Ep. 334: Working With People Who Don't GTD  ## Metadata - Author: [[Getting Things Done]] - Full Title: Ep. 334: Working With People Who Don't GTD - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/a7cea513-c756-4cc6-806f-06645d7ceb9d ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Lead By Example To Influence Others** - Lead by example: demonstrate relaxed productivity so colleagues ask how you do it. - Let visible calm and consistent methods spark curiosity and informal adoption among peers. Transcript: John Forrester A great question, great topic. It's a perennial kind of a concern for people. Once they start implementing GTD, they start looking around and going, wow, how can I get my co-workers, my boss, my direct reports to do this stuff too? How do I get my spouse, my children, my parents to do all this kind of stuff? It's everybody in our world, we start wanting to help them learn this kind of stuff too. So it's a great question. Let's see. I may toss this over to Thais a few times. Thais, I'm just going to let you know, anytime you have anything to say, please dive in. Interrupt. Don't be polite. And I'll just say, I've always heard from David Allen, the best way is to lead by example with this, that if other people see you demonstrating relaxed productivity, they're going to Say, what's your secret? Carrie Mark, ([Time 0:05:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f30c14bb-0d48-4f6c-9533-6d971075961f)) - **Start With Someone's Pain Point** - Ask colleagues about their pain points and overwhelm in one-to-one meetings to open dialogue. - Introduce small GTD practices like capture and clarify from that single pain point instead of teaching everything. Transcript: Thais Codinho I guess another strategy you can try is to identify people's pain, points, and needs. And you can, for example, in a one-to meeting, you can ask what's overwhelming you the most right now? Or is there something that is constantly on your mind that you never seem to get around to? So, making those questions, you can introduce small GTD practices to help them to ease those burdens. You don't have to teach the full methodology all at once. So you can start by encouraging them to capture everything, undermine, clarifyifying actions. So from one simple point of pain. Great ([Time 0:09:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b77b14cb-acaa-46c0-a3cd-1001a4aea6c0)) - **Use Structure To Keep Meetings Productive** - Use structured meetings to prevent agenda hijacking when exploring people's needs. - Keep questions focused so GTD suggestions stay practical and don't derail group time. Transcript: John Forrester Approach to it. People love to be asked a question, like what's your pain point here? That kind of thing. They love to be invited to share about what's a concern for them. And I suppose the danger in that with a meeting is that people tend to hijack the meeting with their own agendas. So it does help to have a lot of structure. And I'll say more about structure in a moment. ([Time 0:10:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f8ac28a4-1911-4abb-b432-9d8991575bfa)) - **Life Management Affects Work Capacity** - Personal life-management gaps can limit workplace productivity and openness to GTD. - Addressing life-management needs can free cognitive space for higher-horizon work. Transcript: Carrie Good insight. John Forrester Good. I did hear a question in there. Mark, do you have any, want to address anything in there? Mark Well, I think there's two sides to this. Part of it is I do deal with a lot of very technical people. And there's things that interest them and things that don't interest them. Yeah. And yet I am charged with kind of not necessarily leading them, but well, yeah, leading them within a specific project within, I don't necessarily, I'm not their human resource leader, So to speak, but I try to, and, and even just to me, that seems logical that you would have a project, you know, and there's steps that are happening. Anyway, it just is hard to get through that. And especially it's come to light with these goals ([Time 0:12:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2942cf4c-64a0-467d-96de-03e6abf0459b)) - **Different Cultures Handle Mistakes Differently** - Mark described finding a costly failure in a meeting where the responsible person casually said, 'oh, my bad.' - He contrasted that relaxed accountability with prior workplaces where such errors had immediate consequences. Transcript: Mark I was really surprised the first time I was in a meeting and had identified a real, I thought a fail, a real fail in cost thousands and thousands of dollars. Yeah. And the person responsible said, oh, my bad. And I, in any other organization I had been in previously, that would be, they would be gone, you know, by the end of the day, in all likelihood, unless they were the owner or somebody with, You know, the son of the owner or something that way. But, but no, um, it was not a, there was not a direct causal effect there of, you know, but it just, we went on, um, which yeah, it was a big change, but, um, that's come around. The governor's has changed quite a bit, but still, so I, I'm going to drop here in just a couple of minutes because I'm going on a call with my counterparts in Europe. Oh, okay. And that's the end of their day. And I need to get on there before they leave. Right. But, yeah, it's a multinational organization. ([Time 0:20:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/68e706d8-be66-4a34-9e11-943112984b81)) - **Mind Sweep Before Big Transitions** - Do a brain sweep when pursuing a major transition to capture all related thoughts and tasks. - Turn captured items into next actions or projects so energy focuses on doing, not worrying. Transcript: Thais Codinho What I suggest is something that you probably are doing already, that is capture everything on your mind, because a career shift comes with a flood of thoughts, concerns, to-dos, and So if you're doing, mind sweep, doing a mind sweep helps you to get everything out of your head so you can process it systematically. And then you can identify if there is an immediate next action, like update your LinkedIn profile or something, or is this part of a larger project? And you can also use Horizons of Focus to guide your decisions. So, because when you think about your career, it often requires big picture thinking. So, the model of Horizons of Focus can help you to align your next steps with your long-term vision. ([Time 0:27:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d7a854a3-fa77-4b35-8a17-f2ae93a243d2)) - **Do Reviews To Stop Recurring Worry** - If a concern keeps returning, invest focused review time to clarify it and save future mental energy. - A one-hour annual review can prevent many hours of repetitive worrying later. Transcript: John Forrester Like that to give you an immediate focus that it means everything else on my list goes away if the coffee or something else is boiling and it's guaranteed that whenever the coffee starts Joseph Boiling people start people say it start saying super interesting things and then i have to like interrupt it's always happened so no that's that's really helpful um and yeah like i Have all those lists and I kind of try to do that, but it's like there's this sort of always this thought at the back of my mind. It's like, should I take like, you know, an hour to clarify? Should I take two hours to do an annual review? Should I take, you know, an hour and a half to do a weekly review? Or should I just be doing, you know, because it's like that kind of existential thought. And I realize it's probably a false dichotomy, but I was wondering. John Forrester I think you got something there where you said a false dichotomy because you could try it both ways and experiment a bit. But my hunch is that you could experiment more with the side of clarifying, getting control at the ground level more, like getting the inboxes at or near zero more regularly, because You might find that that relieves pressure in a big way. One of the things I've heard David Allen say is often when we feel overwhelmed about everything, it isn't everything. It's usually one or two things that are most of the cause of it, but they sort of filter, they color, they cast a pall over everything else because they're not in balance that way. So it could be that if you identify one thing, like, I don't know what the thing is for you. I work with it constantly to figure out what the thing is for me that's most, that if I do that one thing, everything else seems easier that day. Joseph So you would not recommend skipping even like, even like, let's say an annual review or a monthly review in favor of just like hey i know what this goal is in my mind you would still recommend Going through the process because you're saying like in the process of doing that you might realize that whatever that subconscious focus is on like this one thing that just has to take Everything could you know you could well first of all you could figure out that like so there's something major in your life that's going on, and you just need to take care of it, of course, But you could also realize that there's a realignment of focus or even values or something like that, that you might not have anticipated that might be buried. John Forrester That could be there. So I don't do a whole lot of annual reviewing, at least the last couple of years, but if that's something that keeps showing up for you as it's got your attention, I think I should do it, Then it could be that you have spent, I'm just going to throw out a number, 10 hours thinking about that over the last month. And the actual annual review could take an hour. So even if it doesn't create any value other than it gets it off your mind, you'll have saved nine hours in the next couple of months that you don't have to tell yourself, oh, I should be Doing the annual review. ([Time 0:28:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/80b44538-001a-452d-842e-befead47e66f)) - **Experiment With Clarifying To Free Doing Time** - Experiment: try focused clarifying work when overwhelmed to see if it unlocks doing time. - Identify the one imbalance that, if addressed, makes the rest feel easier. Transcript: John Forrester Think you got something there where you said a false dichotomy because you could try it both ways and experiment a bit. But my hunch is that you could experiment more with the side of clarifying, getting control at the ground level more, like getting the inboxes at or near zero more regularly, because You might find that that relieves pressure in a big way. One of the things I've heard David Allen say is often when we feel overwhelmed about everything, it isn't everything. It's usually one or two things that are most of the cause of it, but they sort of filter, they color, they cast a pall over everything else because they're not in balance that way. So it could be that if you identify one thing, like, I don't know what the thing is for you. I work with it constantly to figure out what the thing is for me that's most, that if I do that one thing, everything else seems easier that day. Joseph So you would not recommend skipping even like, even like, let's say an annual review or a monthly review in favor of just like hey i know what this goal is in my mind you would still recommend Going through the process because you're saying like in the process of doing that you might realize that whatever that subconscious focus is on like this one thing that just has to take Everything could you know you could well first of all you could figure out that like so there's something major in your life that's going on, and you just need to take care of it, of course, But you could also realize that there's a realignment of focus or even values or something like that, that you might not have anticipated that might be buried. John Forrester That could be there. So I don't do a whole lot of annual reviewing, at least the last couple of years, but if that's something that keeps showing up for you as it's got your attention, I think I should do it, Then it could be that you have spent, I'm just going to throw out a number, 10 hours thinking about that over the last month. And the actual annual review could take an hour. ([Time 0:29:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ee1c6f27-14d7-40e4-a2dc-0287b45f83a3)) - **Process Mind Maps Like Meeting Notes** - Treat a mind map like meeting notes: process it and extract next actions and outcomes. - Convert one-step items to next actions and multi-step items into projects with defined outcomes. Transcript: John Forrester It may not, it may not be that it's even at the point of asking, is it a project for you? It might still be that your mind map is something to put into a mind sweep where you say, do I have any more attention on this? Or did just having that mind mapping session do it for me? Do I have anything? When I look at this mind map, do I have any actions I want to take out of it? Kind of capture it? What occurs to me is you could pretend you had a meeting with yourself. Okay. And you were on the meeting with you and you took meeting notes in the form of a mind map. One of the things that we do with meeting notes after the meeting is process those as if they landed in our inbox. And now we've got notes to process and say, do I have any action to take on this? If I have an action, put it on my next actions list and then ask myself, is there still a larger outcome? Then that's a project, that kind of thing. And it could be that you look at your mind map and say, did it. It was kind of like a mental sneeze. It's over now. I don't need to do anything more with it. And there are maybe others where you look at the mind map and say, this is full of treasure. This is gold. I don't want to lose this. And you capture many things out of it. ([Time 0:36:29](https://share.snipd.com/snip/67a0dadc-97db-4a3c-8bed-6210d7571286)) - **Organize By Meaning Not By Format** - Organize materials where they have meaning to you, not by imposed categories. - Place mind maps with related support materials so retrieval aligns with your work context. Transcript: John Forrester I go back to David's quote, which is organized means things are where they have meaning for you. So if you have a mind map about a particular topic, the place to organize it might not be with all your other mind maps. ([Time 0:38:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9be94f33-c1ca-4e1c-85ac-61f90e786e74))