In this episode we look back at the amazing interview we had with David Allen. David teaches us how to clear our minds, optimize our workflow and that your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. David takes us through the GTD way of thinking and how this can improve your life significantly and help you increase productivity and reduce anxiety and stress related to life, work and family. If you’re finding that your world is slightly overwhelmed or you’re making mistakes in your business life then this is the episode you don’t want to miss. So jump in, hit subscribe to join the community, and boost your business knowledge today.
In this episode we look back at the amazing interview we had with David Allen. David teaches us how to clear our minds, optimize our workflow and that your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.
David takes us through the GTD way of thinking and how this can improve your life significantly and help you increase productivity and reduce anxiety and stress related to life, work and family. If you’re finding that your world is slightly overwhelmed or you’re making mistakes in your business life then this is the episode you don’t want to miss.
So jump in, hit subscribe to join the community, and boost your business knowledge today.
Matt: [00:00:01] Hi, everyone, this is Matt, the producer of The Investor Mindset Podcast and I'm here to tell you that we've got another great episode for you in the best off series. And this week, we're taking a look back at the episode that we did with David Allen, where he teaches us how to clear our minds and optimize our workflow. This is one that you don't want to miss. Let's get to it.
INTRO: [00:00:30] This is the Investor Mindset Podcast and I'm Steven Pesavento. For as long as I can remember, I've been obsessed with understanding how we can think better, how we can be better, and how we can do better. And each episode we explore lessons on motivation and mindset for the most successful real estate investors and entrepreneurs in the nation. If you're an accredited investor, and you're interested in learning more about our investment opportunities, the exact types of investments that I personally invest in then head over to the Investor Mindset.com/invest or send me an email at Stephen@Vonfinch.com. That's "v o n f i n c h.com". Thanks so much.
Steven: [00:01:19] It's amazing because when people hear about learning about time management or productivity, they kind of feel bored about it right off the bat, because they're like, I don't need to be more productive, I just need to get my work done. But at the core, what this is really about, is about how you can be more effective in everything that you're doing. Like when I first learned this system, I was a little bit overwhelmed. I thought, well, there's so many steps to it, that it seemed confusing at first. But only once I actually took a moment to reflect and understand how to apply it in my own life that I realized that it actually allowed me to do most of the things that I wanted. And so at the at the end of the day, isn't that what people want, like to be able to cook spaghetti with a clear mind, to be able to enjoy time with family, and to be able to get the work done that needs to get done, and only do the work that is most important.
David: [00:02:23] Well, if you know what you're doing, efficiency is your only improvement opportunity and style. I mean, if I'm trying to walk out of the room, I'm always figuring out what's the easiest way to get out of the room. And I may not take that route, I might want to go bogie around and do style and do some other things but at least being aware of, how can I use the least amount of energy to produce the most amount of result, which is really what productivity is about, or at least improving productivity. Everybody's already productive, Stephen, everyone is producing exactly what they're getting. When people say I want to be more productive, what they're talking about is, I want to be able to get done what I'm getting done with less effort or given the effort that I'm putting in, I'd like to produce more results. Either way, either one of those is an improvement in productivity. So I just figured out what the heck and I have to admit, my apologies, I've never had any traditional or formal education in time management, business or psychology. All of my stuff that I found up, that I ended up discovering, and uncovering, and formulating all came from street smarts, and it all came from lots of experience with myself first, and then working that model with a lot of other people. Malcolm Gladwell talks about 10,000 hours sort of behind the expertise and like most people, I'd probably spent 50,000 hours quite literally one on one, desk side with some of the busiest, best and brightest people on the planet actually implementing this methodology that I came up with.
Steven: [00:03:54] And that street smart is clear, because like this stuff works, it works for almost anybody who uses it once they actually learn just a couple key principles. But I've got a quote here, and it's one of my favorite quotes from you and it's "your mind is for having ideas, not holding them". I'm curious, like, what does this mean to you?
David:[00:04:15] Well, I discovered in the martial arts and my own meditative and spiritual practices, 35,40 years ago, that having a clear head makes anything you're doing a whole lot richer, and more effective and efficient. So it's really about, stop using your head as your office, most people are trying to manage a whole lot of stuff in their head. And I discovered 35 years ago again on the street, just for myself personally and then working with lots of people since then, that your heads are just a really crappy office. And now in the last 10 or 15 years, anybody in the cognitive scientists that have been studying how the brain works, basically just validated that. The new data is that your mind can basically hold about four things and as soon as you have more than four things, you're kind of trying to keep track, or prioritize or manage the relationship between, you're going to sub optimize your cognitive process. You're not going to be as smart as you could be, you're not going to be as quick as you could be, and you’re not going to be as present as you could be. And so, it's just kind of the way the mind doesn't work, your mind did not evolve to remember, remind, prioritize or manage relationships between more than four things. It does that very well by the way, your mind evolves so that you could use long term history and pattern recognition to say, oh, there's a tiger over there, there's strawberries of the bush, there's a thunderstorm coming, the baby's crying. Yeah, you do that, you're doing that right there. That's why you think that's a microphone, and that this is a podcast, as opposed to just vibrations of light and so you're doing pattern recognition, or long term history and making sense out of your world, the computers can't even start to do that. They're starting to do a tiny little bit of it. But then you go to the store for lemons, and you come back with six things and no lemons, you know what happened? You tried to use your head as your office, and it just doesn't work very well.
Steven: [00:06:09] So you've got to get those things out of your head and there's a clear process to this. And for those people who don't know about GTD, like I keep saying, it's really a way of thinking and when you can get that way of thinking to start happening and you follow this process, things start being much simpler to organize your to dos' and your priorities. But Dave, will you tell us a little bit about this way of thinking, and kind of give us a little bit of an overview.
David: [00:06:35] Yeah. And Steven, I didn't make this up, I recognized it. Everybody listening or watching this, at some point, felt confused, or overwhelmed at some point and sat down and made a list and felt better, felt more in control and more focused about whatever it was. And so if anybody, reverse engineer and all that, they never keep anything in their head again, there's nothing changed in their world, except what changed was how they are engaged with their world. So I just started to recognize what it is that we do, that allows us to disengage with our world but in an effective way. In other words, there's a lot of stuff you don't have to complete to get them off your mind but you do have to capture them, clarify them, and organize the results of that thinking in some trusted way that gets it off your mind. Most people listening or watching this are probably not worried about it or thinking about where they need to be two weeks from Wednesday at three o'clock in the afternoon, why? They have a system called a calendar, they've got the content in there that they trust needs to be there and they trust they have a behavior that will look at the content at the right time. Well, anybody who says you don't need to get stuff out of your head and create appropriate lists of things you need to be reminded of at the right time, you're kidding yourself. They're intellectually dishonest or either that or just throw away your calendar and say, Oh, my head can do it, all fine. Go right ahead. But so the basic process is to-- there's a five step thing, the way we get control of any kind of a situation, you need to identify or capture the stuff that's got your attention in the situation. What's got my attention about my work, my life, my family, right, the pandemic that's going on, whatever, what's on my mind about anything that. So you have to identify what those things are, write them down, get them out of your head, capture them in some way. And then step two, you need to make some real clear decisions about what those things mean, and what you're going to do about them. If anything, you're actually going to do something about researching karate lessons for your kids, you're actually going to do something about hiring a VP of Marketing, you actually got to do something about getting a divorce. What are you going to do about those things? So that's step two is clarify. Is it an actionable item? Yes or no? If it's not, then you'd reference it, you trash it, or you just park it and incubate it in someplace you'll see it later on. If it is something that's actionable, you need to decide what's the very next action you would need to take, very specific next action, is that an email to send, is that a website to surf, and is that a conversation to have with your life partner. What's the next thing you would need to do if you're going to move the needle toward closure, or whatever this thing is that has your attention. And if one action won't finish it, what's the project you need to keep track of until it's done? So determining whether it's trash reference material, or incubate or if it is an actionable item, what's the next action and one if action one won't finish it, what's the project? That's the thinking process. That’s really where the power of this model is, and I didn't make that up, I just recognized it. That's how you get your kitchen under control, it's how you get your company under control. It’s how you get your consciousness under control. You capture, you clarify, you organize stuff in some appropriate place, you then reflect and review what's the content of that so that then you're making good, trusted choices about what you do, as opposed to just being driven by whatever's latest and loudest in your world. So again, I just recognize those five steps. It's not one thing, it's not, go prioritize or go get organized. Yeah, those are some key components that come in there but for most people, its organizations just rearrange incomplete piles of unclear things. So that doesn't help at all, you really have to do--it's a holistic model, you really need to do all of that. If you're going to get your kitchen under control, you need to work it, if you walk in and you've got guests coming in an hour, your kitchens out of control, the first thing you notice is, what's off, what's not on cruise control. Yeah, that's right. Then what do you do? Oh, that's a dirty dish, that's a clean dish, those are spices, those are whatever, you clarify what those things are, that is off. Then what do you do, you put those things where they go, you organize the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, you put the spices back where spices go, you organize, and then you step back and reflect on the situation. Okay, say okay, what are we going to do and what time is it? Okay, and you pull out butter and you start to create some appetizers. Right, so that's, I didn't make that up, I just recognized it. But those are five very different phases of very, very different practices, each one of which has its own tools and its own best practice.
OUTRO: [00:11:06] Thank you for listening to The Investor Mindset Podcast. If you like what you heard, make sure to rate, review, subscribe and share with a friend. Head over to theinvestormindset.com to join the insider club, where we share tools and strategies from the top investors and entrepreneurs and how to take it to the next level.