In this episode we’re discussing the concept at the core of personal management: control. Specifically, we’ll be philosophizing about what control truly means within the context of the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. We’ll start with David Allen’s definition, which ties control to the workflow stages of capturing, clarifying, organizing, reflecting, and engaging. But does that definition fully capture the complex, often psychological, reality of feeling “in control”? Then, we explore how to build tangible systems and “guardrails” that move us from simply feeling overwhelmed to being confidently in command of our work and personal lives.
(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/145 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.)
Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening!
If you’d like to continue discussing what control means in the context of GTD from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).
In this Cast | What Does Control Mean in GTD?
Ray Sidney-Smith
Augusto Pinaud
Art Gelwicks
Francis Wade
Show Notes | What Does Control Mean in GTD?
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen
How to Get Control of Your Time in Your Life by Alan Lakein
Freedom.to (A Focus application used to block digital distractions)
Fitbit watch (Used to track sleep)
Byron Katie’s process (A methodology for managing unwanted thoughts or feelings)
Raw Text Transcript
Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).
Read More
Voiceover Artist | 00:00
Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a more fulfilling, productive life? Then you’ve come to the right place. Welcome to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. Here are your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith | 00:19
Welcome back, everybody, to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.
Augusto Pinaud | 00:25
And I’m Augusto Pinaud.
Francis Wade | 00:26
I’m Francis Wade.
Art Gelwicks | 00:28
And I’m Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith | 00:29
Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode. Today, we are going to do some philosophizing, I suppose, and hopefully bringing ourselves from that level down to the practical. We’re going to be talking about control. And what I wanted to do was to preface this with The concept of control and perspective in the Getting Things Done or GTD methodology perspective, which is that that’s where came up to me in the first place. And over the years, it has changed. And so I want to talk about what does control mean to each of us and how do we actually make the concept of control practical even tangible in our own worlds. I’m going to define what David Allen says of control in Getting Things Done in the March 2015 edition, in the appendix, in the glossary of Getting Things Done terms, he actually gives a definition for control And then we’re going to talk a little bit about what, the concept of GTD control is so that we can then define what We think of it as in contrasting terms.
So he says of control, one of the two key elements of self and organizational management along with perspective. And so that’s what he calls control in the most basic terms. And if we think about it from the concept of control and perspective, control are the steps of the or stages of the workflow going from capturing to clarifying to organizing, reflecting and engaging on the action level of the horizons of focus. That is what he considers control.
And then as we go up the horizons on the y-axis, we then have projects and so on and so forth going up the horizons. And that’s what he considers perspective.
So control are the actions that we take on the lowest level of the horizons of focus and everything above that becomes perspective. So kind of thinking of it as looking down at the actionability of the thing above itself.
So when you’re at the highest level, Horizon 5 purpose and principle You are looking down at the other’s vision, goals, areas of focus and accountability, projects, and actions. So that is the GTD definition. And… We have all probably thought of it as being insufficient in some way, shape or form in our own worlds. And now what I’d like to do is to ask you all, gentlemen. How do you define control? And what is… If I think Art gave a really great example before we started recording, if someone came to you and said, I’m feeling out of control, how do you help them get in control or under control in their life?
Francis Wade | 03:10
So I think David Allen’s definition is basically a process definition. So he’s saying, here are the steps. Or managing tasks. And the ones that really start with capturing and so forth are basically the steps for managing tasks. And I suppose that I’m guessing that what he means by control is that the… Process of managing tasks is in control. Now, that has a very specific meaning in my world. I was trained in part as an industrial engineer. And we love For those of you who know the Leningrad-Stewart charts and control charts, we love the idea of measuring processes so that they stay in control. That’s not practical for most people to be able to use these kind of diagnostic tools. But the way I would advise to answer your question, Reem, someone who tells me that they’re out of control… Is to ask them What do you mean? Because the word control is a psychological object The definition has changed and it varies and there’s no uniform. Understanding of what it means.
So you have to go to the next step and say, When you say control, the question I would ask is when you say control, What specifically? Symptoms are the ones that you notice and I would imply in real life. Not just in your emotional life, but in The Hard Tensible Life where are those symptoms occurring? Such that you’re led to conclude that you’re feeling out of control.
So I would immediately go to and I would focus and start to break down their response. Between I’ve mentioned psychological objects like I’m feeling stressed, I’m feeling unhappy, I’m feeling unworthy, I’m feeling lazy. As opposed to I arrive at half of my appointments at least ten minutes late. Okay, there we go. That’s one. That’s a tangible object. We can work with that. What else do you have? Well… I wake up in the middle of the night three times out of the week. With something that I forgot to do. That’s two. All right, that’s another tangible activity.
So I would look for the tangible symptoms. The things that you can put your finger on, you can touch, you can see.
And then accumulate those so that we move the conversation from and feeling out of control. Towards And again, in the lingo of industrial engineers is defects. We’re looking for defects. And we’re looking to put them together so that we can say, okay, with these five defects, the root cause of them are Because the truth is, control is a lag indicator. Peely Walter Control is a lag indicator. Comes a lot after. The things that you Did or didn’t do.
So we’re trying to go all the way back so that When we start to… Figure out what they should do, We’re actually looking at things that they did do or need to do or didn’t do. In tangible reality.
So that’s how I would tackle it. Said that to me.
Art Gelwicks | 06:21
Control to me is a very… Unlike the industrial… Definition of it. I look at it from the almost the psychological side of it. Control is a perceived state of comfort It’s a lack of stress. It’s a… Point of awareness. Of activity And I think when someone says they are out of control, my first reaction is to ask the question, When do you feel things went out of control. Because I need to know contextually Is this something that is a recurring feeling, which means that it is probably systemic. To a process failure Or is it something that has recently happened, which may be triggered by an environmental response or some external factor that has pushed things off the rails? But control itself like a, can be an extremely negative impact. On work and process and quality of work. Having a sense of control. I don’t know is necessarily an extremely positive thing. It’s basically neutral. You feel like, okay, if I’m in control, I can do… What I need to do. If I’m out of control, I can’t do what I need to do. But at no point are we saying that if I’m in control, I can do better things. I’m just saying that I can do things.
So to me, I always look at it from the mental aspect of it more than the process one, because The process one I can chase. I mean, I can look at the measures. I can look at the metrics involved and say, OK, this is working. This isn’t this. But that doesn’t necessarily, again, translate to a lack of control. And we’ve all seen it. We’ve had people who have processes that work somewhat. But they feel like they are in control, but we know looking at it, it’s like, no, you’re not. As much as you think you are, you’re careening wildly down the highway.
So… The subjectivity of that term and the amorphousness of that term makes it difficult to have that initial conversation.
Raymond Sidney-Smith | 08:49
In June I presented at the HRMATT Conference.