Ep. 341: Capture Clarify Reflect  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Clarify When You're At Your Best** - Wait until you have energy before clarifying captured items to preserve decision quality. - Clarify when you're at an 'up' point to avoid vague or unusable entries. Transcript: John Forrester Yeah, that's it. I hear at least two really, really good questions in there. Let me talk about the second one first. And I'm just going to talk for a moment while others think of what they would like to say. Because I want to hear what others have to say about this too so the the second question i heard you talking about is when uh you wait until you feel like you have more energy to do it i happen To think that's a smart thing to do because it takes energy it takes mental horsepower, mental strength to do a good job at clarifying what you have captured. I think it's a very smart thing to do to wait until you're at an up point more to do the clarifying. If you're clarifying when you're in any way in a down energy pattern, it could show up in the quality of what you clarify. You could end up with something on your lists that you look at later and go, I don't understand what I meant by that. That's why I think it's smart to clarify when you're at your best instead of when you're not, if you have the chance to do that. And then at some point, you'll probably get to say, well, I've been waiting to be at my best for a week now, and my list of captured stuff is growing. ([Time 0:01:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6d1d1efb-4544-40d3-95ff-5d9cffe49aba)) - **High Capture Volume Often Is A Backlog** - Capturing frequently often reflects an initial backlog rather than an endless stream. - As you externalize and process items, capture volume typically decreases and trust builds. Transcript: John Forrester I can say that I think it will get easier and better. Often when people first start doing this, they have so much on their minds. It's almost like they've got this backlog of many years, depending on how many years they've been keeping stuff on their head. They have a backlog. It's not endless. That's one of the things that some people worry about is it might be infinite. I'll never catch up. And that's not been my experience, either personally or with people I've talked to. You may find things that show up repeatedly. There are reasons for that, and it can be managed. You may find that it backs off some once you start clarifying it more, and that part of you inside starts to trust that when it generates an idea, you'll capture it. ([Time 0:05:13](https://share.snipd.com/snip/89c41276-77b2-4c1e-ac5a-c53b2b270209)) - **Slow Down Clarifying; Use The Diagram** - Slow down the clarifying step and use the clarifying diagram to avoid jumping into planning. - Move ambiguous items to Someday/Maybe instead of prematurely planning them. Transcript: John Forrester Said multiple meanings, and that's a big part of why it takes more effort to clarify what you've captured, because you're deciding what it means to you. And as Ulrika pointed out, it could have multiple meanings. It's one thing if it's a BAM email that you look at and go, this means nothing to me. I don't need to apply any of my brilliance to it. I'm just going to delete it. And that's clarified and out of your system. Things can have multiple meanings. Chat GPT may be able to help some with that. The quality of the response you get from chat GPT may depend a lot on what you type into that as a prompt for it too. Chat GPT does its best to understand what your context is, so the more context you give it, the more it might be able to help. The other thing you just mentioned was you picked up pen and paper and held that and talked about planning. So the other thing with clarifying is that it helps to do it slowly enough that you're not trying to do a whole lot of things at one time. As if you're clarifying, it's a very simple set of questions and answers. If you're getting to the point where you're planning, that to me suggests that maybe you've already decided something is actionable and that it's a project and that it needs to have Plans, and that could all be further down the road in the clarifying that what you brought up about having so much to capture and it's kind of overwhelming, that wouldn't be a problem If you were not such a creative, inventive, thoughtful, bright person. That's the problem. You're a creative, thoughtful, bright, inventive, intelligent person. So you come up with lots of things. And you look at one thing and you can think of 17 other things that branch off of it that are possible. Kind of like the multiple meanings Ulrika mentioned. So that's where the clarifying diagram helps. The methodology guides, a few pages in, it has what's called the clarifying diagram that helps break it down. It'll slow down your brilliant mind while you process what you've captured. And it'll help you to not jump ahead to project planning when you haven't even decided if it's an actionable item yet. Because if you slow down the clarifying, you might find out, yes, it indeed is a project, but I'm not going to commit to doing it now. I'm going to put it on my someday maybe list instead. ([Time 0:07:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5d8adcc3-b18b-4c5f-980c-577e8d577067)) - **Capture Quantity, Delay Commitment** - Capture for quantity, not immediate commitment, and don't feel obligated to act on everything. - Breathe and stay on top of in-baskets without forcing actions for every captured item. Transcript: John Forrester When I first started and restarted and restarted GTD, that initial purge of stuff and subsequent consistent capturing feels so good at first, but can quickly turn to objects that add To resistance when you're faced with making sense of it all. That's a common roadblock when starting GTD. Yes, indeed. Just breathe, stay on top of your in baskets, and don't feel an obligation to take action on everything that comes your way. Well, that seems like good advice. Camille (participant) Yeah, I feel that resistance in something like, oh, I already have so much things to do. Yeah. But maybe those things, those new things need to go to my someday maybe list. John Forrester They might. Yeah, they might. That's the other thing is often when people learn about capturing, I find it's helpful to remind people that what you capture is not a to-do list. What you capture is a list of stuff that's coming out of your mind that you want to externalize so you can be objective about it. But it's not a to-do list. It doesn't mean you've committed to do anything except, at some point, look at it and clarify it. ([Time 0:11:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3a0e4f94-6bf2-45ae-a803-796d4530290f)) - **Repeat Captures Are Signals, Not Failures** - Repeatedly capturing the same item often signals incomplete clarification. - Use recapture as a cue to finish the conversation with yourself and reclassify the item correctly. Transcript: John Forrester And people often think, well, my mind is broken, or how does capture work if I keep rethinking the same thing over and over, and I keep recapturing it? Why? Often that happens because how you've captured and clarified it before didn't really satisfy your mind. Maybe you decided there's no commitment for it, and some part of you still thinks you should have that and you just need to finish the conversation with yourself. Or maybe the way you captured it, you called it a project, but it's really an action. And some part of you inside knows that and wants you to relook at it. Or you called it an action and it's really a project. And some part of you inside says, I want you to relook at that. And that's why I'm bringing this up during your mind, your mind sweep capture again, pay attention to that part of you that mentions things more than once. ([Time 0:14:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3a641467-5d5b-469e-b4bd-2005d32abe38)) - **Diagnose The Real Cause Of Procrastination** - Diagnose procrastination causes: anxiety, apathy, perfectionism, or misalignment with higher levels. - Address root causes rather than just hacking at surface behaviors. Transcript: Camille (participant) This actually reminds me of one of the reasons I actually have some resistance, that is procrastination. I feel my lists are like... I'm using a very good tool. Everything is clarified, like it's going well, but I just don't feel, I don't want to do those things, but even if I feel that I need to. Thoughts on that um any strategies that um you guys do to help with that i mean i don't know just i feel that even if it's a something that is on my calendar and that i know that i need to do that Day i sometimes think like oh i just can't tell people that i'm sick and renegotiate that or something. But at the end of the day, I just, I could do that. I had like energy, I had time, but I just, I guess I'm used it to procrastinate things. John Forrester Well, let's go first to Amelia's comment. Could it be anything to do with a misalignment with higher levels? Does what she said make sense? Or do you want me to say more about higher levels? Makes sense. Camille (participant) But I feel I'm just re-implementing GTD after a long time. So I don't have much, I didn't work out on this horizon of focus. So I'm still building my areas of focus and then up and up. But I guess I don't have this perspective right now. John Forrester Yeah, so Amelia's absolutely right. It could have to do with a misalignment there. So I remember a time when, this was years ago, I was at a job where I had some project on my list and I kept looking at it and going, I don't want to do it. I didn't feel right. Had changed and I never updated that project to match the job description. So no wonder I was resisting doing it. It didn't fit what my new job description was. Part of it wasn't even mine to do anymore. So that's kind of an example of a misalignment with the higher levels there. But it could be, again, that the problem is you're so creative and intelligent that you jump ahead to imagining that when you do it, it won't turn out as well as what you think it should Be, and negative consequences will result from that. People will give you negative feedback, or you'll end up in jail or pushing a shopping cart in poverty or something like that. Those are extreme examples. When David used to do live seminars, he would talk about procrastinating about completing a tax return because there were so many things that could go wrong with it and ways to fill it In wrong and and all that and then he would suddenly go all of a sudden in my mind I put myself in jail for tax fraud and no wonder I don't want to do my tax return so it could be that you're imagining A negative outcome and you could feel more drawn to do those things by imagining a positive outcome for them instead. Camille (participant) I think it's something like a perfectionism that I'm not doing that good enough and I receive a negative feedback and do it again and again. Yeah, yeah. John Forrester Yeah, I bet a lot of us can raise our hand and say I'm guilty of the perfectionist thing. I was working on something last week, and I kept reminding myself of that saying that goes something like, the perfect is the enemy of the good, or the good enough. I kept saying, John, what's good enough here? Not what's perfect, what's good enough? Thank you. Camille (participant) I'll note that. Yeah, ([Time 0:16:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/60285914-e185-496d-9e4e-57ff1b5e6811)) - **A Task That No Longer Fit The Role** - John described a job project he avoided because it no longer fit his role. - He discovered the task wasn't his responsibility and updated the project instead of forcing completion. Transcript: John Forrester Yeah, so Amelia's absolutely right. It could have to do with a misalignment there. So I remember a time when, this was years ago, I was at a job where I had some project on my list and I kept looking at it and going, I don't want to do it. I didn't feel right. Had changed and I never updated that project to match the job description. So no wonder I was resisting doing it. It didn't fit what my new job description was. Part of it wasn't even mine to do anymore. So that's kind of an example of a misalignment with the higher levels there. ([Time 0:18:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/204a3ed3-461b-44d3-81ee-3368f1e8fced)) - **Weigh Closed Lists Against Flexibility** - Consider whether rigid 'closed' to-do lists help or hurt your flexibility with real-life surprises. - Use GTD's flexible approach if you value freedom to respond to unexpected priorities. Transcript: John Forrester Because part of what her suggestion was to deal with that was to have what I would call closed lists, lists that you don't add anything to. Today you decide what your list is going to be for tomorrow and you don't change it. For me, life moves too fast and changes too much to think that I know today what's going to show up tomorrow. What if tomorrow I find out I have a rich uncle who died and left me major fortune and it's a life-changing amount of money, but I need to respond to the lawyer for the inheritance right Away. Otherwise it goes to somebody else. Do I want to stay with my closed list and go, nope, I didn't plan to inherit a fortune today, so I'm not going to allow that into my to-do list today? Or do I want to say, I'm going to be flexible and allow this in? I generally think flexibility is helpful, but some people find that being a bit more structured and rigid can help them with procrastination. They just say, nope, I'm not going to think about all the other things. I'm only going to make myself do this. ([Time 0:21:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bb75da06-317a-41c3-9ddd-3d2a91a411f4)) - **GTD Practice Comes In Cycles** - GTD practice cycles: initial inspiration, plateau, then renewed learning as needs change. - Returning to resources yields new insights as your context and sophistication evolve. Transcript: Speaker 3 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, go, 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 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. And 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 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 0:25:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fc7eb287-4e4b-47ec-836c-e48027ff44ec))