down anything down and, and capture. That's, that's my, my number one really good at capturing was meeting a few Danish GCDs pre summer camp. It was probably the, the visit to a summer house that led to, to the summer camp. And I was, I was driving from, from from home and going to an environment that you're not used to sparked a lot of thinking and ideas. And going to, to, to meet two other GTDs in a summer house sparked ideas. So I was delayed for 10 minutes because I, six times during the little hour trip to, to the summer house I had to stop the car because I had more, more than one idea. So in order not to forget it, I, I stopped the car and wrote it down. And of course they teased me when I arrived.
- [14:31]
B
They said you would have been here 30 minutes ago but you had too many ideas.
- [14:36]
A
But switching the environment, that usually sparks some, some other ideas than I usually have when I yeah. Bike at home. So and you know, you should just capture them. I can't remember if they were important or I've used them afterwards. But there were ideas that I thought was good enough to stop the car.
- [15:05]
B
That's a good quote. An idea that's good enough to stop the car.
- [15:09]
A
And meeting in the summer house with the two other TTDs. We had some very good talks and some foods and really enjoyed it and took some, some pictures and posted in our Facebook group. And then we had Morton commenting in, in, in the Facebook group saying summer camp. And we said oh, let's rent a summer house and, and, and meet 10, 10 other TTDs that that could be a good idea.
- [15:45]
B
And was that the very first summer.
- [15:47]
A
Camp that, that led to the first summer camp.
- [15:52]
B
Okay.
- [15:54]
A
And we were talking what was possible. But it was just after they had, we had the lockdown and things were opening up again. It seems that all of Denmark had so many postponed parties and things they wanted to celebrate. So it was almost impossible to find anything to rent. So we ended up in an old observatory from the University of Copenhagen, the profile observatory. We were able to rent a room there. And when they exhibition closed around 4 or 5, we were able to. To go into the main building, have the rest of our summer camp in the. In the evening there. And when they opened again at 10 o', clock, we we moved to. To the. A very very used education room. They they had. It was the beginning. We have 23 participants from. From six different countries.
- [17:09]
B
That's quite a representation. Yeah, that's, that's a lot of countries for just 23 people. And how about the years following that? I I believe the. The chart of the growth goes like something like straight up almost.
- [17:25]
A
Yeah. But after that we organize the food. We arranged a restaurant to prepare it and brought it to us in the evening. And when I say an observatory, remember this is Denmark, so it's dark, but it's only 90 meters above sea level. So 100 yards is very flat. We're not in the mountains.
- [17:57]
B
And was this held during the summer when you barely have any any darkness during the day?
- [18:03]
A
It was. It was September, so we we had a little little. We have some darkness. Yeah. Also in. In Denmark during summertime. So it's. It's. It's getting darker in. In the summer. Not not completely dark, but there's no midnight sun. You need to go 2,000km north to be able to see that.
- [18:31]
B
Got it. I'm used to talking with some of the GTD enthusiasts who are in Norway or even further north in the country in Norway and anytime I talk to them it's daylight outside their windows in the summer. In the winter it's always dark of course.
- [18:51]
A
So the other side it is same coin and and. And from the first summer camp. Yeah we we were meeting there talking about. We. We. We had five, six people made some some pre presentations of of. Of. Of something they they not usually he was talking about was from the community and we have Martin Hagen that was involved with GTD in Sweden and Morton also. But we're asking them not to bring the usual presentation but try to talk about something something else. And and we actually had a very good quote talking after the presentations in in the evening on on Saturday from from. From Bjorn in in Sweden that he said. I didn't knew I missed the GTD summer camp before I went to the. Before I went to the summer camp when he said that I I need to hold that. I need to write that down because we. It's such a good quote because we we had no idea what we. What we started and and what it meant for for people to to come together. And meet other people talking the same language. Finally I could talk about lists and note taking devices and be understood in instead of people shaking their head.
- [20:46]
B
I totally understand that you're with people who understand the kinds of things you're saying. Look, I found a new pen and they'll be just as excited about it as you are.
- [20:58]
A
Exactly.
- [21:00]
B
Speaking of that that leads me on a somewhat of a tangent off of here which is what about your friends and family? Do you, do they ask you about it at all? Do you try to tell them even if they don't ask you about it?
- [21:17]
A
I was a little bit clever because when last was about to get his certification for the level one seminars he needed to to do some some test seminars and I, I volunteered and said I can arrange that a small company that were able to take care of the costs. And so I invited my, my wife and daughter and my father and five other people and, and we met with us in, in a small room here in, in the countryside and helped him get his certification. And, and, and and for me I was thinking now a lot of friends and family they they can learn GTD and other. I've been around the GTT working for, for 10 years so I'll just be there also for, for fun and, and of of course I, I was the one learning the most.
- [22:41]
B
That's always how it is for me. I've taken that GTD course so many times and there's always something in my experience that's because I'm different when I take the course than I was the last time. So I have a new set of, I have a new set of frameworks experiences to relate to it. So it's always new because I'm different.
- [23:02]
A
Taking that seminar then that it was in 2015 and the next year I found an old mail writing to Morten, Rick and Lars asking about was a Level 2 seminar available and, and they were not ready in, in 2016. So, so I, I went to London through Next Actions Associates and had the level two seminar there with Chuck Brown. Fantastic. Going going to a different country with a room full of people really wanted to, to learn more about gtd. It was amazing.
- [23:56]
B
And that was level two you said?
- [23:58]
A
Yeah.
- [23:59]
B
Ah, so these were all people who were already quite familiar with GTD and wanted to get an even deeper understanding of it.
- [24:07]
A
Coming back from, from from London it feels like I had learned to ride a motorcycle. A very small one. But after the Level 2 seminar I felt I was giving a huge spike and I was almost not able to steer it Opened so much for me, the possibilities and all the ideas and didn't have my practice ready to handle all that. Quite overwhelming to be at the Level 2 seminar. But I got so much out of it. It was amazing. And later, two years ago, we were able to get the Level 3 seminars in Denmark also. So I joined when last starting to have the Level 3 seminars in Copenhagen.
- [25:16]
B
Wow, you have been at this. I was going to use the word religiously, but that's maybe taking it a little too far. But you've been very diligent about deepening your practice over time.
- [25:31]
A
Yeah. And of course I was also so lucky to be able to go to the GTD summit in Amsterdam in 19. My wife found the best gift for my 50th birthday and it was a ticket to the summit.
- [25:55]
B
Oh, okay. She knows you well. Apparently.
- [26:00]
A
She might have seen a book or two of DTD around the house.
- [26:04]
B
Has she? Or have the others in your family stayed with it much? Do they still practice some parts of it?
- [26:11]
A
My, my father does and, and my, my wife doesn't. But we, we have, we have some shared lists. When we were going to. To our summer vacation, I was able to. She was asking about a list of things to remember and I was able to bring the, the one from. From last year able to share it within. Within five minutes. So of course we have. Here's the list of things we need to pack. Yeah.
- [26:47]
B
And I, I think when we first started about talking about doing this recording, you said, well, I have to wait until after the middle of July because I'm going on vacation. So you're just back from vacation, I think.
- [27:01]
A
Yeah, just a weeks of vacation with the family and my father and all.
- [27:09]
B
Well, what about future summer camps? Do you already have dates lined up or a place reserved or how much organization is already done for that?
- [27:20]
A
We have already told everybody that a new summer campus is coming. The second summer camp for ourselves and the participant. We were able to move to a conference center at Kobestan. It's located on the island Sealand, same place as Copenhagen. So our international airport is one and a half hour drive from. From the venue. So that's fairly okay. And the people coming from the other side of Denmark, it's also closer to them. And we had 33 participants the next year from nine countries. And that's the conference I talk about as we break for nobody. We were so enthusiastic to bring information and presentations to the participants that we didn't focus that much on having breaks. So the third summer camp we introduced a lot More breaks. And in the third summer camp we had 45 participants also from nine countries. And we had a guy coming from Germany with the famous quote I found my tribe. So he's been doing a GTD for himself for a long time. Coming to see us it was so amazing and what we have been so lucky about is that 50, 60% of the people coming to the summer camp has been to a summer camp before. So for us it's very easy to get the summer camp vibe or the feeling and a lot of people know each other and what to expect and bring the new participant into to the community. So we're so lucky about that. This year we had 57 participants from 13 countries. Sometimes we have a headline and this year was together and a lot of focus was about the the new team book. Having Ed Le Monde on on a zoom call. David has been so. We've been so lucky having David to to to call in for a Q and A for for all the four summer camps.
- [30:28]
B
Yeah.
- [30:28]
A
So supporting the the summer camp movement and even though it's, it's the community that organized it, we have so great support from GTD in Denmark Virtual Learning and also from the Nordic with Modern Warwick. It makes it so much easier having that support. And the last summer camp we had I think six people coming from from us we have one was in a business trip in in France went to the the summer camp and flying back to to Hong Kong. So we really been around the the globe very much. We we actually had a quite a amazing quote also from from this summer camp Tillen from from. I signed up for the interesting content. I enjoyed the nice location and I returned for the amazing people.
- [31:37]
B
To me that's the specialness that you seem to have captured. I haven't been to one myself yet, but I would like to. But everybody I talk to says something close to that. It's the content of course all of that but it's the people. It's that sense of a tribe, a community that has, has so much in common.
- [32:01]
A
Yeah. And and when I highlight what I've the best thing from from the GCD summit it was the breaks talking.
- [32:09]
B
So that's quite different from the first first summit where you said we break for no one and then you found that people really enjoy the breaks.
- [32:19]
A
Yeah, we we. We really we get so much value from, from talking to each other and seeing what problem other people have. Sometimes it's similar problems and oh you struggle with the same or oh, you found a solution for that. I can be inspired by what we plan to to have the the fifth summer camp in the weekend of the 14th to 15th of June.
- [32:57]
B
We're going to make a note of that. Okay.
- [33:00]
A
And and because we we. We have a little more than half of the people coming from abroad we usually have a Friday dinner this time the 13th June but everything will be on the GTDSummercamp.com last was very clever to buy a domain name that just send it to the Danish Vital learning page.
- [33:37]
B
Got it.
- [33:37]
A
So we use the same link to people every year and we we usually around October have the plans ready for early birds tickets to be available. Yeah.
- [34:00]
B
I have a silly question here. With so many people attending from all over the world, what language do most of the presentations happen in? I assume it's English, but maybe not.
- [34:14]
A
And it's been English all the time because even like the Danish and Swedish and Norwegian are quite similar. Especially for younger people at different. It's too difficult to speak so you usually switch to English quite, quite fast. So every presentation and almost all the talks between participants is in English.
- [34:50]
B
Okay. Do you have back to that whole idea that the community is such a big part of the experience there. Do you have a limit planned on how many you'll have room for at next summer's camp?
- [35:09]
A
There's a limit, a physical limit at the place we currently have and it's quite nice because it's not within a city, it's located near a beach. We have a one hour walk and talk where I have been pairing up people. So they walked two and two around the beach and talk about their specific problems and getting to know each other a bit. And what was just thought as oh that a little bit odd idea then that's actually really appreciated by the participants to be able to have this, this walk and talk. And and usually we, we have planned for the middle of Saturday to have a break but due to Danish summer weather we have the last two times we, we have moved it to a little bit to avoid some rain.
- [36:24]
B
Yeah.
- [36:24]
A
But usually it's nice weather. 20 degrees. I think it's around 70.
- [36:32]
B
I think it was. It may have been Morton that I read about who after this last summer camp he said something like his favorite part of the summer camp was that walk and talk where he got to know one or two people much more directly than he would speaking with a whole group or something like that.
- [36:54]
A
Yeah. And. And we we also have have a session with a weekly review for one or one and a half hour where we sit sitting in a room with 40, 50 people to all doing their weekly review, the concentration and, and the focus, it's, it's such amazing to experience that.
- [37:27]
B
Yeah, I would imagine that something like an electrical storm where there's so much energy flashing around from all these people doing this thing that they know is very important, but it's always hard to.
- [37:39]
A
Get to and, and you can just look around and when everybody else is sitting focused, it's oh, I also need to focus. And we like to have it usually Sunday morning because you get a lot of ideas from the day before, need to readjust and look at your system. And that's been a really great experience and I hope we able to have around 60 to 80 people at the summer camp.
- [38:31]
C
I'd like to give a short message to those of you who've been participating and playing with GTD Connect for a while and sort of remind you that all, all of us with this GTD methodology and this set of practices go through cycles. I still go through cycles myself initially. There's kind of the inspiration and there's a lot of material to ingest and to get familiar with. And so people oftentimes when they first come onto Connect are just potentially overwhelmed by how much information there is. In a way it's just a huge library where we've been able to archive so much different information from so many different perspectives and people and points of view and so understood that it's like walking into a library. Oh gee, where do I start? So that's oftentimes the initial phase of this and many people after a year or two probably get on some level or some plateau where they go, well I kind of got it now, I've got my system set up and everything's fine and I'm fine tuning. And you may find yourself at that point also finding yourself saying, gee, I'm now becoming a resource of this methodology for people around me, people asking me for assistance and help in this. And we've seen in the forums a number of people now sharing ideas about how to get your teams more involved or families more involved with this information. So some of that information is in there as well. But I think you'll find yourself going through cycles of this and you may find that much like if you've ever read a software manual. I remember when I learned Microsoft Word begin with for instance, I read the manual, wow, this is really cool. And I started to use the tool and didn't need the manual anymore. As a matter of fact, a good example of that right here, the manual for this camera that's taking this picture right now. Initially, I read this, got it all set up. That's really cool, and that's really fine. And so pretty much everything was onto cruise control. I didn't need to go back to my library to make this really work. And then, of course, as I started to get more sophisticated in terms of the stuff I wanted to do, got more inspired about some things I saw other people are doing. I go, how do I do that? Went back to the manual. I went, oh, God, I didn't realize I could do that. I didn't realize I could do that. And I remember at least two or three iterations of going back to Microsoft Word back in the days when there actually was a manual for that, as opposed to just all online and realizing, oh, my God, I didn't realize that, oh, I could do that now. I could do that now. And I think that's what you might find with Connect, too, is that it's a gold mine of stuff. Well, many people have read getting things done more than three or four times, and every time they read it, they get something new out of it. So I think you may find Connect the same way and probably even easier, because, hey, it doesn't take much to just click on, surf around, see what might be new or what might be of interest to you, and pay attention. There's more than meets the eye in there.