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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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B
Hi everyone, this is Jon Forrester. I'm here for another Slice of GTD Life interview and this time with Sarah Parrott. Hi, Sarah.
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A
Hi John. I'm so delighted to be here.
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B
I'm glad we got this scheduled relatively quickly. Sometimes it can be months between let's have an interview and scheduling this happened faster, which is wonderful. Would you start with where you are and some about what you do? It looks like you might be on planet Earth based on the background.
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So I am located in Arkansas. Let's see, like right, right over there. There you go.
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B
Yes.
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A
Now I'm in, I'm in northwest Arkansas, which is just the best kept secret in the country. It is a gorgeous community. Fayetteville in particular is where I live. But it's a thriving economy. We have great infrastructure. It's beautiful, great weather. It's quite a lovely place to be. So I am working at the University of Arkansas, that's again located in Fayetteville. I'm the director of International Students and Scholars at the University of Arkansas and I've been in this field for 15 years. I love what I do. I started right out of college and have just been, yeah, loving, loving the intersection of, you know, helping people that are non citizens and being on a college campus and you know, there's just so much about what I do that brings me so much joy and so I'm wonderful.
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B
How did you hear about gtd?
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A
Yeah, great question. I was first introduced to it in 2016, so a good, good 10 years ago where I heard about it and I think I actually watched a LinkedIn course on GTV and was curious about it. But I really, looking back I, I wasn't too informed. Like what I thought it was then is not what I think of it as now. And I think I took away, you know, I just skimmed the top. I took away the two minute rule and inbox zero and I had been incorporating those things really well. But I, the way that I internalized it just was I didn't have a project list, I didn't, I didn't identify next action. I didn't have a weekly review. You know, all the things that now I think, well, that's the heart of gtd. How did I miss that? So I, you know, I, I thought I knew about it. I thought I knew more than I came to realize I did. And then, you know, I just, it wasn't as useful for me as it would be now. And so it just kind of set it aside and I have been practicing inbox zero to Just really make sure that I processed things and not just like, kept it in my inbox. And I've done that, you know, since then. But in. Well, in 2021, I became a mother for the first time. I have a four year old now, and I had a great job, but it was manageable, right? Like, I didn't have much leadership. I came to work, I did my work, and I was able to kind of leave it at work and go home and balance that. But then in 2024, actually exactly two years this month, I became a director of our office. And with that, as many people I think, who get promotions find, it was suddenly a very new job. I knew how to do my old job and I did it really well. I know how to process immigration documents. I know how to have a conversation with a student. You know, I can. I can talk about culture, I can talk about American culture. I can do all of that. What I now was doing, though, in my eight hours a day, was not that I was managing the people that do that, but really what I was doing was looking at spreadsheets and trying to tell stories with data, trying to manage a budget, coaching the people on my team who were doing the work that I used to do. And so with that, just exponentially multiplied the items to do, right? And so then thinking of it as, you know, the to do list, that was just pages and pages and realizing that was not sustainable and I wasn't able to leave it at work the same way that I had previously. And. And so, you know, again, as a mom, I wanted to be able to be at home when I was at home, be at work when I was at work. And of course, you know, not that I don't think about my kids while I'm at work or think about work while I'm at home, but I wanted to be able to box that off of my brain a little bit in order to have that. That transition from home life to work life, right? And then I was expecting my second child, which, as in a place of leadership, coming in with another baby. I just knew, I mean, things were just getting to be too much. And I hadn't even had the child yet, and it was about July of just last year. So here we're recording in March 2026. So this is around July 2025.
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B
Mm.
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And I don't want to be too dramatic, but I was at a crisis. It was just too much. It was just. Everything was coming in so fast. I. We. We had some transition in our office and. And so we were short staffed. Our computer system was having troubles like our information system, you know, so they were just. There were a lot of external factors that made it very challenging. And so I thought, I just need, I need something. I need some way to manage it all. And so then I started doing some research and then I popped back up getting things done and I thought, oh, I know what that is. But as I was looking at it, I thought, oh, I just need a refresh. So I read the book and I thought, well, this is new and is life changing.
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B
Had you read the book the first time years before?
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A
No, did not. And would have probably set me up for better success. But I had watched some, I believe it was through LinkedIn, some explainer courses, and so that was all. And so now reading the book for the first time. And I'll be honest, I read the book and then I reread the book and then I downloaded the audio or, you know, found it on Libby and listened to the audio and then I got the. Was it the like Kindle version and read it again. I read it five times in a row. Wow.
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B
Some people read it and reread it, but they usually wait a year or so between. That's why something like that.
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A
Well, I just knew I needed a whole culture shift in my, in myself. And again, as an international educator, knowing the importance of immersion, I just wanted to be immersed in it. I just wanted to swim in it, I just wanted to think about it forward and backwards. And so I, you know, I think that was pretty, probably pretty extreme. But at the same time, within a matter of several weeks, I was able to really reorient my whole way of thinking about work. And through that I didn't have the luxury of like a full, you know, day or two of closed on everything and do the process as he describes in the book. But I did take several hours each day for several days and made sure that I was processing every input that I had a system. Wow. And anyone else in higher ed knows July is important because August is the intake of students. And so I had everything by the end of July. I was gtd, you know, to the max. And of course I'm always learning. And I don't want to say that I'm like this perfect practitioner, but I was, I was just faithfully like I am a practicer of GTD by the end of July. And so that I really credit to a very clean switch in feeling just underwater overwhelmed, I mean, doing the best job I can, but really just responding to as they came To a switch to, okay, I know what needs to be done and there's a plan for it and I can choose to do that work. I can also choose to not do it and maybe like set it aside to do forward thinking work or to just be present with my kid. And so I really just see that as a big shift from reactionary work to conscious work. And again, as a director, that was an important thing. Like I wouldn't be able to really do what I was hired to do if I was still operating in that very reactive mode. And so, yeah, very thankful to this practice.
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B
You definitely dived into the deep end. Then in your first email to me, you said you started in July and were fully implemented by August. That's actually relatively fast. A lot of people, they might get introduced, but take months to get to where they really have complete lists. It sounds like you even spending a few hours a day, you were, you dived right in.
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A
Well, I was, I was just sold. You know, I knew that it was going to be helpful. And so, you know, I think when you, when you know that it will be worth it. You invest in the setup and everything.
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B
And you use the term crisis. I also, it sounds like you also had just a wonderful opportunity. Getting promoted, having more responsibility, new areas of focus, an expanded area of focus with another child coming along, that, that's all wonderful stuff to have to deal with, but it also means your systems probably needed to change in order to accommodate all that.
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A
Yeah, that's right. That's right. And so I, you know, looking at the timeline in August, what I was maybe seven months pregnant and so seven or eight months. And so I'm really glad again the opportunity and the timing that it came to me in so that I really, it set me up well for maternity leave. And that's why I had written in to you because actually was listening to podcast episode and Anna Maria was going over, I think it was about project list and at one point she's describing or maybe a question was how detailed do you need to be? What needs to be on there? And she said something like, well, you should be able to give your job to someone else and they should be able to do your job and, or give your list to someone else and they should be able to do your job. And then she said, not like you'd ever do that, but you should be able to. And I thought, well, I did do that.
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B
Yeah, that's kind of what you're doing if you're going on maternity leave.
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A
Exactly. So. And that is that is how I set up my maternity leave. I have an associate director and before, you know, several, several weeks before the due date, I made sure that my project list was something that made sense to her. And I, and I passed it off. I passed off my project list to her and my waiting on list. And then I just knew that the things that I was responsible for would either move forward if they could, or I would know where to pick it back up when I returned. And so, yeah, when I got back in February, so I had my baby in November and then I was out until February. I came back and Monday I met with her and she gave me back the project list with the notes. And then again I looked at her project list because as a manager now I strongly encourage, require my reports to at least keep a project list so we can use that as our check in point. And really by the end of the first week, I was caught up. Not that I didn't have action items, but I knew the scope of what had happened, where we were at, what to do going forward. And that's pretty incredible. Like I'm able to look at that. It is.
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B
That says so much about what you did to prepare and then to prepare her to take over for you and how well she did based on your tutelage of here's how you organize projects and actions. That's an amazing transition that it went that smoothly.
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A
Well, I thank you for that affirmation, but I want to go back to crediting GTD because it really is, you know, when you organize things in such a way, you, you are able to, to pick it up and then put it back, put it down, right? And then pick it back up. And so that's, that's really what, what we did. And you know, I think the, the other major accomplishment or feat, if you will, is my inbox, you know, of course, just exploded while I was out, right? And, and I thought about, okay, I had an out of office reply and I thought about, okay, everyone knew, you know, that I, that I was gone. I just want to come in and just delete, right? Like I'll just start over from here and move, move on. But then I thought, well, let me just try to get context from things and just kind of read them through. And I got started on Monday or Tuesday going through my email and I realized that because I had such a well organized GTD system where I had all my projects, had my reference material, I was able to go back through over 1700 emails. By the end of the first week, I was down to zero. And I had it all filed and sorted and you know, added to lists of check on this or ask about that or you know, adding, adding things to agendas. And so again, like I didn't, I didn't do the work of all 1700 emails, but I had processed them. And I think that's just such a big difference. It mentally of, you know, I'm not going to give myself a 1700 to do list, but to just quickly go through them and organize them and put them in the right place so that when that issue comes up, I know where to find it. Yeah, it means that I didn't have just this gaping hole of knowledge. Right. I was able to filter through and put it in the right place. And so again, I again just credit GTD for a pretty magnificent feat. I mean, thinking about, working through and
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B
if I'm doing the math correctly, you were off for something like 12 weeks to 12 weeks minimum. Something like that. When we talk to people about coming back from vacation, we'll often say something along the lines of as a guideline for every day you're on vacation, you should probably plan at least an hour of, of processing time to get back on it. Because sometimes people come back from a two week vacation or a week vacation and think they'll, they should be able to start just the way they left. But there's so much to process while they. From what? While they've been gone. You had 12 weeks of that and yet you caught it up in a week. That's remarkable.
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A
Well, again, I credit dtd. I also credit the ability to do, to process, email, to read and file from my phone while nursing my sweet baby, which I will name as a context that I now have. Right. In the GTD system, you have unique context. And so I have a context for while nursing because of course I do spend a lot of time gazing into his beautiful eyes. Okay, I will make sure I say that. But then there's also just a lot of time where I'm sitting there feeding the baby. And so having that context. And as I'm thinking through my next actions, I think, is this something I can do with one hand on my phone while I feed my baby?
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B
And, and I've heard of some interesting contexts over the years. This is a first.
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A
But yeah, I think the contexts are really an interesting part of GTD and it's one of the things that was harder for me to wrap my head around. And as I'm getting into GTD and I've had several different iterations of context and what helps, what doesn't help? Because I think like a lot of people, context feels ubiquitous these days where you could always do anything. Right?
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B
That's what people think. That holds right up until we start talking about very specific examples. And then they go, oh no, you mean I can't really do that? At least I can't do it well anywhere optimized.
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A
Exactly. And so yeah, I think that was something that took me a while to figure out what that means for me and in what context make the most sense and to kind of infuse. For me, I infuse energy level into my context. So it's at computer high energy. Okay, let's work on the budget. Let's, you know, let's do these kind of harder things if I'm feeling ready for it. But I'm at my computer low energy, I'm going to schedule some things right. Like just kind of easier menial tasks. And so, so yeah, I think, I think that's an area where I've done just a lot of tweaking as I'm sure everyone.
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B
Well, good for you because yeah, the original context of at computer that we're, most of us are at some form of a computer so much now that, that it makes sense to subdivide that into something that's more useful than just at computer, but more specifically about other, other things. What files do I have available or how fast is my Internet connection or how big is my screen? Things like that.
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A
Yeah, yeah. And for me, like how much time do I have to. It goes into that. So if I know I have five minutes between a meeting. Yeah, what, what can I look at and get done? Versus all right, I have a gap of two hours here. I can really focus in. And so I have those different.
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B
Yeah, okay, well, now I get to ask the question everybody wants to know, what tools do you use? What tools have you used? What have you ruled out and switched away from? What are you using now?
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A
Yeah, right Now I'm using OneNote. And I think that one of the reasons for my false start so long ago was I think I was trying to make it too techie, too technical. And for me, I am a really tech driven person. I'm not scared of technology. I want to find more efficient ways of doing things. But I noticed that when I use something like Trello or projects in the Microsoft world, it just felt to me too cluttered and it became harder for me to manage. And again, it could have been the season of life. I was in the type of job I was doing. But I think one reason that it stuck better this time around was. Oh, and let me pause there. So I went from Trello and then I thought, well, no, I just need to do paper. So then I tried paper. But I feel like one note for me is that that middle ground between it is. It is a technology. So it's available on my computer, on my phone, at home, or in the office, where a notebook isn't going to be necessarily unless you're just really always taking it with you. But it felt enough like a written system that it just felt like a more natural organization for my brain to really comprehend what was going on. I will say I do think that I'll be switching to loop soon and I just haven't. I haven't had the time or made the time to really do that switch. But I've been looking at the features and it's very much like OneNote, only it does some of the things that I wish OneNote did. Like, you can tag more easily, it's more collaborative. You can, you know, make. Make notes in different ways that you're. You're kind of Limited on OneNote. So that's what that looks like for me. In my OneNote, the. The side of it, there are technical terms that are escaping me, but that access my project list because, like, the name of each of my projects then comes to the side on that. And then on that page I have the outcome and the next action. But in order to just look at any. Look at my list, I just see that list on the side and then I have another page at the top for the next action. And each of those again are separated by context. And I link to the page that the. That the action is connected to the project that it's connected to if it's a project. So that has helped me to stay organized. I also, very recently, based on a recommendation from Anna Maria, or at least a suggestion, I'll say is I switched the names of my projects to start with the noun and end with the verb. Aha.
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B
Okay.
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A
Yep. So that it. It is easier to find and they. They feel more. Just more naturally named. Well, and again, it's not really naturally named because I would speak with the verb first. So for example, you know, do the GTD interview or whatever. Right, right. Yeah. But instead I have GTD interview, comma, do. So I just like I say that, I say the thing and then I, comma and then do have the verb on that. And that. That's a switch. I've made in the last two weeks and has really helped me to just feel like I know what those projects are at a glance. A lot better.
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B
Oh, interesting, because I was right before I got on with you this morning. Well, afternoon for you, morning for me. For another two minutes. I was reading something that a GTD coach in another country just wrote up about how to name projects that way, and she had a great way of explaining why arranging it the way you just described has a very subtle psychological pull for us toward completion. So we'll get that posted on GTD Connect in the next day or two. But I think you're really onto something there.
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A
Yeah, yeah, well, I, I hadn't heard that, but I would agree with just the way it makes me feel as I interact with it.
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B
Yeah, for, for me, the project name is something like Sarah Parrott interview posted. I have the noun in front, and then it ends with what's the outcome? Well, I want to make sure that the interview gets posted. So in order to do that, I have to schedule it, record it, get the recording to an editor, get the, get the audio and video kind of synced up if it needs to be, stuff like that, and then write up a description and then tell you. A lot of things go into that, but just a few words tells me what the outcome is.
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A
I really appreciate that and I'm going to take that back to my list because it does make it more outcome driven. So I like that. I like that a lot. I mean, I, I think another reason that the starting with the noun versus the verb is helpful because I have just a lot of manage. Right. Manage this project, manage that. But you know that those verbs are not as useful as perhaps, you know, something that actually speaks to the fulfillment of the project. So I, I'll take that with me to my next. My next weekly review.
- [27:42]
B
Yeah, well, as a, as a manager, you know that manage kind of can be a mushy meaning what does. But if you say, well, what does it look like for me to be managing this program at the University of Arkansas? What does my day look like? Who are the people I interact with? And all of a sudden manage becomes a you. You start coming up with much more specific verbs about what manage looks like. You mentioned that you do try to get some of your. Some of the people that you manage to think in GTD terms and do things. How pushy are you? How much do you require them to either read the book or use specific terminology? And how's it been going? How's it work?
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A
Yeah, yeah, great. Question. And an area where I'd love more coaching or, you know, I think that I'm not doing it to the fullest, you know that. But it's always a process. So I think for one, it's for me using the language. So I talk about projects like who's going to own this project? You know, as we, I think in higher ed, we're really good at ideating. Great idea.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And we can have a staff meeting where just so many great ideas are bounced around. And so this has helped me to then say, okay, great, what is the outcome? We're looking at who's going to own this project and what's the next action? And so in staff meetings, I've been using that language. I also, since I'm the director, I get to talk and my ideas get to be heard at least. And so I have just talked a lot about gtd and, you know, I've done a few tutorials with the group as a team and then individually where people have asked, you know, what does this look like for you? Because I did challenge, maybe this was back in August, September. I challenged everyone, you know, think through what are your projects, what's on your mind and define the outcome and give a next action. And so I just challenged and left it more like that, you know, as this is something I'd like for you to do. And so then I just talked more about it and, and I had some questions that people asked, you know, what does this look like for you? And, and so a lot of, A lot of that has just been happening in that, in that respect. However, recently. Well, say it was before I went on, on leave. I did tell my, I have four direct reports. And then I have. And then they supervise others. So we're, we, you know, got some strata there. So for my direct reports, I did ask, okay, I want to see a project list and that so that when I get back from leave, I can look at your project list.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And, and for, for some, you know, I have one person on the team that really jumped in to it and sent me a link to it. And, and we go over the projects list for her one on one each time. And that has become a really useful communication tool for us. And then for others it's been, okay, it looks like your project list hasn't been updated in a while. You know, where are you on this? And so then we kind of go through it together. And yet for another, it's, they told me, you know, this doesn't speak to me like, I just don't, you know, I don't resonate with this, but then when we talked about it, they actually were doing it just in their own way, with their own language to it. And I said that that's the, that's what I'm talking about. It's the thing that you're doing. And so, so I think just being able to. To know what I need as a manager and, and always feel ready to ask for what I need, but then also to submit to their own process, like, it could look different and it could be something that just works for them. As long as it works for them and it meets my need, then we're going to be fine. And here I'll say, for those who know, Marshall Rosenberg. I love the nonviolent communication concept. And so you might hear that that's very nonviolent communication terminology, but just there are multiple strategies. As long as everyone's needs are getting met along the way can look different. So I've been trying to practice in that way as well.