- [Andrew] You're listening to Getting Things Done, the official podcast of the David Allen company, episode three, A Guided Mind Sweep with David Allen. Welcome everyone to the third episode of Getting Things Done, GTD for shorthand and this podcast is all about helping you on your journey learning the art of stress free productivity. My name's Andrew J. Mason and this episode we're in for something special. This is a guided mind sweep that David Allen's performed at a previous webinar. Now this podcast episode is going to differ a little bit from he previous two so far. Meaning, you can listen to it entirely from start to finish and not write anything down but I'm willing to bet, as David says, that one or two things are going to pop to the front of your consciousness that if you write them down are gonna be highly valuable for you later on. You know, one of the first steps of GTD methodology is capturing anything that has your attention and so this process that we're going through today is all about externalizing what's on your mind, taking a step back and then getting to a place where you can make decisions about it. This segment, as well as literally hundreds of other pieces of awesome content designed to take your GTD game to the next level are available as part of GTD Connect. Now, if you're interested in becoming a part of that community and getting the inspiration you need, head on over to gettingthingsdone.com/podcast and stay tuned to the end of this episode for a coupon that'll give you a significant discount at checkout. Now, if you haven't already, get out your note taking devices, whatever you use to externalize thoughts. This is gonna be valuable. Here's David Allen performing A Guided Mind Sweep.

- [David] For those of you who may mot be that familiar with the GTD and you're a new member here at the connect and you're not that familiar or haven't done a whole lot of mind sweeping for yourself personally yet, this is basically the idea here is simply to empty what we call psychic ram. You know, that short term memory space that's hanging on to oh I need to, would, could, oh I got to, oh I need to, whatevers. Some basic ground rules here or some guidelines to get the most value out of this, what you don't want to do is stop and think about what you're thinking about you just wanna write it down. So, nobody's looking, unless somebody's watching you do this right now so be totally honest and candid with yourself. You have the total freedom to wad up the piece of paper and throw it away after you finish it. This is not, this is not to analyze your commitment, this is just to capture the things that you might have attention on. Another way to think about this is what, just what do you have attention on what has intentional meaning for you? This morning, actually last night as I was walking back to my cottage at home I just noticed three of my yard lights, my little halogen lights, outside lights were out. I mean that's one of those things so easy for me to go "I'll remember that." Right. As soon as I get into the house I've forgotten it and the next, til whatever. But I remember this time that I walked in and I got a nice little half-size pad right by the phone that I can just walk in and write on. Katheryn and I are often, we see each other running over writing stuff on the pad much like that and then tearing the pad off. And so I actually replaced those lights this morning which was yay, good for me. Anyway, don't want to bore you with the details of my life. Let's get into it. So the whole idea here is anything on your mind, some of you have probably started already. Just write it down. Cat food, oh yeah I need to call aunt Susie. Oh yeah, da da da da. Now, what I'm gonna do is both helpful and bothersome. I'm going to actually call out in an auditory form, I'm gonna sort of give you triggers of stuff that might trigger some things 'cause sometimes it's helpful you know to kinda stir the dust inside your head and have me or somebody remind you about things. Oh yeah, that might help. The reason it's bothersome is you get on a roll here and then you hear me jabbering but you still wanna keep going with your own roll. So I suggest, just keep going with your own roll and listen to me with half an ear. See if that triggers anything. If you start to slow down a little bit, then come back to whatever I may be mentioning. So, that's the game. If you haven't started already just grab all the top of mind stuff, anything top of mind. One other just little caveat here, if those are you that are old GTD, old-timer GTDers, if this already in your system, if whatever it is that's on your mind or that pops into your head you absolutely know you have there then sure, you probably don't need to write it down. But be cautious about that because if it pops into your head at all, meaning there's probably something that might not be on cruise control about it. So, when in doubt write it down. You can always scratch it out later if you realize you've over captured but much better to over capture. This is not to organize, not to analyze just grab them as fast as you can 'cause you see, once you've pulled the plug these things start to roll and they'll be associating in your mind, lots of other stuff. So first of all, top of mind stuff. What's on your mind, what do you have to do today that may not be captured yet? What's up for you? Just jot it down. Abbreviate, write fast. You might want to think about what just happened yesterday or the last couple of days. Meetings, conversations, stop you in the hall stuff. Things that have shown up in the mail. Voicemails you've gotten. Emails that yanked your chain or that you haven't been able to do anything to think through yet but you know you need to. While you're doing this, if any of you have access to your calendars or diaries, it's not a bad idea to pull that out and glance part of the weekly review which is a great thing to do that I always say in my life is a backward look for a week or two. Just quickly scan back and catch all the oh, that reminds me. If you look back I'll be willing to bet you that you'll see something back there in terms of meetings or things you had on your calendar that may bounce some stuff out of your head that you need to grab. Same thing with going forward. Especially this next upcoming week or two. Events, presentations, family stuff coming up. Speaking of which, any summarizing things and that's with an e-r not an a-r on your mind. Unless you're down under and it's winterize. What's up for this season? Could be a lot of you in the northern hemisphere this is vacation time. Anything about vacation, planning, family. Social events. Nitty gritty work stuff. Projects, projects that have emerged that you haven't identified as such yet. Anything on your mind that you'd call a problem right now that you need to grab to later on make a project. Real good idea to do a site walk-around in your mind's eye. If you are in your office right now look around. Anything on the tables, on the desk, on the side-bar credenzas. Your in baskets, your pending areas. Anything representing new stuff that's shown up you haven't had a chance to identify yet as something you need to do something about. And in your mind's eye you might want to walk around, if you do during the week go to a regular type of office, a regular type of office building and have staff around you and other people around you, just go there quickly in your mind's eye. What about that? Anything that reminds you about meetings, people, projects, problems, situations, opportunities that are up and haven't been caught yet. Might do the same around your home, house. If you're there, you might want to look around just in your mind for even what you can't see and also what you can. Any projects, pipes need fixing. Spackle needs spackling. Any new equipment changes. Clean-up, fix, redo. Projects in the yard if you have one. And of course a great trigger is just people. Who are all the people in your life right now? What comes to mind? Anybody you have attention on? Conversations you need to have, want to have. Okay, this is a, particularly for those of you who are familiar with mind sweeps, I'm gonna lift up to what I call 20 thousand feet because often times the areas of focus and responsibility that we refer to sometimes gets into subtler stuff that maybe is still on your mind, just little, not quite as easy to grab. So for instance, 20 thousand feet, let's take your job. If you have, if you're doing work, what are the four, five, six, seven things you are supposed to be handling well? First of all, is your job clear itself. Anything unclear about that you need to grab. Things changed, things have morphed, things have shifted in the company in terms of your responsibilities. All that clear and on cruise control yet. And whatever those areas you're responsible for. Research, PR, business development stuff, sales, marketing. Anything about staff, staff development, hiring, performance reviews et cetera. Assets, quality control. Tech stuff. Come performance review time what are you gonna be held accountable to have done well over this period of time. Thinking about all that, does anything pop into your head that you haven't grabbed yet? Projects, more subtle stuff that's kinda been hanging out there. Possibilities, opportunities. Someday maybes. And sort of moving over to the sort of overall life areas of focus, how about your own personal and professional development. Anything about classes. Anything you're trying to learn. Anything you'd like to research, get better at. Anything on your mind about that. Personal finances, assets, investments, bank stuff. How about fun. I hate to admit but sometimes I forget Oh yeah, fun. What are the things you like to do? Anything that's been on your mind you might wanna, concerts, subscription series, plays. Fun things, things to do with the family. Speaking of family, anything about your relationships you maybe haven't caught it yet. Personal direct family relationships. Extended family. Good friends. Your network. Pets, don't forget the pets. Your creativity, creative expression. Everything okay about that, any classes you wanna take. Things you might wanna do. And how about all your gear. All your gear okay? Printers, faxes, scanners, Blackberries, iPhones. Are you really gonna do something about the iPad or not. Any of that. Okay, if there were something that you haven't captured, what would it be? Okay, well it looks like not many of you have dropped off so hopefully this wasn't too intimidating for you. You know, usually people feel a combination of grief and relief when they sit down and do these lists. But that's obviously what we work with and for those of you who are not familiar with our workflow coaching process, that's the first thing we do. Just about the first thing we do when I sit down to work with an executive or whoever I'm coaching, is we need to get it all out so this is stage one of how do you get things under control is first of all you have to identify what's not on cruise control. That is the things we have attention on as usually there's an inverse relationship between these things being on your mind and them actually happening. So the whole idea is to move from identifying to then getting things onto cruise control, which is where we go next about these, which are the next two phases of getting things under control which are okay, now, now I got these out of my head. That will serve you temporarily and feels good temporarily. A lot of people that just sort of changes their life, actually. When they just get into GTD they just get this first stage and start writing down a lot more than they ever wrote down before. Sleep better, able to focus better et cetera, but then if you don't move to the next two phases of okay, now I gotta decide what I, what exactly that means to me that I wrote down. Many times people will write something like mom and I go "Yeah, well you had one "but that's just historical data, "why did you write it down?" Oh yeah, so now we have to go through the, okay, do you really want to get this onto cruise control? It'll suck right back up into your mind again and you'll start resist looking at your lists simply because there's more thinking to be done. The more thinking to be done, is phase two and phase three, what we call processing or clarifying what exactly these things mean to you that you got out of your head, and then phase three is now organizing the results of that. When I think through mom, what is the outcome that I'm wanting to achieve there. You'll see Kelly's put the, our new workflow diagram up on the screen so you can see these are the basic questions you just need to ask yourself. Essentially, the reason things have your attention is because you have not put sufficient attention on them. They're kind of a paradoxical situation but it's because you actually finished your thinking about them that that's why they're still open loops in your head and why they keep popping in there. The mind just doesn't manage those very well, it doesn't manage them very objectively, they just tend to pop in often times based upon how much emotional content you had wrapped into it, or how recent the thing got inserted into your head. Those will tend to be as they pop out but that's, all that's doing is just letting you know, hey dude, there's something that you still haven't thought about or decided about or really determined about this yet. And these are the basic questions. What is it? Mom, why did you right it down? Well, it's her birthday coming up so great, is it actionable. You see that on the screen, basic question, two optional answers. Yes or no, are you going to do something about mom or not? And often times that's where things get hung up right there. And then once you make that decision, you might say, "No, I'll just wish mom a happy birthday. "She doesn't make a big deal out of it "and I send her good thoughts." So no. Maybe I want to put her birthday on a spread sheet where I'm keeping track of birthdays so it will become a piece of reference. Or maybe it's incubate. Maybe her birthday's not coming up for another six weeks. You don't wanna decide yet and you say, "I'll just kinda sleep on that for a couple of weeks. "That'll still give me still plenty of time "to do something about it." So then you could put a trigger in your calendar or in a tickler file and then come back to it. I doubt you'd wanna trash the idea, you might say, "Well just wishing her happy birthday "is sufficient." And it's complete but those are the, you know, it if's not actionable and all those could be perfectly fine answers. If it is actionable and you go, "Oh yeah, I guess I gotta do something about mom "and her birthday." Then there's two questions and you see them almost side, sidebar there you see that there's little dotted line that goes up at the left called what's the desired outcome, that means that there's more than one step to this. If you say, "Look, all I just wanna do is "I'm just gonna call mom and leave her a message "and wish her happy birthday." And you can do that in two minutes, well that's just not multi-step thing, that's just okay, that's the next actions, call mom. You could do it in two minutes so that would fit in the two minute rule that you see down there under do it. You would just do that. If, likely that kind of scenario you say, "No, we need to give mom a birthday party." Or perhaps it's like I need to look into whether my sister and I really wanna do this or not for her, then that might be what I call R&B, that's my shorthand for look into project. But anyway, that would be a desired outcome which you see if say, "Yes, gonna, "either I'm gonna give mom birthday party, "or I'm gonna research it." Now you have a project so you see that arrow going over to the left and that becomes a project that's a stake in the ground you need to park somewhere and then keep reminding yourself that you have that commitment now to get, to get that done. Again, back to the simplicity of getting things done is defining what done means. What does done mean about mom and birthday? Is it just that you researched it to make a go, no go decision or you've actually celebrated her birthday? In either case that would go on your project list and of course, tied very directly to that is what's the next action? And then the next action might be I guess I gotta call my sister and see, let's chat about what mom might want. Fabulous. Can you call your sister and do that in two minutes? No, probably not if she answers the phone we'll probably on the phone a while. Great. Can you delegate that to somebody? Probably not. So that means I need to defer it. You see that is the third bubble up to the left there. Okay, now I to park that. Need to call sis, can't do it right now or I don't want to do it right and I need to park that in which case, if you say "Hmm, well I only can call sis "on Saturday, or that's the time I can probably reach her." Then you might want to put it on Saturday's calendar so you don't need to think about it but on Saturday that's just something to do that day and you're gonna do that on Saturday, you can park it there. Or if you said, "No, I'm just gonna "call my sister as soon as I can in and around "all the other stuff I need to do." That's where you would defer it to your next action list. Where you put it down with the little A there for the action list. That would go on a calls list or wherever you wanted to keep track of that kind of thing. Basically, if you've done all that, you've made those decisions, parked them somewhere. And then of course, what we can't handle on the phone here is then making sure you have some regular review. You trust then that where you parked these things you're actually gonna engage with appropriately. You're gonna look at that project list and see mom's birthday coming toward you frequently enough to make sure that it doesn't slip and you're gonna see the reminder to make the phone call and some appropriate time and place so you can do that in time. Now, that's a lot said but that's basically the simplicity of the process. This is not some sort of theoretical gee, this might work. This is literally what we spent thousands of hours with folks doing and it's what those of you familiar with GTD you know that's how you get your in basket empty. You don't have to finish mom and birthday but you do need to clarify what exactly it means to you. What does done mean and what does doing look like and park those things appropriately.

- [Andrew] So, if you played along with us then hopefully you've got some tremendous value out of that conversation. If you're like me your inbox is just tiny bit more full and we just wanna remind you that that, as well as literally hundreds of other pieces of amazing content designed to take your GTD game to the next level are available, ready and waiting for you over at GTD Connect. If you'd like a significant discount while signing up use the code podcast when checking out. And you can do that all over at gettingthingsdone.com/podcast. Well hey, we hope you've enjoyed these three launch episodes of Getting Things Done. This is a weekly podcast. We're gonna be alongside you for your journey every single week and next week we are so excited. The CEO of David Allen Company Mike Williams is going to be interviewing a GTD champion who's working in the agricultural space so maybe not a context that you've heard before, but some fantastic stuff there. And as always, we want to hear from you. What do you like about the podcast? What would you like to see more of? You can send us an email over at podcast@davidco.com and we would absolutely love your ratings and reviews in iTunes. We'll see you all next week. Until then I'm Andrew J. Mason asking you, now that you've listened to this podcast, what's your next action?