Ep. 332: Praise for the Last Minute  ## Metadata - Author: [[Getting Things Done]] - Full Title: Ep. 332: Praise for the Last Minute - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/6c13f545-202e-4775-9de2-555e1c16149b ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **The 30-Minute Packing Rule** - David Allen times his packing and always starts exactly 30 minutes before he must leave for the airport. - He finds the deadline focus yields just-right decisions without wasting extra time. Transcript: David Allen I'm taking a couple of minutes in praise of the last minute. Having finished something at the last minute a while ago, I'd like to share with you this thought. The last minute is not always the worst time to do something. A participant in a seminar of mine made the comment that there are times when he likes to wait to the last minute. His work is better than. It's more focused, more creative, more inspired because of the time constraint he's allowed himself to get into. I had to acknowledge that I think he's right. And there are times that works for me as well. The best example I have of that is packing for a trip. I have scrupulously timed myself over the years. And after thousands of business trips, you know, out of town, I can safely declare that I need exactly 30 minutes to pack. No less and no more. I figured out when I need to be comfortably at the gate of the airport, reverse engineer it to know when I need to walk out the door of my house to comfortably get there then. And I wait to start packing exactly 30 minutes before then. Why would a guy people have called the guru of personal productivity put myself under that pressure, you ask? It's simple. If I gave myself more time to pack, I would take it. Packing. Actually, not packing. Deciding what to pack. Should I take a casual sweater or not? Two pairs of shoes or one? Will I need to be outside on this trip and how cold might it get, etc., etc., ad nauseum. And if I give myself twice as long to pack, I don't wind up packing twice as good, maybe 3% better. But the double stress I put ([Time 0:00:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/334751f5-d378-4f9f-b4eb-82429c76034d)) - **Last-Minute Pressure Can Help** - The last minute can improve focus and creativity when used intentionally under time constraints. - Waiting can be strategic because last-minute information may be mission-critical to plans. Transcript: David Allen The last minute is not always the worst time to do something. A participant in a seminar of mine made the comment that there are times when he likes to wait to the last minute. His work is better than. It's more focused, more creative, more inspired because of the time constraint he's allowed himself to get into. I had to acknowledge that I think he's right. And there are times that works for me as well. The best example I have of that is packing for a trip. I have scrupulously timed myself over the years. And after thousands of business trips, you know, out of town, I can safely declare that I need exactly 30 minutes to pack. No less and no more. I figured out when I need to be comfortably at the gate of the airport, reverse engineer it to know when I need to walk out the door of my house to comfortably get there then. And I wait to start packing exactly 30 minutes before then. Why would a guy people have called the guru of personal productivity put myself under that pressure, you ask? It's simple. If I gave myself more time to pack, I would take it. Packing. Actually, not packing. Deciding what to pack. Should I take a casual sweater or not? Two pairs of shoes or one? Will I need to be outside on this trip and how cold might it get, etc., etc., ad nauseum. And if I give myself twice as long to pack, I don't wind up packing twice as good, maybe 3% better. But the double stress I put myself through is not worth it. There are situations in business and political arenas, too, when the most strategic thing to do is to wait as absolutely long as possible before launching a product or a campaign. Whatever might happen in the world up until the last minute might be mission critical to absorb into the plans and tactics. ([Time 0:00:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4445b67f-f4f1-4dd4-87d8-464fb5a1cb5e)) - **Plan Your Last-Minute Window** - Know exactly how many minutes your 'last minute' requires before you create that deadline. - Make the choice consciously so you avoid guilt and wasted energy from procrastination. Transcript: David Allen But to move it from the category of sloth, indolence, procrastination, and at least minor stupidity, to one of elegantly planned and coordinated high behavior requires two things. First, know how many minutes the last minute takes. And second, make it absolutely fine with yourself as a conscious choice. So some part of you, you know, on either end of it is not, you know, sucking your energy with the self-criticism of, yeah, dude, but you know better. ([Time 0:03:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/103b27f7-8ccf-4fe7-8b1e-8898b2e4d8b3)) - **When Last-Minute Backfires** - David Allen describes a recent last-minute finish that took longer than expected and left him unhappy. - He calls that experience sloth, indolence, procrastination, and minor stupidity. Transcript: David Allen For the record, neither was true for me about this thing I finished at the last minute. It took longer than I thought it would. And I wasn't fine beforehand nor afterwards, you know, with not doing it until then. I got the delightful experience of sloth, indolence, procrastination, and minor stupidity. That's how I know this stuff. ([Time 0:04:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fee4c293-3c9a-4688-ab72-97ab801233c5)) - **GTD Is Cyclical, Not One-Time** - GTD users move through cycles: initial ingestion, plateau, and later refinement as needs evolve. - Returning to the library or resources reveals new techniques when your use cases grow more sophisticated. Transcript: David Allen I'd like to give a short message to those of you who've been participating and playing with GTD Connect for a while. And sort of remind you that all of us with this GTD methodology and this set of practices go through cycles. You know, I still go through cycles myself. Initially, there's 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 on to 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, remember when I read when I learned Microsoft Word to begin with for instance I read the manual like wow this is really Cool and I started to use the tool and didn't need the manual anymore as a matter of fact a good example of that right here the manual for this camera that's taking this picture right now Initially I read this got it all set up that's really cool and that's really fine. And so pretty much everything was under 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, ah, how do I do that? Went back to the manual, I go, 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 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 goldmine 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. ([Time 0:04:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f2065fc4-762b-49eb-8a59-35bb667a7cce))