Conversation with David Allen, GTD Guy, Part 1

Had the good fortune last week to interview David Allen, author of the deservedly sanctified Getting Things Done and the new book, Making it All Work. His Getting Things Done system is a brilliant strategy for making sense of all your inputs (e-mails, phone messages, professional directives, personal priorities), reconciling them with your intentions and priorities, and capturing it all in an organized way so you can use your mind for other purposes besides freaking out about how much you have to do.

I interviewed him for an article I’m writing for SELF magazine about how, according to Buddhist thought, being too busy, rather than a sign of success, is considered a sign of laziness. But how can being in-demand, committed, and loaded with responsibility be called lazy?! Because you’ve allowed your agenda to run you, not the other way around. The reasons for this go deep. It didn’t get this way because you lack willpower. It’s more likely a lack of self-awareness that turned your agenda into a raging beast. You’ve forgotten who you really wanted to be in this life. So it’s actually a spiritual question as much as a time-management issue. That’s what I want to explore in this blog post.

When I’ve spoken with David in the past—and from my long-time experience as a GTD-er—I’m always struck by the spiritual underpinnings of his point of view. In this system, spiritual doesn’t mean woo-woo, new age, navel-gazing, escapist crapola. Instead, it means unflinching, committed, humorous (the more serious the practitioner, the better the sense of humor, I’ve noticed) devotion to looking life right in the eye, figuring out the truth about who you are, allowing yourself to be affected by it all, and then going, clear-eyed, with the flow. Whatever flow looks like for you. Today. This is what GTD helps you do. Sometimes it feels great, sometimes it’s mighty uncomfortable.

The goal of his system is to create a precise, peaceful, and elegant daily experience, one that cultivates what he calls “mind like water.” No matter what you throw into water—a tiny pebble, a giant boulder, your boss and the horse he rode in with—water doesn’t care. It reacts appropriately, absorbs the impact, and returns to stillness as quickly as possible.

GTD organizes your outer life so that this stillness is possible.

So now you have some measure of stillness. This is where the lazy part comes in.

“Laziness,” David says, “is basically a lack of courage.” He describes being too busy and disorganized as a “pretty effective behavior to avoid the intensity of being alive. What you might find if you slow down is who you really are. (When you do,) you’re reminded of how magnificent you are.”  Dramatic pause. “Are you ready to stand up to that?”

I had to wonder: why is it so scary to see who you really are? Because, he said, people would then have to figure out “how you could realize your magnificence and still be a lazy slob who yells at your wife, etc…” In other words, a regular person who is also extraordinary. Meaning, once you glimpse your potential, your greatness, what some would call Buddhanature, it raises the stakes quite a bit and you can no longer pretend your life is going to begin sometime “later;” when you change jobs, meet the right person, lose 8 pounds, or whatever it is. The time to express your potential, suddenly, is Right Now. You see your gifts. There’s no more denying what you’re here to do. “The planet is wired to have you learn the lesson of being responsible for where you have put your creative attachments and energy.” So with stillness comes insight into the truth of who you are and how you invest your energy. Are you ready to stand up to that?

So on one hand, GTD is a way to organize your “stuff” and you can stop with that view and it’s totally fine. It is an amazing system. But on the other hand, it can be a powerful tool on the journey to discover who you really are.

“It all depends on how deep you want to go,” he says.

The way to start? As David said in such a simple way, it made me laugh: “All you have to do is pay attention to what has your attention.” Start with right now. Start by paying full attention to your next action. And the one after that.

A tenet of the system is to look at all you have to do, identify the very next action to take regarding each project you’re committed to, and then take it. The trick is to bring your attention with you. Problems arise when your body is doing the next action but your mind is five actions down the road, or in Tahiti, or wondering if you look fat. You get the idea. Synchronizing body and mind through the placement of attention is as spiritual an endeavor as I can imagine. Not to mention, it helps you get a whole hell of a lot done. A person who can command placement of attention is a formidable creature indeed…

So, I tell myself, the next time you find yourself wicked busy and out of breath, let yourself fill up with breath once again. Notice it as it streams in and notice it as it flows out. Ride the breath like a wave and watch as the waves begin to slow and deepen until you are reminded of the stillness that is always there. The mind knows how to return to this state.

Mind like water.

Stay tuned for Part 2, wherein we discuss a second aspect of laziness: losing awareness of the present moment and instead becoming absorbed in what ifs and oh nos.