hello my mappers, and welcome to the video. Today, we're gonna be going over Getting Things Done by David Allen. Now, this book is a book that I am so happy to bring to you because it absolutely changed my life. Now, that's a pretty strong statement for a simple personal development book, but this book has given me so much clarity of thoughts, so much peace of mind, and really, really helped me create a better work/life balance. So, if you're anything like me, you're the person that has sometimes a hard time shutting their mind off after they get home from work, or they find themselves thinking about amazing business ideas during the middle of a conversation with a friend or a loved one, this book is going to be perfect for you. It really is so much more than the art of productivity. He calls it the art of stress-free productivity, and man, that's so, so true. And the level of stress going down is going to be felt all the way through your life when you implement some of the strategies that I've pulled

out of this book for you now a quick introduction. First, to David Allen himself. He's the president of David Allen & Co, which is now a very big, big company. When this book first came out, to my understanding, it wasn't quite as big as it is now. But he is a master at productivity and coaching and has more than 20 years' experience as a consultant, executive coach, and an educator. The companies he's worked with include Oracle, Microsoft, Lockheed, and the World Bank. Some of the biggest companies in the world are implementing this system. His writing and work have been featured in Fast Company, Fortune, and many other publications. I actually found this book well-refined. This book I had read quite a while ago, but you know how sometimes you read a book and then you reread it and it feels like a completely different book? That's what happened to me on this one. I found him from a podcast that he had done. Maybe I'll link that down in the show notes for you guys. The first quote that I pulled out of the book is, Welcome to a

goldmine of insights into strategies for how to have more energy, but be more relaxed, and get a lot more accomplished with much less effort. If you're like me, you like getting things done and doing them well, and yet you also want to see life in ways that seem increasingly elusive, if not downright impossible, if you're working too hard. And that's what I alluded to in the intro. I'm the type of person who really loves business, who really loves doing these mind maps for you guys, but I sometimes find it difficult when I'm not doing those things to keep thoughts about those things out of my mind. And it ends up making my life outside of work and outside of doing these mind maps a little bit less enjoyable. And this book has really helped me with that. This doesn't have to be an either/or proposition. It is possible to be effective doing. Wow, you are delightfully being in your ordinary workday world. Now that's so interesting, right? He's talking about doing and being, talking about a lot about presence, which some of them.

mindfulness and meditation books that I've done on the channel talked about quite a lot of it well about as well now. This book is really to me two different things. On the surface, you might think getting things done. Why would I want to read that? That seems like just another productivity book of which there are literally hundreds out there on the market. And that's what it is on the surface. It's practical advice on how to manage your attention and your energy. Scientifically and clinically proven tips and tactics to help you manage your time and get more done. And as you can see, I mean he's been in business for so so long because so many people. A lot of these tips and tricks are working or else these big companies would never hire him. But looking a little bit deeper into the book, it's really a methodology for giving you more peace of mind in your day to day life both in your work and in your personal life. There's specific practices that allow us to relax and step into flow much more easily. So if you're on this channel

because you're looking to find ways to get into a flow state a little bit more, or if you want to learn a little bit more about flow States. I did a mind map on the book Flow by Mihai Csikszentmihalyi. Such a good book. In this book is a great kind of ancillary ancillary book to that book. Now, next we're moving into mind mapping. Quick introduction to mind mapping if you're just new to the channel. You can get the most out of the mind maps by following along. You could find the process of how I mind map all of these books plus 50 plus other mind map templates, including this one, all at the link down below. Following along is going to help you learn more, remember better, and apply these books to your life, which after all is why we read or why we watch videos on books. Now, the first big idea that I pulled out in the court to go along with it is about idea fairy repellent, and you'll see why it's possible for a person to have an

overwhelming number of things to do and still function properly with a clear head and a positive sense of relaxed control. That's a great way to live and work at elevated levels of effectiveness and efficiency. It also because it's also becoming a critical operational style required of successful in high-performing professionals. As we get inundated with new alerts and new technology, we end up getting a lot more scattered with our ideas, scattered with our attention, and that's essentially what he's talking about here. You already know how to do everything necessary to achieve this high-performance state. If you're like most people, however, you need to apply these skills in a more timely, complete, and systematic way so you can get on top of all that is feeling buried instead of feeling buried. There is more on our plates than ever and then there has ever been before. This is great because want number one we have access to so many fulfilling and engaging things to do. There literally is an endless number of things for you to be doing at any given moment and in the

past it simply wouldn't have been like that. So, on one hand, this is really great. The possibilities of life and work are now more than ever open to one's own imagination. Can you imagine someone back in the day thinking, I'm gonna read books, mindmap them, and strangers are going to help me support my lifestyle through coaching and through watching the videos? Isn't that amazing? That simply wasn't available just a number of years ago. It's allowing people to have a life that is true to their own desires. They get to do things that they really want to do because of this amazing amount of opportunity. However, we would be missing the full picture if we didn't acknowledge how difficult that actually ends up making things. Having so many options can lead to distraction, procrastination, and stagnation, especially if we're not careful or we don't have a good system for staving those things off. That's why it's so imperative that we have this system and we keep it in place to keep us focused on the task at hand while also allowing

our imagination to run right. We don't want to really kind of miss either one of those two things. We want to be able to focus on the task at hand, get it into that flow state to produce our best possible work, but we also want to be careful that we don't try to be too focused all the time, too rigid all the time, too work-minded all the time because imagination is such a big part of our lives. Today clients of mine often get distracted by something I call the idea fairy, and that's why I'm talking about the getting things done system as idea fairy repellent. For example, when that idea fairy pops up, it's usually when you should be focused and dedicated to a specific pursuit. A wonderful new idea will pop up into your mind. So, say for example, I'm doing this mind map and all of a sudden I can't stop thinking about a new business idea for my marketing business, that type of thing will happen to us all the time.

that idea of Harry. Well, first, it'll knock quietly, and then they'll say, Hey, this is a good idea, you should think about this, and then it gets a little louder and a little louder and a little louder, and eventually you jump from what you should be doing to this new amazing idea that you have, right? The brain is an idea factory and it's great, and I'm happy that it's doing that job, but the idea fairy always comes at the wrong time. It comes at the time that you should be focusing. So you want to make sure that this getting things done system is implemented in your life so you can easily and simply put this idea, this great new idea, in its proper place so you can get back to the work that you should be doing. And I'll show you all the ways that the getting things done system is going to help you with these ideas that pop into our heads when we should be doing other things. I'm sure all of us has felt that before, the next big idea that I pulled out of the book.

was about perfect readiness now. The quote to go along with it says, In karate, there's an image that's used to define the position of perfect readiness, mindful like water. I believe Bruce Lee talks about that quite a lot. Imagine throwing up a pebble into a still pond. How does the water respond? The answer is totally and appropriately to the force and mass of the input, and that returns to calm. It doesn't overreact or underreact. And man, that's a state that we should really be trying to get into in our daily lives as well. So often, we'll get an email, a notification, or etc., and we'll just tense up and we'll really, really, really worry about this over and over and over again, and we can't get back to that calm state. Our mind will never let us forget a task that someone has emailed us or pinged us with until we either do something about it or we say we're never gonna do something about that. So, the power of a karate punch comes from speed, not from muscle. I know this as a boxer as well.

it's not necessarily how strong you are, but how focused, how pop you can create that punch at the very end. It comes from that focus, pop at the end of the whip. That's why I pity people can learn to break boards and bricks with their hands. It's also why you see a big size differential between people who can actually have not get power in a boxing match. It doesn't take calluses or brute strength, just the ability to generate a focused thrust with speed. But a tense muscle is a slow one, and that's often why you'll see boxers don't talk about lifting weights quite so much either. So the high levels of training in the martial arts teach and demand balance and relaxation as much as anything else, namely as much as strength, clearing the mind, and being flexible are the key. And again, that's the key with productivity, especially the key with the stress-free productivity that we want to achieve with the getting things done system, which we'll talk about in this orange point here. So cultivating a flow state.

is the same as that boxers punch, or that karate blow. It requires this state of being relaxed, and that flexibility, so that you can create that pop at the end in order to be productive, and in order to get into that flow states. Flow states, if you don't know too much about them, I'll quickly go over them. They happen easily when you're doing things like sports, video games, hiking, and thinking. And why does it happen so easily during these activities, and it feels so hard to get into some projects when we're doing, you say, for example, work? Well, it's partly because there's no tension in these scenarios. When you're playing sports, there's a little bit of tension, but you're not gonna really get in trouble if you don't win the game. Or same with video games, and hiking, and thinking, there's not as much tension in any of those scenarios. In fact, a lot of these scenarios require you to be a little bit relaxed. So, cultivating a calm mind with minimal distraction is what it really takes to getting into these flow.

States easily and repeatedly. And again, if you don't know about flow States, you don't know why they're so important when it comes to work, when it comes to any kind of creative endeavor. I recommend that you check out that book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and it will absolutely change your life. And this really, to me, is the heart of the Getting Things Done system: creating the space so that we can be like the water, we can react appropriately, and then return back to our calm and ease and relaxed state so that we can bring back that flow state. So if we can easily dip into flow on an everyday basis, it's cultivating calm, adventurous, and a less tense state of mind. The system below that I'm going to talk about in the next point, that's really the only aim: to help you with that specific thing. It's not necessarily to show you how to work harder, it's not necessarily to show you how to get more done in a specific day by, you know, blocking the specific you.

know using the Pomodoro Technique, or anything like that, but this system specifically is to help you stay relaxed when you're diving into the work that you need to do. One piece of advice that I would give is really, if you get nothing from the book, try to find when you're falling into the trap of sticking too much rigidity onto your life. Yeah, whether it's in your work, your exercise, your personal relationships, try to see, hey, where am I putting too much rigidity on myself? Where am I holding myself to too many rules? Where am I dictating what the outcome must be in order for me to feel rewarded, to feel happy? And if you could take that piece of advice away from this book, that's what I think David Allen and myself would really, really think that that's a useful piece of advice to take away. Okay, now we're halfway through the map, we're gonna talk about the new system. Now these two orange points are the main points that I pulled out of the book.

that I think that you should take home so make sure you stay home. To stay tuned for our many getting things done session that we're gonna do at the very end. The first one, however, is about the new system. So, he says the methods that I present here are all based on two key objectives. Number one is capturing all the things that need to get done either now, later, some day, big, little, or in-between into a logical and trusted system outside of your head and off of your mind. Now, to me, that was the biggest breakthrough of the entire book, capturing these things into a trusted system that you know you're gonna check later, outside of your head and off your mind, disciplining yourself to make a front-end decision about all of the inputs you let into your life so that you will always have a plan for quote-unquote next actions. And that's the second big, big, big thing that I learned from this book. Anytime you have to do something, anytime you have to capture an idea or write down something that you need to do, you need to make a

list of next actions because it's so so powerful that you can implement or renegotiate at any moment. Most people walk around with their RAM bursting at the seams. They're constantly distracted, they're focused, disturbed by their own internal mental overload. Does that feel like you? I know it's felt like me at times in my life, for sure. What's the next action? This is the critical question for everything you've collected. If you answer it appropriately, you'll have the key, a substantive thing to organize. The next action is the next physical, visible action that needs to be engaged in in order to move the current reality towards completion. We'll talk a little bit about what next actions might look like in a little bit here. The GTD system is compromised of two key objectives. Number one, you got to capture. So what does that mean? Well, this is the part that we talked about before, the things that your mind jumps to when you procrastinate. This is just one of the things that happens but

the idea fairy can jump into your head, and that ends up happening when you're trying to procrastinate. And this is one of the things: ideas, to-do's, commitments, other projects, things that other people are putting on you, things that you've committed to, other projects. Like if you're working on one project, the idea fairy is going to come and give you another project to work on. These things are constantly jumping into our head when we should be focusing on the things that we need to be working on. And the only way to get them out of your head, right, the main objective of the brain, is to remember these things because you're deeming them as important. This new idea sounds really good, it's important, this to-do list, this commitment that I've made, these things are all very important. And the number one thing that your brain wants to do evolutionarily is to make sure that you remember those things. And that's why they keep popping up. They're continually popping into your head not as Oh, my brain can't focus but as My brain is

constantly remembering to remind me of these things because they're important, and that's its number-one job. So that's what the entire system is about: getting these things out of our heads. But of course, it interrupts the workflow and our flow state, and this makes our work much less effective when these things are jumping into our head. And that's again why we need that system. We need to convince our brain that we won't forget the important information. And quick aside here: inside the book, David talks a lot about to-do lists, and it talks about not having a set system for how you're putting these ideas on paper, or etc. The reason that that isn't going to work, the reason that you must have a dedicated system to deal with these things, is because if you write it down on a piece of paper, then your mind is going to continually remind you that you wrote it on that piece of paper, and it's going to try to make sure that you didn't lose it. So you need to not only

have a dedicated system, but you need to have a dedicated time to go and check that system so that your brain will be able to forget those things and actually focus on the task at hand, which really is the core of productivity. So, the capture system, what the heck is it? Write down everything that pops into your brain at the time and put it into your inbox. Now, this could be actual email inbox stuff that's coming to you, could be notifications, could be ideas, could be commitments that you made, could be to-do lists, and etc. Here's a couple tips from my life: I like to use Trello for this. So, anytime an email comes in that I need to do something about that's gonna take me a couple of minutes, I am going to throw it in my Trello inbox as a to-do list. Any time I have a good idea, I throw it into my Trello inbox. Any projects that I have planned, any meetings that I have planned, I throw it all into my Trello inbox, actually in the inbox part of it, and I can maybe take a photo of my

actual Trello board later. If anyone's interested, it's also important to schedule time on your calendar to empty this inbox, or your mind won't stop reminding you. This is kind of the piece of paper that I talked about before. I have scheduled in my calendar every Monday morning. I try and fill my inbox with as many ideas that I can possibly get out so that I can kind of defrag, so to speak, my mind before I get the work week started. And then anytime something pops into my mind, I throw it immediately, throw it into the inbox. Even if I'm doing something else, I will throw it into the inbox because I know it'll take less time to throw it into the inbox than it will to continually pop up in my mind to remember to throw it into the inbox. The next thing that I have every day, I make sure that I have time in the calendar first thing in the morning to set aside, Hey, what can I clear out of my inbox today? What projects do I have time to work on? What commitments do I have?

time to actually follow through on today. Today, and then at the end of the week on Friday afternoon, I have a little bit more time scheduled to really pull out, you know, oh there's an idea that I had that I need to execute on. Oh, that's not quite, that's not good. I'm just gonna throw that into the inbox, really clean out that inbox as much as I possibly can on Friday afternoons. So this system is by no means very complex, and by no means is my system the best system to follow, but these ideas are more like principles that you can create your own system around. So we'll talk about next actions next after you've collected all that information. So say, for example, I put a project in. I have an idea, I put a project in. I put maybe, what are the next couple actions? That's what we're gonna do next, right after you've collected the information. It's helpful to turn it into next actions instead of make the next mind map. You would want to write it like this. You would say, Oh, make...

the next mind map might be your heading. But here are the things that you could potentially do. My next action might be to pick the next book. It might be to read the book. It might be to start the mind map. Fill in the mind map. Shoot the video. Edit and upload. And what I tend to do is I brainstorm all the potential actions that I could be taking here. And then I kind of rearrange them inside of Trello as which one is going to be my next action. Which one is going to be the most important. And which one is going to, yeah, which one is going to be the one that I don't necessarily need to do right away. That's how I would do it. So this is gonna help us stave off procrastination. Quite often it can feel like make the next mind map is a big giant thing that we need to do. And you know just pick the next book is a pretty easy thing to do. And it helps me build up momentum. I do have a full photo of

the entire GTD methodology. So there is a few more steps that I haven't included here just for times sake, but if you are interested, you can read the entire book. I think it's a great book, and I believe there's quite a lot of graphics as well on Google that you can go and find if you want to see the entire system. But these are kind of the two main objectives that have made the most difference in my life. Moving on, we're gonna do the two-minute drill, man. This one is so important. These next two small tips, but they're life-changing for most of us. If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it's defined. I can't tell you how many of my clients have email inboxes that have 50 emails in there that all they need is a reply. All they need is a two-minute long reply. Then two minutes is probably even more than it might take, right? So how many of these things do you have on your list? Two-minute things

that'll only take two minutes. Take out the trash. All these small little things. As soon as you think about it, you should just do it. But it's gonna take more time to put it on your list, and it's gonna take more mental energy to think about it all the time than it would to actually just do the thing, right? These are things like call Suzie about why, send an email to Tim, take out the trash, all those sort of things. These two-minute actions that, as David says, don't deserve to go in your Inbox, just do them right away, get them off your mind. This is a really big concept for me in Getting Things Done, as soon as they come up. It helps you not let your list get out of control with a bunch of small actions, and it also helps you just kind of cultivate that I'm gonna do it right away type of mindset, which that is huge if you're in business or really if you're in any career. Get things done as quickly as you possibly can and build up that momentum. Next is Inbox Zero. I've

been living by inbox zero for three years. Even before I read this book, but man, it is absolutely life-changing for the people that I've helped with it. It requires much less energy to maintain email at zero base than at a thousand base, and this is one of the best things that I have ever done to help quiet my mind. Again, it was quite a long time ago, but here's how I do it. First, I have two folders, one for the end of the day. Again, I have this time scheduled in my calendar to look at my Inbox at the end of the day, and I have to empty this out at the end of the day for thirty minutes. If it's a two-minute action, I'll do it. If it's more than a two-minute action, I'll put it in my Trello board. I make sure that this one gets emptied by the end of the day every single day. And then I have another one for the end of the week, scheduled time in my calendar for two hours to get everything in this folder done by the

end of the day, or by the end of the week. Sorry. So, you know, might have a bunch of projects that could take 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes that need to be done by the end of the week. I make sure that I actually go and get those done by the end of the week. The other actions that I have available to me in the inbox is one, not important. If it's a spam email, just delete it right away. If it's finished and say it was a two-minute action or it was a better project that I just added the step into my Trello board for, I archive it. Now, I put it in an archive because it's easily searchable just in case I do end up having to go back to it. Archived for me is almost like deleted. I very, very, very rarely have to go back to archived. If it's a two-minute action, it's done right away. If it needs action today, I mark it as unread and I put it in today. If it's going to take more than two

minutes. It can take 5-10 minutes. I put it in today and mark it as unread if it needs to be done this week. And it's gonna take 10 to 15 minutes, I've marked it as unread and put it in this week. If it's a full project idea or it's part of a project idea, I should put that as well. I put it in my GTD inbox or in my calendar if it's necessary. So it's so so important. Get to that email INBOX lifestyle, and it's going to make your life a heck of a lot less stressful. Now, finally, the one that a lot of you have probably been waiting for is many GTD. This is where I'm gonna take you through a very small kind of sequential system that you could use in your life to get started with this. And again, if you're interested in my trouble box, maybe just leave a comment down below. I'll show you my exact Trello board. I'm not shy about sharing that. I just am unsure if anyone would be interested in.

seeing it so you can try for yourself right now if you like. Choose just one project that is stuck on that is new or stuck or that could simply use some improvement. Think of your purpose, think of what a successful outcome would look like, wherever you'd be physically, financially, in terms of reputation, or whatever. Brainstorm potential steps, organize your ideas, decide on next actions. Are you any clearer about where you want to go and how to get there? It's very interesting, right? So here we go, let's do these steps together right now. Grab some paper, you know, if you have the mind map, that's even better. So going download the mind map if you don't have it. Here's a very, very simple way to go through this, and this is essentially what you would do with every project that might come up. And ideally, you could kind of scale this out to use it in your everyday life. So first, what's a project that's new, stuck, or could use some getting things done? Any project, it could be any project. The first thing

that you want to do is think about, okay, what's the purpose of this project. Why am I actually doing this project? And if you're setting, you know, random projects, you want to actually come and kind of ground them and say, what is the main goal? What is this building up to? And that'll help you stay motivated to keep going with it or help you motivate a team if you're trying to motivate a team. Now next, what does a successful outcome look like? Kind of describe it in a couple of sentences. Generally, that's what I do with a bigger project. Can say, you know, what does a successful outcome look like? Or if you're working with a client or you're working with some partners, you could even pose the question to them, what does a successful outcome for this project actually look like? And just write that down. That way you can kind of measure whether you actually got that thing done or not. Now let's list some potential next steps. And this is what I talked about before. Let's brainstorm every potential next step.

every potential step in the entire project. If you have enough time, write those steps down in a checklist or whatever it might be. Write everything down, and then it's time to organize. What is the next logical step that makes the most sense? Since, right, it could be anything. For some people, it might be: what's the smallest thing that I could possibly do that will get the ball rolling on this project? For some people, it might be: what's the most logical step that's gonna make every other step easier? A little bit of 80/20, a little bit of the one thing by Gary Keller. Finding what the first step is going to make every other step easier is a very good way to go about it. It's gonna be really up to you. Find that most important step and put that first. Make that in the checklist first. The final step would be to put the rest of the steps in their logical order. Now, it doesn't have to be exactly right. You can always change it up, and that's why I love about Trello.

you can drag and drop the checklist items. You can add new checklist items. You can take away checklist items if you decide that it wasn't the way that you wanted it to be. Very, very important. Just make it into some sort of logical kind of process, logical kind of checklist that you can go through, and then schedule some time to get started. Now, it's very interesting. We didn't talk so much about this, but in the book, he talks about don't put anything in your calendar unless it must get done at that specific time. And that's generally what I do as well. I have meetings with clients. I have them very specified in my calendar at a specific time because I either have to go to that person or meet them on Skype or whatever it might be. And then everything else is open time. And that's what I love. But it's open time for my projects, is open time for my getting things done list, and it's really awesome because I can start clicking those checklists off and get a lot of dopamine hits along the way.

I want to thank you for being with me here today. If you're interested at all in how to mindmap, how to make books stick a little bit better, by all means, go down and get that free course down below, and hopefully I'll see you in the next one.

Getting Things Done - David Allen (Mind Map Summary)

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