1 Big Idea to Think About

  • Life is best lived when it is under our command. We can’t let the incomplete tasks and all our commitments overwhelm us – but instead, we need to move in a meaningful, action-centered, way to get things done.

1 Way You Can Apply This

  • Try David’s “In-box” method. Write each task you need to do on a single piece of paper. Place it in the in-box. Later, take each of the things you have put in the in-box and decide, “What is the next immediate thing I need to do to get this task completed?”

1 Question to Ask

  • Am I living a life that allows me to be fully present?

Key Moments From the Show 

  • Why people are so attracted to the Getting Things Done movement (2:51)
  • Your head is great for lots of things but not great as an office (7:45)
  • Why you need an in-basket (10:25)
  • Determining your next step (13:08)
  • How many projects should you do at one time (17:55)
  • The 6 Horizons (20:49)
  • Being fully present in each moment (27:49)
  • How to reset your focus when you get distracted (30:44)
  • David Allen’s journey of discover through his youth (35:23)
  • David’s college experience (41:52)
  • Beyond Getting Things Done (46:47)
  • Finding a wisdom source (49:31)
  • Yield to win (57:29)
  • What David Allen is about now (1:00:10)
  • What David learned from this conversation (1:01:35)
  • What’s most important to David and why (1:02:17)

 

Links and Resources You’ll Love from the Episode

Greg McKeown:

David! It’s great to have you back, and it’s great to have you be willing to talk to me today. Thank you for taking the time.

David Allen:

Sure, thanks for the invitation.

Greg McKeown:

Look, of course, I’ve been familiar with all of your work for years and years; read it, Getting Things Done, but also your other materials. And I’ve been so amazed at the impact that G.T.D. has had around the world. Has it surprised you?

David Allen:

Bemused, really, more than anything else. You know, it’s one of those things called “high anticipation, no expectation” about whether the world would buy into this or not. And so, you know, I’m not particularly aspirational or entrepreneurial. You know, I’ve really been more of a researcher and an educator than anything else. But just to watch that somehow, whatever I uncovered had hit enough of a nerve that it spread sort of virally and organically. And, you know, we paid a lot of attention to how do we manage that as best we can? How do we, you know, maintain the standard? How do we, you know, then build some sort of a global network about this, you know, and make it more available on a global scale? And that was bigger gum than I knew how to chew, and so, you know, it’s taken, you know, 10 to 15 years to try to figure out that and get us to kind of where we are right now.

Greg McKeown:

What do you think the biggest pain point is that has driven interest in what you’ve been offering?

David Allen:

Depends on who you talk to, and depends on on who it is. I mean, Getting Things Done in this methodology is useful to anybody that has a busy life and wants to get it… and wants to manage it, you know, with less stress and get more done, you know, with the energy they’re investing. The people most attracted and interested in this are already…they’re the people who need it the least. They’re already the most productive, aspirational, positively focused, creative, and productive people, and that’s why they’re interested in it. They already know the value of the system, they already know the value of getting organized, they all know the value, and they already know that they can produce more value if they had more room. And so they just run out of room. 

So to a large degree, you know, our most sophisticated market and client are the people that have just run out of room and want the opportunity to be able to do more better, you know, of what they’ve already been doing. Or do it with less stress, or be able to spend more time watching their daughter play soccer, or whatever the heck that “better” might mean for them, in terms of that. And so that’s the most attracted audience to what we do. Howard Stern is one of my biggest champions. Brad Keywell in Chicago, probably the top entrepreneur in the world, you know, came to me and said, “David, I’m just, you know, I’ve just hit my stride, but I’m up to here, I got no more room. I don’t know what to do with all these million-dollar ideas I wake up with.” 

So that’s, in a sense, the most attracted audience initially, you know, to what I do or to what this methodology is. If you said, “What’s out there?” I would say that generally speaking, it’s the ambient anxiety that most people are living with; they either recognize that and they want to do something about it or not, or they’re just addicted to it, and don’t bother changing it. It’s not so much a sense of overwhelm, if you were really overwhelmed, you’d fix it. But it’s the ambient anxieties, it’s stuff that wakes you up at three o’clock in the morning called, “Oh my God. Oh, what if?”, or, “What should I do about..?”, or whatever. That’s probably the hungriest audience in the world. I’ve got the marketing issue of solving that problem they actually don’t realize they have.

Greg McKeown:

I read elsewhere that there’ve been other people; Will Smith, Robert Downey Jr…who else have you been surprised by that sort of suddenly just popped up? “Oh, yes, this is this is a methodology I care about, this has helped me,” these high performers that you’re describing?

David Allen:

Well, they don’t so much surprise me. What surprises me is that people don’t get it. So I’m like, you know, okay, well, they got it. Great. Cool. Good for them. There’s not a whole lot of people kind of at that level that I know of. There are a whole lot of people that just kind of show up out of the woodwork like those guys did. I had no idea they sort of bought into this, that was just sort of serendipitous stuff. Howard Stern too, I mean, Howard called us because he said, you know, “I need help,” whatever, we had a coach in New York and sent her to him. And then he sort of transformed his life, you know. So he started to publicize that to the world, which was kind of cool. We were sort of…we’d met together in Beverly Hills, you know, a few, three, four or five years ago or whatever, whenever it was…kind of mutual fanboys. And, you know, Howard is just a lovely guy, but you know, he would tell you it changed his life. It gave him the room and time to be able to manage all of his radio businesses and his entertainment businesses, as well as then learn to paint, which he always wanted to do. It…you know, and Arianna Huffington is an old friend, you know, I’ve coached her for years. There are people kind of at that level of the game, but you know…Look, I’ve only sold 2 million books, and there’s 7 billion people on the planet so, come on, you know, I’ve barely started, I guess.

Greg McKeown:

Do you feel frustrated by that number?

David Allen:

No, no, are you kidding?

Greg McKeown:

You’re just so grateful that things have been as impactful…

David Allen:

If anybody buys…I’m surprised anybody buys into this. You know, it kind of depends on what side of the bed I wake up in the morning.

Greg McKeown:

Well, that’s right because a second ago, you’re like, “I’m surprised that everybody doesn’t get it,” and now you’re like, “Well, I’m glad that anybody gets it.”

David Allen:

That’s right.

Greg McKeown:

That’s the kind of dichotomy sometimes we do feel.

David Allen:

Right.

Greg McKeown:

You’ve said that your head is great for lots of things but not great as an office. This sounds familiar for anybody who is, you know, otherwise successful, driven, capable person. Can you talk to me a bit more about that?

David Allen:

Well, I could just point you to all the cognitive science researchers over the last 15 years that have now just basically proven this fact. I just interviewed Daniel Levitin, you know, who’s a serious cognitive science researcher at McGill University, he wrote The Organized Mind, he just wrote Successful Aging…fabulous book by the way.

Greg McKeown:

Mm hmm.

David Allen:

So I interviewed Daniel again, and, you know, I told him, I said, you know, “Daniel, by the way, it seems that the cognitive science had basically concluded that your mind did not evolve to remember, remind, prioritize, or manage relationships with more than four things.” 

He said, “Wrong.” 

I said, “What do you mean wrong?” 

He said, “Two” he said, “No, two is about it. More than two things you’re trying to keep in your head, you’re going to diminish your cognitive function”. And so now that’s what’s happened, I guess. 

So, you know, I just have to say, “Look, I discovered this 35 years ago”. But just from…on the street smarts, and I had a mentor who sort of my head deciding next actions about all that stuff, and then watching how different that I felt, and how different my energy was.

Greg McKeown:

Tell me about that mentor.

David Allen:

Dean Acheson. Not the famous one but a guy named Dean Acheson, still a friend of mine, a longtime executive consultant in organizational change. He developed a fabulous model, and he and I ran across each other, he sort of took to me, and took me under his wing and said, “Gee, David, I think you’re probably gonna, you know, do more with what I have here,” than he was interested in doing. But he took me under his wing, we shared a number of clients, and he walked me through the process that he had uncovered about how to unstick executives’ thinking so that they could move forward with more freedom instead of having barnacles on their holes. Hey, here’s a big pile of printer paper and a pin, empty everything out of your head that’s got your attention, one per paper.

Greg McKeown:

He was the person who really introduced you to this idea of the mind sweep and all of that.

David Allen:

Correct.

Greg McKeown:

And so how would he do it? What was his process? Okay, ream of paper, one thing per page? Is that what you just did?

David Allen:

Yeah. Well, first of all…first of all, an in-basket. If you don’t have one, you need a place to then throw those pieces of paper once you write it down. You know, “Buy cat food,” write it on a piece of paper, and throw it into the in basket. “Hire the VP of finance,” you know, throw that in there. “Think about whether we should get a divorce or not” write that on a piece of paper and throw it in there. And so that was the process. Simply anything that had any of your attention, just on a separate piece of paper. And important that it was a separate piece of paper because then step two was to come back through each one, one at a time, and not avoid them, and put it right in front of your face. Cat food: what’s your next action? Divorce: what’s your next action? Hire VP: what’s your next action? And then force you to really get really clear. 

That was just a transformative process, and I didn’t need it…my life was okay, you know, I wasn’t like in serious pain or whatever, but he walked me through that process, and I went, “Oh my god. This is incredible, what that produces.” I just turned around, that became just a key part of what I started to do in my coaching consulting process.

Greg McKeown:

But what did it produce for you when you did that one page…I mean, you literally did it, yes? You did the one page per item, and what did it produce for you?

David Allen:

Clarity. Focus. Control. Space. Freedom.

Greg McKeown:

I’ve gone through the process of unloading everything in my mind, you know, the mind sweep, multiple times. The first time I did it, I think there were probably 400 items, but actually translating that into the next step has been less clear for me. But this is the first time I’ve ever heard the idea of actually put each item on a separate sheet of paper. That feels different to me.

David Allen:

Well, this was the rule…you know, we did it with clients, and actually, we did it. The reason for this was really, this was the first step to clear the organization of all the old business it had, so it had more freedom to move forward, and also had a nice clean communication system so that you could, you know, toss something into somebody’s in-basket, and they wouldn’t just let it lie there. They have to pick it up and decide what’s my next action on it. And so, building in an airtight communication system as well as clearing the deck of all the old business was very powerful.

Greg McKeown:

And by “all business”…That’s an interesting phrase, what is meant in that phrase?

David Allen:

Anything that’s incomplete, that’s not been closed up. That’s still lying out there, that’s got somebody’s attention on it.

Greg McKeown:

So you’ve got these separate sheets of paper now, you’ve got two reams worth in front of you, one per page. Now you already said sort of the next thing is to go through what is the next step per…for each item.

David Allen:

Well, basically, the idea is you throw all these pieces of paper into your in tray, and then you get your in tray empty. You do that by picking up the top item first, one item at a time, glued to your finger until you make the decision what’s the next action? And there’s a one-way valve out of the in-basket, it does not go back in. So you’ve just got to make the decision. What’s the next action on this, if there is one? Or is it trash, or is it reference, so you decide exactly what that thing is. And then, you know, forcing yourself to make that decision. Now, later on I developed and really recognized not only do you have to decide the next action, but if one action won’t finish this, then what’s the project that you also need to identify and keep track of?

Greg McKeown:

Okay, talk to me about that. So I’ve got these all these sheets, I’ve divided them up, I’ve taken the next action, so I can remove half of the sheets, but I’m left with half of them now because all of these are really part of a project. What do I do next?

David Allen:

Well, you know, what I would do if I were actually doing that process with you, is we’d go through each one of those and decide what’s the next action. And if you could finish the action in two minutes, we just do it right there. That’s the two-minute rule. If you couldn’t finish it, then we say, “Are you the right person to do the action?” and if not, then you need to delegate it. You delegate it right there, either by writing a memo to somebody and putting it in your out basket or shooting an email, “Hey, could you handle this?”. 

And if it’s neither of those, if the action step would take longer than two minutes and you couldn’t delegate it, that’s then what you need to then keep track of as an inventory of the actions you need to take, you know, on anything that would take longer than two minutes. And then that, you know, back then, this was before even personal planners, Greg, I mean, come on, this is 1981, 82, 83, I mean, digital was like, what? Nothing was there. And so what we did, we just had people sort of build a stack of their own action items, you know, on these separate pieces of paper, and then we’d just say, “Okay, sort those however you think that might make sense?”. Well, these are the calls I need to make, these are things I need about this, whatever. And then we’d just them grab some manila file folders and then create some file folders to sort of sort these actions that they need to be reminded of to do into these different categories. Most people had seven to 12. Tends to be about how you tend to sort things into seven to 12 categories if you’re trying to, you know, manage something complex. And so people just sort of created their own little categories of those things. 

And then ideally, you know, you get to the end of your day, you’ve got your calendar and tells you where you need to be when, and if you have any time, then you just rummage through all the other, you know, folders of action reminders. And sometimes you might want to… even back then, we had people sometimes create a hot folder, where they just go through the night before or that day, the morning, and just pull out the one or two or three actions that they needed to take if they had time around their calendar stuff and just put that in their hot folder. Stuff to do today, assuming I have any time at all, the three things out of the 400, or 22, or 75 things they had in their folders. So it’s a pretty simple, pretty idea. You know, come on, still, there’s no difference right now in terms of what you need to do, Greg. Decide how you spend your day.

Greg McKeown:

You talk about the distinction between, you know, identifying outcomes and actions, these being like the zeros and ones of productivity. How does that fit into this? Now we’ve got these folders of projects, they can’t be done in a single task, they can’t be done within two minutes. So their projects are left. What’s the outcome role that needs to be fulfilled?

David Allen:

Well, you need an index of those things that you’re committed to complete within the next few weeks or months that are going to…that you can’t finish in one sitting. Get tires on your car, hire the Vice President, fix the tooth, you know, get your kids at the right school, whatever those are. Most people have 30 to 100 of those. So that was, over time, we discovered as people, as we began to build sort of list managers, especially when the Palm Pilot showed up, which was a fabulous list manager. And you know, or the paper planners where you could create a project list. Here’s a list of all of those outcomes that I’m committed to do. 

So that came later after my work with Dean. He didn’t really include that in there, but that became a significant part of how you actually get control and get focus in your life. And then building in a once-a-week, weekly review, which, if you’re familiar with Getting Things Done, is probably the most important and most challenging habit to build, so that you keep your system current.

Greg McKeown:

Let’s go back to these 30 to 100 projects. You’re not suggesting people work on 30 to 100 projects, you’re suggesting these are contained somewhere that could…so that they can be managed. How many projects should somebody be working on at any given period of time?

David Allen:

No right or wrong to that, just as many as you got. You can only do one thing at a time, so whether you have 43 you’re not doing right now, or 200 you’re not doing right now, or five you’re not doing right now, doesn’t matter. It’s up to you, right? How many things are you not doing right now, Greg? How many am I not doing right now? But the list of options in terms of things I could be working on right now that’s quite dependent on the job, your commitments, what you’re doing in life, how many things you’re comfortable keeping, how many plates you’re comfortable spinning in the air, you know, at any one period of time. There’s no right or wrong about that.

Greg McKeown:

So you don’t have a sense of, like, okay, over the next 30 days, we should only take on five projects…

David Allen:

No

Greg McKeown:

…Eight projects, have as many as you want going on.

David Allen:

Have as many as you want. As many…no, have as many as you want and as many as you have. Most people are not even…are clueless about how many they actually have. So that’s a lot of what Getting Things Done is about, is getting a grip on current reality. It’s funny, people get pissed at me for their lists. I’m going, “Excuse me, that’s not my list, that’s yours.”

Greg McKeown:

You’re like, “The problem existed before I came around. You just didn’t know about it.”

David Allen:

Correct.

Greg McKeown:

So, it seems to me that one of the advantages, and maybe one of the disadvantages of Getting Things Done, is that it’s managing the mass and the complexity that already is. You know, it’s facing what it is, it’s trying to capture that, it’s trying to organize that, so that you know what to do to move forward. 

Okay, that’s a significant advantage. But where I wonder, and I know that you have answers for this, but where I wonder, is what about the things that are really important but aren’t showing up, you know, in that inbox currently. You know, the relationships that really matter, but your attention isn’t on them right now, even though they’re important. How do you advise somebody to make sure they’re even aware of those things or working on them? They’re important, but they might not be, you know, present for you, right?

David Allen:

Yeah. Well, we talk about the six horizons, you actually have commitments with yourself. So you might need a review of one of those horizons called areas of focus and attention, and responsibility.

Greg McKeown:

Just review for us again what the six horizons are.

David Allen:

Well, let’s start at the top. Why are you on the planet? Your purpose and your core values. What really, really matters to you, Greg? You don’t care where you live, as long as what? You don’t care who you live with, as long as what? You don’t care what kind of work you do, as long as what? 

So you’ve got to answer to those. Those are at the top, we call that horizon five. And that’s basically purpose and principles. What are the core things? Why are you on the planet? How’re you doing? What’s on purpose, what’s not? Okay? But even knowing what that is, is not going to help you decide which email to write first. But then the next operational level, and when I say come down, that doesn’t mean less important, it just means more operational, more material. So there’s another horizon that says, “Okay, Greg, if you were to be wildly successful in your career and your life and lifestyle five years from now, what would you be doing? How would you be?” That’s vision. And that’s…see, you and the person next to you could have very similar purposes but a very different picture of what you’re going to be doing wildly successful to fulfill that purpose. They may be, you know, a major surgeon, and you may be, you know, the great American author or God knows, you know, whatever your vision is. So vision is the next level of commitment that you’ve got, okay? What’s your vision, where you’re going, you know, in terms of what would wild success for you really be? And then you have the next level down, would be something we call goals and objectives. 

Horizon three would be: Okay, what are the things you think you need to finish or accomplish over the next three to 24 months that you think is going to make your vision happen? That would be the typical kind of goals and objectives and so forth that companies would have when they’re doing annual planning, so forth. That’s horizon three. 

Horizon two would be: Okay, what are all the things you need to maintain or manage at some level of equilibrium and health, so you can get there? So for you personally, that’d be how’s your health and energy? How’s your relationships? How’s your fun factor? How’s your dog? You know, how’s your… how’re your finances? How’s your fun factor? You know, any and all those things, you don’t finish those, those are just things you need to watch and say, “How am I doing about that?” Some of those may be on cruise control, and some of those, to your point, may be,” Oh, God, that reminds me, I really ought to…” And so looking at that horizon may then remind you of stuff that you hadn’t been thinking about necessarily that consciously, but if you move your consciousness up to those levels of your commitments, you might recognize that that’s actually been sort of grinding away in there, or spinning away in there at a more subtle level. 

And then you have horizon one, which would be all the projects you need to do about any of the above. And then the ground level would be all the actions you need to take about any of those open loops. 

So those are the six horizons. I didn’t make those up, I identified them. So when you say, “How would I start to recognize whether I should be paying attention to this relationship or not?” I say, “Yeah, that’s horizon two.” Your relationships; how are you doing? How’re you doing as a dad, how’re you doing as a parent, how’re you doing as a partner in life, how’re you doing with just your network of people, whether that’s your neighbors or your, you know, extended family? So yeah, those are all things to ask yourself about, and they may all be on cruise control. 

By the way, there’s a great book out there called The Antidote if you haven’t read it yet. Oliver Burkeman’s book The Antidote. And he talks a lot about the stoics and a lot about the necessity to accept current reality as opposed to just go out, you know, free-wheeling and assuming, “Hey, don’t have any negative thoughts” or whatever. And excuse me, you’re going to have to have thoughts about what’s real. Whether you like it or not, you better engage with it. The way out is through. So, but again, you know, part of the subtlety of Getting Things Done is when you pay attention, appropriate attention, to what has your attention, you’ll then find out what really has your attention. Which by the way, when you appropriately engage with it, will open you up to find out what really has your attention. So it’s a big onion to unpeel, Greg.

Greg McKeown:

Mhmm, yeah. Once you start removing some of the first layers, you find there are more layers underneath…

David Allen:

Of course.

Greg McKeown:

…And that they’re deeper, and maybe richer, and maybe a little more painful.

David Allen:

Well, not necessarily more painful, but more challenging for you to come to grips with, in terms of getting comfortable with appropriately engaging with it. To a large rate, in my experience, Greg, for the most part, you’re right. You start to get to the more subtle stuff. The more subtle stuff tends to be the more strategic things. As you start to unpack those, especially if you have the discipline already of ground level and level one, we say, “Wait a minute, I need to do something about that.” Okay, what would be your desired outcome? What’s your project? “I need to get clear with my partner in life about whether we should get divorced or stay together.” 

Okay, there’s an outcome, I got a project, what’s your next action? So that’s the challenging part, would be to make yourself really operational about the things that have your attention at these more subtle levels.

Greg McKeown:

Yes, because it’s the cutting edge of all of those important relationships, important decisions, you still need…the same process exists, what’s the next step that needs to happen? Let’s stop procrastinating this, stop avoiding it.

David Allen:

Right. Assuming if you wanted to get that off your mind, Getting Things Done is not so much about getting things done as it is really about being appropriately engaged with your life. If you’re appropriately engaged with your life, you can take a nap. A really, really peaceful nap. If you’re appropriately engaged with your life, you can have a beer and totally enjoy it. It’s about appropriate engagement, but appropriate engagement doesn’t mean ignore it, or numb out to it, or, you know, or whatever. It means I got to look at it, I got to decide what it means, I’ve got to decide what I’m committed to do about it, I have to decide that I’ve parked the reminders of the things I might need to do about it in appropriate places that I’ll see it the right time. Then, I am now appropriately engaged with it, and it’s off my mind. So you don’t have to go very far. You know, the essential thing is to have your mind empty or have your mind clear so that there’s no distraction, nothing pulling on you. You know, someone has described G.T.D. as lean, you know, the lean process, and the manufacturer or whatever, lean for the brain. No wasted thinking, no distraction. Why should you be thinking and bothering or worrying about stuff that you can’t do anything about right now? And so this is it. I just figured out that algorithm, you know, over all these years and, you know, just made that available to people.

Greg McKeown:

I’ve heard that you’ve answered the question, “Look, how would you know you were sort of a master at this?”. And it would be that you are fully present with the person that you’re talking to.

David Allen:

Or with whatever you’re doing. Cooking spaghetti, or running, or sleeping, or whatever, you’re just there.

Greg McKeown:

It’s fully being present in this moment, doing what’s important now.

David Allen:

Well, or just doing what you decide you want to do right now. I mean, important… it’s kind of like discipline. Those words require…they sound like too much work. You don’t break a sweat by deciding the next action on an email. Deciding to talk to me right now, Greg, you decided to somehow…but you didn’t say, “Wow, this is really important.” You just said, “That’s the thing to do.” 

So it wasn’t like, “Ah, is this a priority to talk to David right now.” No, you made that decision already, and it probably wasn’t hard as you went along with that.

Greg McKeown:

What you’re saying is, don’t burden yourself with the additional layer of: is this the most important possible thing I could be doing right now? Just be able to organize yourself so that you can be fully present doing this so that it’s…

David Allen:

Well, you know, the old sign, and I’m sure you’ve seen this, is “I will not should on myself today.”

Greg McKeown:

Yeah, because that itself is a burden that takes up the RAM of your brain and, you know, makes it hard to actually enjoy and be present in this moment.

David Allen:

You would only have that thought if you’re not present. See, if you’re really present, you don’t have those thoughts about, “Gee, I should, I would,” or whatever. 

But you need to go through the process of getting to that clear space and that essential space, essentially…”That essential space, essentially,” it’s funny I’d said that…That’s not free. You actually have to do what you need to do to get to that space. You don’t just wake up in that space. You might, but then you fall out of it, and you don’t know how you got into it, and how you fell out of it, and how to get back into it again. But if you want to make sure that that’s an ongoing, you know, state of mind, there actually is a thought process that you have to apply. You know, and not a discipline so much as a direction or a rigor, to make sure that you then insert these best practices. So that you…you know, your heads clear. You don’t have to go very far, I mean, come on, I fall off my wagon several times a day. You should. Several times a day I fall out because something new shows up out there I didn’t expect, and now I have to then recalibrate, refocus, or whatever, “I just lost my control. I just lost my attention, my focus. I now need to get back on the present again, boom!” But I just know how to do that very fast.

Greg McKeown:

How do you do that fast? What’s the reset process?

David Allen:

Well, you just say, “What’s got my attention right now? What does that mean? Where does that go? What’s the next action on that?”. So I’ve captured it, I clarify it, I organize it, make sure I park it in the trusted system, however I need to do that. So I just apply my own process. I’m, you know, my own fellow student. I implement this regularly.

Greg McKeown:

Is Getting Things Done, you know, the lazy way to productivity?

David Allen:

Well if you know what you’re doing, efficiency and style are your only two improvement opportunities. Right?

Greg McKeown:

Yeah, I like that.

David Allen:

I mean, if you know where you’re going, just getting there with as little effort as possible, or styling, but why do you get there? That’s the only things to improve or to do that you’re…what else is there to do? If you don’t know where you’re going, that’s another improvement opportunity. But that’s just another level of efficiency.

Greg McKeown:

Let me just back up for just a second. So back when you were, you know, we’re talking nine, ten, that age, you were doing records. What’s a record that you would do?

David Allen:

Bugs Bunny. There was a Bugs Bunny record and I remember at age five or six or seven or whatever, I just memorized everything he did. And then I’d go out, and there’d be sort of a family party in the living room and I’d just go out and suddenly stand in the middle and just sort of recite this whole thing.

Greg McKeown:

Really, you would just, unannounced, you’d walk in there.

David Allen:

Unannounced, I was just…I was just…

Greg McKeown:

“I’m doing this!”

David Allen:

“I’m doing this.” Yeah, yeah.

Greg McKeown:

Can you still remember the record?

David Allen:

No, I have no idea.

Greg McKeown:

You’ve got no idea. Those words are not in you anymore.

David Allen:

No, come on. Not at all.

Greg McKeown:

But you liked the attention of it, you entertained them, it led into this child acting. What was something that you did in theater?

David Allen:

Well, you know, my first role was playing Louis in The King and I. So I learned to sing, and, you know, we did a whole summer and summer theater of the King and me in Shreveport in a brand new theater that someone had donated the money to build at the Seminary College there. And it was wonderful. And I met a lot of people because it was semi-pro, so there were people from New York, and people from Houston, people from other places that were professionals who came to be part of The King and I, you know, part of that event. So that was fabulous. And then I had roles in Waiting for Godot, you know, the Beckett play. And then I had a role in Peter Pan, I played john in Peter Pan. And Peter Foy, who actually flew Mary Martin on the stage in New York for the Peter Pan production, actually came to Shreveport and flew us. So we…I actually got to fly in a harness across the stage. It was very cool.

Greg McKeown:

So cool.

David Allen:

So those were great experiences for sure.

Greg McKeown:

And this led to…?

David Allen:

Well, then I kind of grew out of that, you know, kind of grew out of the child age. And then, in high school, I actually became a debater…

Greg McKeown:

Did you?

David Allen:

…So I was a state champion and went to nationals in debate. Yeah.

Greg McKeown:

Were you enjoying the debate? Did you look forward to it? Did you freak out going into it?

David Allen:

No, I loved it. I loved the ability to kind of stand up and be extemporaneous about something that I thought I might not know something about. But I also did humorous interpretations because back then, anyway, I don’t know if they still doing it, but at least in our school system back then, they had forensic club. We did, you know, dramatic reading. We did comedic reading. We did extemporaneous speaking. We did debate, and so forth. So our debate club sort of kind of did all of that. And we actually traveled around, you know, to east Texas and all over  Louisiana, whatever, doing debate tournaments. I participated in most all of that and did very well. So that was fun. That actually gave me certainly a lot of experience in being able to stand up in front and talk in front of people, you know, kind of in an extemporaneous way.

Greg McKeown:

What did you think you wanted to be at 16 doing these debates? What did you envision your future?

David Allen:

I thought, you know, maybe a lawyer? You know, what else do you do? I mean, come on. You grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana. If you have any kind of intelligence and capability, there’s not a whole lot of options. I mean, keep in mind, Greg. This is 1962, 1961 through 63, 64. So back then, if you were kind of smart at all, you were either going to be a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher. You know, there were no, nobody…consultant? What the heck is that? Actor? Oh, no, go get a degree before you try to do any of that. Yeah, so there wasn’t a whole lot of options about what to think about it that way. 

But then again, if you have the time and you’re interested, another spin that was added to this was that we had an exchange student in our high school from Germany, and she spent the year there. And I thought, well, that’s kind of an interesting thing. Maybe being an exchange student would be really cool. So very long story very short, I decided to apply for the American Field Service, A.F.S., at the time, to see if I could be an exchange student for a year, kind of between my junior and senior year. And it turned out I got accepted. And there were not many people in the whole U.S. because they were expecting families outside the U.S. to accept a U.S. student for a whole year. So there weren’t a lot of families out there that were, you know, willing to pay for that and willing to, you know, step up for that. But there were a few. So there were about 300 of us from the whole U.S. that year, and I got chosen and wound up spending a year with a Swiss Family in Zurich.

Greg McKeown:

What was that like for you?

David Allen:

Oh, transformational. It was a, you know, come on, like to go from Louisiana to Zurich? You know, to have spent a year there with a Swiss Family and learn to speak German and a little bit of Swiss German. And, you know, I can’t tell you how many people I put to sleep when I came back with all the slides I took of mountains because it’s like, “Look at that mountain! Oh, my god, there’s a snow-capped mountain!”. You know? 

They were probably like okay, but to me, that was quite cool. And it really opened my eyes for a lot of things. I mean, I went to probably the…it wasn’t an academic program, it was really more of a social-cultural program to just go live with family, and I went to the school that the kids in the family went to. Turned out that they went to probably the top pre-university schools in Zurich, and, you know, in all of Europe, actually. But I wound up going down into downtown Zurich every day on the tram. And, you know, I was a block away from the Kunsthaus in Zurich, where I just walk in and there’s a whole room full of Monet’s water lilies. And I walked down two blocks to the Odium Cafe where Dadaism started where Jung you know, taught. To me, this was like suddenly opening my eyes to a whole new aspect of the world that I was just not familiar with at all.

Greg McKeown:

It’s like a new planet.

David Allen:

Yeah, for sure. And that changed me a lot from trying to be a lawyer, to say, I got much more interested in culture and the sort of liberal arts if you will. So I came back, you know, spent a whole… actually, that was a whole year. A lot of the kids that did that actually got credit for that year. I didn’t, because I had a girlfriend who was a year younger than me anyway, so I said, “I’ll come back and go back to school with her”.

Greg McKeown:

Hmm.

David Allen:

So I came back and spent, you know…you come back to Shreveport Louisiana high school with “Sis boom bah rah rah!”, you know, football and like, “I don’t think that’s my style”. So…

Greg McKeown:

Yeah. So far you’ve done theater, you’ve done debate, you’ve done Switzerland. Football isn’t the next thing for you.

David Allen:

Not really, no. And I had an older brother who had gotten a National Merit Scholarship and had gone to Yale in math and science because that was the Sputnik era where anybody smart was going to be shunted into math and science so that we could catch up with the Russians. But that wasn’t his gig. He was great at it, but he was really a jazz musician more than anything else. And so he flunked out of Yale. When I came along, I said, “You know, I don’t want that sort of mega-versity kind of a thing that my brother had done.” And so then I got recruited by this strange little college in Florida. No grades, independent study, design your own education, you know, small campus right on Sarasota Bay. Hmm, okay. And so wound up getting a work scholarship, and scholarship, and so forth. And then went and got my BA in a strange little college, which was kind of ahead of its time. It was really sort of one of those leading edge colleges in the early 60s, that if you were to combine Reed, Goddard, Antioch, Sarah Lawrence, UC Santa Cruz, and so forth, those kinds of colleges that sort of approach it that way, this was a whole little college that did that.

Greg McKeown:

You were able to pursue the things that you were genuinely interested in. It’s like the opposite of formality…

David Allen:

Correct.

Greg McKeown:

…With education.

David Allen:

Yeah.

Greg McKeown:

What do you remember learning when you were just so free to learn?

David Allen:

Mhhhm. Well, sort of following my curiosity, if you will. I mean part of it was, again, I had an academic advisor at the college who turned me on to intellectual history, history of thought. That was fascinating to me. And, you know, it was a wide world. I mean, it was…and we had the opportunity to do independent study, and so I got a chance to do that. And it was a college that basically had recruited kids from all over the U.S. who had somehow been just unique, or stood out in some way, they didn’t know who was going to be successful in a freewheeling college like that. So they picked a range of people. So I got a chance to hang out for three years before I got my BA with, you know, 200 of the strangest, most interesting, most different kind of kids you would ever meet, that all came from all around the U.S. So that was quite enriching, just to get all of that input from it. So yeah…I don’t think there was any one thing, Greg, that really stands out there….quite a rich mishmash of all kinds of experiences that I had.

Greg McKeown:

The experience itself was the learning. Who was your favorite teacher through that time? Was it that history professor?

David Allen:

Yeah, yeah, Dr. Mayor. George Mayor and we became good friends.

Greg McKeown:

George Mayor still alive?

David Allen:

No.

Greg McKeown:

If he was still alive, and you had a chance to just thank him, what would you say to him?

David Allen:

I said it many times, was thanks so much for, you know, trusting in me and, you know, giving me the opportunity to do what I did. He gave me some resources to go explore some things on my own, and he was quite a mentor of mine. I very much appreciated that, and I think I acknowledged him along the way.

Greg McKeown:

You end up going from there still to California, to Berkeley. And you study…?

David Allen:

American intellectual history. I was fascinated by the American psyche. You know, again, I’d come back from Switzerland and really realized how different the culture was, even though that was probably as similar as you could find another country, in terms of just the family I lived with and their style of living and so forth. But at the same time I recognized there was something quite unique about the American psyche, the American culture.

Greg McKeown:

And it sounds like you could see it almost for the first time, because you had the experience of seeing another culture, which reveals not just Switzerland, but also America and Americana.

David Allen:

Yeah, yeah. And again, this is the 60s, and people were going, “Oh, America sucks. We need to leave this…”. What was interesting is we had to write a thesis for our bachelor’s degree at New College, and my thesis was the Decade of Disenchantment: America in the 1920s. And I wrote about the novels that were written, and the literature, and the the thought process that was going on. And it was funny, in the 1920s, anybody who was smart and sensitive said, “America sucks”, you know, “The middle classes, they are unconscious, they all went to Paris and smoke dope, they all went to….”, you know, they did all kinds of things in the 20s. This was such an American thing. And then I watched all the hippies doing this, I’m going, they’re thinking they’re so unique, and going, “No, you’re totally American, this is a very American thing to be doing.” It was interesting. So I had a different, you know, sort of awareness about the American psyche, and I was fascinated by it. And, you know, have been ever since. Fast forward, discovered that a lot of what that psyche represented and reflected started right here, a few blocks from where I’m living right now in Amsterdam.

Greg McKeown:

When you look at the work you’ve done post writing Getting Things Done, it seems always to me that there’s something else you want people to understand. You know, otherwise, why write the other books? What is it that you want people to hear that maybe they couldn’t hear or couldn’t get just from reading the original?

David Allen:

Well, it’s the mindset, I guess, that can become quite transformational for people. So what about that and why? I suppose that early on, the thing that has sort of kept me engaged with this is really realizing that I had uncovered, from my perspective anyway, the two key things that we are really accountable for here on the planet. And that’s completion and creation. So, you know, you need to be accountable for the things you’ve put in motion, those open loops that you’ve created. You can call it karma, you can call it whatever you want, but you’ve put it into motion, and you will eat it. It will come around, and it’s something that you must then grapple with or deal with in some way.

Greg McKeown:

Hmm.

David Allen:

So the sense of completion is critical. But then, if you’ve completed and you’re still here, and you’re still around, you’re still now creating. So now, how do you then appropriately create so that you don’t, you know, create unnecessary, inefficient, ineffective things, you know, for yourself? So completion and creation are really the essence of what G.T.D. is about. It’s really about, well, what are the open loops you’ve got, and then what do you need to do about them. So it’s actually getting people in the driver’s seat of their life again. So it’s a very, very…as simple as these things may sound or be, they actually resonate with a very core level, I think, of the human experience. I think that’s why it’s so universal; there’s no cultural bias, there’s no gender bias, there’s no personality biases, nothing to this. Everybody needs to handle what they’ve put into motion, and they need to be accountable for what they continue to put in motion. 

So in a way, if you look at it that way, and then I go, I can’t stop telling anybody. If I’m gonna die in two hours, then I’ll want to tell you or anybody listening to this exactly that. If I’m only going to see you for a day or for two hours or whatever, what would I want you to know? So I couldn’t stop telling you this. So, I don’t know if that answers the…maybe a long nonanswer to your question.

Greg McKeown:

Who do you see as a wisdom source today in the world?

David Allen:

I don’t know. I don’t see a wisdom source in the world. To me, it’s all from the spirit. And anybody who’s tapped into the spirit, then they may be a wisdom source. They may be a source of wisdom that shows up with wisdom…

Greg McKeown:

And what do you mean when you say that?

David Allen:

It’s kind of like the muse…comes through and decides to speak through you, Greg, or not. Whether you pick it up or not, and run with the ball up to you. But there’s a much bigger game going on, you know, than just the material world. And so, understanding who’s driving that material world and where’s it going, and how do I tap into that and how do I, you know, reflect it? How do I engage with it sort of appropriately to do the best I can, in terms of maybe why I’m here to do what I’m doing.

Greg McKeown:

What does spirit really mean to you when you use that word?

David Allen:

Well, I use it with a small “s”, that stuff you can’t see. And, you know, there are a whole lot of realities from my personal experience, a whole lot of realities outside of this material reality that we’re in right now. You know, this is about, you know, what you and I are talking about, and how we’re engaging with this is about 10% of who you and I really are. There’s 90%, that’s some other level, and other levels that it’s engaged in, and has been, and will continue to be. So you know, we will continue. This is just a sojourn here. It’s a great lesson, it’s a great educational place. You know, this world is tough, but it’s designed really to teach you about choices and the effect of choices that you make. So this is just an educational thing. So the spirit is just that other energy field or that other thing that is really behind all of this lives inside of all this, it is part of who we are. It defies words because words can’t describe something that’s outside of that vocabulary.

Greg McKeown:

Words are really limiting because there’s obviously reality outside of words. So our words are always…

David Allen:

But they can direct you. Words can be directive.

Greg McKeown:

Yeah.

David Allen:

So, you know, just even in our conversation we just had, anybody listening to this directed their consciousness either to, “Wow, these guys are really jerks, they don’t know what they’re talking about. How stupid is this?”, or,  “Oh, yes, that reminds me. Ah, yeah”. So words can be directive. They’re not the essence, but they’re directive.

Greg McKeown:

Elsewhere, you’ve used the following: you’ve talked about your soul, your spirit, your intuition, your gut, whatever you want to call it, the still small voice, essentially inside all of us. Do you feel that in your life? Is this what we’re really trying to get to in Getting Things Done, so that you remove all that noise, so that you can be more aware of that soul spirit intuition, and so on?

David Allen:

No, I don’t do it for that reason. If you’re focused on that, this will make that easier. And so, you know, my whole thing is getting you back more into you in the driver’s seat of your life so that you then discover for yourself what it is you need to discover on this level or any other. That’s all your choice to do. So I’m not a proselytizer, I’m not trying to convince anybody else because they’re already in it. Everybody already is a spirit, everybody already is…there’s nothing to be saved. They’re already saved. You’re here, you just need to be more aware of that. So it’s just like how conscious do you want to be about what you’re doing? And managing this life, if you’re in it, managing it more elegantly, will tend to be able to open you to more subtle levels, if you’re interested in pursuing those, for sure.

Greg McKeown:

And what are those subtle levels like for you?

David Allen:

They’re subtle, and they’re lovely. And it’s, you know, it’s just a bunch of love. And it’s a bunch of, sort of, elegant awareness of the truth and, you know, kind of what’s happening in the world. And as strange and as crazy as the world is, as we know, we’re going through some crazy times, as people can experience that. There’s a reason, and there’s a bigger game going on inside of all this. So being able to relax and be willing to be open to whatever the bigger game is, and realize that the spirit, you know, has its own plan. There’s a big, you know, there’s a bigger game going on. And you know, I don’t live in that world, you know, that much. I’ve tasted it at significant times in my life, so I know the reality of that, that we’re all in this game together. And you know, we’re all one, and there’s a oneness to whatever all this game is. So, you know, I don’t want to sound like, you know, a spiritual preacher in some way, shape, or form because, you know, I’m kind of allergic to those folks, as well. But there is a real truth to that. So, I don’t know how to…it’s kind of inexpressible in verbal terms.

Greg McKeown:

I was talking to a leader recently who said that they had a conversation with their son about when things don’t work out in life; you need to go to plan B, you need to go to plan C. And the son turns around and says, “You know, you always talk about that. Plan B, plan C. But I think,” and they’re talking spiritually, “I think when things don’t work out, you’re still in Plan A.” And that seemed to be consistent with what you were just saying then. That even when things surprise us, even when they’re not as we expect them to be, even when we’re disappointed or grappling with new challenges, you’re saying this is still plan A. I’m putting words in your mouth, but does that sound about right?

David Allen:

Yeah, no, sure. No, there is no time in spirit, there’s no right or wrong in spirit. It kind of is what it is. I mean, the world’s fine. Look out there. It’s not overwhelmed. It’s not stressed out. It’s doing okay. It’s only how we’re engaged with that, but how we’re engaged with that as our lessening here. So what are you learning about the truth, about what is and what matters. And you know, there’s lots of data about that. People who have sort of dying experiences that come back and go, “Wow, it’s a very different thing out there”. And it’s all cool.

Greg McKeown:

I wasn’t going to try and force this, but I know that you had an experience in your life where in hindsight, you felt you weren’t cooperating with your life. And it landed you in, if I understand right, in hospital for a couple of weeks, is that…Am I understanding that right?

David Allen:

Yeah, no, that’s correct. Very true.

Greg McKeown:

Can you tell me a little more about what led to that and what you learned from it?

David Allen:

Eh, much longer story. When I write my memoirs, I’ll detail it out maybe, you know, in more of a different way. But it was really more about, you know, trying to pay attention to stuff that I wasn’t clear where the voices were coming from. And I started to pay attention to the voices that I was hearing in my head. And so, started to follow the voices, and that ran me into a lot of trouble. And it also ran me into a lot of folks because I, at the time, I was quite sensitive and could sort of psychically see what was going on with people. And I realized they didn’t understand anything about what was going on, anything about what I’d seen and I got…it pissed me off. That they couldn’t see it and they couldn’t get it. That they were trying to force me to do something different than what I was doing. And so I pushed up against it. And so, you know, I kind of railed against the world. And then the world said, “Okay, let’s shut you up and put you away.” And that was very uncomfortable. So I said, “Okay. Let me figure out… because obviously, I don’t seem to be able to beat this game, in terms that they’ve laid out. So let me cooperate with it so I get out of here.” 

So, you know, as I kind of, somewhat humorously, but also somewhat, honestly say, you know, I’m still as crazy as I ever was, you’re just looking at the highest rate of cooperation here.

Greg McKeown:

You decided you would yield to win?

David Allen:

Yeah.

Greg McKeown:

You said, “Okay, I’m not going to fight all the forces in the system, because….how do you push on the system the harder it’s going to push back?”.

David Allen:

Right.

Greg McKeown:

But you still went forward in your life aware that you were seeing things other people weren’t seeing or aware of?

David Allen:

Correct.

Greg McKeown:

Do you still feel like that?

David Allen:

Well, not, you know, not so much. It hasn’t been that important to me to sort of prove myself right. So I just see what I see, and then use it for the highest good of everybody involved as best I can. So I’m not out to prove anything anymore.

Greg McKeown:

Hmm. What are you really about now? I understand you could keep doing what you’ve been doing, and you, I’m sure will. You’ll keep teaching these ideas, you’ll keep bringing them to the world, I mean, I sort of can see that and imagine that. But what really is left for you? What is…what would you feel you had not got done if it was over now?

David Allen:

I don’t know. I really don’t have any drive about that, other than to say, “Hmm. Well, the more I’m aware of who I am, why I’m here, and how best I can, you know, make my energy available for the worker spirit and the work, my work, to do.” You know, that’s fine. There’s not much bigger or better or different than what that is. So that’s kind of my daily modus operandi, and I don’t have a big aspiration to do anything more further than that.

Greg McKeown:

For you, you’re saying, this will just evolve as it’s meant to evolve. And you’re not wanting to have, you know, the answer for all of that.

David Allen:

Yeah, true. I’ve kind of seen…I’ve been to the mountain, you know. And I’ve seen it and will trust that you know, however it plays out is going to play out.

Greg McKeown:

What is something that you have learned today in this conversation? What has come to you clearer, or differently, or in a fresh way?

David Allen:

Perhaps a more practical way to talk about my spiritual experiences.

Greg McKeown:

Hmm.

David Allen:

And that that’s okay. And that, you know, obviously you are open for that, because I don’t do that at all. I mean, it’s rare, because most people are just not ready for that conversation, or don’t want to broach the conversation or I’m not ready to have that conversation. Who knows?

Greg McKeown:

Hmm.

David Allen:

So… but I’ll be 75 in December, so say, “What the heck? I don’t know how many more miles I have on my tire.” So why not chat pretty directly if you’re asking directly?

Greg McKeown:

I want to end on a really easy question, which is a question that every student who applies to Stanford Business School has to ask, and answer rather. It’s an easy one, it’s, “What matters most to you and why?”

David Allen:

Yeah. What matters most to me is that I’m engaged with the world in the most optimal way. And why? Because…why not?

Greg McKeown:

No, give me more than that. Not why not, there’s more to it than that for you.

David Allen:

Well, that’s where freedom lies. If I’m engaged in the most optimal way, I’m free. And freedom is sort of my core value. I’m free to do what I want to do the way I want to do it. And whatever’s up right now, and I don’t have anything else, there’s no other requirement, I’m present. So that allows me to be, you know, available for whatever the universe has for me at this very moment.

Greg McKeown:

Yeah.

David Allen:

Be open to it.

Greg McKeown:

Yeah. I mean this, to me, this whole conversation has connected the dots between this very practical beginning place, which I think is such a great service to people, and myself included, to try and not be so consumed and controlled by all the incomplete stuff, all the commitments that are hanging out there, all the noise in their head. That’s the beginning place, but it’s not the end place. This is an important mechanism for getting your life under your command in order that you can be ready to be of greater service and to make a contribution and that you feel pulled towards, a pulling that you might not even feel if you’re just so reactive.

David Allen:

And that the strange kind of Zen and Sufi aspect of this is the game itself is fun. And highly…there’s magic in the mundane. And so, just being present with whatever…cooking spaghetti, or taking the dog for a walk, or, you know, sitting down and writing your life plan for the next 10 years. And in all, it’s the same stuff, and that you shouldn’t evaluate or judge any of it as better or worse, it’s just called “That’s what it is right now”. And let me enjoy that, let me appreciate that. Let me find out what that’s about. And then, you know, strangely, I’ve had some of my best ideas when I’m doing some of the most mundane stuff in real life. So, you know, so relax. Get rid of all your shoulds.

Greg McKeown:

David, what a pleasure to have spent this time with you. I feel honored to have had the conversation, I feel grateful to just engage in a way that takes us beyond one level and into another. I’m sure it will be a blessing to other people, too, as it’s been a blessing to me. And I’m grateful for the work that you have done, and of course, for the work, whatever it is that you feel pulled and called to do into the future. Thank you for your time.

David Allen:

Thanks, Greg. Thanks for the invitation. This was fun. Yay!