David Allen

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:25:02
Unknown
Flow unleashed, unleashed. Do you often feel like there are not enough hours in the day to get everything done? To the multitude of commitments and varied tasks each day often get the better of you.

00:00:25:04 - 00:00:52:16
Unknown
Welcome to Flow unleashed. I'm Doctor Cameron Noseworthy, scientist and High-Performance coach to multiple world champions. In this show, we unpack key insights and specific topics so that you are kept up to date with the latest science and practice of human performance.

00:00:52:18 - 00:01:19:18
Unknown
First off, the I go back. In almost every consulting and coaching work I do, the challenges surrounding time management surface. I'm often asked, how do you fit everything into your life? How do you run a business, coach a range of clients? Be a loving husband. Be a present father. Spend considerable time on your hobbies. Keep fit, conduct research, write books and smile on your face.

00:01:19:20 - 00:01:45:20
Unknown
To which I often laugh as I'm not always conscious of how I manage to do such a variety of tasks successfully, and sometimes my own lifestyle can stress me out. On reflection, however, I feel I was very lucky to learn some key principles to time management at a very early age that have stayed with me throughout my life and career, some of which we will go over in this part.

00:01:45:22 - 00:02:09:15
Unknown
And many of us are not taught time management at a young age, and as a result, our commitments and schedule can be a constant concern for us. Keeping track of everything that needs doing and fitting it all into our day or week can be troublesome, often stressful when we don't fit it all in. The mind has few options other than to feel like a failure.

00:02:09:17 - 00:02:36:07
Unknown
Take Lucas for example. Lucas is a professional athlete and runs his own business. Often these two careers are mutually exclusive. The pursuit of one makes the pursuit of the other very difficult or near impossible to do both very well. Just to be an athlete takes an enormous amount of training, commitment, scheduling. It demands a lot of lifestyle sacrifices and proactive thinking to stay on top.

00:02:36:09 - 00:03:07:05
Unknown
Whether that be organizing travel schedules or managing the nutritional needs of exerting the body to its limits week after week, year after year, then add on to it the demands of growing a business, managing 30 staff and the relentless decision making and logistics that managing a security company requires. These loaded demands would often be too much for most people to handle, which is where my client Lucas, was at when we started.

00:03:07:07 - 00:03:34:10
Unknown
And whilst Lucas was doing a great job juggling both professions, his time management wasn't his first priority and like most of us, he suffered the pinch. He would often arrive at our sessions in a brain fog. His brain was continuously overloaded. His to do list was always longer than the time he had available, and he constantly felt like he was underperforming at work, which stressed out his neurology and affected his performance as an athlete.

00:03:34:12 - 00:04:03:17
Unknown
Staying on top of other important events in his life, such as organizing his girlfriend's birthday, was overwhelming. His attentional bandwidth would become full and it would all feel too much. And as a result, he would stress, worry, wouldn't get the best night's sleep, and would become avoidant to urgent and important decisions and tasks that he had today. The more he stress, the more avoidant he became and the more issues started appearing.

00:04:03:19 - 00:04:31:02
Unknown
And ultimately he felt like he was just surviving each day in the hope that nothing disastrous would happen. And then he'd wake up and do it all again, keep juggling the plates, hoping nothing would fall. Now, for many, reducing the ambition or personal responsibilities would be the sensible thing to do here. Finding flow is almost impossible whilst being overloaded and feeling overwhelmed.

00:04:31:04 - 00:04:52:07
Unknown
Though his business income funded his sport and without it he would not be able to afford the costs of being a professional martial artist, which was his main priority without running his own business and being in charge of his own schedule. He wouldn't be able to get the time off he needed to compete and train 20 plus hours a week.

00:04:52:09 - 00:05:27:16
Unknown
So instead, we looked at how he could improve his self-management. Specifically, we dialed in on how he managed his time. What were his priorities and how much of his time was stressing over future events, distracting him from accomplishing his present moment tasks? How could he delegate much of the work he needed to do? I'm glad to say that by simply revolutionizing how he managed his time, he was able to continue managing his business and compete as a professional athlete.

00:05:27:18 - 00:05:57:03
Unknown
At times, he had to prioritize one over the other, but by using the concepts and skills laid out in this pod, he was able to achieve and enjoy his dreams. Today's guest, David Allen, has spent decades researching and practicing productivity, and is considered one of the world's most renowned experts on time management. Time magazine heralded his book as the defining self-help business book of its time.

00:05:57:05 - 00:06:16:02
Unknown
Welcome to the show, David. Thanks for the invitation. Glad to be here. How did you get into time management? Well, I had lots of different jobs up into my 30s. Didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up, and then decided, okay, I like it. Just go in and help people do what they're doing and they call those consultants.

00:06:16:02 - 00:06:34:07
Unknown
So I started my own little consulting practice, got very hungry for some good models to use that if it wasn't clear, I could help a consulting client, that I could pull a model out of my back pocket and, you know, work through it and would improve their condition, sort of, no matter what or no matter who. So I was hungry for those kind of models.

00:06:34:08 - 00:06:56:05
Unknown
And also I'd also gotten very, very attracted to a clear head with my martial arts practices and meditation practices, spiritual practices and so forth, and discovered that as my life got more complex, it was pretty easy to screw up the clear space. So I was hunting for techniques for myself to keep myself clearance surfing on top of the game.

00:06:56:07 - 00:07:25:15
Unknown
Turned around that once I discovered some of these techniques and I had some good mentors and taught me various pieces of this, turned around and use the same thing with my clients and it produced the same results. More clarity, more focus, more space to focus on the meaningful stuff. So that was pretty cool. Then one day, some the head of human resources at a big corporation saw what I was doing and he said, wow, our whole company needs that more stability, more focus, more accountability, all that good stuff that.

00:07:25:15 - 00:07:45:12
Unknown
Could you design something like a seminar around what you've been doing, that we can reach a lot of people. So I worked and developed a two and a half day personal productivity seminar that we did a pilot program for a thousand of their executives and managers, and it worked. Then it hit a nerve. So I found myself thrust into the corporate training world.

00:07:45:14 - 00:08:17:19
Unknown
And so that was the 1983 84. So for the next 20 plus years, I spent thousands of hours my consulting turned into, for the most part, a lot of coaching, one on one with the executives or senior people in the organization, as well as lots of people going through the training that I designed. Then, after about 20 years, I discovered it sort of took me that long to figure out what I'd figured out, and then nobody else had done it and that it was bulletproof, and it actually produced all those results if anybody applied the methodology.

00:08:17:21 - 00:08:41:03
Unknown
And that's when I decided to write a book, getting Things Done, first edition was published in 2001, and since then this stuff has become somewhat global and it spread around the world. So there's a very short version of a very long story, Jim. How would you explain the main concept in your book? I didn't really make it up so much as I recognize what it is that we do that gives us a sense of stability, control and any kind of situation.

00:08:41:05 - 00:09:09:05
Unknown
So it comes down to five basic steps. The core methodology here, which is, first of all, capturing the things that have your attention, then clarifying exactly what you're going to do with them. If anything, outcomes and actions required, and then organizing the results into some sort of trusted external brain or trusted external system that you then review and reflect on and then use that, then allow you to feel comfortable about your choices, about how you engage your attention and your service.

00:09:09:06 - 00:09:33:02
Unknown
So it's a capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage process. That's not new behavior, really. Most people are doing versions of that to some degree. Very few people are really doing it fully. So I just uncovered the essentially the the formula about how you're able to clear your head without necessarily having to finish all that stuff and maintain a very busy life.

00:09:33:04 - 00:09:57:09
Unknown
And I guess the issue for most people is we go straight into the engagement, imagining having coached this and trained this for decades. We come across consistent problems. And would you say that's the case is people kind of just that step of clarifying and then organizing before we engage? Yeah. Well, the biggest problem camera is most people are using their head as their office and your head's a crappy office.

00:09:57:11 - 00:10:20:19
Unknown
Your brain did not involve to remember mine, prioritize or manage relationships between more than four things. That's new cognitive science. Researchers basically proven that. And so. But most people are trying to use their head to remember, remind and prioritize and manage sort of the complexity of their life. And it just doesn't work. You tend to then be driven by latest or loudest.

00:10:20:19 - 00:10:42:03
Unknown
And to your point, you just go do as a and. But it's not from a trusted place, it's from a busy or what's the most latest and loudest thing in front of me. And that's where most people are operating. And certainly, you know, when we're in that headspace, we go to the the latest and the most urgent and we just end up doing and go, go go go go go go.

00:10:42:05 - 00:11:12:01
Unknown
And how does sort of stepping out of the head help reverse engineer and how could that happen? You'd never keep anything in your head. And I don't but see nothing changed in your world externally. What changed was the most important thing to change, which is how you were engaged with your world changed. So externalizing it. We know now that just getting stuff out of your head is writing it down, and looking at it gives you a much more of a sense of clarity, much more of a sense of of being able to trust your judgments about what you're doing.

00:11:12:03 - 00:11:36:13
Unknown
Absolutely. And that's a externalizing it or getting that third person perspective. And it's amazing how when we voice something or put it down on paper, suddenly our perspective of it changes. Sure is absolutely the detail of what we're seeing changes. Most people are really unaware of how many personal commitments they actually have, how many words good shoulds need to that do's that they actually have.

00:11:36:14 - 00:11:59:06
Unknown
So I've spent thousands of hours with some of the best and brightest folks on the planet, walking them through, just unloading everything that has their attention. It for a typical mid to senior level professional, it takes 1 to 6 hours just to identify everything pulling on their head, both personal and professional, for the tires of my car. And then on the next vacation, I need to fix my broken tooth.

00:11:59:06 - 00:12:23:18
Unknown
I need to think about hiring a VP of marketing. I oh my god. And most people, because you can only remember one of those at a time. Most people are not aware of how much of a mountain of those kinds of things they have. Once they start to identify what those are, that really changes the game. So subliminally there's a part of you that thinks you should be doing all of those all the time.

00:12:23:18 - 00:12:45:09
Unknown
No wonder people are so very overwhelmed. You can't, you can only do one thing at a time. And most people that have so much stuff banging around in their head, if you need to buy cat food for your cat and you also need to rewrite your business plan, those will take up about the same space in your head, and either one of them is likely to wake you up at 3:00 in the morning.

00:12:45:11 - 00:13:07:07
Unknown
Oh my God, I need job! Oh my God, I should write business plan. If they're in your head. So again, it's just a really bad place to try to manage the relationships between all of those things that we have going on now.

00:13:07:09 - 00:13:39:00
Unknown
Ineffective time management causes continual conflict in our life, distracting us, adding stress and dissatisfaction to life, making finding flow near impossible. Why? Put simply, we can only hold a small amount of information in our short term memory. And if we have lots of things to remember, analyze, and strategize, we eventually run out of space as our attentional bandwidth closes in and the available space is smaller than what needs to be remembered and analyzed.

00:13:39:02 - 00:14:13:18
Unknown
The mind naturally attributes conflict to the situation. To try and overcome this conflict, the brain attributes a stream of attentional nodes to aid the struggle, adding effort and stress to the felt experience, choking our ability to access our long term memory prolonged and our threat center starts to come online, activating concern and worry about losing control. And in rebuttal, the thinking brain steps in to think our way out of the situation, only to chew up more of the of the already limited mental and sectional bandwidth.

00:14:13:20 - 00:14:48:14
Unknown
The result? A snowballing neuro site, a physiological reaction of anxiety and attentional choking. Research such as the review by Bridget Pleasance titled A review of the Time Management literature, clearly demonstrates that effective time management behaviors relate positively to perceived control of time, job satisfaction, and health, and actively work to reduce the stress in our lives. These time management techniques essentially provide the framework and space for us to push on and be our best.

00:14:48:16 - 00:15:21:21
Unknown
Paradoxically, the answer to great time management is not to keep thinking about all the things we need to do, but to actually stop thinking about what needs to be done. You know, the real secret about all this getting things done is not so much about getting things done. It's about appropriately engaging with all the commitments in your life so you're present whatever you're doing, which happens to be the most productive state behind a golf ball from or fire somebody from, a good spaghetti from or doing whatever you're doing is when you're not distracted, when you have full presence about whatever it is that you're doing.

00:15:21:23 - 00:15:40:19
Unknown
So, you know, the mindfulness people and all those folks that are, you know, in the clearing your head, all that's really good stuff. But if you still need cat food or you still, you know, have a commitment about writing your business plan for your next vacation that needs to get planned, that's you're not going to stop that noise until you actually get into it and get through it.

00:15:40:21 - 00:16:00:00
Unknown
So the way out is through. But that means you're going to have to catch and capture all the stuff that is banging around in your head. And by the way, you don't have to go very far to see where to apply this. Just notice what's got your attention. Anybody listening to this, even for the few minutes you and I've been talking to, probably had their mind go somewhere that has nothing to do with what you and I are talking about.

00:16:00:02 - 00:16:23:15
Unknown
That's what you need to start to grasp. What was that? And why do I have my attention on it? And the reason, for the most part, 98% of the time, things bang around in your head if they're in there more than once. We all have 50,000 thoughts today. So I'm not writing all that down. Most of the time I'm just grazing or just looking around and noticing things that there's no incompletion about that.

00:16:23:15 - 00:16:39:05
Unknown
But if you tell me, hey David, here's a new movie you need to see, or a book you need to read or a restaurant you ought to try, or can you do this and get back to me with something about that? If I can't finish that, the moment that happens, that's what I better, right? That's why I've always got pen and paper with me no matter where.

00:16:39:07 - 00:16:55:02
Unknown
Because this stuff hangs around. Who knows where. And some of your best ideas, for instance, about work don't happen at work. You don't have the bandwidth there for some of your but some of your. The coolest things you'll think of will occur to you not where they're going to be applied or where are you going to use them.

00:16:55:04 - 00:17:13:22
Unknown
And so having some sort of portable capture tool is very practical, I think, to be able to grab those things as they occur to you. That's a whole lot of what this is about is just is being able to manage that in to your point, it becomes a lot easier to be clear about your priorities. If your day to day gets under control.

00:17:14:00 - 00:17:32:22
Unknown
So if your day to day is feeling out of control, and then you try to give yourself some new vision or goal in the future, I think all of that is just going to create frustration and guilt. So you need to get your day to day under control. And then once that's there, there's a you'll have a sense of confidence about where you put your attention and what you put your focus on.

00:17:33:00 - 00:17:54:23
Unknown
Yeah, it's amazing how when we take some space and have some clarity and are able to do what you're saying. How so? Because we can become just hearing you talk. I'm reminded of my best work is normally done in an airplane where I'm sitting, and I feel very distant from all the stuff that's normally grabbing my attention and pushing and pulling.

00:17:55:01 - 00:18:14:07
Unknown
No awareness, and I'm able to have a free perspective on a particular topic, whether it's I'm on my laptop or I've got a pen and paper out and I'm brainstorming and I'm able to get into the zone, find flow and stay there for, you know, for long periods of time because I'm not distracted by all the usual distractions.

00:18:14:09 - 00:18:38:06
Unknown
Interesting little sidebar on that, though. A good friend of mine, Mark Taylor here in the Netherlands, just finished writing a book about focus on Focus Off and has done a good bit of research on the flow state about the flow state. And for some people, for instance, an airplane. Why it's sometimes it's easy to get in the flow is it actually forces you to concentrate because there is external stimulus.

00:18:38:07 - 00:19:12:17
Unknown
So sometimes either listening to music or being somewhere like in your favorite coffee shop or whatever, where there's still activity going on, it actually forces your brain to concentrate. For me, listening to classical music, Vivaldi or somebody like that makes it easy for me to do the kind of thinking I need to do to sort of catch up and get my life sort of in order, you know, what we call the weekly review once a week gathering, bringing up the rear guard and making your list current and making sure captured everything that's happened that week and and haven't missed anything.

00:19:12:19 - 00:19:47:14
Unknown
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please hit the subscribe or follow button. Every subscription helps me to spend more time making this show even more valuable for you, so please hit the subscribe button now! Okay, let's dive back in. Imagine sitting in an office located near the railroad tracks, trains rattling by several times an hour, and as you try to concentrate, the rumble of every train pulls you away from what you were doing.

00:19:47:16 - 00:20:20:09
Unknown
You need time to refocus, to collect your thoughts. Worse, just when you have settled back in, another train hurtles by. This description, as described in the book Scarcity by Sendhil Melanchthon and Elder Schaefer, mirrors the conditions of one side of a school in New Haven located next to a noisy railroad line. In the early 1970s, two researchers decided to measure the impact of this noise on their students, and what they found was staggering.

00:20:20:11 - 00:20:47:22
Unknown
The study revealed a striking difference between the two sides of the school. Sixth graders on the train side were four year behind their counterpart. On the quieter side. Prompted by this study, the city installed noise padding and this intervention erased the difference. The researchers found that after the intervention, students on both sides of the building performed at the same level.

00:20:48:00 - 00:21:17:07
Unknown
These results mirror many laboratory studies that have documented the powerful effects of even the slightest of distraction. Interestingly, managing our time is really about managing our attention by freeing up our attentional bandwidth. We free up space to get things done, and we're more efficient with the task at hand. We become better able to focus, organize, prioritize, and be more effective and efficient in our moment to moment performance.

00:21:17:09 - 00:21:39:03
Unknown
With such a limited attentional capacity, if we are not in charge of our attention, there will be 1,000,001 things that will distract us to focus our attention and keep our attention in one place. Especially in this day and age, seems to be quite problematic. You only need to keep glancing over at your phone to constantly be distracted from what looks like this time.

00:21:39:05 - 00:21:59:18
Unknown
Well, yeah, I'm a friend of mine now. As doctor Dale Cooper, newly in Brussels, wrote a fabulous book called Brain Chains Like Chains Around Your Brain. What are the things that limit our cognitive abilities? And he's done an incredible amount of research on that. And a whole lot of that is being able to recognize the things that distract you.

00:22:00:00 - 00:22:23:22
Unknown
He's and he's got a big rant about social media because it's so addictive and just having your phone in your pocket, you know, creates an endorphin rush in your head just thinking who might be buzzing you. Also, you know, just having all that stuff around makes it to your point, much more challenging for everybody to maintain focus and to maintain control of your attention for sure.

00:22:24:00 - 00:22:42:09
Unknown
Absolutely. Every time it goes off, that dopamine feels fantastic. And we're taken away from from where we want to be, which is helping us to be productive and more efficient and safer. And don't shoot the medium if you know what you're doing. It's a great time to be alive, isn't it? I mean, come on, you're that person in Amsterdam.

00:22:42:09 - 00:23:03:22
Unknown
We're talking to each other like, gosh, how cool is that? Right? So yeah, but you need to know what you're doing. If you don't, it's so easy to let yourself get sucked into computer games or social media or all kinds of other stuff, you know, especially if you got something tough that you're procrastinating about. It's very easy to allow yourself to get distracted.

00:23:04:00 - 00:23:34:07
Unknown
But don't don't blame the distraction. Absolutely. And our attention is just another form of self-regulation in some form or another. And a lot of us haven't been trained or taught how to self-regulate late. Our attention, our emotions, our thoughts. We just sort of we're sucked into the reality of a reactive reality of what's happening inside us, and often not taking that time like system to be able to capture, organize, reflect, and then engage with.

00:23:34:07 - 00:23:56:16
Unknown
Too busy just reacting the whole time. What tips do you have to kind of help us get out of that reactive phase and into that capture and organize phase? Hence, you took a pen and pad. Well, yeah. And these are like ongoing behaviors or best practices to just train yourself to be able to capture, you know, things that occur to you that you can't complete in the moment.

00:23:56:21 - 00:24:24:04
Unknown
Write them down. So that's a major key. A second major key is once you write down tires or mom birthday or tooth or bank or whatever, most people's To-Do list still are unclear because they have a determine what exactly is the next step they would need to take to handle mom's birthday, or the bank or their tooth. And so deciding what's the very next action and if one action will complete what it is.

00:24:24:04 - 00:24:43:16
Unknown
What's the project? You know, fix tooth. Yeah, that's a project. Give mama birthday party. That's a project. But most people actually are not. We haven't been trained. We're not born doing outcome and action thinking. You actually have to train yourself to do that. It's a cognitive muscle essential that you need to work. So that's what I uncovered many years ago.

00:24:43:16 - 00:25:06:20
Unknown
And it's 2000s of hours doing. And it's a big key to this methodology, which is once you've identified stuff that has your attention, then you need to clarify what exactly that needs. Is it something that's it's actionable? Are you actually going to do something about mom's birthday? Yes or no? And if no, then it's either reference material or trash, or you incubate it for maybe a ride, or later on that you might want to do something.

00:25:06:22 - 00:25:24:09
Unknown
If it is something you're going to act on, then you need to decide, well, what's the very next action I would need to take? Is that an email to say I was on a website to surface? I'll call my sister, see what she thinks about mom's birthday. What's the very next thing you need to do about that? And if that one action won't complete this thing, then identify what's the desired outcome.

00:25:24:10 - 00:25:44:07
Unknown
We practically call that a project. Fix the to handle the next vacation or deal my mom's birthday, give my birthday, extend my credit lines back and those become the outcomes. So thinking training yourself to think about outcomes and actions. So part of my mission, Cameron, is that that we build a world where there are no problems, only projects.

00:25:44:09 - 00:26:05:22
Unknown
Oh, so any anytime you've got something, you're distracted by a problem. I would like to see a great. Well what what what your desired outcome. Get this six. No kidding first okay. What's the next step? Oh, God, I guess I got I call on the dentist or something. As simple as it sounds, most people avoid this like the plague, but all kinds of stuff that's banging on their head or.

00:26:06:00 - 00:26:30:11
Unknown
Yeah, and it's often a just a change of perspective. Speaking to a lady recently and her life's busy, she's got kids, she's got a whole load of work, like going on. And then suddenly, when we reframed her life as she's the CEO of all these things happening, she saw the problems as tasks and she saw suddenly gained a whole lot of responsibility for them and responsibility for the solutions.

00:26:30:11 - 00:26:56:01
Unknown
And she was far more innovative and energetic in how she was going to approach these previous problems. And now it's easier language projects and all by changing her view of who she was within the barrage of issues and scenarios that's happening around her pretty sophisticated approach. Look at it. As a good friend of mine also calls the notion any problem.

00:26:56:01 - 00:27:28:06
Unknown
He calls a puzzle. How do we solve the puzzle? Same idea. Yeah, absolutely. And what you know, there's a lot of listeners and viewers will be, you know, nodding their heads and listening to this and probably singing up the same song sheet, and we'll have some kind of method for recording stuff. And personally, I use Google Keep. I've always got a paper or two on my desk that I'm scribbling down on, and I try and make sure that they're flushed out every day and I'm not come to the desk with five nights with scribbles all over us.

00:27:28:07 - 00:27:53:11
Unknown
And how how do you suggest what's a good way to kind of record and organize and reflect? Well, I found low tech is best for capturing because no batteries required, no Wi-Fi required, because ubiquitously you don't have to turn anything on interrupting plug anything. So that's why I've got ten on paper with me. I've got a little note taker wallet that's got a tiny little pin in it wherever I am, because it's got like credit cards and driver's like somewhere in there.

00:27:53:13 - 00:28:08:09
Unknown
So that goes everywhere. So I have that sitting here at my desk. I've got scanning paper right in front of me, like you do. So that's how I do that. That's the easiest way to do it. Now you can capture by just recording on your iPhone and whatever the problem is, for a lot of people that's a black hole.

00:28:08:11 - 00:28:29:13
Unknown
Yeah, because the digital world, they're so all you do I put that in Dropbox, I put it in Evernote. Do I put it on my Apple task I mean, ultimate? Yeah. I mean, so unless you're quite disciplined, where to your point, like I write all kinds of notes and throw them into my own in-tray. So I have I'm looking right now my physical in-tray that has a little note I wrote in.

00:28:29:13 - 00:28:48:08
Unknown
It has Drew Carey obsolete? Okay, so I still haven't dealt with those yet, but there is a note in my own in-tray, but it will get emptied out. It's the only note in my in-tray, because I do empty it last night. So the whole idea of kind of low tech being able to grab any of these kind of things, because that's not my organizing system.

00:28:48:10 - 00:29:11:08
Unknown
I organize the results of thinking about what that note is and what I might need to do about it if I can't finish it at the moment. So any action that you could take that takes less than two minutes. That's one of my part of my methodology is the two minute rule. Any action, once you determine what the action is, if you can actually finish it in two minutes or less, I think you longer to actually organize and look at it later on than it would be to finish it right then.

00:29:11:10 - 00:29:31:12
Unknown
And that eases a lot of people, either through the executive time with just learning that little trick. You know, it's worth the price of admission. Just that one, the two minute rule. But you have to determine what the next action is before you can apply that. So what's the next step? And can you do that in actually a tumultuous and if not, then it goes into my organizing system and I use a digital version of that.

00:29:31:12 - 00:29:47:22
Unknown
I you know, there's no perfect system out there. For 20 plus years, I used a paper planner, which is a great tool for list management. Basically, you just need something that men's lists. You need a list of the errands you need to run, the list of things to talk to your life partner about. You know, a list of things websites to surf, whatever.

00:29:48:00 - 00:30:06:21
Unknown
And most people have, by the way, between 30 and 100 projects and over 150 next actions on all the moving parts of their life right now. So they keep trying to manage that in your head. Good luck. And so you just need some sort of a good list manager where you can customize that based upon how complex your life is and what the volume is.

00:30:06:23 - 00:30:31:13
Unknown
And I, I find another thing really helpful. When I wake up every morning, I always take five minutes to sit and reflect. Imagine my bigger, my higher level visions, my higher level goals, etc. and then apply or visualize and what I imagine to be the perfect day in terms of feeling good, productivity ticking up off my list. How am I going to do that?

00:30:31:13 - 00:30:58:23
Unknown
What's it actually going to look like? So I've kind of almost already mapped out the day ahead of me, and I've kind of recalibrated, if you like, or re synchronized all my notes and everything that's going on specifically for this day. So I'm not I keep getting distracted by what needs to be done tomorrow or what I need to do next week, or whatever sort of uptake in charge of what's happening today and how I'm going to do that, leaving room for opportunity and spontaneity, etc..

00:30:59:01 - 00:31:19:02
Unknown
Do you guys so similar process yourself like that? So recommend anything similar? Yeah, I absolutely the night before I always look at my calendar for the next day to see what the hard landscape is. One of the commitments I've got that I've contracted with other people or myself to make sure I'd handle on that day, just so I can sleep as long as I sleep.

00:31:19:02 - 00:31:38:12
Unknown
I love the sleep, so I'm not a motivational speaker. I sleep as long as I can. I love taking naps. I used to think that was I would just lazy. But now with cognitive science research, we know that specifically optimizing my cognitive ability is being able to let my brain rest and then recalibrate stuff unconsciously. So yeah, so I do that.

00:31:38:12 - 00:31:52:13
Unknown
I do that usually the night before. And then once a week I do. You engage in what we call the weekly review, which is 1 to 2 hours, where I really lift up and manage the of instead of just holding the trees to your point, same kind of thing. It's like, yeah, let me just lift up, look around.

00:31:52:15 - 00:32:08:21
Unknown
What am I missing? See, most of us don't have time to think. We need to have already thought so like you do. Your point in the morning. You've already thought so. Then what's your day starts and the badness? The day and the craziness of the day. And then the speed of the day starts to get on you. You don't have time to do that.

00:32:08:21 - 00:32:30:08
Unknown
Those kind of thinking during the day, you need to have already done it. To your point, I the number of people I know who have implemented my methodology the night before look through all of their lists, all of their stuff that they've got, and then just take a little index card and just cancel in the two or 3 or 4 things that are going to get done the next day if they have time to do them at all.

00:32:30:10 - 00:32:49:22
Unknown
Yeah, but they're willing to tear that up and chase the bait changes. And many times it does. But they're not over structuring themselves, but they're using all of that to to keep themselves focused on what would give me some real value. Is it intentional today or if I didn't, if I have time to do that? But again, you have to hold that up against the much of your day is going to be a surprise.

00:32:49:23 - 00:33:12:22
Unknown
Stuff you don't expect things. You just show up as they show up and you're going to have to then calibrate that against, you know, all your other priority. Oh, but when we calibrate and we proactively spend time to manage it, you know, there's this just sort of sense of the ease in my mind, whether that level of stress just diminishes because I'm not trying to hold on to all of that.

00:33:13:00 - 00:33:47:08
Unknown
Is there anything that or any other benefits that come from this or any other suggestions you have for how can I manage my attention so that I'm not getting distracted by unnecessary things? Well, I think it all comes down to if you actually build the habits of these best practices, capturing what has your attention, clarifying what you're going to do about it, if anything, parking the results in some trusted external brain that you reflect on and review by on a consistent basis, then you're making trusted choices about whatever you do, and then it just allows you to be present with whatever you're doing.

00:33:47:10 - 00:34:08:18
Unknown
This is what you and I are talking right now. I'm sure you have a lot of things you could be thinking about, as I do, to accept this, but as long as we pass the results of those things in some place, we trust that when you and I stop talking, you know, you and I both trust we're probably going to go back and check in on our external system or our intuitive judgments.

00:34:08:20 - 00:34:30:00
Unknown
So ultimately the prioritization is going to be your intuitive judgment. There's no ABC 123 high medium low. Prioritizing. That's all way too simplistic in terms of the complexity of our lives and what really drives the choices we make. But you just want to make sure you're making a trusted choice. If you make a trusted choice, you just need to sauteed onion right now for dinner.

00:34:30:02 - 00:34:50:06
Unknown
Then you've looked at everything else. You go, okay, I'm aware of everything. I'm not doing. I have a new partner that's delivering our trainings. South Africa. I was just visiting with them down in Cape Town. He starts out most of his presentations, you know, with, okay, here's my number. My number is 87. What's yours? People scratching their heads.

00:34:50:08 - 00:35:08:12
Unknown
What's he talking about? Number 87 is that 87 is the number of things I'm not doing right now. Instead of talking to you. And so I just looked and counted, he said, but I know what they all are and you know it. Take to, you know, the point of my methodology. You can only feel good about what you're not doing when you know what you're not doing.

00:35:08:14 - 00:35:26:01
Unknown
But if you looked at everything and decide to take a nap, that's a power net. If you're taking a nap to avoid all the stuff you're not thinking about, that's not a not an easy nap to take. The whole idea is just looking at all your stuff, looking at the gestalt of your life and going, hey, no right now taking a nap, spring or something, and wind score.

00:35:26:01 - 00:35:51:01
Unknown
You know, I really need to sit down and handle this ugly email. I got to answer that or whatever. Another guy who's a big champion of my stuff, major successful movie producer. His priority is what's the most fun thing I can do? Another good friend of mine, his priority. What's the ugliest thing I need to do? And sort of leapfrog or whatever the thing, whenever they say, let me do the ugliest thing first, and then I can snack on email for the rest of the day as a reward.

00:35:51:03 - 00:36:09:07
Unknown
And I do either I do both. Sometimes I do what's most fun, sometimes I just move the thing that I'm avoiding the most done. I like that approach to mixing it up because I often tackle the most important or the most difficult thing first. Otherwise I'm just thinking about that for the rest of the day. I'm doing messed up, really.

00:36:09:07 - 00:36:26:21
Unknown
I've got this another pink elephant that I'm just thinking about, but other times I need a little fun, or I need a laugh, or I need to stretch my legs or I need to whatever. So I do prioritize things that make me feel good, that then give me the energy to then tackle other stuff. So it's nice to hear there's that mixed approach.

00:36:27:01 - 00:36:49:06
Unknown
As long as we're doing fun stuff for positive reasons as opposed to avoidant reasons, that it can really help. Yeah, it's another version of to control is out of control. If you try to structure your life too much, you're going to fall off the end of the pier because you're not flexible enough to build, sort of engage appropriately with whatever's, you know, appropriate at the time.

00:36:49:07 - 00:37:30:10
Unknown
Absolutely. Well, thank you very much, David. This has been really interesting and certainly reinforced the message of taking that time, whether it's a third space or just an extra two minutes or dedicating a whole weekend or doing a training program, but taking time to to manage, gather and organize and reflect of what's actually happening, which then allows us to kind of maximize a level of trust that we have within our capacities and abilities for handling everything on in our lives, which then gives us the presence and the focus and the ability to be on the task at hand 100% and lead us to those optimal levels of experience and performance that we know we'll see.

00:37:30:15 - 00:37:45:18
Unknown
Well said. And so thank you for your you're in for David and great stuff. All the best. Thank you very much David. So then you took him flow unleashed.

00:37:45:20 - 00:38:24:21
Unknown
Time management skills. Even just reflecting on our tasks and available time can help you reduce stress and prioritize your time. Effective time management clarifies your goals and prioritizes your most important tasks. It creates clarity and space in our mind, allowing us to better trust our intuitive decision making of what to do next. David. System of externalizing what we are doing and putting tasks into future time slots on our calendar has helped thousands to stress less and focus for longer periods of time.

00:38:24:23 - 00:38:52:02
Unknown
By having a better management of our time, we become less distracted by involuntary preoccupations of an unmet need or an ever increasing To-Do list. As distractions arise, we can free up our attentional bandwidth by converting such recurring demands into one time feature actions on an externalized system, and trust that if we follow that externalized system, everything will get done.

00:38:52:04 - 00:39:30:22
Unknown
We no longer need to worry about when it will get done because it has been allocated to a time in our future efficiently and effectively. Using your time doesn't just increase productivity and make the To-Do list shorter, it can help increase your confidence, unlock new opportunities, and help you reach for bigger and more meaningful goals. If you would like to find out more about David Allen and his methodologies for time management and getting things done, please see the show notes.

00:39:31:00 - 00:40:01:22
Unknown
Thank you for listening to Flow Unleashed. If you enjoyed listening, please subscribe to get notified when our next episode drops. The more people that subscribe, the better I can make the show for you. Equally, please leave a review. Your review will go a long way to helping others find this spot. Until the next time, thank you for listening to Flow Unleashed.