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- [00:00]
Amelia
Foreign.
- [00:10]
Jon Forester
Hi everyone, this is Jon Forester and I'm here for another GTD Connect Office hour. As usual, this is an open discussion. We can talk about any GTD topic or wider productivity topic that you would like to bring up something. Hi Camille.
- [00:31]
Camille
Hi, John. Are you.
- [00:33]
Jon Forester
Are you joining us from Brazil?
- [00:36]
Camille
Yeah.
- [00:38]
Jon Forester
Wow.
- [00:39]
Camille
I live in Rio.
- [00:41]
Amelia
Okay.
- [00:43]
Jon Forester
How nice to see you there. I mean, we've had emails a few times in the last month or so and I thought I remembered that you were in. In Brazil, but great to see you.
- [00:54]
Camille
Nice. Well, I noticed that I capture a lot of things throughout the day, which often leaves me feeling overwhelmed when it's time to process. I'm wondering, over time, do capture items naturally decrease as I refine my system or it is normal to always have a high volume because lately I've been experiencing resistance when capturing because of this overload. I often wait until I have enough energy so I don't process things poorly, but then I feel like I'm missing opportunities to use those small windows of time. Yeah, that's it.
- [01:45]
Jon Forester
I hear at least two really, really good questions in there. The. Let me talk about the second one first, and I'm just going to talk for a moment while others think of what they would like to say, because I want to hear what others have to say about this too. So the, the second question I heard you talking about is when you wait until you feel like you have more energy to do it, I happen to think that's a smart thing to do because it takes energy, it takes mental horsepower, mental strength to do a good job at clarifying what you have captured. I think it's a very smart thing to do to wait until you're. You're at a. An up point. More to do the, the clarifying. If you're clarifying when you're in, in any way in a down energy pattern, it could show up in the quality of what you clarify. You could end up with something on your lists that you look at later and go, I don't understand what I meant by that. That's why I think it's smart to clarify when you're at your best instead of when you're not. If you have the chance to do that, and then at some point you'll probably get to say, well, I've been waiting to be at my best for a week now, and my list of captured stuff is growing. The tension of having unclarified stuff is greater for me than the chance that I might do it when I'm not at my best. Let's give anybody else a chance to chime in, too.
- [03:14]
Amelia
I can chime in in the sense that I. If I understood you, Camille. Am I pronouncing your name correctly? Camille. Camille. Yeah, sometimes. Like, it just happened this morning that I had some things to capture on my. I kind of have an intake list, and I don't know if your process setup is different. There's a place in my tool where I can add it, but then if I'm using my phone, if it's on the desktop, it's easy. I just put it right where I want it to go. If it's on my phone, I actually have to, like, drag it up. And sometimes just that will be a barrier for me deciding that I want to add it in the first place. So I don't know if the resistance you were talking, or you might not have even used the word resistance, but the feeling that you're having, is it around actually capturing the ideas in the first place or the resistance to processing them and clarifying them later?
- [04:14]
Camille
It's in the clarifying process. I capture a lot of things, but then I look at the pile and then just get. It makes me overwhelmed.
- [04:26]
Amelia
Yeah. So it's not that you have resistance capturing the items in the first place. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. I can have a. I can just offer you a sense of shared reality, that it can be a lot.
- [04:40]
Jon Forester
Thanks for that, Amelia. I've heard many, many people say this. They're capturing so much. Where does it all go? When will I have time to. You're at a great place. It means you understand the GTD principle of capturing and the importance of that. That's a. That's a great first step. Lots of people don't even get that far. They just have uncaptured stuff rattling around in their minds and live that way. The fact that you understood that capturing has a potential benefit for you is great. Good for you. I can say that I think it will get easier and better. Often when people first start doing this, they have so much on their minds. It's almost like they've got this backlog of many years, depending on how many years they've been keeping stuff on their head. They have a backlog. It's not endless. That's one of the things that some people worry about, is it might be infinite. I'll never catch up. And that's not been my experience, either personally or with people I've talked to. You may find things that show up repeatedly. There are reasons for that, and that can be managed. You. You may find that it backs off some once you start clarifying it more. And that part of you inside starts to trust that when it generates an idea, you'll capture it, and then eventually you'll clarify the captured thing and decide whether it's something to take action on or not. You'll start to trust yourself more because of doing this, and it's like practicing a new muscle or something like that. I was doing some new exercise yesterday that I hadn't really done before, and I found myself working, whining out loud afterward, going, ow, that hurts. I'm not used to doing that, so it hurts. Ulrike says. I agree that it can feel overwhelming. Personally, I found it helpful to use Chat GPT for processing support. Sometimes my head gets crowded just by figuring out what something means, and it might have multiple meanings too. Good.
- [06:41]
Camille
That's interesting because I try to use ChatGPT especially for planning projects, but I just didn't feel connected to that project. That plan, I don't know. And then I decided that I needed that time, I needed that pen and paper to actually plan and feel connected to the purpose of that project and the principles. And I think it can help if you need some ideas. But at the end of the day, you have to set the terms.
- [07:24]
Jon Forester
Ulrike said multiple meanings. And that's a big part of why it takes more effort to clarify what you've captured, because you're deciding what it means to you. And as Ulrike pointed out, it could have multiple meanings. It's one thing if it's a BAM email that you look at and go, this means nothing to me. I don't need to apply any of my brilliance to it. I'm just going to delete it and that's clarified and out of your system. Things can have multiple meanings. ChatGPT may be able to help some with that. The quality of the response you get from ChatGPT may depend a lot on what you type into the as a prompt for it too. ChatGPT does its best to understand what your context is, so the more context you give it, the more it might be able to help. The other thing you just mentioned was you picked up pen, paper and held that and talked about planning. So the the other thing with clarifying is that it helps to do it slowly enough that you're not trying to do a whole lot of things at one time. As far as if you're clarifying, it's a very simple set of questions and answers. If you're getting to the point where you're planning that to me suggests that maybe you've already decided something is actionable and that it's a project and that it needs to have plans. And that could all be further down the road in the clarifying what you brought up about having so much to capture and it's kind of overwhelming. That wouldn't be a problem if you were not such a creative, inventive, thoughtful, bright person. That's the problem. You're a creative, thoughtful, bright, inventive, intelligent person. So you come up with lots of things and you look at one thing and you can think of 17 other things that branch off of it that are possible. Kind of like the multiple meanings Ulrike mentioned. So that's where the clarifying diagram helps the methodology guides a few pages in it has what's called the clarifying diagram that helps break it down. It'll slow down your brilliant mind while you cap. While you process what you've captured. And it'll help you to not jump ahead to project planning when you haven't even decided if it's an actionable item yet. Because if you slow down the clarifying, you might find out, yes, it indeed is a project. But I'm not going to commit to doing it now. I'm going to put it on my someday maybe list instead. If it's on your someday maybe list, you don't need to put the effort into planning for it. So you see where I'm going with that is my recommendation is to make it easier with easier to clarify what you've captured by using that clarifying diagram to make the clarifying slowed down so you don't outsmart yourself.
- [10:29]
Camille
Now I'm thinking about it and actually planning take takes a lot more than two minutes. So it's the next.
- [10:38]
Jon Forester
There you go. See, you already understand so much about the methodology. Exactly. If you get into the planning of it, then you've gone from the clarifying process into the engaging the doing process. So you jumped ahead by four steps in the five step model. Amelia says, I'm realizing that as I capture something, generally speaking, I'm putting it on in the list, clarifying it at that moment that they sit so close together, the clarifying and the organizing with some things that are fairly simple. Yeah. As soon as you clarify this is what it is and it's actionable, you just put it on a list right away. It doesn't. They happen so quickly that it's almost like one thing. It's for larger things that have may have multiple meanings or not a clear Meaning that I say slow it down and don't try to organize it until you've clarified it. Chuck says my small piece of advice for Camille is go for quantity over quality when capturing. But during the clarify stage, do not feel obligated to move forward with attaching a project or next action to the vast majority of the stuff you've captured. When I first started and restarted and restarted gtd, that initial purge of stuff and subsequent consistent capturing feels so good at first, but can quickly turn to objects that add to resistance when you're faced with making sense of it all. That's a common roadblock when starting gtd. Yes, indeed. Just breathe, stay on top of your in baskets, and don't feel an obligation to take action on everything that comes your way. Well, that seems like good advice.
- [12:26]
Camille
Yeah, I feel that resistance is something like, oh, I already have so much things to do. Yeah, but maybe those things, those new things need to go to my someday maybe list.
- [12:39]
Jon Forester
They might. Yeah, they might. That's the other thing is often when people learn about capturing, I find it's helpful to remind people that what you capture is not a to do list. What you capture is a list of stuff that's coming out of your mind that you want to externalize so you can be objective about it. But it's, it's, it's not a to do list. It doesn't mean you've committed to do anything except at some point look at it and clarify it. There's no commitment to complete do anything like that. That stuff that often helps people too, because they think, oh, if I, if I get it out of my mind and put it down on paper or in my digital system, I have to do it, then as long as it's in my mind, I can pretend that it's not really a commitment. It's not a commitment when you get it off your mind either. You haven't clarified it yet, so. And even when you do clarify it and decide that you're committing to it later on in your review, you can say, I changed my mind. I'm going to move that to someday, maybe now, or delete it all together.
- [13:46]
Camille
Thank you for all your answers. This was very helpful.
- [13:53]
Jon Forester
Yeah, it looks like you, you got several people here thinking and coming up with their own inputs on this and how they've handled it. So thanks for asking a question that stirred involvement from all of us. I said there's a reason why something might show up in your cap. In your capturing. It might show up more than once. And people often Think, well, my mind is broken. Or how does capture work if I keep rethinking the same thing over, over and over and I keep recapturing it. Why often that happens because how you've captured and clarified it before didn't really satisfy your mind. Maybe you decided there's no commitment for it and some part of you still thinks you should have that and you just need to have a finish the conversation with yourself. Or maybe the way you captured it, you called it a project, but it's really an action and some part of you inside knows that and wants you to relook at it. Or you called it an action, it's really a project and some part of you inside says I want you to re look at that. And that's why I'm bringing this up during your mind, your mind sweep capture. Again, pay attention to that part of you that mentions things more than once. Chuck says I feel like resistance isn't talked about enough. Literally any feeling that keeps you from fully implementing GTD or any personal management system for that matter can be labeled resistance. Webinar idea. Yeah, resistance, friction, drag in your system. Any of those are things to be watchful about for sure. And those can show up at pretty much any point in your GTD implementation. Capture, clarify, organize, reflect, engage. If you've got resistance showing up there, that's for sure something to pay attention to. Actually that's a great kind of open ended question. Anybody on here. When you're thinking about how you implement gtd, are there places where you've got resistance, hesitation, drag, friction. It takes longer than you think it should. Any label you want to put on that, that, that feeling of this actually.
- [16:16]
Camille
Remind me of one of the reasons I actually have some resistance that is procrastination. I feel my lists are like I'm using a very good tool. Everything is clarified like it's going well but I just don't feel I don't want to do those things. But even if I feel that I need to. Any thoughts on that? Any strategies that you guys do to help with that? I mean I don't know, just I feel that even if it's something that is on my calendar and that I know that I need to do that day, I sometimes think like oh, I just can tell people that I'm sick and renegotiate that or something but at the end of the day I just, I could do that. I, I had like energy, I had time. But I just, I, I get, I guess I'm use it to procrastinate things.
- [17:35]
Jon Forester
Well, let's go first to Amelia's comment. Could it be anything to do with a misalignment with higher levels? Does what she said make sense, or do you want me to say more about higher levels?
- [17:50]
Camille
Makes sense, but I feel I'm just re implementing GTD after a long time. So I don't have much didn't work out on this horizontal focus. So I'm still building my areas of focus and then up and up. But.
- [18:06]
Jon Forester
Right, right.
- [18:07]
Camille
Because I don't have this perspective right now.
- [18:11]
Jon Forester
Yeah. So she's. Amelia is absolutely right. It could have a. To do with a misalignment there. So I remember a time when this was years ago. I was at a job where I had some project on my list, and I kept looking at it and going, I don't want to do it. I didn't feel right. And I realized eventually my job description had changed, and I never updated that project to match the job description. So no wonder I was resisting doing. Didn't. It didn't fit what. What my new job description was part of. It wasn't even mine to do anymore. So that could be. That's kind of an example of a misalignment with the higher levels there. But it could be, again, that the problem is you're so creative and intelligent that you jump ahead to imagining that when you do it, it won't turn out as well as what you think it should be, and negative consequences will result from that. You'll. People give you negative feedback or you'll end up in jail or pushing a shopping cart in poverty or something like that. Those are extreme examples. When David used to do live seminars, he would talk about procrastinating, about completing a tax return because there were so many things that could go wrong with it and ways to fill it in wrong and. And all that. And then he would suddenly go, oh, all of a sudden, in my mind, I've put myself in jail for tax fraud, and no wonder I don't want to do my tax return. So it could be that you're imagining a negative outcome, and you could feel more drawn to do those things by imagining a positive outcome for them.
- [19:55]
Amelia
Instead, I think it's something like a.
- [19:58]
Camille
Perfectionism that I'm not doing that good enough and I will receive a negative feedback and do it again and again.
- [20:07]
Jon Forester
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I bet a lot of us can raise our hand and say, I'm guilty of the perfectionist thing. I was working on something last week and I kept reminding myself of that saying that goes something like the perfect is the enemy of the good or the good enough. I kept saying, John, what's good enough here? Not what's perfect, what's good enough.
- [20:29]
Camille
Thank you. I'll note that.
- [20:32]
Jon Forester
Yeah. And I'll look for. I'll look for something around that procrastination he had. He. David talks about anxiety because of imagining some negative outcome and also apathy. You just really, truly don't care about it. It's probably. It may not be valid for you any longer. You're not committed to it any longer, doesn't fit your job description. There could be valid reasons for procrastinating. Here is I'm going to pop in a link to a webinar that David did on procrastination. Okay. I'm only laughing because Amelia already put the link in there. Thank you. That's the one. That's the, the webinar link I was about to post too. That's David talking about procrastination. I actually heard from a book author recently who had an approach to procrastination. And I looked at it and thought, there's some good ideas in there, but they aren't going to work for a lot of people because part of what her suggestion was to. To deal with that was to have what I would call closed lists. Lists that you don't add anything to. So today you decide what your list is going to be for tomorrow and you, you don't change it. For me, life moves too fast and changes too much to think that I know today what's going to show up tomorrow. What if tomorrow I find out I have a rich uncle who died and left me major fortune and it's a life changing amount of money, but I need to respond to the lawyer for the inheritance right away. Otherwise it goes to somebody else. Do I want to stay with my closed list and go, nope, I didn't plan to. I didn't plan to inherit a fortune today, so I'm not going to allow that into my to do list today. Or do I want to say I'm going to be flexible and allow this in? I generally think flexibility is helpful, but some people find that being a bit more structured and rigid can help them with procrastination. They just say, nope, I'm not going to think about all the other things. I'm only going to make myself do this. So a lot of it depends on what works for you. Procrastination takes on many faces. It's coded and embedded into deep corners of our psyches. It Distorts our perception. Most people who try to address it only hack at the branches and don't dig deep to the root of the issue. I recommend the work of Dr. Bill Noss, K Naus for further reading on the topic of procrastination. Thanks for that. Thank you. That was Chuck and Amelia says, I agree with what you're saying, John. Personally, I found that rigidity, rigid thinking paves the path of non effectiveness for me. I remember, Gosh, back around 2007 or eight, I read a book that advocated having what the author actually called closed to do lists. His approach was what you do today is never what comes in today. You're only today working on stuff that was already on your lists from a day or three days or a week ago. I guess he wanted people to feel really comfortable that they could control their futures. But his approach to today was, I'm only going to work on what I already put on my list. Up to this point, no new input is allowed today.
- [24:19]
Camille
But at the same time, I mean, life happens and some. Sometimes you need to do something urgent, unexpected, and if you have like that rigid plan and things change, you might end the day like, oh, I wasn't productive at all, you know.
- [24:41]
Jon Forester
Yeah.
- [24:42]
Camille
And you don't need to feel bad about the things you didn't do, right?
- [24:48]
Jon Forester
Yeah, exactly. My. My life shows up in surprising ways and always has. Being that rigid just has never worked for me. That's why I like gtd. And David will tell you over and over and over, he. He came to this because he wanted more freedom, not less freedom. He wanted to have more choices. He wanted to have everything externalized on a list so he could look at it and know what he previously committed to and then with complete confidence be able to say, I'm not going to do any of that right now. I'm going to do something entirely different because I know what I'm not doing.
- [25:39]
Chuck
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 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, you know, 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, you know, 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, 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. I remember at least two or three iterations of going back to Microsoft Word back in the. 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, you know, 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.