Ep. 327: Slice of GTD Life with Bryan

Summary

Podcast Summary: Getting Things Done — Ep. 327: Slice of GTD Life with Bryan

Date: September 10, 2025
Host: John Forrester (GTD®)
Guest: Brian Darr
Theme: Exploring a personal journey with GTD, practical application using Trello (and other tools), and the deeper psychological insights behind adopting the GTD methodology.

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Overview

In this episode, host John Forrester chats with productivity enthusiast Brian Darr about his GTD (Getting Things Done) journey, his practical systems—including an in-depth dive into using Trello—and the human challenges of list management, digital overload, and self-compassion in productivity. Brian’s background in Atlassian tool implementation provides an interesting vantage point for the intersection between digital tools and GTD.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction & Bryan’s Background

[00:10 - 02:46]

• Brian works for an Atlassian solution partner, implementing productivity systems for a wide variety of clients.
• Emphasizes he’s not here in an official capacity, but as a “productivity nerd.”
• Finds GTD dovetails perfectly with his work in project management and tool implementation.

2. Discovering GTD: The Long Road to Adoption

[03:04 - 05:21]

• Brian first heard of GTD during university but didn’t act on it until much later (2019).
• Initial awareness came from the book being recommended alongside classics like How to Win Friends & Influence People and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
• Used to move “read this book” from week to week on his analog planner—a classic pre-GTD habit.
• Only seriously engaged with GTD when listening to the audiobook years later on a business road trip.
  • “The number of things that I moved week to week on a physical calendar I just laugh at now.” – Brian [03:38]
• Instant resonance with concepts like the two-minute rule, clear next actions, and cleaning out inboxes.

3. Prior Habits & GTD Reinforcement

[05:21 - 07:26]

• Already practiced Inbox Zero, inspired by Merlin Mann’s “Inbox Zero” talk at Google.
  • “It just totally resonated with me because up until then, my entire life, I don’t think I ever emptied my inbox, like, not even once.” – Brian [05:50]
• Comparison to cleaning rooms: regular small actions avoid big clean-up nightmares.

4. Human Element: Self-Compassion and Future Self

[07:26 - 07:52]

• Developed a practice of cleaning home before travel: “Future me is usually very, very happy.” – Brian [07:29]
• A recurring GTD theme: “Be kind to your future self.” – John [07:36]

5. First Implementation — And First Overwhelm

[07:52 - 12:51]

• Tried to implement GTD thoroughly after initial exposure but became overwhelmed (especially with “capture everything”).
• Dropped GTD for five years, only to return after realizing its importance in executive functioning.
• Shifted from audiobooks to a physical book for the sake of spatial memory and deeper understanding.

6. Deep Dive & Self-Study

[12:51 - 14:18]

• Listened to 100+ GTD podcasts, took copious notes, used a “bottom-up” approach (mastering tools, breaking rules later).
• ChatGPT proved a surprisingly good GTD “coach,” although John notes caution regarding quality of online GTD info.

7. Struggles with Lists and Self-Trust

[11:38 - 13:31]

• Developed a negative relationship with lists: “Present Brian” overloading “Future Brian.”
  • “Present me was always indentured by past me to do things that were already prescribed and to never do what needed to be done in the moment.” – Brian [11:50]
• Learned (through therapy) to free himself from such “indentured servitude.”

8. Tool Talk: Trello as the GTD System

[14:50 - 27:10]

Practicalities of Trello:

• Trello = flexible, digital lists that are nearly as adaptable as paper.
  • “The beauty of GTD is that in the end it is just lists and it is tool agnostic... the tools are left with the responsibility of making your system more convenient, more efficient, and also possibly providing structure and guardrails where you need it.” – Brian [15:42]
• Multiple boards: personal, work, shared with wife, higher horizons (with a humorous “should” on filling it out).
  • “Don’t put a should on yourself. There’s no reason your higher horizons need to be shoulded...” – John [17:10]

Shared Personal Boards

• Shared Trello boards for couple’s reference (e.g. restaurants, date ideas).
• Lists as GTD contexts; temporary “Read/Watch” list during periods of heavy learning.

Features Loved:

• Rich text plus any kind of embedded content (YouTube, Google Docs, etc.).
  • “It’s not just rich text, it’s beyond rich text, it’s any kind of content.” – John [19:58]
• Super fast new list creation; easy archiving; visible status via icons.

Project Linking & Weekly Review

• Links between projects and next actions; makes weekly reviews faster (“Do I have a linked next action?”).

Someday/Maybe Books

• Segregated “Someday/Maybe” list into project books, non-fiction, and fiction.
• Reading fiction (like Lord of the Rings) for joy—a nod to balanced living.

Reference System: Still a Work in Progress

• Acknowledges reference materials are scattered and could be improved.

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9. Work Board: Structure and Delegation

[26:25 - 28:37]

• Work board has a single next actions list and a “Today” list (cleared daily to avoid backlog).
  • Dividers above/below “must do” vs. “optional” tasks.
• Includes delegated projects column, with explicit tracking of “delegated to,” fostering alignment on outcomes.
  • “What you have there is a great approximation of what you do on paper.” – John [28:31]
• Free Trello handles nearly all this; paid features (like custom fields) would be nice but aren’t essential.
• Comment log tracks interactions, requests, and “poke” reminders with dates.

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10. Personal Productivity vs. Team Tools: Trello & Jira

[28:37 - 30:40]

• Trello recently rebranded by Atlassian as a personal productivity tool, distinct from Jira’s “team project management” scope.
• GTD in Trello for personal tasks; Jira for team/complex projects—works especially well when integrating tasks from both realms.

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11. Practical Integrations: Email & GTD Flow

[30:42 - 33:03]

• Gmail integration: paste email URLs in Trello next actions. Emails can be archived and easily retrieved.
  • “This is actually probably a project more than anything, but I can then click back on that URL and it’ll find that email in my Gmail archive...” – Brian [31:19]
• Reinforces proper “Inbox Zero” and breaks the habit of treating your inbox as a to-do list.
• John’s excellent real-world metaphor:
  • “Nobody would think of leaving their paper mail in them. Pulling down of the mailbox, opening it up, taking. Opening the envelope... and then leaving...” [32:21]

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12. Data Storage Reflection

[33:20 - 34:45]

• Data storage is now so ubiquitous that digital archiving of tasks and reference is easy and low-stress.

13. Power of Digital Reference and Multi-Platform Integration

[34:45 - 36:10]

• Linking Jira tickets (work tasks) directly into Trello; real-time sync and status updates.
  • “It allows you to really blend information from multiple systems, which I find super helpful.” – Brian [35:52]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On self-kindness in GTD:

  • “So many things in GTD help with the 'be kind to your future self.'” – John [07:36]
  • “Present me was always indentured by past me to do things that were already prescribed and to never do what needed to be done in the moment.” – Brian [11:50]

• On digital lists' flexibility:

  • “The beauty of GTD is that in the end it is just lists and it is tool agnostic.” – Brian [15:42]

• On healthy productivity:

  • “[Napping] was the most productive thing to do at the moment.” – John [22:58]
  • “It’s not, you know, productivity posturing, it’s actual... people really forget the human element a lot in productivity.” – Brian [23:10]

• On Trello's role as productivity hub:

  • “It’s the closest thing, in my opinion, to an analog list as I could get because it is so flexible. But it’s digital, so it’s synced on every browser I’m on, it’s synced on my phone. It’s got hyperlinks...any kind of content.” – Brian [15:58]

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• 00:10 — 02:46: Bryan’s intro & professional background
• 03:04 — 05:21: Discovering GTD and initial setbacks
• 05:21 — 07:26: Inbox Zero, cleaning, and self-care
• 07:52 — 12:51: First GTD attempt, overwhelm, five-year pause
• 12:51 — 14:18: Deep dive: self-study, podcasts, ChatGPT as coach
• 14:50 — 27:10: In-depth Trello system walkthrough
• 30:42 — 33:03: GTD email workflow, breaking inbox habits
• 34:45 — 36:10: Integration of Jira tickets and productivity boards

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Conclusion

Brian’s journey is a relatable exploration of falling in and out of GTD, merging digital tools seamlessly with best-practice workflows, and (perhaps most of all) learning compassion for “future you.” The fusion of GTD philosophy, psychological insight, and specific tech tips (especially Trello) make this a practical, inspiring listen for GTD users at any stage.

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Final GTD Wisdom (David Allen drop-in at [36:10]):

“All of us with this GTD methodology and this set of practices go through cycles… 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… Pay attention. There’s more than meets the eye in there.” – David Allen

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For listeners and GTD practitioners:

• Consider the tools you use as evolving companions, not fixed solutions.
• The human side (your needs, energy, and self-compassion) is as important as the tactical one.
• Don’t be afraid to revisit, adapt, and kindly reboot your systems as your life changes.

Transcript

[John Forrester]

Hi everyone, this is John Forrester and I'm here for another Slice of GTD Life interview, this time with Brian Darr. Hi, Brian.

[Brian Darr]

Hi, John. Thanks so much for inviting me. I'm really, really excited to be here.

[John Forrester]

Good. It's great to have you here too. I think you're the first interview I've ever done where somebody's office was inside an actual clock.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah, this is a studio. This is like actual wallpaper. It's like somewhat textured, but this is a studio we use for like recording webinars and stuff.

[John Forrester]

Oh, wow. Okay. It was clearly not one of those virtual backgrounds because when you would move it, it didn't show the blur around you.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a, it's a pretty distinctive room, but. But it's got good audio and a good camera. So.

[John Forrester]

Yeah. What part of the world are you in? Can you locate yourself for us? Geographically?

[Brian Darr]

Yeah, I am in St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States right now, which is actually also my hometown. But yeah.

[John Forrester]

Okay. I know you have some interesting things to tell us about when we get into the, the technical aspects of the software you use and that kind of thing. And we can give something away on that when we tell people what you do for work and who you work for. So you want to talk a bit about that you do who you work for to start with?

[Brian Darr]

Yeah. So I work for an Atlassian solution partner and I was kind of have to explain this a little bit also. I'm not here under that guise. Productivity nerd. But so Atlassian makes productivity software and like team based project management software. One of them is called JIRA and others called Confluence, and they use a network of solution partners to do implementations of that. So I've been doing Atlassian implementations for just about the last decade. Like large and small clients implement basically productivity systems, project management systems, you know, business transformation kind of stuff. And it's really fun and I, I GTD actually fits really well into that. But yeah, so that's that. That's also why I, I tend to lean towards Atlassian tools. But. And that's actually how I found you because I had a question about one of your recommendations and so they're happy, happy to be there to talk about it, but also just happy to talk about GTD in general because it's a great system.

[John Forrester]

Great. Okay, well that leads me into the next one, which is how did you hear about gtd? How did you learn about it? How long ago and particularly did it. Did you know about GTD before you started working with the Atlassian products I did.

[Brian Darr]

My GTD journey is very long, I guess, and I, I wish I much like personal finance. Everything else, I wish I'd started it sooner. I would say about five years after the book came out, I was in university somewhere around that time and that book, how to win friends and influence people and like seven habits of highly Effective People kept going around and I had it on a to do list that I moved week to week on my physical planner to read this, which I know now as a gtd. No, no. And I didn't do anything about it until I think like 15 years later in 2019. Yeah. So, you know, could have been so much more productive all those years. Like I just. The number of things that I moved week to week on on a physical calendar I just laugh at now. But in 2019, I got the audiobook and listened to it while on a road trip driving to a client. And like there were so many good things from the first third of the book that I was just really excited about. Like two minute rule. I remember Clear next actions, cleaning out your inboxes. And I was already doing Inbox Zero.

[John Forrester]

Oh, okay, good for you.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah, so, so, so it felt very validating. And as a result of it, I, you know, got to my hotel for that trip and I, I think, I think that that week I, I consolidated all of my to do's into Trello, which is my tool of choice. And, and then, you know, made sure I had clear, you know, I mean, especially the whole like, you know, mom birthday thing really, really resonated with me.

[John Forrester]

Right.

[Brian Darr]

David Allen talks about like, you know, you need to be much more clear about what that is.

[John Forrester]

But moms all over the world for 20 years now have been getting better quality birthday celebrations because of David's work.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah. Yeah. Certainly much more thoughtful ones too.

[John Forrester]

Yes. Okay, so by the time you've got got to that, you were already ready to start implementing it in Trello and you just dived right in. Well, one other detail before I let you get past this was you said you were already at working with Inbox Zero. That's.

[Brian Darr]

Oh yeah.

[John Forrester]

One of the big pain points people often get to when they come to GTD is I have this overflowing inbox, whatever it is, email, social media, Slack, etc. But you were already consistent about getting your ends to zero, is that right?

[Brian Darr]

Consistent enough. I, I think I, I learned about Inbox Zero. I think when I was living in Japan, like, I think I learned it in like, you know, the early 2010s. And I. I watched that video from Merlin Mann that he gave at the Google headquarters, and, yeah, it just. It just totally resonated with me because up until then, my entire life, I don't think I ever emptied my inbox, like, not even once. And. And it sort of reminded me of, like, the first time that I really cleaned my room when I was a kid somewhere in high school. And my grandmother had been telling me for years, you know, if you just do a little bit every day, you'll never have to clean your room again. And my room has not been messy since, but I had learned that the hard way, too. So, yeah, Inbox zero is great. And, you know, hearing. Hearing the, you know, emptying your inbox's piece of gtd, just filter, validating.

[John Forrester]

Got it. Yeah. I. I was lucky enough to have somebody. I had a job where for a week or so, I had to help with housekeeping service at a dude ranch. And I had a. Somebody who ran that crew who taught me something that's helped me ever since, which you already knew, apparently, which was if you clean your room, you won't ever have to do it again. If you. If you keep it clean, you don't have to do it again. And her version of that was, you don't have to clean a clean s. You could apply it to a bathtub or a toilet or whatever. But she said if you keep that. If you keep the sink so that it's clean and the porcelain is slippery, clean, slippery, you won't have to clean it. You can just do a quick swab and everything comes right off of it. I always felt it was the same with inboxes and organization and rooms.

[Brian Darr]

I also have this habit of cleaning my home before going on a trip because future me is usually very, very happ. When he comes home that he doesn't have to do anything other than unpack.

[John Forrester]

Yes. So many things in GTD help with the be kind to your future self.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah, that's a good way to say it.

[John Forrester]

Yeah. So back to what you were saying with you got to gtd. You're on this business trip, and you start implementing it right away.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah. And then I got overwhelmed, and I stopped for five years. It was. So I hit the part about capture everything. And keep in mind, I was listening to this while driving, and there was something about that that just felt overwhelming. And so I stopped listening. Not intentionally, but I got busy, and I really didn't pick it up again until this year when I was reading a book on executive leadership Coaching. And in the first chapter it was describing good executives and bad executives. It was like, you know, this example of a good executive has mastered David Allen's getting things done and they're not worried about productivity. And I was like, you know, before I finish this book, I really need to go back and figure that out. So, so I made it kind of an annual goal. It's actually just a sidebar. My wife and I do this like annual summit every year where we go away over, over holiday in January and we just sort of plan out the year and this is one of my big goals. So. Yeah, and so I picked up the audiobook again, but then realized very quickly that I actually needed the physical book because I needed like sort of a physical map in my brain about where, you know, the, the processing diagram was and I needed to use my spatial memory to keep location of key concepts. I found the physical book actually helped much more than the audio when you got into the implementation. And so, you know, right after that planning summit in January, I really dove in deep for about six months and I'm still pretty deep into it. So I finished the book, I listened to about 100 of these podcasts, took lots of notes, and then just slowly modified my trello lists in place until it turned into, you know, what it is now for me. And I think what I found really helpful about that was that listening to all the podcasts and listening to the actual practical advice that I took a lot of notes on this stuff, I've always taken a very bottom up approach. Like I learned things through tools and so listening to the way that other people did it, it's almost like learning the rules and then practicing the rules so I can then break the rules later for myself. So I found that very, very helpful. ChatGPT was also actually a surprisingly helpful coach. A lot about gtd. I think it's scoured all the forums that are public and you can give it a sort of a. I'm dealing with this problem, you know, how should I. I was asking about, you know, tracking books that I'm reading recently and it was a pretty nuanced answer about, you know, some people do this, some people do this, but if you're a purist, you know, this is, this is the way you should do it.

[John Forrester]

Mm. Yeah, it's, it can be very good and it, as with anything, it, it helps to give it a good prompt question. Depending on the prompt question, you can also get, get some, some pretty awful GTD advice out of it because it doesn't Necessarily, it may go to a website that's got a lot of popularity in search results that doesn't have good advice on it. But it'll say, this website has a lot of people who seem to think it's good, so we're going to give you the. Yeah. Anyway, the other thing you said that I wanted to ask you a little more about was when you realized capture everything was part of the, part of the deal, what about that was daunting or got you kind of stopped for a while.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah, so I, I realized after a while that I actually have kind of a bad relationship with lists. I would use them to say this, like, present Brian would come up with a lot of lists for future Brian to get done. And as I learned over the years, this was present me not really trusting future me. And what that meant was that present me was always indentured by past me to do things that were already prescribed and to never do what needed to be done in the moment. The more I got to know myself, you know, the more I realized, like, maybe the most important thing I can do right now is take a nap or call or do the dishes. And so I was really beating myself up with lists and not really realizing it at the time. The idea of writing everything down just sounded like beating myself up even more. So I just stopped and I was like, oh, yeah, you know, I got some good advice from this, but as David said in the book, it takes a couple of reads and, and you find out new information every time. And I certainly did the next time around.

[John Forrester]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Brian Darr]

Good.

[John Forrester]

Okay. Well, yeah, sometimes people realize, oh, we'll capture everything, and then they start having a look inside their own head and realize, scary place. There's a lot of room in there for everything.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah, well, and you know, I mentioned ChatGPT earlier. You know, this is where I think in person coaching and being a consultant myself, you know, I, there is something amazing about having somebody there that can adapt quickly to your needs. Yes, certainly. I think that is a great way to go. If you have, if you have the time and the means and a person available, that's a great opportunity.

[John Forrester]

It's true. It really is. It's, it's the way to get the most in depth. Yeah. And you did a great job too, with your self study. Listening to podcasts, reading the book, taking notes, that kind of thing. That's. Lots of people won't go to that, that much length to do their own self study.

[Brian Darr]

I, I, I learned a couple years ago from, from my now life that I am somewhere on a neurodivergent spectrum. And so this, this definitely became deep dive special interest. Yeah. And so it was, it was funny hearing, hearing your voice for the first time when we talked a little while ago because I was like, oh, wow, I've heard your voice, you know, dozens of times now on, on podcasts.

[John Forrester]

It switched to the Donald Duck voice for a little bit. Try to throw you off, but wouldn't be able to hold it forever.

[Brian Darr]

Okay, well, thanks for that.

[John Forrester]

Kind of catch up on how you got to GTD and you snuck a spoiler in there a few minutes ago that other people are going to go, oh, yeah, he did mention that. So let's get to the, get to the part of this everybody loves to hear about. What tool do you use and how do you use it and just get into all the nitty gritty you want to with that.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah. So, I mean, it's funny because I do, I do at Lasting product demos a lot too. So I can, I, I came prepared for that as well. But yeah, I've used, I've used Trello for years. I probably bumped into it right around the time Atlassian acquired it because I was already working for an Atlassian partner and I was like, oh, what's this new tool? And I found that years later when I picked this up again, that it adapts really well to gtd. The whole purpose of Trello is that, at least from my experience, that it's really flexible. So part of, part of learning a new process is stubbing your toe and trying things, and trying new things after that and reworking your systems until you get it right and you learn a lot from that journey. And the flexibility of Trello really makes that an easier process, I think. And I think the beauty of GTD is that in the end it is just lists and it is tool agnostic. And therefore I think the tools are left with the responsibility of making your system more convenient, more efficient, and also possibly providing structure and guardrails where you need it. But as you grow, the tool has to grow with you. So that's why I really like, is the closest thing, in my opinion, to an analog list as I could get because it is so flexible. But it's digital, so it's synced on every browser I'm on. It's synced on my phone. It's got hyp links and what Atlassian called smart links, which is basically like embedded content from a URL. It's got all the word processing features that I like much more than Just other regular list tools and. Yeah, so here, I can show you. First of all, Trello is. This is gonna sound like product demo. I really don't mean it to. I just do this a lot. Trello is basically lists that have cards that live on a board, so you can have multiple boards. So I've got a board for personal me, a board for work me. I've got a board that I share with my wife, and I've got a board for higher horizons of commitments. This one is unfortunately currently empty, except for columns of things that I really should fill in.

[John Forrester]

I'm going to say don't put a should on yourself. There's no reason your higher horizons need to be shoulded, filled in or anything like that. If you get to a point where you have attention on it, then sure, fill them in. But if you don't have attention on it, then that's okay too.

[Brian Darr]

I, I appreciate that. Yeah.

[John Forrester]

And then back to your US board there. When you said you share that with you, your wife, does that mean you have shared access to it? She can actually get in there. Don't you? Okay.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Forrester]

So like, terrific feature.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah. Yeah. Trello. Trello was acquired by Atlassian because it was, it was a, I guess, operating in the same space. Atlassian's product, Jira is for much more structured project management. And probably a lot of your listeners use JIRA at work, maybe. I know JIRA can frustrate a lot of people when it's. When it's not set up right, which I think is why people love Trello, because Trello doesn't really have any sort of central administration. People just build the processes they need. And JIRA can do that. I think a lot of people aren't used to that, but. Yeah. So because of that joint project management aspect of the tool, Helen and I both are in that U.S. board. And it has a list of restaurants we want to try, date activities we want to do, restaurants that we enjoy. So if we're shooting on tonight, we're tired. Where should we eat? Usually it's just the hot bar at the local grocery store, but it also has trips we want to take, movies we want to watch. And it's nice just to have that sort of reference system hanging out there for us whenever we need it. I guess we can start with my personal to do board. So this one, it took me a while to figure out, but I use lists as the contexts, except for Read Watch. Read Watch is sort of a temporary list that I'm going to probably just use Until I'm done watching a bunch of reading a bunch of like GTD stuff and articles. And then this list will probably go away. But so for example, here I need a BookNobu for an anniversary and there's this description field and it's like fully editable text. So I can add headers, I can add bulleted lists. This is my favorite example. But I can take content from like let's say YouTube and just drop it in and embed it. And it basically resolves into like full size player. So if I've got Google documents, I need to put in here just about anything. And that's why I like this tool because it's flexible and I can drop in what I need.

[John Forrester]

So it's not just rich text, it's beyond rich text, it's any kind of content.

[Brian Darr]

Exactly. And then I can also add attachments. So if I didn't want to embed that I can add as an attachment or I can add the document that I'm working from down here. I can add checklists and add items that need to get done. I mean, it's just super flexible. And if I need to make a new list, it's as simple as just double clicking and you know, there's my new list right there. Yeah. And so I'm going to archive that list. So for me, I do a list of anywhere at computer calls I need to make currently, things I want to read, watch, things like I can only do at home, errands, agendas. So I've got, you know, things, talk things talk to the next time I go to therapy or you know, things to talk to Helen about, things I'm waiting for. And then I also have notes at the top of some of these that are basically like David Allen Co. Best practice recommendations. So I think I saw, I think I saw on one of your webinars there was a list of, you know, how to choose what to work on. It was in dealing with competing priorities webinar. And so my AT computer list is the longest list I have because I just like a nice workspace when I work on most of the stuff. And so I keep this as a reminder at the top and then questions.

[John Forrester]

What will give me the payoff? What am I? Oh yeah, most things like that, that helps you decide what's the benefit if I do it, what's the cost if I don't? It's really great, great questions.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah, well, I mean, they're, they're from, they're from you guys. Yeah. What, what if done right now would give me the highest payoff. What am I avoiding the most? And what's the value if I do this or the risk if I don't? These were all, I think, from like, David's slideshow.

[John Forrester]

Yeah. What could be the highest personal payoff? And it could be a nap.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah, yeah. That was my own addition because, you know, maybe at that moment, maybe I'm just tired and I'm, you know, just want to. Want to take a break before I, Before I regroup and try something.

[John Forrester]

I remember when we had a physical office in Southern California, the David Allen Company did, and it had glass walls. Most of the walls inside the office were glass. So it was very. It wasn't open, like an open plan office where everybody gets to hear and get interrupted by everyone, but the walls were glass. So it had transparency as a company value and was demonstrated in the architecture. And one of the things that David had a small little foam pad in his office. And there were times when he would just take that pad, drop it on the floor and lie down there. And if you were walking by, you'd see David taking a nap as the most productive thing.

[Brian Darr]

Yes.

[John Forrester]

To do at the moment. And he wasn't. Anybody could see that he was demonstrating that that was the most productive thing to do at the moment. So.

[Brian Darr]

It'S not, you know, productivity posturing, it's actual, you know, I find that wonderful because I think, I think that people really forget the human element a lot in productivity. You know, I was. When I was indenturing future Brian to get stuff done and.

[John Forrester]

Yeah, your phrase, indenturing future Brian, because that sets you up to free Future Brian.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah, yeah, that was, that was from my, from a very smart therapist that helped me figure that out after. Yeah. So I've got, I've got all these lists. I've got my projects list over here. And one of the things that I like about Trello is that you can, you know, I need to, I'm. I need to buy a fan for, for our living room. And I can, I can link other Trello cards. So I've got a Next Action linked here. And then as I click between them, it takes me to that, to that Next Action card. And there's this icon here that shows me, you know, do I have further text in a description and do I have a linked card? So, so when I'm doing a weekly review, I can quickly look and see, you know, do I have a LinkedIn, a LinkedIn X action. And if I don't, then it's a Good reason to dive in and find out why. So this one, I've got some shoulder pain recently and I actually know that I've got physical therapy appointments set up, so I don't need an X action for that.

[John Forrester]

Okay.

[Brian Darr]

And then I got my someday, maybe a big list of books I want to read. And this one's actually broken up into three different categories. One is project book. It's one. Here, I'll show you. It's three different lists. So project books and non fiction and fiction books. And I can hide next items. It's nice because it provides a history of what I've read. And I found that I usually need one from each. And so, you know, project books or books that I'm gonna have a lot of actions on a lot of reflection. Non fiction books that I enjoy reading but, you know, aren't as much fun as fiction. And then fiction is just a reminder that I should probably read for fun. And right now I'm, I'm rereading Lord of the Rings, and it's been delightful and it's. I, I find a lot happier when I'm also reading fiction. But pull that out to make sure that I was reading it.

[John Forrester]

Great.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah. And then I've got some, some reference over here and actually some quotes from, from you guys. But that being said, like, I think my reference system could really be redone. I. It's, it's, it's, it's still spread across Google Docs, Apple Notes, Trello, some other places. So that, that could be a lot better. But. So that's my personal board. And then I've got a work board that's structured slightly differently. This one, I've got one central next actions list, and I've been doing a lot of cleanup over the last week. So this is so much less than normal right now.

[John Forrester]

Okay.

[Brian Darr]

But then because of that and because I try to structure my day at work, which is a little different than my personal life, which is sort of, sort of spreads across everything. I've got a today list that I drag over whatever I think I can get done today or whatever I have to get done today. And this I have to clear out every day because I don't want that to be just a swamp to leave stuff in forever. And if there, if there are things I have to get done, I'll just do three dashes and it'll create a divider and I'll put the things I have to get done above that divider and things that are optional below, you know, just to help you prioritize that or I can just rewrite that too. But.

[John Forrester]

And you have the clear every day at the top of the. As part of the title there.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah, exactly. And then the other, the other difference between this and my personal board is that I've got projects delegated in addition to projects, so.

[John Forrester]

Oh, okay.

[Brian Darr]

And then, and then a reminder that the, that the delegated projects we should be aligned on outcomes to whomever that's. That's delegated to.

[John Forrester]

Oh, and. And you have. Who you delegated it to. That's good practice. Best practice.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah, yeah. And this is all free Trello. I could pay for Trello. There's a lot of great paid features. But, you know, like, this is where the paid version would help because I could have a, I could have a custom field for it instead of just putting the person's name in the title. I could have, you know, a delegated to field that showed up on those cards, but.

[John Forrester]

Well, yeah, you could, you could have that. I'm not sure that it's that much of a, an improvement because as you said at the beginning here, you talked about the. What. What. Imitates an analog system. What, what would you do if you had paper? Well, you'd be writing down pretty much what you wrote there.

[Brian Darr]

Done.

[John Forrester]

And, and then what the project is and like that.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah.

[John Forrester]

What you have there is a, is a great approximation of what you do on paper.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah, yeah. And it, but, but, but with all the conveniences of digital. Yeah. And then you can see here, there's the, there's these comment bubbles. So, so like here you can open up a comment section and whenever I poke somebody, you know, I'll just write, you know, poked today in the comments. And then I have a history, a dated history of the last time that I talked to them. And you know, that was one of, one of David's best practices too is, you know, know when you requested something, so. Yes, that's pretty helpful. Yeah. And. And there's some other, there's some other nice, nice features of this that I use too. One of. Here, let me, let me switch back to. Well, here, I'll just stay here. One of the features that I really like. Trello recently rebranded as a personal productivity tool. I think originally it was designed for teams, but Atlassian, you know, needed to find, you know, product fit between Trello and jira, which. And JIRA is like product project management on steroids. And as someone who mentioned that, I love jira, I think it's wonderful. And if it's set up Right. It can absolutely accelerate your business. But. But there was a real blur between JIRA and Trello. And what they did recently is they, they said, you know, Trello is for personal productivity, Jira is for, you know, team project management. And I like that because I think it really meshes well. You can, you can track and break down your complex projects. Like David says, you know, 90% of projects are just a couple of next steps and you're done over some projects, like if you're implementing a system or, you know, you know, changing a system that involves many people or building software and that you really do have to break down. And so you can do that over in Jira, and then you can track your personal tasks in Trello, because doing a personnel review is not necessarily something that should be in Jira, depending on how your team works.

[John Forrester]

Right.

[Brian Darr]

You can bring in all of that other stuff into this tool. So I just prepped an example here. If you use Gmail, here's an email that ostensibly requires a response. I can copy the URL of that email onto it, respond to Bob, drop it on a Next Action card, link the email, and then I can archive that email out of my inbox, and then I can prioritize responding to Bob amidst everything else I'm doing that day or that week. And then when I'm ready to respond to him after I've done all the research, this is actually probably a project more than anything, but I can then click back on that URL and it'll find that email in my Gmail archive and pull it back, and then it can.

[John Forrester]

You don't have to go back into email and search on it or worry that the URL has changed because you've refiled the email somewhere else.

[Brian Darr]

And I haven't seen this in a lot of other email systems, but it's something I love about Gmail.

[John Forrester]

The fact that the URL tracks from one location to another is so helpful for productivity.

[Brian Darr]

Yes. Yeah. And to the purpose of Inbox zero, it means that my to do list is no longer my inbox or even a folder in my inbox. Everything central in my Trello board.

[John Forrester]

Yes. And that really helps people to get out of the habit of treating their inbox like a to do list.

[Brian Darr]

Exactly. Yeah.

[John Forrester]

That's a key, key habit to get out of doing that we've all been trained to do for so much, so much of our lives, because we weren't really trained on how to, how to treat an inbox like a mailbox, a physical mailbox that you would Empty every day. Nobody would think of leaving their paper mail in them. Pulling down of the mailbox, opening it up, taking. Opening the envelope. Okay, got it. Putting this thing back in the envelope, shoving it back in the mailbox, and then leaving.

[Brian Darr]

Metaphor. Oh, I really like that. I'm gonna use it.

[John Forrester]

Yeah. Who, who would, who would do that? Especially with, let's say you have something sensitive coming where it's a, an envelope that doesn't reveal the contents.

[Brian Darr]

Yeah.

[John Forrester]

Inside it's got your financial information, Social Security number, etc. You wouldn't want to leave that open and put it back in the mailbox or anything. Yet people treat email as if it's something they can just leave in there forever, partly because storage is so cheap.

[David Allen]

So.

[John Forrester]

Oh yeah, mail systems very rarely will tell you you've got too many emails. We're past the days where storage ran out. And people hit email quotas much. I suppose some, some places that still have email quotas, but for the most part, storage is unlimited these days, especially.

[Brian Darr]

In your, in your professional life. And I think Google like a hundred dollars a year for 2 terabytes of storage. And I've got all of our photos in Google Photos and I think I'm only using like 25% of the storage. Like, I'll never hit. And yes, and to pay somebody to, to handle the redundancy and data protection, all of that is $100 a year to me. Seems like a total steal for all of my digital life to be stored in what I think is a safe place. Privacy concerns aside, which I'm sure some people have. But I find it.

[John Forrester]

Right, right. And it's, gosh, I remember years ago I used to be concerned with data protection and redundancy and thinking, all right, so if I have this privacy RAID array and, and then I have a copy of that that's stored off site somewhere else. And how much protection? Oh, yeah, and all that. And if it's spread around the cloud on servers in three continents, it's just not the same concern.

[Brian Darr]

I haven't had to think about raids in well over a decade, which.

[John Forrester]

Yes, exactly. Yes.

[Brian Darr]

Something else that I, I love about using digital tools like Trello is that with these smart links, you know, you, you talk about mixing, you know, personal productivity within work. And just as an example, here's a, here's a sample system of Jira and just a fake ticket that's got random data in it. I can copy the URL from jira. So maybe this is the thing that is assigned to me in my large work tool that I have to do, but I can drop that into Trello. And because they're owned by the same company, I've got this that I can now prioritize amidst everything else, I think. Can I? Yeah, there we go. And I can see the priority. I can zoom out to it and link to that, but I can even change the status of my JIRA work from Trello. So I could mark this as, you know, now it's in progress, and then I could mark it as done within jira. But here it is prioritized amidst everything else I'm working on. So it allows you to really blend information from multiple systems, which I find super helpful.

[David Allen]

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 of us with this GTD methodology and this set of practices go through cycles. You know, I still go through cycles myself initially. There's. 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 or to 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 read when I learned Microsoft Word to begin with, for instance, and I read the manual like, 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 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. You know, there's more than meets the eye in there.