Today on ProductivityCast, we are interviewing David Allen, who is most often quoted for saying,
Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.David Allen, author of Getting Things Done
David Allen is the author of best-selling book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (the revised edition was published in 2015, among other works), and the eponymous GTD methodology, as well as the founder of David Allen Company.
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In this Cast | On Getting Things Done With David Allen
Ray Sidney-Smith
Augusto Pinaud
Show Notes | On Getting Things Done With David Allen
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
GTD Summit
Remote Work Productivity Conference
GTD Virtual Study Group
GTD Meetups -- DC, NYC
GTD Café
Two-Minute Tips for Turbulent Times
Raw Text Transcript | David Allen Interview
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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17
And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.
Augusto Pinaud 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17Welcome back everybody to ProductivityCast the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I am Ray Sidney-Smith. I am Augusto Pinaud. And welcome to our listeners to this episode today on ProductivityCast. We are interviewing someone most often quoted for saying your mind is for having ideas not holding them. We have the honor and privilege of speaking with David Allen, author of getting things done the art of stress free productivity, and the revised edition was published in 2015, among other works and his eponymous GTD methodology. Welcome, David.
David Allen 0:45Hi, Ray Augusto. Thank you. Thanks for the invitation.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:48No problem. We're what we wanted to talk about today was a chronological movement through GTD and your world. What we're gonna do is we're gonna first talk a little bit about the past. That is you getting things done the art of story Stress Free productivity around 1998. It was published in 2001. And I'm just really curious about this. What was your experience? What was it like for you to, in essence codified something that was, and it's supposed to be axiomatic. These are supposed to be enduring principles, but they're also unique in the way that every person kind of invests in them in their own life and work. How did you decide on how to position that for yourself in the book?
David Allen 1:23Well, actually, it all came right out of out of 25 years. You know, I started doing versions of this work in 1981 82. Before you guys are born, probably. And so it was really more out of thousands of hours I spent both in the training and executive coaching field and world with this methodology, you know, the first decade or so really, really identifying it and refining it, and then you're spending an awful lot of time delivering and developing and continuing to refine The methodology itself, but the basics of it really haven't changed even since then. So I knew what I was writing about what I didn't know how was to how to put it in a book. So that was a that was a challenging experience. It was funny, almost becoming an alcoholic writing a book about the stress free productivity. Because you know that I tried to write the book, like I gave seminars and keynote speeches, and it doesn't work that way. Books, very different media for people to engage in. So that's why it took four years from the time I pulled the trigger in 97, to start actually formulating the book. So I didn't have any problem understanding the value and the bullet and the bullet proof of it. But it did take me 25 years to figure out what I'd figured out, and that it was unique and nobody else seemed to have done it the same way. And that it was bulletproof, because it stood the test of going viral inside of some of the most challenging organizations. You could imagine. That it would that it would stick in. And so I knew at work, I just didn't know quite how to put it into a book. So that was that was that was a big challenge at that point.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:10So you think that the experience working with others with the with the material was actually what helped you have the kind of fortitude to know that it could be translated?
David Allen 3:19Oh, yeah, absolutely. And, and, you know, come on, the strange paradox of getting things done is that people are most attracted to it. The people who take to it the most are the people who need it the least. They're already the most productive, organized, systemic, systemic people you could ever meet. They're the most creative. It's just that they, most of those people that get attracted to this, their own creativity has just outrun their own ability to keep up with it. And so they find themselves up to their own limits, and they know they could produce more value if they had more space. And so they are attracted to this because, well, for whatever reason, the cool The cool thing about that is I've got the hang with some The best, brightest and busiest people you'd ever meet on the planet and spent literally, you know, Malcolm Gladwell talks about 10,000 hours, I probably spent 50,000 hours, literally, desk side with folks like that. So, you know, once you've had that level of experience, there's not a whole, you can't punch a hole in this stuff. You know, you kind of really know it work because it works. In variably. Over all of those years, anybody who implemented any of this produced exactly the same result without fail, or control or focus, or space to focus on meaningful stuff. So by that time, I had enough confidence because I'm not a kind of guy. I'm sort of introverted and I'm not ever really motivational speaker. I'm really more an educator and then then researcher about this than anything else. And so I had to feel real, real confident that you know, that 25 years of my life work, I was going to put, you know, sort of put it out there open source into the public. So, anyway, so that that's a short version of a very long story.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:58Yeah. And so on the on the personal productivity level, there's that level. And then there's the organizational productivity space and organizational structure. And I know that you have some history with holacracy. And so I'm actually really curious about your background in holacracy. From my bit of research, you met Brian Robertson of holocrazy, one at the conscious capitalism conference, and you decided to bring holacracy to the David Allen company. And for folks who maybe don't know what holacracy is, if you can give us kind of like the mini definition, and and then what did you learn from investing in holacracy? in the organization?
David Allen 5:36Oh, that's a big question. I mean, there's a lot of a lot of answers to that. So I could spend for a while but I'll try to. I'll try to give you the soundbite of it anyway, part of what holacracy is, was Brian Robertson sort of gotten religion with GTD and said, How do I create that in my organization? Because I can be real clear, and you can be real clear, but as soon as we have an organizational structure, you know, that increases complexity exponentially. And so Brian said Okay, how do we create organizational mind like water? How do we get organization as clear, as GTD creates clarity for an individual? How do we do that, organizationally, and very, very similar modality, really, they'll have to hand it to Brian, he, he's kind of from another planet, he was he spent a lot of time creating quite a rigorous structure, which was, which was quite which worked, really did work. And so, and I was about to, I was about to give up my company because of the stress factor and, you know, saying, why can't this company sort of run itself? Because I'm not the best player for the play in terms of being a CEO or trying to manage people. That's not my, I'm not particularly interested in it, and I'm not really good at it. I made a bad hire of previously of someone that I thought could could do that and it didn't work out very well and that was quite painful. And so That's when I said, Okay, let me see if I can learn how to run an organization myself. And so deep dive into studying. Okay, what are all the books you're supposed to read? And what, what's all that stuff? And then I, when I heard Brian speak on stage, I went, Oh my God, that's exactly what I was looking for. And it turned out he was big fanboy of mine. So, you know, we kind of got together. And, you know, was one of those, you know, the strange paradox of implementing self organization, I had to be quite dictatorial. I had, I had to, I had to sort of essentially legislate because I was going to follow the company if we didn't find something like that.
