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This is episode two, on Step Two of the Workflow Diagram / Map, Clarify (formerly Process), in our nine-part series on the Getting Things Done (GTD) personal productivity methodology and eponymously-titled book, from the perspective of the ProductivityCast team--as long-term practitioners, critics and observers of GTD. “Without a next action, there remains a potentially infinite gap between current reality and what you need to do.” ~David Allen In this episode, we discuss how we all define Clarify and how we process/clarify in our own systems today, as well as what challenges we see GTD practitioners face and how to overcome those issues in day-to-day productivity. (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit http://productivitycast.net/040 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 discuss this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Francis Wade Art Gelwicks Show Notes Resources we mention, including links to them will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. Evernote Toggl 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 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life? Then you've come to the right place productivity cast the weekly show about all things productivity here your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:19 Welcome back everybody to productivity cast the weekly show about all things personal productivity I'm recently Smith i'm joined with my co host Augusto Pinaud. How's it going? Good morning, Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. How are you gentlemen? Great. I'm doing well, we are going to be talking about the second stage of the workflow diagram within getting things done by David Allen. And this is the stage that he calls processing and the first edition or clarifying in the second edition. And so for the rest of our discussion today, just know that we may note processing or clarifying as, as the terms sort of equally, okay, so I wanted to start off the discussion with how each of us defines the term processing or clarifying in the context of GTD, what we remember, say, from what David Allen told us, it was in in our readings of the book, and how we determine or define that in our practices today, and our productivity systems today, because they obviously change over time, I don't think that the term processor clarify is immutable, just because over time, the way in which we do it is so fundamentally different, because if we do it, and we do it well, long enough, it changes, we become better at it. And therefore processing clarifying becomes a different process for each of us. And so I'm open to discussion on that as well. But let's start off with defining processing or clarifying, Augusto Pinaud 1:45 you know, as I said, you know, that collecting assumption that for me was Oh, super clear, super cool. The processing part to me a lot longer to understand, okay, now, I have old days what I'm going to do, and to really slow down enough so I could really process this stuff, you know, the beginning was like, Okay, well, I get this envelope with papers of new car. Okay, then file and I, my default answer was, when in doubt, file, what produce in many cases was a ridiculous big file cabinet. And me going back to all I forgot to register the car. So good. I knew now where the papers were,

Over the next nine episodes, we are going to be in conversation about Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. We are going to talk about each of the steps in the GTD Workflow Diagram / Map. We will cover capturing, clarifying, organizing, reflecting and engaging, then a discussion about Weekly Review. Finally, we will cover what we wish we knew when we started our GTD practices many years ago. In this first cast in this series, we discuss GTD's first step in the Workflow Diagram / Map, Capture. Capture is more than simply writing things down. GTD gives us a cohesive method for getting all of our incompletes and commitments into places where you know you'll look at it again. (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit http://productivitycast.net/039 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 discuss this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Francis Wade Art Gelwicks Show Notes Resources we mention, including links to them will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. Getting Things Done Virtual Study Group (live call-in discussion and podcast) Getting Things Done by David Allen Perfect Time-Based Productivity (2nd Edition) by Francis Wade Google Keep OmniFocus Amazon Echo Devices (voice-based assistant) Remember the Milk Evernote Livescribe smartpen and notebooks Everlast reusable notebooks (not the Wave Rocketbooks - do not microwave these!) Amazon Kindle How to Escape the Zeigarnik Effect Francis has a self-assessment for Capturing Skills: https://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=how-good-are-you-at-capturing 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 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling, productive life? Then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17 Welcome back everybody to ProductivityCast the weekly show about all things personal productivity. This is Episode 039 Episode 39 of ProductivityCast. And today I am joined by Augusto Pinaud, Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Welcome to the show, Gentlemen. Unknown 0:35 Good morning. Great to be here. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:38 Good morning, everybody. Over the next nine episodes, we are going to be in conversation about getting things done the art of stress free productivity by David Allen. We're going to talk about each of the nine steps in the GTD workflow diagram slash map. And we will cover capturing, clarifying, organizing, reflecting and engaging and then have a discussion about the weekly review. Finally, we will cover what we wish we knew when we started our GTD practices many years ago. In the final two episodes, I think it'll be really interesting for us all to kind of look at this from the different perspectives we have on getting things done. Some of us are GTD practitioners, some of us are not some of us have been critics of some of these parts of the book. And some of us have been great advocates and enthusiasts for it. So I think it'll be really interesting for us to be able to have a conversation about each of these pieces. And Up first is the concept of collecting and or capturing David Allen started by calling it collecting and the collection habit, as he used to call it,

In Episode 037, we discussed the power of routines in your day, and specifically, your morning routine. In this episode, we cover the evening routine and how to make your evening routine a productivity enabler in your life. (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit http://productivitycast.net/038 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 discuss this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | The Evening Routine Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Francis Wade Show Notes | The Evening Routine Resources we mention, including links to them will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. Outlook Skedpal Evernote Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Dr. Roy Baumeister Apple Pencil Goodnotes Remind Me Pro 10 Evening Routines That Will Make You Productive at Work and Life The 4-Step Journey To A Productive Evening Routine Checker Plus Blue Light Blocking Glasses Google Calendar Remember the Milk 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done by Peter Bregman Raw Text Transcript | The Evening Routine 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 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling, productive life? Then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity, here are your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17 Welcome back everybody to productivity cast the weekly show about all things productivity. I'm recently Smith and I'm joined here today with my co host Augusto Pinaud how's it going? Augusto Pinaud 0:27 it's going awesome. Good morning. How are you today? Good day. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:31 How's it going, Francis? Francis Wade. Good. Good. Good to be here. So in the last episode, we talked about morning routines. So if you haven't yet listened to that episode, I highly recommend that you hop back over there and listen to us discuss the importance of sort of defining routines. So we defined routines and the importance and benefits of having a routine in this episode, we're going to kind of continue that conversation and switch that to the African noon and or evening routine. No, we're just going to lump this under evening routines, even though it could possibly cover some of our late afternoon activities. And what we're going to do is just go round robin again, as we did last episode, and talk about each of our various routines. So I Francis Wade 1:17 think I mentioned last episode that I plan I make a schedule for the day use a number of tools to do that including outlook sketchpad and I go to my go to my Evernote sort of plan for the week. So the mornings tend to be fairly well executed according to plan. However, the afternoons when everything started was the heck, I lose steam at around one o'clock their boats and going to like a extended crash. So I'd have lunch at about one 130 is my normal routine. And that's probably the last productive for the day because I start early and I, you know, I go full steam ahead until about 130 breakfast, I don't do anything brain related for lunch. Usually, I'm usually watching something on Netflix or fooling around on on Facebook or no one again, I might do better heavy reading. But I usually am pretty tired. And then in the afternoon, I try to stick to active activities like returning phone calls,

There’s a long-standing misconception (in Ray Sidney-Smith's humble opinion) that habits are how you become more productive. But, it’s actually your routines that power your habits, and therefore, your personal productivity. In this episode of ProductivityCast, we discuss the power of routines, and specifically look at the morning routine. We discuss each of our morning routines and discuss some challenges facing building a good morning routine. (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit http://productivitycast.net/037 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 discuss this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | The Morning Routine Ray Sidney-Smith Francis Wade Art Gelwicks Show Notes | The Morning Routine Resources we mention, including links to them will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. Why Rituals are Superior to Habits Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, PhD A Workday in my Life With Evernote Duolingo Mango Languages Raw Text Transcript | The Morning Routine 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 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling, productive life? Then you've come to the right place. Productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity, here are your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Good morning, Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17 everybody. And welcome to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith and I'm joined here today with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Welcome, gentlemen. Good Unknown 0:28 morning, Ray waiting for this morning. Good Unknown 0:31 morning, everyone. Good Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:33 to have you both. Today, we are going to be talking about routines. And specifically today in the next this in the next episode, we're talking about morning routines today. And in the next episode, we're going to be talking about evening routine. So we're going to talk about how we bookend our days to be more productive. So I wanted to start us off with the definition of routine and talk a little bit about why routines are important and how they benefit us, we're going to then go around and talk about our own morning routines, what really underlies what's the framework under underneath which we created our routines. And then we'll talk about some of the design challenges for implementing a morning routine, what what types of challenges any of us on the productivity cast team has experienced and how we overcame those challenges. Let's start off by discussing what a routine is. And I'm going to give my own take on this, and then you all can jump in. So my thought here is that many times people talk about habits and habits being something that can be a huge productivity enabler. And for me, I really fundamentally disagree in large part that habits are what we should be focusing on. Because habits are really difficult to develop habits are automatic, once they're done. And so they're, they're efficient in one way, but very ineffective. And another if you need to change in any way shape, or form or be flexible. And that's where routines fit in. And so routines are just a set of practices. It's a procedure in essence, that you that you regularly follow. So it's flexible, it's adaptive. And what we want to do with routine is, is, in essence, connect multiple types of things,

Commonly, we discuss how to better manage your personal productivity through the effective use of task lists. Today, we discuss a counterintuitive productivity concept that Augusto Pinaud has been using for many years--the "Do-Not-Do" List. In this way, this is another use of task lists but, in this case, it's a way to identify what you shouldn't do. In this episode of ProductivityCast, we discuss the idea of the Do-Not-Do list and how you might use it in your personal productivity system. (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit http://productivitycast.net/999 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 discuss this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | The Do-Not-Do List Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Francis Wade Art Gelwicks Show Notes | The Do-Not-Do List Resources we mention, including links to them will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. How Do I Create a Not-to-Do List? by Michael Hyatt Levenger - Steve Leveen Getting Things Done by David Allen Raw Text Transcript | The Do-Not-Do List 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 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling, productive life? Then you've come to the right place productivity. Cast, the weekly show about all things productivity, hear your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17 Welcome back everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith and I am joined here today, as usual by Augusto Pinaud, Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Good morning, gentlemen. Good morning. Hey, guys, great to have you all here. Today, we are going to be talking today about something called the do-not-do list in deference to not messing up what this very vital productivity tool can be to you. I'm going to pass the microphone over to a goose. Joe okay. So do you want to explain to our audience a little bit about what the do-not-do list is and and how it functions. And then we can get into conversation about how it might be practical in a productivity system. Yes. Augusto Pinaud 1:04 So I discovered that the idea of the do-not-do list a long, long time ago. And it was under the understanding that as you get into being more productive, getting more into productivity, getting done the most important things, there is also a set of things that you should have stopped doing that you need to pay attention is not only what we do, but he's also us important what we stopped doing because there are things that are simply not worth it, that simply should not be in your list that you need to acknowledge that you need to stop doing that doesn't matter what there are they would they, you know, like in productivity that will change from person to person. But it is important to acknowledge that they are things that may have been good to do or may have I never good to do that do that you need to stop doing. And that's how this idea of the do-not-do list came for me. So I've been practicing this list. And he has growing and under things now that I'm so conscious that I will never do again that I have even removed out of the list. But the idea was, see what things on your day to day do you do that in the name of productivity you need to stop doing or you should stop doing so Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:29 ago. So this is likened in my mind. And we can compare and contrast this to the National Do Not C...

Do you use paper for your productivity system? Do you use a digital system? Or, a hybrid productivity system? In this episode of ProductivityCast, we highlight the Bullet Journal, an all-paper productivity system developed by a productivity enthusiast, Ryder Carroll. It doesn't matter what you use, you can learn a thing or two about your own productivity system when you look at how others "on the other side" use their systems to get more done. (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory, please visit http://productivitycast.net/035 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 discuss this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | What is the Bullet Journal? Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Francis Wade Art Gelwicks Show Notes | What is the Bullet Journal? Resources we mention, including links to them will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. Bullet Journal Bullet Journal - Getting Started Example of a Bullet Journal - Ryder Carroll - Image More artistic version - Image Dash Plus Bullet Journal Companion (iOS) Evernote MSFT OneNote MSFT Office Lens (iOS) (Android) Bullet Journal Resource Center WTF is a Bullet Journal Robert’s Rules of Order, 11th Edition Raw Text Transcript | What is the Bullet Journal? 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 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling, productive life? Then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity, here are your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Welcome Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17 everybody to productivity cast episode number 35. And I'm Ray Sidney-Smith. I'm joined here today with my co-host, Augusto Pinaud. Good morning, everybody. And I'm also joined by Francis Wade, how's it going, Francis? Good. And I'm joined by Art Gelwicks. How's it going? It's going well. How about you, it's going really well. I'm excited for this episode, because we're going to let you kind of take the lead here and talk about something that you know quite a lot more about them than the rest of us here on the productivity cast team. And that is the bullet journal so I'll give you my couch bullet journaling expertise definition and and then I'm hoping that you can educate listeners on and us about more about what the bullet journal really isn't how it works. So as I understand it, the bullet journal is a complete handwriting paper and pen productivity system. The mechanism allows you to create a kind of an index at the beginning of an of a journal. And then you have your your monthly calendar and then monthly task list and you track your items that are calendar events and your task items you perpetuate v existing items forward in your journal throughout the course of the journal itself. And obviously throughout the course of time with a monthly review that allows you to transfer things from one month to the next and then from one week to the next as well is that the basics Art Gelwicks 1:55 it's it's part of the basics. Yeah, that's that's what some of the core functionality thinks about. But it's bullet journal is is become or has become its own, I almost want to say metaphor for productivity, I would put it almost analogous now with getting things done. And the reason why I say that is because it has developed a very rabid following around the benefits of it. Now, let me backtrack a little bit and explain you are absolutely right o...

This week, we discuss on ProductivityCast the importance of productivity habits and/or routines. What are your best productivity habits/routines? And, we ask that of each of the ProductivityCast teammates. Spend some time thinking this week about how you can level up your productive habits and/or routines. And, let us know about them in the comments! (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory, please visit http://productivitycast.net/034 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 discuss this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | Productivity Habits/Routines Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Francis Wade Art Gelwicks Show Notes | Productivity Habits/Routines Resources we mention, including links to them will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. Tiny Habits program (BJ Fogg, PhD) Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results by Stephen Guise RescueTime Todoist Persistent starting (The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play by Neil Fiore, PhD) IFTTT Evernote Instapaper Raw Text Transcript | Productivity Habits/Routines 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 h:mm:ss.ms to h:mm:ss.ms (e.g., 0:00:00.000,0:00:04.000 starts at 0.00 seconds and ends at 4 seconds in the cast's audio). Read More Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling, productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity, here are your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17 Welcome back everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney-Smith and I'm joined here today as always with Augusto Pinaud and I have with me Art Gelwicks and Francis Wade. Today we're going to be discussing one of my favorite topics to discuss, which is habits and routines and why you should have a habit or routine and what some of the criteria are for a good productivity habit, and a routine. And then what I thought would be really fun is for us all to go round robin and choose our what we believe is our best productivity habit or routine and, and then we can kind of each discuss with one another why we've chosen that as our best habit or routine. So let's start off with what any of us believe are maybe a criterion or criteria for having a productivity habit, and or routine. And I'll just get started with this particular in my particular flavor of how habits are developed. I really believe that habits are developed through the stringing of existing habits. So I really do believe that productive routines are the way in which you establish new habits, let me make this or sensical for everybody. So if you think about starting a habit, everybody talks about how habit development is very difficult, it's true. And you have people like Stephen guys, and BJ Fogg, who have talked at length about how to reduce the habit size to really help you get started. I think those are really great techniques, tactics. But as a strategy on the whole, I really do believe that the routine the stringing of habits to one another that are already existing is the way that you really develop stronger habits. So all of these tactics involved on top of the strategy of using an existing routine, I think, is really, really powerful. So that's my big thing is like, if you want to, you know, drink more water, well, choose points in your day, when you naturally are going to already be walking by the wa...