Jeremy Weisz
think that David, why do you think you were gonna take it further?
David Allen
I don’t know, intuition. I guess. He he didn’t. He wasn’t particularly, you know, aspirational in terms of either what he had learned trying to, you know, spread it around the world, his education lies, you know, he was just interested in his own own boutique kind of consulting practice. And so, but he took me under his wing, and I brought him a good client to begin with. So we work together and then he shared with me a whole lot of what he had learned about organizational change. And he shared with me a very powerful model about how to do that was the five five phase model. And one of the things he had discovered was that it was very difficult to get an organization to change and move forward toward where it found it wanted to go. If it had a lot of old business, and a lot of things completions and a lot of unconscious stuff that was kind of hanging around like big barnacles on a ship said you try to get an organization to try to change and move forward when it has a lot of old business that are incomplete and hanging them up, you know, psychologically and even physically, that it’s like trying to, you know, pull somebody through quicksand. So he discovered some techniques, especially working particularly with senior executives, CEOs of the companies he was working with, they had really trouble making decisions and they had a lot of old business that was sort of hanging around them and sort of, you know, sucking the wind out of their sails. So, you know, he just in his own frustration and working with his own clients, he one day just had somebody sit down and just empty everything that was on their mind. any old business, any incompletions, any projects that hadn’t been finished any old business at all, and, you know, started to you know, sort of empty do what now we call the mind sweep, you know, and getting things done. Like literally everything they have their attention on personal professional Anything they’re willing to share, just get it out of their head, write it on a single piece of paper, buy cat food, hire a vice president, research a new XYZ, whatever it was.
And then he had them take that big pile of stuff they got out of their head and pick up one one at a time and say, what’s the next action I would need to take to move the needle on this toward enclosure? And he had them make the next action decisions. And he did that process with me. I mean, I was pretty well together. I thought I was pretty well organized and focused. But he said, David, why don’t let let me show you what what this is like. So he sat me down and had me do that process. And I went, Oh, my God, you know, I’m dumping stuff out of my head, I didn’t know was in there. And then he had been go through that stack one at a time and make the next action decision about it. And he had the whole process about once I made the action decision. If I could do it in two minutes. I should just do it right then. If I could delegate it, there. It’s a little memo, a little paper based memo. This was before even paper planner. I mean, this is 1981 82. Right? And so we all this is just on paper, there’s low tech, but very, very powerful. It made sure I had an in basket, made sure I had a place to throw the stuff that had my attention, made sure that I had an out basket that I could put the stuff if I was delegating, or it needed to go out somewhere, making sure I had a good filing system to park the stuff that I reference. So it was low tech, but extremely practical and extremely powerful. And what a surprise, you know, big data. That sounds like very basic stuff. But most people aren’t even close to doing what that process really is. And so I literally then spent hundreds of hours with Dean walking through as soon as we’d work with a CEO, we had to run fast and work with all the direct reports because the CEO as we were doing this was just out suddenly unloading tons of stuff. And they’re all the direct reports. Oh my god, what is all this you know? Well, the boss had been the bottleneck. So we just uncorked that. And so we would just run through the whole organization. Make sure everybody you know Had this same process of keeping the head cleared how to in basket, how to place to grab all the stuff and surface a lot of the old business, actually all the old business and make next action decisions and move the needle on either throw it away or file it away, or let’s get it let’s let’s let’s engage with it appropriately. Yeah. And so that was very, very powerful. That was just his initial proper prop process. So that then you could take the senior team and focus on purpose and vision and what’s the vision of the company and then redo a reorg based upon outputs based upon you know, yada, yada, and that made a very powerful model that Trumps just organizational change that I did for many years worked with a number of clients just as a consultant, doing that kind of stuff. But the funny thing, Jeremy, was that that just that first process, solved 90% of the presenting issues. Because all you had to do was surface well wait a minute, what’s got anybody’s attention in the organization? And then find out how do I unstick that and the organization almost organically by itself starts to move starts to change. You free up all kinds of tons of energy, that then you can then then use then, you know, if you’ve got a good process to then focus that released energy toward whatever the new direction is very powerful stuff. Anyway, that’s that was, you know, two years of two to three years of working very closely with Dean and doing then my own work, you know, in that regard and finding out that just that first process of capturing and clarifying what was on people’s mind what they had attention on, just became the core of a whole lot of what my consulting practice was. And that became the core element when a corporation asked me to design a whole training around this, really, you know, because it really is, you know, and this can you can take this at a mundane level, but also pretty sublime level. It’s really you know, our work here is about completion and creation. Right, you’re here to finish what you put in motion. And you know, whether you like it or not, it’s around you, you know, you can you can fool me but not yourself into commitments you’ve made with yourself? And then you know, then where are you parking? Where are you pointing your creative energy once you free it up. And so those two things, you can expand that you can contract it down to work with a seven year old we teaching kids this stuff, you know, and then you can take it all the way up to the most sophisticated busiest people on the planet because I’ve worked with spent thousands of hours literally deskside working with them in doing this kind of stuff, you know, very powerful and it’s kind of a de You know, when you think about it, the The interesting thing is the most powerful thing is the thought process that this installs, outcome and action. You know, the keys to getting things done is first of all what is done mean? And what is doing look like happen. But what is done mean very few people are really clear about what that is. What is the project you’ve got now, this thing has caught your attention. Why is it got your attention? Ah, I don’t like this. Well, would you like to have true That’s a good question. No kidding. So what’s the project? What’s the outcome? you’re committed to actually move on right now? How would you like to feel? What would you like to produce? What’s the desired outcome? And by the way, if you had nothing else to do, but that what would you do? Where would you go physically? Where would you put your attention right now, if you had nothing else to do, what’s the very next action step you would need to take?
And those two things and by the way, when I say next action, I mean, as granular as you know, send an email, surf the web, talk to your life partner, you know, draft a document. You know, what, pick up the phone, you know, whatever the next physical visible thing I’d see you do, it has to be that granular otherwise, you haven’t finished your thinking. And the thing is still spinning inside your psyche. So those that was basic stuff that I began to not only learn, but then spend hundreds and then thousands of hours working people one on one, just applying that thought process and seeing interesting Enough how rare it was to find anybody who actually had built that in as a habit. Most people work, but they haven’t defined the the art of work. And the art of work. And it was the late great Peter Drucker would tell everybody who’s, you know, has to think about what they’re doing that their biggest job is figuring out what your work actually is. The mail that comes in your mailbox still doesn’t label itself as junk mail. You have to do that. You actually have to, I love junk mail. But yeah, I know. I found some of the coolest things in the world from junk mail. It’s not junk mail. Yeah. So it’s only junk mail. Once you make the decision that I don’t need that that it’s not a someday maybe even Oh, that’s a cool brochure. I might want to go there somewhere once the virus is over, or whatever, you know, so So yeah, some some of these basics I began to explore a long time ago. And then, you know, I began to refine that a lot of my consulting turned into coaching Actually for mid to senior level executives in these companies where I was being brought in to do a lot of training about this stuff, because they wanted hands on deskside one on one time with me to actually implement it themselves. So it wasn’t so much coaching, like, let’s spend a year together though. It has morphed over the years into sometimes I’ve done that with a client. But for the most part, it was just like, hey, let me take you by the hand and walk you in, implement this methodology.
Jeremy Weisz
That’s where the certification comes in. People can now hire certify your certified partners,
David Allen
correct? Yeah. So learning to coach you know, coaching really well, which I learned first from Dean, my first mentor and then you know, we built you know, I then I wound up I wasn’t particularly aspirational or entrepreneurial myself, but just wound up having a bit of a boutique, kind of training and coaching company with just enough of my own coaches. trainers to keep up with the demand that was just, I never marketed anything it was just pick up the phone, it was all by referral. And so wound up, you know, fast forward, you know, over the next 30 years spending, you know, thousands of hours quite literally one on one that side with some of the best and brightest folks you’d ever meet. And hundreds of thousands of people going through trainings that both I did as well as certified, you know, coaches and trainers you know, in our company. So there’s a very schrieffer Yeah, for sure live long stories are amazing. So
Jeremy Weisz
yeah, you know what, I hate to give you more work, David but um, I would love to see your next book bosses the bottleneck and you talk about the the craziest stories that kind of like cleaning up organizations almost like a Chicken Soup for the Soul for like, you know, cleaning up all the stories like dumped out of your head. Okay, when did this and here’s some of the stuff we did. type of type of thing. So,
David Allen
you know, I it’s funny people have often asked me that Oh, by the way, just interesting serendipitously, Jack Canfield and I shared the stage together sort of personal growth trainers back in, back in the late 70s and early 80s. So, you know, jack rose all this stuff as well. Mm hmm. Anyway. The people have often asked, Well, what are some of the most interesting or strange or different things you have run across? much? It’s all pretty much the same.
Jeremy Weisz
I was gonna say a strange I would say most chaotic. You remember a, like one of those? Wow. I mean, not necessarily a hoarder situation. But a crazy just a chaotic organization and what? No,
David Allen
no, relative to what I have as a reference point in terms of clean and clear space. Everybody’s chaotic. Everybody’s in chaos. And interestingly, it’s kind of like the better you the better you are, the more Interesting and sublime, the chaos is. See, let me let me, let me boost this up a little bit. If you don’t pay attention to what has your attention, it’ll take more of your attention than it deserves. And once you handle what has your attention, you’ll find out what really has your attention. Which by the way, once you then appropriately engaged with opens you up to find out what really has your attention. So it’s a big onion to unpeel. So just because somebody feels and looks and maybe maybe looks like they’re organized and in control, there’s multiple levels there that may not be true. Or that that that that they need to explore. As a matter of fact, the more sophisticated and mature people are, the more subtle and sublime the chaos is internally. Like what am I really doing with my life now that I’m 55 you know, Wow, I’ve just graduated and they just handed me this new job do I really want that? So out of control can Like a lot of different things it doesn’t they don’t look out of control. As a matter of fact, the strange paradox about this, Jeremy, is that the well the real strange paradox is that people most attracted to this are the people who needed the least. They’re already the most productive, aspirational, positively focused, future focused kind of folks, it just they’ve, they’ve come up to the limit of their own ability to be able to keep expanding their ability to do good stuff. They’re already doing good stuff that got him to the successful thing, but they just they’ve just hit the limit. And they know because they already know the value of system that’s what got them there. They already know that they can produce good stuff because they already doing that. They just know they’re limited now. And they want more they want it to be able to expand more and expand more. Expand more does not necessarily mean work harder, or even produce more physical results. It may be expand work called get more time with my kids, expand more be able to be of greater service to people around or expand more to be more of a mentor and a servant leader in the organization that I’m working in. So expansion can look or sound like a lot of things, I’ve had to deal with the fact that the word productivity has got a lot of baggage around it because it kind of sounds like work harder, sweat more, you know, do more, and everybody’s already kind of up to here. So and Yeah, sometimes it is about getting more done, you know, physically done because a lot of people are quite inefficient in terms of the stuff they’re getting done. And so, but but many times, it’s more like improving the quality of what you’re getting done, and how you’re moving through, you know, the commitments and how you engage with life.
Jeremy Weisz
I changed the title now then it’s called expand more and then the boss is the bottleneck is the subtitle. So
David Allen
very, that’s very good, creative. The boss about another another, maybe title of the book. But it actually is just a reframe of how you think about what getting things done is as nuts as much about getting things done as it is about being appropriately engaged with your life. Mm hmm. Are you appropriately engaged with your health? Are you appropriately engaged with your cat? Are you appropriately engaged with your job? Are you appropriately engaged with your desk, or you appropriately engaged with your desk drawer. And the appropriate engagement doesn’t mean that you’re, that you’re finished. That doesn’t mean that you’re doing everything about it, it just means that you’re fine with the way it is and how you are currently relating to it. So that’s why a lot of the key of getting things done and a lot of the way our coaches and our trainers work with people is to find out what has your attention because there’s usually usually say 95% of the time, things are on your mind, because you’re not yet appropriately engaged with them. That is, it’s on your mind because there’s some part of you The old knows you, there’s some decision about it you need to make, or you need to park the results in some sort of trusted place that you figure you are the right person will see at the right time in the right context, because then it won’t be on your mind. Because you’ve now externalized your commitment into an external system that’s trusted. If the mind is then freed up to do what it does best, which is, you know, make good strategic intuitive judgments. The mind did not evolve to remember or remind. It’s a crappy office. And that’s one of the biggest problems and that’s where a lot of this lease subliminal stress is coming from. For a lot of people as they’re trying to use their head as their office. They’re trying to use the head to remember remind, prioritize and manage relationships between a whole lot of commitments and a whole lot of things out there personal and professional. And then, you know, I discovered this over 30 years ago, but the cognitive scientist in the last 10 years or 15 years have now discovered and proven that the number of things you can hold just in your psyche and still manage it appropriately in terms of remembering reminding Managing the relationships and prioritizing is for Hmm, I just interviewed Daniel Levitin not long ago, his new book on successful successful aging great book. And Daniel wrote the organized mind. I mean, he’s a deep cognitive science researcher, McGill University and other places. And I mentioned to Dan, you know, I said that four things he said, David, wrong.
Unknown Speaker
You said to?
David Allen
I said two, he said, yeah, it’s too Maybe that’s since what’s happened since whatever I don’t know. But you know, his point of view was the brain is just really, it just will get fried. And that’s what a lot of people are dealing with. And that’s what a lot of this my methodology was, I discovered the algorithm about how do you get stuff off your intention without having to finish it? But that’s not free. You don’t get there by drinking or meditating. I mean, those are fine things to do. They just they may numb your head. let you leave your head. But, you know, if in the world that you’re in if you want to have a clear head, cooking spaghetti or spending time with your kids or, you know, writing the business plan or whatever it is you want to do, you’ve got to deal with things that you’ve committed to. Those people have just committed to a whole lot more things than they realize. Yeah, I think I,
Jeremy Weisz
when I think of getting things done, I think of organizational organizational psychology, meats, Confucius something like that.
David Allen
Yeah, well, there’s a whole lot to that. I mean, I really have loved actually, since high school, I you know, I read a lot of Zen and I, big, big fan of the Sufi stuff, and I love that sort of minimalist, you know, sort of thinking, you know, style, if you will. And so, and, you know, the efficiency and the effectiveness of a lot of those ancient philosophies are, you know, quite sublime. And people say, gee, David Wallace did, you did all this come from I said no, it just, it sort of discovered the same stuff I discovered.
Jeremy Weisz
The, you know, we mentioned a few things, you know, in sort of the beginning parts of the GTD workflow. So you talked about the capture that clarify, would you consider what you talked about? And before we go there, you mentioned, you know, you can do this with seven year olds, you could do this with the top CEO, executives, it doesn’t matter. And I was actually with my daughter the other day, she’s eight. And we set up a Trello board, you know, basically, motive motivated by and inspired by Getting Things Done. And we added a brain dump column, a to do column, a doing column and a done column, because we had stuff we wanted to do yesterday. And so we brain dump everything and then we started moving it, but she had a clarification for me and she wanted a fun stuff column which preceded the to do column. So we had to do the fun stuff, the brain dump stuff, the fun stuff, do that first. And then the to do so thank you for that. getting her started on, you know, getting stuff out of her head. So you could just like, you know, clear your mind a little bit to start. So I think the first two things that the capture and the clarify, are those two that you just mentioned? Where did that where does that fall into what you just talked about and then maybe just mentioned, you know, we organize, reflect and engage also, oh,
David Allen
well capture and clarify those are extremely powerful. I mean, it’s really a holistic model, the five steps if you really want to sort of stay clear, and stay in control and focused. And by the way, I didn’t make up those five steps. I recognize them. So, you know, and but they are very different steps. It’s a very different thing for you and your daughter to capture the stuff that might have your attention that you might want to do something about versus the decision to then what specifically do I want to do and where does that go? Which then you No more to the third stage, which is where does it go? You know, which column do I put it in? That’s called organized. So once you’ve determined what what this means it would that’s a fun thing. Oh, that’s a kind of a work thing, then fine. Where do you put fun stuff? Where do you put work stuff? Hmm. So that when you’re into fun mode, you’re not bothered by your work stuff. And when you’re in work mode, you’re not bothered by your fun stuff. Big. Well, out of the mouths of babes. Right? You know, and even to that point, the fact that most people have not externalized all the stuff that has their attention. one parent several years ago, you know, had a kid that just never cleaned his room. So he, his dad kind of got GTD and said, Okay, let me see if we can play this game. So what he did was instead of just telling the kid go clean your room, said, hey, let’s play a game. Let’s go find all this stuff. That’s not where it ultimately belongs. Let’s play the game. Let’s see how many things we can Find that aren’t where they would ultimately should be to go and see a big box and they went all around and found all this stuff, and they put it in the big box. Cool. Okay, now the second part of the game is let’s take each one of these things one at a time. Pick it up and see where does it go? Let’s see how fast we can do that. Okay, pick it up, that goes over there Banga. Like, hey, we’re almost at the bottom of the kid wound up cleaning his room on a regular basis. Right? You got the game? Guess what? You tell him to clean the room. their psyche is so creative and so fast. They’re thinking of how many things they’re gonna have to decide how many things they’re gonna have to decisions are going to make. Oh my god, they just blow a fuse. That’s why most adults resist this process as well. Like, oh my god, sit down and think and write down. Everything’s got my attention. Oh my god. Don’t ask me to do that thing. And then people get mad at me for their list. I’m like, I’m sorry. I mean, my list. You can decide where you want to keep track of it. But kind of out of the mouths of babes. Interestingly enough, you know that the model of Wow, now I can clean my room as a game, simply because I got to capture clarify steps as individual and discrete practices that need to be done, sort of in cooperation and coordinate in coordination with each other. Then of course, he included this step three, which is organized once I decided that’s that toy and those toys go over there. This is a fun thing that goes into the fun column. That’s the organized step, put stuff where it goes. So you don’t have fun stuff mixed up with the other stuff because then you start to go numb to the pile. So then organizzata organized just simply means once you’ve decided what this is, and if you can’t finish it in the moment, stick it somewhere. So you don’t have to keep rethinking what it means or what you need to do with it. When you when decide to engage with it. And then step four says look at the piles. Look at the column. Hey, you want to have fun? Go look That that’s the reflect process. Okay, let me step back a little bit and take a look at the inventory of the things that I’ve actually uncovered. And then step five simply says, Okay, now, now let me go have fun. Let me go do that thing. Let me engage now. But now what I’ve done because I’ve captured and clarified and organized at all, and step back and reviewed from a little higher perspective on the whole thing, and then now now I’m making a trusted choice about how I’m engaging my activity and my focus. So it’s true for a seven year old is true for a 70 year old is true for the CEO of a global corporation that’s true for your stay at home dad is true for anybody. You know, but again, these you’re not born doing this.
If you were I did had to get an have to get another job.
Jeremy Weisz
So what was the Why? What made you decide to release another edition of Getting Things Done?
David Allen
Well, the model is is is eternal. I mean, you know, 100 years from now or whenever we fall. to Jupiter, you still need an in basket, you’re still gonna have to capture stuff that has your attention, you’re still gonna have to decide the next action on it, you’re still gonna have to have some system that’s going to organize the reminder of it, you know, so you can engage with the right thing at the right time. Well, so it’s an eternal model and has been since I sort of uncovered discovered it and formatted it, if you will, I really framed it, I guess, more consciously than most people were aware of that’s suppose the value of what I brought to the table was to be able to frame the model. So that didn’t really change. I a little deeper understanding 15 years later of what these I, you know, you may have noticed, I changed some of the wording a little bit like instead of collect it’s capture, instead of process, it’s clarify. Instead of review, it’s reflect because those things represent a more global phenomenon of this model. Because it you know, that as opposed to just sort of this mechanical, let me just deal with the stuff that’s I’ve already produced it’s out there. And let me just kind of get it in place it, it works that way too. But this is actually a bit more expansive. So of my vocabulary expanded to include the more sublime aspects, I think of what the model really does, and, and produces. And for the most part, the audience changed a ton. See, when this was first written, you know, took four years to write it started in 97. And we produced, you know, got on the shelves in 2001. This was really targeted for the fast track professional in the US. They were the people that were the first kind of experienced that tsunami of email and all the inputs in the digital, you know, flood of stuff and fast change going on in their organizations. And so they were the hungriest, essentially for this model to kind of stay up stay afloat amidst all of that. And they were, you know, part of they were the people that were most interested in paying us to bring this stuff to them, you know, so, so the first book was, you know, I got a suit and tie and that’s kind of you know, You know, it’s targeted for that audience and a lot of the vocabulary, a lot of the examples that because that that’s where a lot of my experience came from was the corporate world. And, you know, even though I worked a lot with, you know, smaller companies and startups and entrepreneurs, but that was, you know, the bulk of my time was spent in the big corporate environment out there. But I knew even back then that this worked for students, it worked for the clergy, it worked for sole proprietors, it worked for physicians, it worked for attorneys work for anybody who’s got a busy life, you know, I’d seen it and work with people to watch how powerful it was. So 15 years later, well, let’s say back in 2001, I’d say maybe in an organization, 10% of the people really, really really needed this now 95% of the people in organizations needed because, you know, people don’t have time to hold people’s hands. People, you know, have to then sort of be their own entrepreneurs be their own executives, no matter what level they’re at in the organization because things are moving so fast, and they have to stay in control of themselves. So a lot of it was just the expansion of the audience. To include, you know, a lot more, you know, people in in a lot of other different kind of professions and context, you know, and how it in that way and also included, as you know, when the one of the last chapters, a lot of the cognitive science stuff that is shown up since the first edition was written, that basically just validates, you know, this model.
Jeremy Weisz
You know, Dave, what are ways that people can engage with Getting Things Done, they can get the books, you have a certification program, and I want you to talk a little bit about the workbook.
David Allen
Yeah, well, let me just give a kind of a big confession. Right here, Jeremy. And that is, I am not a really good trainer. I’m certainly not a good instructional designer. You know, I’m a good presenter, and I was really more of a researcher and an educator than anything else. But I didn’t know really how to make this stick For people, I just knew what I discovered in the model work. And so I wrote the book really is a manual in case I got run over by a bus. It took me 20 years to figure out what I’d figured out. And then nobody else seemed to have figured it out that way, and that it was bulletproof. Because it had been tested and proven in the toughest environments, you could imagine. It went viral inside of those environments. So I knew this really, really worked. So you know, I had some good coaching from some good friends and said, write the book. So that was an agonizing process. Amazing how stressful it was to write a book about stress free productivity. But so that said, you know, as the book became quite successful, and got translated around the world and started to spread around the world, and people knocking on our door from around the world, David Can Can I be a GTD coach, can I can I distribute this in, in Italy? Can I do this in China? Can I do this in whatever and you know, I didn’t. As I say that was bigger. Go Then I knew how to choose how to build some sort of global model about this. And so we decided, Okay, well, let’s, let’s turn our focus to what can we do? Because it’s such great stuff, let’s not hold it back from the world. So the last 10 or 15 years, our focus strategically has been how do we scale this? How do we build a global model for this? And how do we create an education that actually sticks because it’s a lot of stuff, you know, come on, if you listen to my seven and a half hours on the audio, that’s a lot of stuff to go implement. Unless you’re already really close anyway, it can be quite daunting. So you know, a lot of the coaching that we’ve gotten really good coaching over the last 10 years from some of the best instructional designers in the world really, and it’s a lot of it’s about simplify, not not step down the methodology, but simplify the ease and lower the barrier of entry for people to get involved with this and actually start to do the behaviors themselves. That’s old kind of the big backstory to then ultimately, we We just produced in Getting Things Done workbook, which is like to take the 10 steps to actually implement this. So you don’t have to go try to figure that out through the book, you could. But this is makes it a lot easier. And it’s got QR codes. So if you put your phone on that, you’ll see a little video of me talking about what you just read. And so it makes it a lot a lot easier, I think, for people to engage with it. So that’s why
Jeremy Weisz
that’s one of the workbook. So I wish you would have told me that a week ago, No, I’m just kidding. No, I love the book. And so is it. I’m gettingthingsdone.com, gettingthingsdone.com,
David Allen
Well, you’ll, if you go to gettingthingsdone.com, that’s our website. We don’t sell books anymore. We actually don’t do coaching and training ourselves anymore. Because we’ve now like, you know, we’ve now licensed partners all around the world, and licensed, you know, pretty rigorous training that we’ve licensed certified, licensed trainers and coaches to actually deliver this work like We do it up to our level of quality. And the book you just have to get from please, you don’t get it from your local bookstore. You know, come on, I love to support local bookstores, so, but didn’t get it from anywhere that good books are sold. So, yeah, that and also last year we produce Getting Things Done for teens. So, you know, over the years, parents kept banging on our door saying, Oh my god, how do we get this to my kid? Or, or Gee, I wish I learned this when I was 15. Me too. And so, you know, I co wrote that with two parents, you know, who were big GTD errs and really good at this. One of them was, you know, a key executive in our company and the other co author is still a public school teacher in Minneapolis, who’s teaching his kids. That’s why I say we know it works for 789 year olds, because he’s been teaching it for two or three years, you know, this stuff and has its own model of how he does that. So that’s what’s happened. I you know, I suppose, you know, since the success of the book is now how do we distribute it to the audience that really can use it How do we distribute it around the world? Trying to figure that out? So, you know, still got a lot a lot ahead of us.
Jeremy Weisz
Can they get it on your website, the workbook? Where do they get the workbook?
David Allen
No. Same thing. Go the bookstore, you go to Amazon,
Jeremy Weisz
you can get the workbook at the bookstore too.
David Allen
Yeah. All right. Getting Things Done workbook. Okay. Nice. But that’s uh, you know, it’s in the same kind of in the same model, as there was the Seven Habits workbook, there was a, you know, any of the really good, you know, business books that were quite successful. Many of them produced a workbook afterwards to make it easier for people to play and engage.
Jeremy Weisz
I want to talk about the Yuppie Bible a little bit. There’s a really cool picture online of you holding up this huge book. I think when I was reading, it dates to 1985. And it’s the subtitles roll out to large corporate client in us and it’s you holding this huge book.
David Allen
Well, it was McDonnell Douglas. I mean, interestingly, they the the corporation that brought me in to begin with asked me to take the stuff that I was doing design a seminar and training around, it was lucky, the head of human resources there and he became a huge champion of our stuff. And then he moved over to McDonnell Douglas. And then he brought me over to McDonnell Douglas and I wound up training, literally thousands of engineers and people like McDonnell Douglas. And so, you know, at one point, they were having some sort of a celebration and they invited me to some big dinner or whatever big surprise to me. And, you know, back then, you know, there was the idea of the yuppies, the young and up and coming or whatever yuppie stuff, you know, whenever yuppie stood for, and they brought me up on stage. And then they made they, of course, these engineers that we love Douglas in St. Louis and manufacture this huge, you know, copy of this black book because at the time we were using, when we were doing training, we were actually including the best Paper Paper planner in the world. We had discovered the best one back then paper planners just kind of shown up, but we found the best one and so on. You know, as we were doing the trainings, we actually included that it was called time system out of Denmark, it was called time design in the US because there was already a time system, you know copyrighted in the US have had to change the name. But we included that. And it was a very classy, still a very classy, graphically, one of the best design paper planners in the world. I used it for 20 years. It’s a great tool. And so we included that. So that’s why, you know, they just made this huge, big black model of this paper planner, because people all around McDonnell Douglas are walking around with this black book, and after they’d been to my training and so that’s that’s where that came from. This was very, very fun.
Jeremy Weisz
Um, David, first of all, thank you. I have one last question. Before I ask it ever should check out gettingthingsdone.com and the books on your local bookstore, Amazon or whatever, I prefer Audible, so I have it on Audible. But um, before I asked my last question, because my second last question What’s next for you? what it what is? What do you focus on and working on?
David Allen
Well, a lot of what I’ve been doing for the last two or three years, and particularly and keep doing is supporting a lot of our new licensees, because we’ve, you know, we’ve wound up with a program both in the US, with part with vital smarts and the US fabulous company, and they are certifying their trainers for the US and Canada. And then outside of that, we’ve partnered with a company called SM covey. Actually, that’s David Covey, who is Stephen sun, and Stephen martex. They’d come from Franklin Covey, and they built a sort of global network there. And so they took me by the hand and said, okay, David, we, you know, let’s let’s partner together, we’ll, we’ll help you do that. So they built their global network. We’re now officially in about 73 countries. I think we’re you can see that if you go onto our website and look at training. You can just see all the different countries that are that deliver our training. So a lot of what I’ve been doing the last two or three years is is when we have a new licensee once they kind of get their feet on the ground. I show up for a week and do press and sort of let the world know these guys have my imprimatur. And you know, this is the real book, because there are a lot of gdd pirates out there and had been, you know, people read the books, oh, I can do this. And so it was kind of disturbing the brand and the quality. You know, so we, a lot of our work now is more support of the licensees, you know, who are now doing great work and a fabulous network of people out there, some of the coolest folks you’d ever meet. One of the reasons I’m in Amsterdam, aside from the fact that we, we love the city, we wanted to move to Europe anyway, as much more of the center of the world. And then Santa Barbara was right where I came from, which is also a lovely place. But, you know, in the last six to nine months I’ve been in Moscow had been in Kiev, I’ve been in Tel Aviv, I’ve been in Athens. And so that’s a lot of what I’m doing.
Jeremy Weisz
Now all the European countries you can get all over Europe much easier. Obviously from Amsterdam and for the center of the world, and it’s impossible to fly into Santa Barbara, I mean, not impossible, but it’s like definitely. Yeah.
David Allen
So I could see why. That’s tricky business. Yeah, for sure.
Jeremy Weisz
Um, my last question is, I’m curious of your favorite books of all time, business and or otherwise.
David Allen
You know, I go from sort of favorite book to favorite book to favorite book and so I guess it’s kind of hard to choose one.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah. Any any ones that influenced you? I guess you could say, Ah,
David Allen
oh, the one of the best recent ones is called the antidote. Oliver Berkman is the Brit. He’s actually a god. And I think the subtitle I don’t have it here. Not on my shelf. The subtitle is happiness for people who can’t stand positive thinking And it’s really, really good that my wife, you know, who seldom laughs out loud when she’s reading, which is laughing out loud. He’s a great writer. He’s he did it really well. And it’s a lot of it is about. Well, he actually goes into into something that I didn’t really understand as as much as I, as I do now. Have the the, not the sofas, but the who were the sort of the ascetics of the Greeks, the stoics. Yeah. So he explains a lot about stoicism. We all think that that’s his big asceticism, hard work, you know, got to stop all that. It’s not wasn’t really that at all and a more much more subtle level. It actually has a big tie in with GPD. In that it’s a lot about the acceptance of current reality, as opposed to Yeah, happy happy that I don’t have any negative thoughts. No have whatever thoughts you have. And big acceptance of current reality is actually required if you want to move forward appropriately. And so a whole lot of what getting things done is about as an acceptance of the current reality, what are all the commitments you’ve actually got. And as opposed to trying to ignore those, or trying to only have positive thoughts and only think about the things you want to do, but still not deal with the realities that you’re dealing with. And right now, especially with the pandemic going on, as one of my biggest advice, the one of the most important things to advise people about right now, is, you better get a good grip on what current reality really is. For you, how much money do you have? How long can you go before you have to change something? What’s going on? You know, how do you feel what’s you know, what’s up? It basically it’s saying life, life is not necessarily fun. It’s always a challenge. And you wouldn’t grow if you didn’t have challenges. And so you actually don’t have to like your life to get it off your mind and to appropriately engage with it. So it was a big validation event, a very well written very fun and I think I think it’s a really good sort of a wake up call and probably especially now with what’s going on in the world, I think it’d be a great book for for people to read. So Oliver Berkman, the antidote. Great, you know, a great book, great book to read. And that, you know, in current reality, and I could, I could spend a lot about that. If you know, if you pick up a map or look at your GPS, or whatever was pretty much the first thing you look at, if you want to go somewhere, where you are, if you don’t know where you are, even if you even if you know where you’re going, you don’t know whether to turn right or left. So you need to know where you are. And then of course, and this goes back to outcome and action against the old sort of the sort of fundamental GTD thought process. What are you what do you want to have true? Now? What’s true now? What would you like to have true instead of this if you want this different? And being able to sort of get in the driver’s seat of your life is a whole lot of I think what the essence of Getting Things Done really is and why so many people, even though it looks fairly simple and highly practical. A lot of people have quite transformative experiences when they start to apply it.
Jeremy Weisz
You know, I should never say last question, David, but um, it brings up I want to know your wife leave
David Allen
it by the way. Do I never believe anybody who ever says, here’s my life? Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz
exactly. You shouldn’t. Because you brought something up that I have a note to ask about is your wife’s influence on the company.
David Allen
My wife’s influence on the company. Well, she’s been she, she met me in a seminar I was delivering, you know, 35 years ago, because her company required people to go to my seminar. So she met me there. And then she wound up working for the boutique kind of consulting and training company that we had in Los Angeles. And, you know, we were married to different people at different times, but things change. And so one day she asked me how, you know, she was divorced. I was divorced. She asked me out for a date. I’m like, Oh my god, what do I do with that? Anyway, so, so she’s been working with and so she’s been working in the company, she was actually one of the first people to train our coaches. So she got trained, you know, by Dean and me and was very similar very in that. So we’ve been shoulder to shoulder with me for Well, I guess, even before we were married, that was like, probably three years before that, and then we’ll be married 29 years come September. So. So she’s been doing this work for 3030 something years. So she’s really a lot of the backbone, you know, the power behind the throne, if you will. And a lot of her work is the the, the the yeoman’s task of getting all the materials and graphics and all the support material and making sure the quality control and all all of that stuff, you know, I’m kind of out there that guy, you know, but she’s the one who really, you know, make sure that,
Unknown Speaker
you know, the real work knows
David Allen
the real work. You’ve been a great partner. Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz
Thank you. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for what you’ve done for for me and everyone else who follows the Getting Things Done. methodology and workflow and everyone should go to gettingthingsdone.com check out everything that they have going on. And I want to be the first one. You know, David, thank you so much. I appreciate it.
David Allen
Jeremy, thanks for the invitation. It’s been fun.
