H.I. No. 39: Getting Things Done

"H.I. #39: Getting Things Done" is the 39th episode of Hello Internet, released on June 9, 2015.
==Official Description==
Grey and Brady discuss: Hello Internet babies, humblebragging time warp, how likely is your job to be automated, a new corner, John Nash, losing weight, and collecting the Getting Things Done homework.
==Show Notes==
*Discuss this episode
*Audrey's Facebook page
*Little Bear's broken arm
*Slow Motion Little Bear
*Play 'Where's Audrey': Video 1
*Play 'Where's Audrey': Video 2
*SciShow: Is Urine Really Sterile?
*Hello Internet Flag submissions
*Dovsky
*A special email
*The first discussion of Humblebragging on Hello Internet
*Will your job be done by a machine?
*Grey's new podcast: Cortex on Relay.fm
*John Nash
*Numberphile: John Nash
*'Getting Things Done' by David Allen
*Space album
*Grey's book notes: Creativity Inc
*Grey's book notes: Bird by Bird
*Grey: Time Management for Teachers
Are you there? I am. You're still Robo Gray. Still Robo. God damn it. How is Audrey doing? Well, I am assuming you are asking about her imminent surgery. I thought she was scheduled to have her lady surgery as you described it. I've been concerned. She was scheduled. She went and had her check. Everything was in order. But because of various factors to do with our preferred vet and holidays and things, it has been put off until mid-June. So all is calm. Well, all as calm as can be in the world of Audrey. It has been a big week for Audrey News though. Her favorite toy, which you may remember, little bear? I remember a little bear. I remember a little bear. She quite liked little bear. Little bear is definitely in top of her sort of top of the rotation. After much, much playing and much chewing and much aggression from Audrey's little teeth, little bear has finally lost its arm. Oh no. Yeah. It was a sad moment. So I captured the moment with the camera for posterity. And I don't know what we're going to do yet. I had to fish the arm out of the bin. My wife was very much of a mind just to get rid of it straight away. But I'm kind of a bit more sentimental, as you know, and more of a hoarder. As you know, you have to try to save little bear if it's Audrey's favorite. It's a great photo though. You'll have to link everyone to the photo of Little Bear sans arm. And I actually did have some high-speed slow motion footage of Audrey playing with Little Bear that I hadn't got around to editing. So I've put that on the internet as well. So it was sort of the Audrey Little Bear week here in our house. Was this all on the, like, doesn't Audrey have a Facebook page or something? Don't you maintain it? Yeah, I put it on her Facebook page. She's all happening. Oh, the Audrey fans know all about it. I've also sneaked to her into a couple of videos this week. Two of it actually she appeased in two of my videos this week. So there's a bit of an Easter egg. One of them's pretty obvious. One of them is a total hidden Easter egg. So only the true fans are going to see that. Well, yeah, that'll be a fun, whereas Wildo Hunt. Yeah, well, you won't see it because that would involve watching one of my videos. But I watch your videos. I watch your videos. All right. Cool. Anyway, so I'll keep you up to date with Audrey. But for now she is, she doesn't know what's coming. She is just fine. She's probably mostly broken up about Little Bear. But she doesn't know about the impending surgery. Yeah. In which her doctor might be listening to audio books while it's occurring. The thing is she loves going, actually, I should ask the vet that. She loves going to the vet. Like, she really enjoys it and everyone at the vet loves her. And she's a real celebrity. And I'm worried that this experience is going to change the way she looks at the vet. Because at the moment, I think it's just a place she thinks we take her to go and have fun. And next time she goes, it's going to be, what'll hang on? I didn't sign up for this. What do you normally do at the vet that she thinks it's fun? No, no, you don't, taking a dog to the vet, it's not, there's not happy fun time to the vet when you're bringing a dog. Everything's fun for Audrey. Everyone don't sign her and she gets to sniff lots of people and lick them and play and everyone's talking in a high-pitched voice to her. And she's never had anything, you know, badly wrong. She's had a few injections, but she's fine with them. So she's all good, she loves it. She loves everything. She is a singularity of pure joy. She is, she definitely is. All right, well, keep me posted on the Audrey news. You know, do you think you could stop me? No, no, I can't. So in the last podcast, you mentioned you Ryan being sterile and I'll tell you what, didn't you get to put me in your box? Oh, man. Yeah, I think someone was wrong on the internet. Yeah. And boy, yeah, wrong on the internet, you are going to hear about it. I think it was just, it was a perfect storm of having seconds earlier been discussing urban legends and these false notions that spread. And then then moving right into the, oh, you're an hysteral thing. It turns out I have been informed many, many times this is not true. I do have, I do have a tiny, a tiny point I want to make in my defense, though. Okay. I got into an argument with someone about this years ago because I was on the opposite side of this. I thought this, this notion that you're in a sterile, like, oh, come on, that can't possibly be true. You're in his disgusting. It has to not be sterile. I remember looking it up and coming across this little piece of information that basically where this notion comes from that urine is sterile is that when you try to culture it in those, in those little petri dishes, you don't get the, like, the kind of bacteria that live in your urine don't grow very well in those petri dishes. Right. Hank Green of SciShow did a little video talking about that. And that piece of information is something I must have come across years ago when I was originally looking this up. And I remember changing my opinion like, wow, contrary to my belief, urine is sterile. But it seems that recent research papers have been able to culture bacteria that are not the normal culture loving ones that we have in other things. So I'm not saying, like, I was wrong. There's no, there's no two ways about it. I was wrong. And I certainly have, I have definitely heard about it. I mean, maybe your urine is sterile. I would hope so. I would hope that my urine is sterile. I mean, I can see why you'd think that too because it's sort of, I don't know if it is, but it seems like something that would be kind of acidic and not very conducive to life. And yeah, anyway, it fits in the realm of possibility, but it is not true. And yes, I received a torrent of corrections from people, gleeful to inform me. This was not the case. Yeah, it's not the sort of thing people would just let pass. No, it is not. And I have now had to set up a filter with the word urine on my Twitter because it was getting, it was getting a bit out of hand. I was like, yeah, I know people. I don't need to receive 300 more of these. Yeah. All right. There you go. H.I. flags. You brought it up last time. I think the idea of what would a Hello Internet flag look like? Indeed, yes. And I think you put in the show notes here a link to a couple of designs that people have come up with for Hello Internet flags. Oh, I don't want to have a usual debate over who put what in the show notes, but I thought you put that one in anyway, doesn't matter. It was the show notes fairy who put it in. Oh, I haven't seen some of these yet. I mean, various people, various people have submitted designs of varying levels of excellence. And thank you to everyone who did. I have the ones I have seen. I found interesting. And I'm humbled that our viewers would do it. Sorry, I always, I always call viewers their listeners. It's okay, Brady. It's okay. But it bothers me when I do that. And I do it all the time. Sorry. No one would, I didn't even notice. No one would notice unless you brought, brought attention to it. No, okay. Go on there. We have had so many interesting designs, but they've come to at least me from a variety of sources. So I've seen some stuff on Reddit. I've seen some people tweet flag designs at me for Hello Internet. I've received some emails with flag designs in them. It's just kind of this random assortment of things. So what I would actually like to do is when this show goes live, I want to put a thread on the Reddit where people can submit the flags that they've made. Because I would like to see them all in a single collection somewhere. Yeah. So people who've already submitted to one, if they could resubmit to that thread, that'll be really handy. Yes. That's what I'm requesting. I'm going to make a thread. If you have a flag submitted as a top level comment, like let's not have a whole bunch of replies nested below each other, I would do, I would really love to see them kind of all on one level. And this way people can vote them up and vote them down. And really all the flags are welcome. Because I think so much were intentionally kind of terrible to be funny. And I've seen some genuinely really well designed ones. Yeah, they've just been very good. So I think it would be great if we could try to collect them all together in one spot. So when this show goes live, I will, if I remember, try to put a discussion thread on the Reddit so people can just put them all in one place and then maybe we can talk about them next time. Yeah, I've really enjoyed them. And that's a really good idea of yours. So because I would like to sort of see them in one place too. Because I'm far too disorganized to hunt around for them. But it's it's really cool that people are doing it. I'm sorry. Can you hear that on your end? There is an owl outside of my window right now. Oh, no, I don't know, but that's awesome. I just don't know if you could hear it hooding away. But I think I think I may have now that you mentioned it, but I think that's totally cool. Long may it hurt. I would really rather not have it hoot because it is now officially summer here. And my office is already incredibly hot. And when I start recording podcasts, it gets way too warm. And I'm trying to keep the window cracked open a little bit so I don't asphyxiate to death. But that owl might make me have to close the window. Oh, I think it would be really funny if there's just an owl in the background. It doesn't have to be all silent and perfect. I think people would like that there's an owl there, especially because we've got a history with the owls as well. I haven't met you on the podcast. Yeah, I mean, I have this I have this big open window to the outside and I'm just kind of I'm really hoping that the owl doesn't come in during the podcast as well. It's like how close is it? I can't see where it is, but it sounds like it's close. That would be the most awesome moment in the history of podcasts. If you got attacked by an owl while we were recording, I think that would be awesome, but for not reasons that I would appreciate or enjoy. So I don't know that it's not there. I don't know, man, it'd be great for Dovsky. Yes, it might be great for Dovsky. It might be great for our listenership numbers, but it wouldn't be great for me personally. Come on, Gray. Take one for the team. Gray, take one for the team. Take that owl attack. No, I think I will pass. All right. Now, I received an email this week, which was awesome. I'm so excited, but so I'm going to call it up here. This comes from a woman named Anne or Anne Leeser. She's she's from some European country, so her name is quite exotic. And I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce that. So anyway, this comes hot on the hills of us having talked about people who listen to the podcast while performing surgery. Oh, no, not more of this. Well, I thought that was pretty awesome. There were people who were actually doing surgery while listening to the podcast. But Anne Leeser, I apologise, Anne, if that's incorrect, has has topped it all. I'm going to read you her email and then I'm going to send you the photo that was attached. Okay. Dear Brady, dear CGP Gray, you were wondering in your last episode, who has the time to listen to podcasts? Here is a possible answer. Scientists on maternity leave. In the last weeks of my pregnancy, I finally had the time to listen to all your episodes. Your conversations replace very well the stimulating exchanges I would normally have at work during the coffee break. Your last episode was also great help in the delivery room. See picture, which I will now send. No. So here she is on the sort of delivery bed. Like, it's okay, it's not like too graphic. On the delivery bed, listening to our podcast. And I will read on. You managed to make me laugh at a time when my husband was too stressed and tired to provide distraction. I recommend your podcast and videos to all my friends, especially young parents at home who crave so much intelligent entertainment. Thank you for your great work on YouTube. Both of you make fantastic videos and complement each other perfectly with your different styles, like real soulmates, smiley face, cheers from Anne Leaser. Wow. There you go. Giving birth pretty much, listening to Hello Internet. Yeah, I think we can clean that as like a Hello Internet baby. All right. Oh, I did ask her because I did reply because I will put the email on my blog. I won't put the picture on the blog because that's obviously a personal thing. Right. Right. But I did ask her if she had a boy or a girl. It was a boy. I haven't got a name as yet. Well, so who is she going to name the boy after, I guess, is the question. I don't know. I wouldn't wish the name Brady on on anyone. But then again, I wouldn't wish the name CGP on anyone. I think she's going to have to just go her own way on that one. Speaking of Hello Internet babies. Oh, are there are there more Hello Internet babies? Well, of course, there's the most famous Hello Internet baby of all. And I did receive your postage today where you have mailed to me. I know. I know you don't want me to say this, but I'm going to say it. I was one time I was wondering if this was ever going to come up. You have mailed to me the certificate you were given when CGP Gray, the penguin was officially named. This is a this is a shining testament to how much you really will not accumulate things or anything sentimental. You've said basically not having that in my house. I sent you a video of me scanning the certificate in my house and you immediately replied warning me not to throw it away. And I promised you that I wouldn't and you then exactly what I was going to do. Yeah, it's not going to throw it away, but I was going to give it to you. And I figure you can you can frame it somewhere in your house. No, no, I've got a better I've got a better plan. Oh, yes. If you excuse the panel, I'm still hatching the plan. So I don't know exactly. I don't know about it exactly, but I think it will involve our Patreon supporters. So, I mean, if you happen to be one of those people, keep an eye on the feed over the next few weeks, storm up or so. And there may be some news on that front. Okay. Well, I look forward to hearing about this plan that is incubating at the moment. Oh, nice. Now I just want to I know I bring this up all the time, but I've I feel like I have to bring it up again. And people must think they're in some kind of time warp because actually I just listened to the old episode of Hello Internet that you put on YouTube today because you put them up a little bit behind real time. And I was discussing it on that. So people must think I talk about nothing else. What is it that you want to talk about? I just want to mention something about the word humble brag. Okay, let's do this yet again. Everybody listen carefully. Doesn't matter what you're going to say, Brady. Listen carefully. Gray and I love talking about humble bragging. I'm sure it will never stop, but we did not coin or invent the term. When you when you see it or hear it and it's becoming more and more common, you do not need to contact us and say, well done guys, your word is spreading. Free booting, yes, I'll take that. You should take that with pride. I'll take it with pride, but we had nothing to do with humble brag. And in fact, if you go back and listen to an early episode, you can even hear the moment when I'm talking about this sort of phenomenon and he's tells me, oh, it's called humble bragging, you know, there's a whole website about it. We did not the reason I feel compelled to do this is not just the tweets and the emails. But the other day I got a text message from my wife saying, all excited saying, did you invent humble bragging? I just heard it on the radio. She doesn't listen to the podcast and she knows that you say she doesn't listen to the podcast, but that to me is just there could not be more proof that your wife has never listened to a single episode of my internet because humble brag has been on all of them. I know. But she multiple times said that we didn't coin it. But she she does know there's some word that I carry on about sometimes that that you know, it's been spreading, which is obviously the freebooting. And she obviously got a bit mixed up and heard it on the radio and sort of tried to be supportive and encouraging and proud of me. And I had to say, no, nothing to do with it. Love, if the bragg humble catches on, then it's me. Then it's me. But humble brag, no, what was that again? I don't even remember what that was. That was some terrible idea. No, it was good. That's when you remember with the toothpaste on the face, it's when you brag to increase the humiliation. Yeah. I don't think so, Brady. I don't think that's going anywhere. Early days. Early days. Early days. I still think leg. I still think I always say incorrectly, an upset people, Lang Yap, Lang Yap, or whatever it is. I still think that's I'm holding it hope for that one. I know you are. I know you are. But not in a new way, not in a new use kind of way, but just in giving it a, you know, an injection, increasing its popularity, because I think my use of it is completely normal and fine. I don't even think I've adapted it. I feel like people like you must be how languages split apart over time. There are people who are just insistent on creating new words and new ways to say things. And when we used to have much greater geographical separation from each other, it's people like you that would cause languages to shift and become incomprehensible to each other over hundreds of years. I don't know if you're trying to insult me there, but I'm taking it hugely as a compliment. I think it's just a thing. I think people like you are the reasons that language is split. Sort of creative people. Yeah. Almost as though if we had enough time on this podcast, if there was an infinite amount of time stretching before us, at the end of that infinity of time, you would just be speaking an entire language constructed of your own words. Greg, give me another 20 episodes mate. That's all I need. All right, we'll put that on the calendar. All right. Next on follow up here. There was a really cool link. I haven't looked at it in much detail, but someone tweeted it to us and it had CGP, Greg written all over it. Humans versus robots. Let's call this thing up. Let me pull this up. This is some kind of little web application where you can enter your job via a series of drop down menus and it tells you the percentage likelihood that your job will be replaced by robots. Yes. Have you done it yet? And what did you put for your job? Let's say is there anything, what is the closest thing we could get to a YouTuber here? I couldn't find one. I ended up putting in photographer that I felt like that was the closest to my job. That's not too bad for you. But okay, so we have art to design, entertainment sports and media as the overall category. Yeah. Umpires and referees, that's probably me to answer. Why does radio and answers have a smiley face after it? Oh, right, because it's on the VR, right? Of course. Editor's music, writers and authors. I mean, you could multi-media artists and animators. That's probably closest. Oh, that might be me too, actually. I didn't try that one. I think that's probably closest to you as well. I like that 1.5% chance of maybe being automated. Yes. So this is this website. If you try to find whatever is your job, it tries to give you an estimate of the chance of it being automated. However, I came across this a little while ago and I thought, oh, this looks really interesting. And then I started playing around with it. And then I thought, wait, this seems, this seems like a pile of nonsense, this website, because I was trying to try to figure out, okay, how are they, how are they coming up with these numbers? And if you look on the bottom, they have a bunch of little axes on which they're trying to measure the jobs. You know, does your job need to come up with clever solutions? Are you required to personally help others? Does your job require negotiation? And then this is a strange one. Does your job require you to squeeze into small spaces? And it's an interesting one. Breaking down the jobs by those axes plus some others and then saying, okay, what's the probability for automation? Yeah. But if you start looking around at some of the jobs, they have what I think are just dumb results, results that don't make any sense. So of course, I went to go see under education, training and library. What do they say for high school teachers? Well, actually, we should see, what does this say for newspaper reporters? Let's do that first. Where would newspaper reporters be? Well, that would be under media too, wouldn't it? I guess some media, do they have a technical writer? Is that you not really? No, you're more likely, oh, you're more likely to be maybe righteous and authors, but even then that doesn't really work. They don't have anything that's like a, I guess it's because the job is already just on the way out. Nobody's really interested in newspaper writers. Right. Yeah, there's nothing here that's even remotely close to a newspaper man. Oh, editors, maybe editors. Okay, what does it have for editors? Let's just do that one. Five point five percent. Okay, that seems good. All right, so if we go over to education and then you select high school teachers, this website gives it a point eight percent chance of being automated, which I would agree with because I mean, a big part of the job is just basically taking care of a room full of children, which is hard to automate, putting all the education that's supposed to be happening aside. You still need an adult in a room full of children. That's hard to automate that factor. If you jump from high school teachers down to middle school teachers, which in my perspective is basically the same job because, I mean, this website is geared for America, but in the UK, I mean, the whole education system is different, but I basically taught middle school kids through to high school kids. It's like combined in the UK. This website suddenly jumps and says, oh, middle school teachers have a 17.4 percent chance of being automated. Like one on earth is causing this difference. I don't think this is even remotely valid like that. That to me just says whatever, whatever axes you're using here, it's like, oh, some researchers got together and they just arbitrarily scored some jobs on some axes and then made this little thing. But I don't think it's very informative. What do you think, what do you think I would look at? I think I've talked about on the podcast before. Can you guess? You looked up some sports thing like cricket cricketeers. Have you looked up cricketeers? Go away. No. Nothing could replace cricketers. They are gods. Oh, well. I guess it is hard to replace a god. I'll give you a clue. Give me a clue. What's a regular segment on Hello Internet? You want to look up airplane pilots. Yeah. What do they have for airplane pilots? You guess first. You guess and then I'll tell you. Don't shake. Just what do you think? Yeah, yeah. I'm going to guess it's something like over 97%. 54.6%. Hmm. Yeah, see, I don't think I'm not going along with this website. That's pretty high still. I can't wait to send that to my pilot mate. I've been telling him for years that he's going to get replaced. How does he react to that? He thinks there's no chance and I tell him it's almost a fair complete. Again, we talked about this before. It's longer than the cars, but it is inevitable. Yeah, some of these are so dumb. I'm just kind of randomly jumping around here. Personal chefs 30.5% chance of being automated. I mean, I guess that depends on what you're kind of talking about. If I can 3D print my food, that's not quite the same as a personal chef. Well, these jobs don't even have any idea what they are. So apparently the job that is least likely to be replaced by robots is mental health and substance abuse social workers. There you go, kids. And the one most likely to be replaced and is already being replaced is telemarketer. That's not surprising. Followed by a podcaster. No podcaster. Podcaster. Zero percent chance. Irreplaceable. Irreplaceable. Well, I guess if we're speaking of podcaster, now is the time to talk about your new fling. Yes, yes. I did just yesterday put out a new podcast that I'm doing. I'm doing like a 10 episode series with Mike Hurley of Relay.fm called Cortex. Mike just wants to interview me about some of the ways that I work. Some of the nerd details about how I work. So if you want to hear more of me on podcasts, you can go to Relay.fm slash Cortex and give it a listen. Do it. And for all the people who've been contacting me asking how I feel about being like a spooned wife. Can I just say I'm currently open to offers and if anyone wants to talk to me, open negotiations, I'm very receptive at the moment. I did send you flowers. I did send you flowers. You did send me flowers. You did send me emoji flowers. I did. And you know what they say when someone starts sending you flowers, that's the first sign that they've been up to funny business behind your back. Is that what they say? Is that the advice? Apparently. So if you start sending me a whole lot of emoji flowers, I'm going to know that you've been slacking me off on the other podcast, which you have told me not to listen to, which makes me, which makes me even more suspicious. I don't know if it would be good for you to listen to me on another podcast. I think you have to listen to me enough. It doesn't seem like you want to listen to me more. I have told you in private though that I am surprised that you have not started your own interview podcast. I always thought that was inevitable. Once we started doing this thing and we kept it going, I've been just waiting for the day that you send me an email telling me that you're starting your own podcast where you're going to go interview some other people. With all that spare time I have, yeah, maybe we'll say. I would want to listen to that podcast. This seems to me like we're going to have airplane pilots getting automated. That's inevitable. I feel like a Brady interview podcast is inevitable. For now, I've got you. That's all I need. Let me send you a flower. Thank you. For those who want even more gray in their life, go check out Cortex and hear all about it. Now that we've indulge you, it's indulge me, but it's not playing Crash Corner this week. It's not playing Crash Corner. No, it doesn't. What does it say? Oh, it says playing Crash C. That's right. I bring this filling in the order. That's right. Because this week we have a new segment called plane crash. Well, no, it's not even crash. It's just called plane compensation. Because guess what? This sounds boring. What is this? It is unbelievably boring. Actually, I'm already regretting it. Wow, I can't wait to find out what this is. But I promise doing do you remember that? Remember that podcast a while back where I talked about being stranded on the runway for hours and then I missed my connection and missed my mate's party and all that in Australia? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that. Well, after that happened, I thought I must be entitled to compensation and I went to these websites to tell you what to do. And it said send this pro form of letter and stuff. So I just copied the letter and I don't normally do this kind of thing. But I was so fired up. I thought I'm going to try. So I filled out the letter. I sent it off to the airline and then completely forgot I'd done it because I like cooled down and you know, didn't care anymore. And just the other day. So it must be months later. I got this email from the airline saying you are indeed entitled to compensation. Fill out this form. Give us your bank details. Send us a scan of your passport and we'll send you some money. And have they? Well, I don't know because I just did this like a day or two ago. So you don't have the money yet? I don't have the money yet, but that just gives me a whole another reason to bring this up on a future podcast. But I still think that's progress. I think this is interesting. There could be something in this. There could be something in this. But I mean, I hope for your sake that you just get compensation for having to sit on the runway for forever. But I can only imagine that this is the start of some kind of long multi-year Brazil-like process of forms and offices and signatures and notaries and all kinds of things. The next step is, oh, thanks for your bank details. You now need to send us your passport and driver's license so we can verify your identity and yes, make sure that you were the person on the plane. And then, oh, you know, you have to go to the this office to collect the check in person in the basement, you know, past the door marked beware of Tiger in Nigeria. This is, I can only assume that this is where this is going. I hope for your sake, they just send you some money. But I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you. Now, I'm expecting a big ward of cash at some point. It's going to be awesome. That's how they're going to send it. A lot of cash in the mail. Yeah, yeah, oh, gold bars. Yeah, a brown paper bag just overflowing with money. Here you go. So we're terribly sorry. I'm looking forward to it. I'll keep you, I'll keep you informed for the next installment of plane compensation corner. Wow. He's getting better and better. Really? I know. I know. If I take the word plane out, I think it will be completely boring. Compensation corner. That's the next. Yeah. Corporate compensation corner. Oh boy. That's good. That's that's what I'm aiming for. Yeah. We can ask people for their tails of corporate compensation in the Reddit. It'll be very exciting. God, I'm sorry, I'm bored already. This episode is brought to you by Harries dot com. Harries offers high quality razors and blades for a fraction of the price of the big razor brands. Harries was started by two guys who wanted a better product without paying an arm and a leg. 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Go to harries dot com and use the promo code H i to save $5 off your first purchase and to show your support for Hello Internet. Once again, that's harries dot com H ARRYS and use the promo code H i so they know that you came from Hello Internet. I wanted to briefly bring up the death of John Nash who is a super, super famous mathematician won the Nobel Prize in economics. Did a lot of really impressive mathematics as well. He recently won the Arbell. I think I say able but I think people who know what they're talking about may be called the Arbell Prize which is kind of like the Nobel Prize of mathematics and it was actually coming back from winning that prize. He was on his way back from the airport in New Jersey with his with his wife and they very unfortunately were killed in a crash. The taxi they were in crashed. And it was interesting because apparently they were not wearing seat belts and there seems to be very heavy suggestion that perhaps this was this was why they died. I don't know. I don't know much about the crash but that's what people say. Did you know that? Did you know about this incident? Yeah, I had seen the news on Twitter probably that John Nash and his wife had been killed in a car accident. I didn't realize it was back from the awards ceremony which makes it kind of extra sad. It does. It does definitely. Yeah, that was aware of this. The end for those of you who don't know who John Nash is, he was the one portrayed by Russell Crowe in a beautiful mind which is which is why a lot of people may have heard of him even if they are not math enthusiasts. The first thing I wanted to very quickly ask is do you always wear seat belts in taxis? Because I sometimes don't. Yeah, it's it's a weird one isn't it? It's funny because at some point I know I grew up and I just didn't and then it's at some stage of being an adult I remember realizing what the hell am I doing? Why do I think that sitting in the back of a taxi doesn't require a seat belt to be buckled? I don't know. I can't remember when this occurred but I do remember having that thought at some point and realizing like what the hell brain? Just because it's like a car that you're going to get out of quickly doesn't change the requirement to wear a seat belt. It's kind of like buses and seat belts. Oh, you know, we don't need seat belts on buses. It's fine. It's safe because it's a bus. It's like wouldn't it be safer with a seat belt? I think it would be. But lots of buses don't even have seat belts. Yeah. Do you wear the seat belt? Well, like I said, I quite often don't in kind of like the black cabs in London because it just doesn't feel like a place that you wear belts but I do if it's like a normal car but I should all the time. As should everyone. So there you go. But I was talking to a taxi driver actually a couple of days ago. Well, I was actually talking to the mate next to me about John Nash and we were talking about seat belts and he was eavesdropping. So he started talking to us about seat belts in Texas. The taxi driver was eavesdropping? That was your saying? He was, yes. Okay. And taxi drivers apparently are not always required to wear seat belts. The reason being, it's because if they get sometimes, if they can get into dicey situations with like rowdy or drunk customers or you know situations can arise where wearing a seat belt is not necessarily what the taxi driver wants. So they probably should and I certainly would. But if they're not wearing one in some circumstances, that is allowed. At least where I was, I can't speak for every municipality, government, council, county, city and the world. I can't imagine this. I have to look at that. Can you not imagine like if a taxi driver is wearing a seat belt and it's somehow some criminal person next to them like could use the fact that wearing a seat belt to pin the main or to do something to them and like I think I can easily see why that would be a role. This just feels like a thing of probabilities that it's easy to imagine scenarios under which the driver seat belt might be a hindrance because of a passenger problem. And it's less easy to think about all of the time that they're driving on the road. Like surely that's the greater danger like the probability of. I think basically maybe if this rule does exist anywhere, it's just saying, okay, taxi drivers, you decide, you decide which risk you want. I mean, I have it up here that it's on gov.uk that in the UK licensed taxi drivers is not required to wear a seat belt. Are you suggesting the taxi driver was wrong? Wait, I'm agreeing with you. I'm saying that the taxi driver is not required to wear a seat belt. Oh, sorry. Oh, it does say that. Does it? Yes. Are you saying it was right? I'm saying that you are right. So sorry, I've been shocked. I've never been right before. I just I just assumed you were going to tell me I was wrong. Wow. You're brain inserted the other thing. No, I know. I know. I know. How you saying that I have a government web page that agrees with you here? I'm just trying to say that the license taxi drivers not required. Fourth of June 2015. This has happened to be the ones before. I was right. There you go. There you go. Well, I've introduced that. I think this should be a video. This should be a video for you. Go ahead. You can have that. You can have that for your video. I'm I'm still disbapled by this. And it also looks like on this website, seat belts, the law, that now there's seagulls outside my car. That's lovely. That's lovely. You've got I think that's gorgeous seagulls. Thanks a lot, seagulls. I like that. Don't cut that. I'm gorgeous. This is so hot in this apartment. Keep it, Gray. Keep the seagulls. Okay. Anyway, back to seat belts. The important thing. It says here that a driver who is reversing does not need to wear a seat belt. It seems like a very strange is the idea that maybe the seat belt gets in your way when you're trying to reverse? I don't know. That's that's very strange. And it also there's also an exception for police, fire and rescue services for seat belts. Cool. Cool. In the exceptions, I find it shocking and surprising. There was another thing about John Nash's death that I want to bring up because obviously running like a mathematics YouTube channel number five, there was sort of requests for a video. So we did make some videos. I guess it was more my decision than anything, but in talking with the people who are in my video, we decided not to talk about his death in the video and just make it about some of his mathematics. It was just, you know, this is John Nash. He was like a big deal. This is what he did. He is the mathematics behind it. He is why mathematicians really respect him. And there are a few reasons, but one of them was, I don't know, I just kind of wanted the video to be timeless in a year or two. I was hoping people would watch this when John Nash's death wasn't in the news and wasn't of tremendous interest. And I still want to people to watch it and think, okay, that's who John Nash was and that's what that's his mathematics. And I thought it would, I thought it was unnecessary, but I also thought it would really date the video in the long term. And I don't always go down that path, but this time I did. And there are a lot of comments under the video. A lot of people thought maybe I'd recorded it before he died or we didn't know he died or we were careless or not many people thought it would have been left out on purpose. Even though at the end of the video I did put John Nash and his year of birth and death as well as the one tiny nod to the fact that I'm aware he's dead. People on the internet, they don't often assume competence. They assume incompetence on your part. Yeah. I was just wondering, I would have thought you would agree with my course of action there. It sounds like something you would do because you're a big one for timeless videos. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I want it to be timely, but timeless. Yeah, I would completely agree with that. And I almost, I almost feel like it's more respectful to not talk about his death. I definitely agree with that too. I don't think the fact that you know, he died coming back from getting his prize or he died in an unfortunate way is sort of should be used to define him in any way. And it's not like I was doing a news report. I was just making a video about his mathematics and I wanted that to take precedence. Yeah. I mean, if you think about, if you think about cast your mind back to scientists or mathematicians whose names you can think of and whose work you know, can you name how any of them died? I'm trying to think like very few. But I'm thinking like I don't know how Isaac Newton died. It's just the first one that comes to mind. Yeah, I feel I feel like did Albert Einstein died his desk in Princeton and not 100% sure if that's the case, but I don't know. I think he died in bed because his last words were to his nurse and I think no one knows what they were because the nurse didn't speak German or something like that. Or could be wrong about that. I don't know. But yeah, but yeah, so I I would feel that the the timelessness of the video aside, it's still correct to leave out his death because you feel like, okay, you're trying to make a video that's explaining the interesting thing about this person's life and how they died even if it's sad. That's not that's not why this person is a notable person. They are a notable person for the work that they have done and you are explaining in a way like why someone should care that this person, John Nash, existed. And so yeah, I would definitely say it's the right decision to not talk about his death even if his death has just occurred and you are making the video precisely because of his death. Cool. I feel better now. Yeah, but you knew you knew. I know. I just said that because I felt like I should say something to end the conversation. Podcasts are strange trying not to be awkward on a podcast. Life is like that too. Like if we were talking at the pub and that had just happened, I probably would have just said something as well to sort of just respond to. Otherwise, I'd just stand there looking at you gomelessly. That's what we do have the additional problem that we can't see each other right now. And that we're just constantly aware that other people are listening to us talk. So dead air is like a big problem. So we have to be talking. Dead air is your problem. Do you take photographs? I'm guessing you probably do. Maybe you've got a thousand photos of your pet your hour playing in the gardens like I do. Or maybe one of you and CGP Grey posing awkwardly by the Clifton suspension bridge. Or maybe there's one of you listening to the Hello Internet podcast while in hospital giving birth to a baby boy. Whatever you have, they shouldn't remain hidden away on your phone or on a memory stick or some fold on your computer. Get them out there, show the world. And there's a great way to do it because fracture exists. Fracture lets you go online, upload your picture and then have it literally printed onto a piece of glass, kind of like on the back of the glass. Not the front because I guess it would get all scratched. On the back of this piece of glass and then you could just mount it to your wall. There's no frames, no bits of paper, no mapboards, no problems at all. Just smooth clean lines. It's the sort of look and display that leaves people like Grey purring like a kitten. And by the way, they do include all the little bits and pieces you'll need to hang it on the wall. Don't panic, you're not going to be left with a job of mounting this pure pain of glass on your wall. It's as easy as 1, 2, 3. Now I've been thinking outside the box and I've come up with three other types of images that maybe you could get fractured onto glass like this and hang it in your home or your office or something like that. Your favourite astronomy image, maybe the Andromeda Galaxy or one of your favourite nebula, they're always really colourful and pretty and I think they look really great on the back of a piece of glass. Or how about a flag that means something to you, the state flag of Maryland maybe, depending on your house decor. But here's my favourite of the day. How about a piece of art by yours or someone else's children? A particular eye catching finger painting or something like that, which normally spends a few weeks on the fridge and then gets all tattered and covered in coffee stains. I can think of loads of people who'd love that. Probably as a gift. Their favourite kitty painting, looking all professional and on glass, that would make a great keepsake. Why don't you give that a try? These fractures do make great presence. Now if you're feeling inspired and want to try this, here's where to go. Fractureme.com. When you get there, you'll get 15% of your first purchase by using the offer code HelloInternet. That's all one word HelloInternet. And it will also mean the fracture people know you came from here. That web address again, fractureme.com. So go on, give it a go. This is a great way to get some of your favourite images out there. Don't have them hidden away. Have them out on display. So I wanted to follow up something with you from the last show that I wanted to talk to you then, but the conversation kind of got away from us. But you said a very interesting thing, which was that you were turning up your health light bulb lately. And I wanted to ask you about that. But before we even talk about what's going on there, the thing that caught my attention was when you mentioned this last time, you prefaced it with a remark that was something to the effect of how, oh, you're not supposed to talk about your health in public or what was that? That struck me as a very interesting comment. And I'm kind of curious to hear some of what we're thinking. I don't remember where I read this or where I saw this, but it did strike a chord with me and it had like a smacked of some truth. And that is when you, this is this whole thing where if you set goals or things you're going to do, it can be counterproductive to tell people that you're going to do it. Because usually just the process of telling people you're going to do it gives you that kind of satisfaction or drug release in your brain or whatever it is that makes you feel like you've done it. And sometimes just telling people, you know what, I'm going to lose weight and I've got this big plan. And here's what I'm going to do. Sometimes telling that and hearing people go, oh, that's brilliant, really good in giving you pets on the back and telling you how great you are. That gives you the satisfaction you were looking for and sometimes you won't just follow through with it. I don't know if it's true or not, but it was quite a recent thing for me. So, you know, I can remember all the times over the years I've said to my wife, oh, I'm going to get healthy and she's like, whatever, talk to me after you've done it. So, so in that respect, I'm trying, that respect, I've now got an attitude a lot more of don't tell people what you're going to do, just do it. But on the other hand, telling people publicly you're going to do something can sometimes speak quite good because then if you don't do it, a whole lot of other people know you didn't do it. So, that's why I kind of thought, ah, maybe I will say it. Yeah, I feel maybe bad about having drawn you out, but it seems like you do kind of want to talk about this publicly. No, no, yeah, I'm fine with it. Do you know why I'm fine with it? Let me get my report out because I've lost 3.9 kilograms apparently. I need to do my calculations here. What is it like, seven pounds? I think it's like seven or eight pounds. Yeah, that sounds pretty good actually. I'm going to pull out my little converter here. But it's getting to a point now that like if I do a weigh in, you know, I'll shave all the hair off my body and make sure I'm wearing absolutely nothing and next I'll be holding helium balloons or anything I can think of. I don't know what I can do that will help, but would helium balloons increase your weight or decrease it? It would decrease your weight. Otherwise, they wouldn't float. You can't bring helium balloons under the scale, Brady. That's true. But yeah, I'm not sure. But like if you've got a big can and then you fill it up with lots and lots of helium, I guess you'd have to put it under pressure, wouldn't. Okay. Here's the only question. Did you put enough helium in the cans that it floats? Because I'm going to guess the answer is no. Then the can will increase your weight. Okay. Well, then I'm not rolling out. I'm not rolling out helium balloons then. I used to think about this all the time when there was little ritual when I was visiting my family home from college that my father was always excited to have me around because it was time for me to help bring a whole bunch of stuff to the dump. We'd have to load up the car and go to the local dump. One of the things that always caught my attention, I thought it was interesting was they had these big scales where the car has to weigh in on the way into the dump and then has to weigh on the way out. You basically had to pay by how much stuff you were dumping off at the dump. I always used to cross my mind of how to cheat the system. I was thinking, okay, we can go to the dump but we can have the car just filled with helium balloons. Then the car is going to weigh less on the way in. Then when we get in there, we dump the actual materials and we release all of the helium balloons into the sky and then on the way back out. I'm wondering if this would be cost effective. How much are we paying for the material that we're dumping versus what is the cost of the helium balloons? I never quite did that calculation but I was always on my mind every time we went there. I like it. I like your thinking. How to cheat the municipal system. I once did a story when I was at the BBC about a guy who was really, really, really obese. It was a really nice report and he was like, he wanted to do it because he wanted to raise a lot of awareness about health problems and he was telling me the only way he could weigh himself was to go to the local dump like that and go on the scale that was used by the cars. He was the only scale he could use to weigh himself. I thought, the main thing that struck me was gosh, that must be like embarrassing. Yeah, I think they'd be pretty embarrassing. He was such a top man. He was a brilliant man. It was really good what he was trying to, you know, the awareness he was trying to raise but he was also a very big man. You're not using the dump scale for yourself. I'm not, I'm not, no, I'm using normal ones and I'm fighting the urge to weigh myself too often because if you do it too often, like you get that, you know, you get all the fluctuations but if you wait every week or so because I have done this before quite successfully and I found if you do it once a week that's much more encouraging than doing it every day when you start saying little ups and downs and thinking you're a failure. So here's a question then, really. You're weighing yourself every week you're saying. Well, I'm thinking I might weigh myself on podcast recording day. Well, this is where I was going with this. I don't return this into like one of those like health shows though, but and I'm not going to spend every show talking about health and stuff but there you go. We'll see. The reason why I was asking is that if you will agree to do the weigh-ins on the podcast, I will also do weigh-ins on the podcast because I also need to lose some weight and I think this is a thing that we can do together Brady in in front of maybe like a hundred thousand people. So there's no pressure. As I said, I lost three point. What did I say? Three point nine kilograms. Three point nine kilograms. That's actually since the last podcast recording. You want to you want to start there? You want to get a week ahead on me on this one? No, no, no, it'll just be it'll just be it'll be it'll be will play it like oh no, you don't understand sport. I do understand sport. Tell me tell me about your sports ball. I was going to say we'll do it instead of doing it like as an overall you know who loses the most over a fixed period of time. We'll just do each two weeks who lost the most that week and if you lost the most that week, you get a point and then and then it's like the next week you can win a point again. So it's like in golf like more like match play rather than stroke play. I don't know the thing is though. Is it going to get to a point where like like we starve ourselves like the night before the podcast and it could affect our podcast performance. It could be like it could this could be detrimental gray. It could be like gosh Brady and Gray they both just sounded terrible on the podcast today. It's like well that's because they didn't eat for two days before the podcast because they wanted to sleep at sleep down. It's depend. That will that will not be my plan that will not be my plan. I will be I will be changing my my diet but not necessarily restricting my diet. I think would be would be my plan. I say I go more the other way. I'm more I'm more restricted and not change it with everything that we do. It's not the it's not the same. But so like again I don't want to push you but are you you're you're in on this you want to do. And then in the next podcast I'll tell you how how much I've lost since this podcast and you do the same as long as we do it in kilograms people can convert the numbers people can convert the numbers and I know but I can't say you've just got to tell me in kilograms. Oh that reminds me I've got a story. Oh my story time. This was a good this was this was a really good fan interaction. It's like your dream fan interaction. My wife ran a 10 kilometer race in Bristol at the weekend and I went along to watch and so eating a you bacon sandwich so I didn't know I feel healthy while she was running 10 pairs. And so I was you're chopping it as she runs by. Yeah so I was like I did bump into one like you know viewer slash listener before the race and he said hello and and that was that was fine. But then during the race I was there were like 15,000 people or something running in this race and I was sort of standing at the side of the road waiting for my wife to come by like near the finish line and there was just a stream of people that was just like thousands and thousands of people running past and thousands and thousands of people lining the side. So it was just like faces everywhere and as all these people were running past me and I was kind of waiting for my wife I was actually using the tracking app to see where she was which you'd appreciate. Oh the find my friends thing. Yeah like the one on your on your iPhone. So I knew she was coming soon and suddenly this this this voice says Brady and I couldn't figure out where it was coming from and then suddenly I realized it was a guy who was like running past me because Brady and I sort of looked at him and he goes I'm a big fan and then he just kept running he never stopped. So like he obviously and I don't know how he spotted me because I was just a face in this huge crowd and he was just running along and he's obviously and normally when people spot you and you're like not particularly well known like us you're just the obscure person who it's like oh have I seen that person before or not normally it takes someone like five minutes to say yeah that's who it is but he obviously picked me out in a crowd to decide that's who I was called out said he was a fan and went past all of his all in the space of five seconds the guy was a genius and like I was so taken aback that I just sort of stood there and went thanks but then after he after he'd gone and it was like it was over so quickly I did think that's great kind of fan interaction like there was no chance for awkwardness because the guy just had to keep running he was like he was a hundred meters from the finish line and it was stopping then so whoever you were thanks thanks for watching he was a legend that guy I really enjoyed it that's pretty funny I have to say yeah I did like I did like it I did like it so I was humbled again but of course I'm gonna always say I'm humbled by those things from now yes that this is gonna be your thing so next podcast we will compare losses from this day to the next all right yeah or gains potentially yes or gains all gains I feel like I need to high five you over the internet to get this started but we can't do that I don't know I feel a bit awkward about this it feels really it feels a bit like naff like a bit you know now come on man like we're in this together we're in this together okay high five there we go now that's even more naff hello internet is brought to you by backblaze.com backblaze the service that if it isn't running on your computer right now you need to sign up backblaze is an online backup service it's a little application that runs on your Mac or your windows pc and constantly sends your files up into the cloud to be safely 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can be that cheap you really you really need to sign up for this kind of thing if you don't have it already because otherwise your data is just it's vulnerable to the world at any moment your hard drive can break or when you're out of the house someone can come in and just steal all of your electronics you don't in that situation want to have to worry about your data as well you want to know that your data is just safe so backblaze it's peace of mind for your data so right now go to backblaze.com slash hello internet and sign up if you don't already have this on your computer do it last time we assigned getting things done at the book which I think you brought up you brought this up it was totally my doing great I bought the book without telling you right because it means so much to you I decided I wanted to try and read it and I told you I was going to read it and then we kind of co-decided well let's set it as homework so that when we discuss it on the podcast other people can can join in etc so if you haven't finished getting things done or you haven't started I guess this is that time in the podcast where we hear it later from people who pause it go out read a whole book and then come back and then unpause the podcast this is your no can I can I just say can I just say don't pause yet just wait a bit longer before you decide whether or not to pause because here we go Brady has not done his homework oh I thought you did do your homework I've got something to say about it though okay okay what's going on here well I bought the book in paper printed form and as proof not this counts as proof but there it is oh wow yeah I'm totally convinced now I have got the book and I've also tweeted pictures and and we did discuss how the printed version was probably better than getting the audio book viable.com slash hello into that so but it very quickly became apparent to me that my only chance to read this book before deadline was going to be getting the audio book because I'm doing as I'm doing a bit of running I walk the dogs I'm doing a lot of driving at the moment so I figured the only time I was going to get actually get this done haha was was during these times so I downloaded the audio book I started listening to it I read it I read a little bit but then I started listening to the audio book and I think I've probably listened to about an hour to an hour and a half of it and I have stopped with no plan to resume haha but here's the part where you will be proud of me Gray I'm laughing because just before we started recording this podcast I was having dinner with my wife and I made some predictions about what might happen in the getting things done section and and so far I'm actually kind of on track I think I'm I'm think I'm I'm doing pretty well with my predictions okay but tell me tell me what what I'm what am I going to be proud of did you predict that I would have pages of notes for you I would not have predicted that well your prediction is about to go awry because I went down today and I wrote down loads and loads of things hmm about why I would not be doing my homework one of one of my thoughts is that you would find this book deadly boring is that correct I think you are understating the case there death death would have would have been a welcome respite haha I knew it I knew it I knew it can I just say before I before I get stuck in that I am aware that this book means a lot to you and and everyone likes different things and I respect that you like and what it's done for you and also you know I went into this with some prejudices which were enhanced as I was reading it and also I just really don't like homework like I know I like I know everyone says they don't like homework at school and never did homework at school but you cannot understand how much I didn't like homework and how much I avoided doing it and the the thing that makes me happiest about the fact that I am no longer at school or university is that I don't have to do homework I don't have to do things in my spare time that I don't like right and so it's really really hard for for me to devote that much time to something I don't like so that's the benefit of being an adult is you get to make decisions about your your own time it is wonderful being an adult let me get my notes out because I think I don't know how you feel about this but I feel like we should do with my side of things first I am fascinated to talk to you and I want to I want to clear something before you say anything anything further which is and now this is the part where I have a hard time now remembering what we've said to each other in private and what we've said on podcasts so I'll try to try to summarize this but I know that at some point maybe in the podcast maybe in person we had a we had a little bit of a misunderstanding because I made some remark about how like oh this book won't help you or I said something along those lines and yeah I think you you took that in exactly the opposite way that I kind of I meant it because as we've discussed I actually like you get more stuff done than I do you work more than I do and I think you are more productive than I am like if we compared our days and so when when I made this remark about how like oh this this book won't help you I was actually kind of coming at it from the from the opposite perspective of like this is a book for I guess now like 12 years ago me who was just totally useless at everything and I don't I didn't necessarily think that for someone like you who is already working a lot and is very productive and is and is in control of their own life I didn't think that there would be a lot in this book for you so that is the way that is the way that I meant it like oh you know that that that was kind of perspective that I was I was coming from I have to say I was never insulted by you saying that I mean I took a little bit more along the lines of that I'm a because I would not describe myself as someone who is totally in control of my life I didn't say totally in control so I took up more like you know Brady's a little bit disorganized but he will always be that way and and no books gonna whip him into shape and I did not take that as an insult I took him as actually a stone cult truth but I certainly was not insulted by it so you don't need to feel like you know you you upset me anyway no that's not what I meant but what what I just mean is it's like okay it's like there are some people who are more naturally productive than others and I am I am very far on one end of that spectrum and I think you are much further along on the other end of that spectrum yeah and so a book like this is very different like people on on opposite ends of the spectrum have different problems they're trying to solve are you sort of saying that you feel like this book is maybe like a you know I get healthy diet book and it will be pointless for like a professional athlete to read it because they're already healthy or do you mean it in that context or yeah yeah yeah I think that that that kind of is the case of like if you're taking someone who is incredibly unhealthy they need different advice than someone who is already fit and trying to get fitter maybe okay all right that's that's one way to look at it all right all right well you might be feeling a bit bad now because I'm about to get stuck into this book but let me tell you let me take you let me take you through the book please or you know let me take you through my opinions on the book and these are all based on having not finished it so I know this is a bit like reviewing a movie and you didn't stay to the end and it should be taken with that massive grain of salt all right so do you happen to know what chapter you got to you I'm just curious no I don't okay and so this is this is basically just me going through a bunch of prejudices and fleeting impressions and I'll try and get through it reasonably quickly don't take it personally if you like the book don't rush don't rush I am I can't wait I can't wait to hear this I'm so I'm so excited I'm also very aware this book is massively successful and I have not written a massively successful book or come up with a massively successful plan for people to organize their lives so this guy is already ahead of me on the curve but that's not how criticism works I haven't made any movies but I can still say that a movie sucks let's go now let me start with the real first impressions here this is this is based almost on the cover of the book and hearing hearing you and and other people talk about it beforehand you're so excited I I don't know whether you're going to get more excited by this or suddenly feel like your world crumbles down but anyway let's do it my first impression about this whole getting things done was that it was kind of almost a bit cult like because you hear this thing about the you know the G T D system and people have got like their little abbreviation for it and a hashtag for it and you get the book and it's got all these quotes all over it and it's got the sort of the smarmy picture of the of your of your leader with his glowing white teeth like like like he's coming down with the tablets from on high it's like oh look at him he's so he's so handsome and smart looking and he's going to have all the answers for us so it's a bit like I don't know like I said cult like and even on the back of the book this is a quote from the back of the book it says an entire culture of personal organization that offers to change the way people work and live if someone came up to me on the street with a clipboard and said can I talk to you about an entire culture of personal organization that offers to change the way that you work and live I would probably think they're a Scientologist right or they were from some weird organization so this this was the first impression I had and then when I started reading it a few things sort of started adding to that a few little terms hang on let me open the book here did I because I've been scribbling notes in the book yeah it sort of it talked about things like being engaged in the moment and things like that and I'm thinking gosh what have I got myself in for here you know the first chapter a new practice for a new reality that sounds like almost religious doesn't it anyway that was my first impression that impression subsided a little bit but not a whole lot but anyway let's move on to my next point the next thing that I started feeling very strongly was it reminded me a lot about it reminded me of fad diets like you know how everyone you know how you had things like I remember like I think it was in the 80s maybe there was the Prittikand diet and I remember my mom got really into the Prittikand diet and put us all on to it and like Nathan I think his name was Nathan Prittikand but that's just me going by memory I didn't check but you know there was the guru who come up with this diet and it was the answer to all your problems and if you eat this and eat that and change everything this will fix your life and we had the Atkins plan more recently didn't we you know this here's this guy called I think it was that kinds of guy I don't even know I think Atkins was the person yes yeah I don't know if it was a man or a woman I'm probably I'm assuming it's a man actually I don't know why anyway if we're going to put down money on cult leaders and their gender I think the safe band is usually a man leaving you go so we heard the Atkins die and you've got your five two diets going around and this just seems like another one even to the point where it's called you know the G T D so again again this for someone like me this results in the putting up of a lot of walls because I'm not someone who buys into this stuff very easily and I didn't and you know remind you know it reminded me a lot of you know when everyone was saying you have to read men are from Mars women are from Venus this is you know this is the book that's going to change your life and as soon as everyone says this is the book that's going to change your life I'm like mmm mmm mmm I'm resistant to one man or woman coming down from Mount Sinai with the tablets telling me this is what's going to fix your life and this is what this feels like you know this is just one person this is just one person's opinion and yeah okay he's come up with something that works maybe for him and a few other people but anyway that was my second impression the book itself and you touched on this already very very boring the word I would use to describe it is coma inducing corporate bollocks these are some terms like I just for this took me 10 seconds to go through the book and find these terms these are these are all from the book involve ourselves optimally integrated life management system implementing standard tools and procedures for capturing ideas and input hierarchical outline with components and sub components purpose and principles furnish the impetus like I who talks like this this is not how and and actually funnily enough you talk like that sometimes but but I certainly don't and I and it really really turned me off and I remember when I was listening to it was worse when you're listening to as an audio book and I know that's my fault yeah I can imagine it's way worse as an audio it's like I it's just like I cannot listen I cannot my brain is turning into bubble gum stop and I'm like it's like no matter how hard I'm like straining to pay attention I want to pay attention but you're just talking about in such stupid boring corporate terms and I think that's a I mean that's a product of who he is you know I get the impression he's some consultant who spends or who used to spend most of his time fleecing CEOs for huge amounts of money with this you know this plan and obviously very successfully because obviously it works for some people but for me it's like stop stop make it stop and in the end I just had to just stop like I said I mean I felt like you could take all the sentences in this book and throw them up in the air and land randomly and the book would read exactly the same to me I would it would seem like the same book that's that's honestly what it was like if I was going to make a TV show like a sketch comedy about some corporate away day where some guy comes and talks to people it would look like this guy and all of these terms I would use in my script this this could be a script for my sketch comedy show it felt like at times it was just way way too boring I'm sorry now I know it's important to be organized and Lord knows I could be more organized but I just I just don't think I am the personality type who is going to be willing to take it from a book and from some other person's plan and I don't think it is necessary to take it from a book or someone else's plan you know and I accept some people maybe some people are bigger than me and they have the open mind and this and and a man or woman enough to say you know what someone else needs to do this for me someone else needs to find the way for me but for me it goes against everything that I'm about and it also goes against why I feel like I became a self-employed person you know I spent all my life in newspapers and the television doing having a wonderful job with more freedom than most people could possibly wish for and still I felt dictated to by demands and deadlines and and lists and all these artificially imposed structures and I really value freedom and I felt and I know he says this is this is all about creating more freedom for you but that's just that's just a line I don't I don't want more constraints and lists and an idea and I don't want some corporate consultant to be the person who changes my life you know I have I only get one life and I want and I want to do it my way I don't want to live David Alan's life I want to live my I want to live my life and you know that that summarises my main thoughts about this book I I've also made some notes here but maybe I'll save these I have made some notes about why I think CGP grade likes this book and I don't know if you want to hear that or you want to talk I am I'm loving this I love it when you're angry really this is great this is great I'm not even the least bit angry I like I like I find this quite cathartic and you know what I know a lot of people are going to have read this book and really like it and I think a lot of our listeners particularly our more vocal listeners are going to be the sort of people who do like this book and I totally respect that let me talk to you I'll tell you why I think you like it okay yeah I want to hear this why do you think I like it actually can I just just very quickly did you read or are you listening to the new version or the old version I was listening I believe to the old version and I was reading the new version okay okay why does CGP great like this book I don't know if you like this word don't take it offensively because I don't mean it in the offensive way but I and also I can't pronounce it but but I think it but I think it much like I can't pronounce plurality in case you haven't noticed but although I think I may have got it right then by accident no I know I think you fetishize organizational systems and work methods I think you get really obsessed with them and you really really love them and I think no matter what you did I mean you happen to have a job now where you're very you're very successful when there are a lot of demands on your time and you get a lot of emails but I think no matter what you did no matter what job you do even if you worked in a toothpaste factory and your job was just putting the lids on the toothpaste as it came down the conveyor belt you would be into this kind of thing and want to have systems and lists and ways to do it and optimize it because it's just it's just what you are it's just who you are and and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that I but I think kind of the journey and the organization is brings you as much pleasure and satisfaction at some level than the outcomes and again that's completely fine much like there are car enthusiasts who just like going for a drive because they like they get pleasure from automobiles and it doesn't matter where they're driving they might just drive around the block or drive around the countryside and come home they don't care where they went they got pleasure from the car and from the ride I think your brain derives pleasure from these kind of systems and and there's nothing again like I'm I'm the same I'm the same but with different things like for example I love watching a base game of baseball because it gives me pleasure and I usually watch them days after the game and I will avoid the scores and the outcome although that's really what it's all about because I want to watch the game so there's nothing wrong with valuing the experience over the outcomes now you you can tell me afterwards if you think I'm right or wrong but first of all let me give you three pieces of evidence that I am right haha number one and we talked about it earlier you've started a whole new podcast about all your systems and the way you work even though we talk about your work all the time here that's just not enough you you could talk about this forever and I'm and I'm seriously beginning to think maybe you will that's a piece of evidence number one the second piece of the second piece of evidence is you always say how fascinated you are by people's work systems you always you always say it to me I'm really fascinated by how you work I'm fascinated by how destined works I really want to know how how this person does that you're much more fascinated by that than what they create I can I don't think I you have ever in your life asked me what I'm working on what's your next video about I ask you all the time what your next video is about and you won't tell me but I ask you all the time you've never asked me what my next video is about but you do always ask me how I work what I'm doing what my systems are that's my that's my second piece of evidence you're much more you're much more focused on systems than outcomes and and the last piece of evidence is your videos your videos show this aspect to your personality brilliantly because because you always say you're not interested in news you're not interested in politics you're really disengaged from the real world yet you're obsessed with voting and elections you wanted to talk about the UK election in depth you didn't know who any of the parties were or who any of the politics you couldn't care less all you wanted to talk about was the system used to put them in place look at your pope video like as far as I know you're not particularly interested in Catholicism and you're not a big follower of happenings in the Catholic Church but you made a fantastic video about the process used to put the pope in place all you care about is systems you're not particularly interested in outcomes and for that reason this book this book getting things done is truly in every sense of the word grey porn and it's not it's not just grey porn it's highly highly explicit porn because because every page after excruciating page just goes into incredible detail about lists and workflows and ways to become more effective like I feel dirty touching this book because of how much pleasure I know it gives you that is that is that is the end of me I find your evidence for my interest in systems unconvincing um I'm actually I'm actually mostly embarrassed that I think you are right that I have never wants to ask you what you're working on that's fine that's a sure it's what you're interested in yeah I would just I feel I feel a slight shame as a person like we've discussed sometimes like I'm not very good at interpersonal relations but I realize like that's actually quite bad that we've known each other for a long time and never once I've been like hey what are you working on so I like I'm laughing but I'm also feeling like a horribly guilty in realizing like oh yeah that's right I am not a good friend sometimes you are you are good friend you don't have to ask someone what they're working on in their work to be a good friend and I was not I would never suggest otherwise so so there we go now this book you obviously have read before a long time ago and but you because there's this new addition out at the moment where he's he's updated it for a whole new generation of mini grays to enjoy um did you have you finished have you finished your second oh I don't know how many times how many times have you read it I was trying to think that this is I would say this is probably the fourth time I read the book over over I was trying to remember it must have been it must have been like 2005 or 2004 when I first came across it when I was first training as a teacher whenever that was so let's just say about 10 years ago that's when I would have first found it and yeah I know I've read it a couple times since then how did you find out about it like how did it get onto your radar I don't remember specifically how I came across getting things done and I wish I did I wish I remembered how I found it it's like your origin story Gray but basically I was I was really like falling apart in my teacher training years because I just like I was not an organized person and a thing that had always seemed like an advantage which was as a kid I kind of just like floated through high school without a lot of work and college was a bit of a wake up call but it wasn't like enough of a wake up call and so I sort of floated through that as well and and and then suddenly it was it was when I was doing my teacher training it was like wow I'm not prepared for this and like all of the things that I need to keep track of and I just remember very well there was this huge binder of like 500 things that you need to have pieces of evidence for in order to be qualified as a teacher and and that was the kind of thing I was having a very hard time keeping track of all that and I know I was I was reading books on productivity like oh god there must be something there must be something here that can help me and I remember reading a bunch of books that I thought were just really awful I can still remember what some of them were I was like oh this book is useless this book is is terrible and at some point I came across getting things done after I had read a bunch of books where I felt like all of them were just totally unhelpful and this was the book that I did find helpful and then what was different what was different about so the reason I the reason I asked before about the if you read the old version or you read the new version is that the old version is definitely dated but I actually I think it's actually better than the new version the new the new version has been updated in a way that I find it is much less actionable and I have to say one thing like you are totally right that I am a systems person I am very fascinated by systems and your piece of evidence were dead on but you are you are wrong about the the pleasure that I drive from this book I have always found this book kind of boring it's actually not the case that I'm like oh boy all of these pages are great and when I was when I was when I was reading the newer version I actually because I have the old one is on my Kindle and I was highlighted up for a review that I was going to write I went back and forth a few times to to look at how some of the passages had changed I was like oh god it like it got boringed up here like they took out some of the specificity and added more of this kind of jargon yeah David Allen has a lot of of business jargon yeah if you don't read books that are business books this kind of thing can be death I tend to read like a disproportionate number of books that could broadly be classified as business and they all have a kind of word poison in them that you have to you have to shuffle through like even even a book that I read recently which was probably one of the best versions of this that there can be which is creativity ink by the guy who runs Pixar which is very interesting an entire book about the system of how Pixar produces movies but it's still it suffers from the same kind of like dude at the top who's a manager and and talks about horizons and vision stuff and it's like oh god that's disappointing right because I actually really wanted to read that book you will enjoy creativity ink a million times more than you enjoy getting things done but it still has a little bit of that like this is a book written by a business dude this one I'll think I'm actually just looking at the notes here like there's some stuff that I always find hilarious and getting things done and here I have the highlight here let me go to this little page this was in the first edition but it shows like David Allen is living in a different world so there's this section which has a t it is a quote typical list of things you might want to do someday and on that typical list are get a sailboat take a watercolor class take a balloon ride build a wine cellar spend a month in tuscany publish your memoir it's like well that's interesting that's an interesting collection of things and earlier he uses an example of the kind of problem that you might have to solve where you have inherited six million dollars from a relative and you to figure out how to disperse this money it's like oh yes we all face these problems David Allen there's a whole bunch of examples of here where it's like you can feel the world that this person is coming from just hanging out with CEOs and chairman and yeah and and the first book suffered from that and and the this the new addition I think is worse and is that it's beauty though it is is that is that subconsciously how it's appealing to even someone like you because it's like oh you know he's so successful and hangs out with successful people if I do what he says I'll I'll be like that too now this is this is a certain kind of thing in in these book that I find really tedious I find self descriptions of of like hanging out with other CEOs like I just I can't stand that I can't stand that kind of stuff especially in a book that is ostensibly about a particular skill that you're supposed to gain or a particular thing that you're supposed to learn like I'm not really interested in in you and like the the the current addition at the end has this little chapter about like David Allen's journey through the many years of doing getting things done it's like oh man I couldn't have skimmed that chapter any faster if I tried it was just like flip flip flip like I just have I have no interest in that so that's why I when I was reading this for the homework there were many times where I kept thinking like oh god poor Brady right it's like do you know I was don't worry great you know what I was doing I was listening to public service broadcasting's brilliant new album all about the space race and that's what people should be doing listening to that there you go yeah but I know yeah okay yeah but don't feel bad I'd stopped okay yeah but that's I'm actually quite relieved in some ways it's like I got he didn't push himself all the way through it because you might never have forgiven me oh I feel bad because we said it as homework okay now man out here's here here is the thing that I like I will be very curious I'll be very curious to see people's reaction to the book in the reddit this time and for for people when you're leaving comments there's something that I want to know which is in addition to just how how did you like or dislike the book I know or do you think it's going to be useful or not I also want to know your station in life now like are you a student are you an adult are are you working are you not working are you a business owner right you know like what like what what is the your position in life because I think that that can be that can have a like I'm curious to see if there's any kind of relation between certain kinds of people who find this useful and certain kinds of people who don't I would really like to know more than just what people think about it so the thing you still haven't told me though and I know this is a huge question about a book that's so influential for you is is because you're talking quite negatively about it as well why is this a good book what is value of this book yeah so I was making notes on on the stuff that to me is the kind of core of this book and the stuff that really caught my mind at the right time in my life and I even made a note for anybody who wants to like skim through chapter five is like the real starting point of this book which I'm sure you never even you never even made it that far as it's like you know a battlefield of soldiers not not not getting to the fifth mile because they all just died on their way yes I'm lying dead on the food yeah right about mile marker point five yeah I mean some of the stuff that I'm about to say is going to sound just blindingly stupidly obvious if I had to condense the book down to the one thing that really stuck with me and that really ended up changing my life he hammers on the notion of your brain is not for remembering things that this is not the job of your brain yeah you need to you need to take everything out of your mind and put it into some kind of external system that your brain is for doing intellectual work or making decisions but it is not a storage system and that is really where things started to change for me and I was it's funny like reading through this and kind of remembering where I was at this point in my life I will give you an example of how just incredibly stupid I was when I was younger and like okay so I had all these things to keep track of and some somehow I'm thinking like oh maybe I can just remember the five hundred things that I'm supposed to do to train as a teacher of course that's not even remotely possible but I was reading through this and I had a memory of like oh god oh this this incredibly dumb idea I had of I was trying to come up with a system that would allow me to memorize all of the various calendar appointments that I had now we we have discussed before that I'm I have sometimes used these kind of memory systems to remember things yeah like these these kind of these tricks that you can do to make it much easier to remember a large volume of stuff and it's like it seems impressive when you see memory experts do stuff but like there's a there's a mechanism behind this there's a system behind this like sort of like some people you hear about using these memory palaces or things like that or the memory palaces the one that you always hear about because it's nice to visually describe I never did that I use some other systems but it's the same idea that there's like a there's like a mechanism for this yeah and when I was when I was training as a teacher I was looking into into those kind of mechanisms for date-based information and I had this notion that I was going to somehow memorize this complicated calendar that I had of days that I'm at the university days when I'm at the training school when are the meetings with my advisors when are my meetings with the local advisors at the school when do I need to be here when do I need to be there and it's it's shocking that I could ever be that stupid to think that's a reasonable solution as opposed to something like a calendar like why don't you write things down on a calendar you moron but but it somehow I thought like oh I'm I'm like a smart guy right I should be able to remember where I'm supposed to be at all the time all times it's like no don't do that that's an incredibly stupid thing to do it's highly error prone and it's not going to help you at all and so the very notion of like right just tough down on a calendar idiot like this was life changing to me and and the the one little item that I also started with was I kept a small paper notebook in my back pocket and always had a pen with me and I really really got into the habit of whenever I had any thought about anything like a fleeting thought just write it down don't even judge what it is don't think if the thought makes any sense just like just quickly just write it down in this little notebook and then once a week go through the notebook and decide if anything needs to be done about that stuff and I often talk about like loops like reviewing your life in loops I think that was like the er loop for me the beginning point of having a little notebook writing things down and then going back and regularly looking at that notebook I can say great the benefit of that can I say like because I because I'm a guy here's lots of ideas all the time oh I can make a video about this or I should do that and most of the time they just fall out of my head and they've forgotten forever so obviously I see the value of what you're saying but I do feel like if I did that I would have a lot less ideas and I would also have just a lot less fun life because I just always be writing stuff down and pulling out my notebook and it would just that would consume me and I'm just not that's the that's my problem with what a lot of the stuff this seems to be hinting at I feel like all these systems just become consuming and I sometimes worry what I worry about you but I sometimes think that about you I sometimes think do these systems consume him like I know they I know they result in nothing being lost and you know you're like a really reliable hard drive but I sometimes wonder whether or not you're just like having fun the experience that I had when you say like oh I'll just be constantly writing stuff down the thing that I found really interesting and and where I feel like oh I became a different person is that in the beginning yes I found myself just writing stuff down all the time yeah but I swear like what happens is your brain gets reprogrammed in such a way that what you realize you're doing is you're actually like thinking about the same things over and over again from different angles because your brain is so used to trying to remember it and what what I feel like now is that my brain is much calmer than it was when I was younger and so I don't actually feel like oh things are constantly popping into my head because like I have this whole system that my brain has learned to trust that like oh if if you do have a thought you can write it down and you know that it will be reviewed at a later point in time and you don't have to like hold on and that's what I feel like very relaxed in a way that I didn't before and it's something that I actually notice is when I'm not doing well with the system because like with everything in life it goes it goes through cycles like sometimes you're really on top of stuff and sometimes you're not but a key thing that I notice is like repeatedly thinking about something like I can tell something is on my mind and that's usually a sign of like oh are you really keeping track of this stuff or are you trying again to just remember what you're supposed to do that's important and and I find that that's a that's a bad sign for me and it's actually like I was very interested to do this homework now because I've been aware that I haven't been as on top of my system lately as I would like and I've had things like on my mind kind of burning up some mental cycles in a way that is not helpful and it's like oh yes right pay attention to this this behavior like get back into the habit of writing all the things down so it's like you feel really busy at the start writing everything down but that's like a temporary phase or at least that was the experience that I had you know now I keep my phone on me all the time and and I have it set up so that I can very quickly write things down but I don't pull it out like you know a a hundred times an hour of like oh I thought this thing oh let put the phone down you've got to pick it right back up right that's that's not the case that's not the case do you do do a bit of self editing presumably like you do do you do a bit of editing about well that's not even worth writing down no not really yeah I don't have that that kind of thing happen right it doesn't almost don't know how to I feel like I'm I'm I'm lacking words for an internal process here what qualifies as something worth writing down like if you're walking along the park and you think oh birds are pretty you don't think you're right birds are pretty in your phone like what counts as a thing to write down um yeah I mean that's fair but but at the same time something like birds are pretty is not the kind of thought that is internalized in words in my brain right you just like you're looking and you are it's like oh your eyes and your brain are seeing birds and you're hearing a song this kind of this kind of thing what's something you write down that I don't write down um I mean the the obvious one is is thoughts about future videos right and uh very often what I what I find when I go on when I go on walks or I'm just walking around is is some little sentence scrap will pop into my head of like a clever way to phrase something right right and I'll write that down and and very often I'll realize later like oh that that actually fits very well with this other project that I might work on someday and so I find a little like a little pithy one-lawner or an awesome downward so that's that's exactly right you know sometimes you come on a play on words or just a like a sentence that has a nice rhythm to it and I'll write that down and so I'll I'll file it away in my system because I'll realize later like oh it's it's connected to the other thing sometimes it's not but most of the time there's obviously some project in mind that this is connected to so that that's the kind of thing that I'll write down I just feel a bit like and I'm not saying that I'm like a super creative guy you know full of the most ideas in the world but I feel like if I collected every single thought I had like like it would be like an avalanche and I just wouldn't know where to do with it what to do with it all it would just be because I think I have like a hundred of those thoughts every hour and I would still say that if you start writing that stuff down you have less of those thoughts than you think okay and I can't I can't remember where I read it but it's I think it was like Bill Waterston the the guy who did Calvin and Hobbes but talking about like nothing nothing makes you realize how how boring most of your ideas are than when your livelihood depends on generating good ideas I feel like like writing those ideas down makes you really face that right and when I go through like I mean now they're digital notebooks but when I go through the things that I've written down I mean half of it is just immediately deleted like oh this is just obviously nothing or this doesn't go anywhere this is just some some dumb thought or I'm never going to do anything with this this is just a stupid project idea how do you know when that point comes gray how do you know when to delete something how do you know when something is no longer a value if you're valuing everything and writing it all down how do you then devalue it so this is the getting things done sister now that we're talking about okay the point is to have something on you all the time to capture your thoughts so that now that's my phone and it used to be a notebook and then the other phase is deciding on a time when you're going to sit down and you're going to go through those things and that is like you're separating the process of filtering your thoughts from simply recording your thoughts so it's that point when you sit down and you know so like once a week will sit down okay let me just go through all of these little notes that I've written and then is the point that I'm making some kind of judgment about does this need to be filed somewhere or is this just nonsense and I'm just going to delete it I mean one of the things one of the things I would say gets deleted the most is I come up with just ideas for apps that I would want on my phone and I'm not an app developer I have no skills in this area this is probably a thing that is never going to work out but I'll still write them down and then very often when it's you know three days later and I'm doing my weekly review and I'm going through all my notes I realize you know what that's a terrible idea that's an absolutely terrible idea for an app that I've written down and I feel free to just delete it you know it's just then it's just gone so that's kind of the way this works okay I mean that kind of goes against something that I sometimes think and it's actually some advice I often give to people about sort of what I do in sort of video journalism and that is and it was some really good advice I was given at the start it's really stuck with me is when you go somewhere to like make a film or do an interview or whatever you're going to make a film about don't don't get your camera out straight away don't start filming everything take your time get the lay of the land meet the people think about the film you know build relationships know what's what and then start filming get what you need be efficient and then leave don't walk in pull your camera out going oh look at this shiny thing I'm going to film that look at that I'll ask you a question I'll ask you a question I would have and like that's what young in experienced people do they film everything they panic and then they get back to the office and they've got like 18 hours of footage and they don't know what to do whereas I can come back and I've just got 15 20 minutes exactly what I need and I can efficiently turn it into a film and what you're sort of advocating here is almost the exact opposite of that it's like it's like it's like get out your butterfly net catch absolutely every butterfly that flies by and then spend hours and hours and hours back at the office thinking no I probably shouldn't have got that butterfly what a waste of time that was oh no I've got nine of those butterflies and I've already had a hundred of them before it's kind of a bit like shouldn't you have like some sort of editing or filtering system where the capturing's happening the thing that's different with your situation and I can see that is totally good advice that the way to to put video together for a news broadcast like that but that's different because you're already talking about you're at the stage where like a project needs to get done and yes overshooting footage is unhelpful like this you're already discussing a like a project that has a system that has been tested by people like the the phase that I'm talking about here is is stuff that is much much earlier than that just you know things that might turn into projects someday but you don't not necessarily where they're going right so this is like way earlier like you decide you're going to do a video series on going to the middle of England for example which is something you did before right I'm discussing the point at which you're walking down the street and for some reason you start thinking about oh the middle of things like where is the middle of Scotland where is the middle of Wales and then you just write down your notebook like the middle of things like question mark that like that's a little thought that you have and then a week later you look at it and if it still has some kind of pull on your mind you think oh maybe this is something I there's something here but very often you look at thoughts and there's nothing there I mean I just I pulled up my list of notes right now just to see like I'm curious how many have I written down and it's probably been yeah it's probably been just over a week since I've gone through the notes and I think I have can't be much more than 30 things written down over the courses of a week it's not a this is what I mean like it's the pace slows over time but when I first started it you know in the in the in the first couple months it felt like I was just constantly writing stuff down but that's not the case anymore okay what have been your other thoughts reading through at this most recent time then is it is it still is it still a specialty do you still do you still make you feel you know I mean you spoke in such glowing terms about it when you talked about it changing a lot do you still look at it with that fun I know I made I know I was quite negative about it but do you still do you still have that funness for it or do you look at it like like like an like an ex partner and think oh I can't believe I was so I'm fed you I did with that back in the day no I don't feel that way I would still very strongly recommend this to people who are trying to figure things out like how how do I get organized I would definitely still recommend that because going through this like I did make a bunch of notes on the things that I thought like yes these are these are the core points like if you can do these things it's extremely helpful and there is I think it's I think it's either chapter five or chapter six but there is one point where a lot of the business language starts to drop and I was like oh I remember this section where he kind of like walks you through what he would do if he was being hired to help you organize your life and he talks about okay you need you know set aside two days here's what you're going to do you're going to collect all of your things together and then he talks about how how like how we're going to go through all of these things and how we're going to start like building a person's system up from nothing into something that is at least somewhat functional and I still think that there is a lot of of value in that without a doubt I have tried to put on my website I've done two now of these things I'm calling like book notes which are me reading a book and then trying to pull out the parts that I think are useful and I did that with creativity ink and I did that with bird by bird which is a book on writing yeah and one of the reasons why I wanted to do that is I am just very aware that I read a lot of books that have what I would say are our big parts of them that are are frustrating or that are not good but it's like I don't really care in some ways about the parts of the book that aren't good like I don't want to write a review saying oh this part was good and that part wasn't good I care about like what can be gained from a thing just basically all the spoilers kind of like the spoilers yeah and and getting things done to me has a really core section that is very valuable but but you do have to get through a whole bunch of other stuff to get there and the language is definitely one of them the business speakers is it can kill a man I was laughing before because yeah David Allen is like this very interesting combination of kind of like a business person but also a hippie like he constantly talks about your psyche and these other like California buzzwords oh yeah and there was all that calm water or whatever it's spaking your mind yeah mind like water and it's it's it's like oh god you're grading me the wrong way on two axes here buddy yeah it's like it's quite impressive actually add cult leader to that as well then you've got the pair you've got the holy trinity of things to turn me off yes yes that's exactly right but um oh the the cult thing that I was gonna I made a note because I want to just come back on that which was yeah I also happen to come across getting things done at at around the time it was kind of becoming popular on the early internet and there are a lot of great materials that people have written about implementing getting things done in their own lives yeah and those things I I remember reading just a ton of those to try to see like oh how are people making this system work and that stuff is very useful and I was kind of embarrassing I don't know if I if I actually want to mention this but I still have on my YouTube channel that very very old video which is like time management for teachers which is one of the very first things I ever did yeah and I rewatched that in in preparation for the podcast and again it was like oh these these horrifying flashbacks of of this whole this whole life but that is a case where you can see like what I'm doing there in some ways is explaining here like here's how I organize packets of paper for classes here's how I'm do arranging these lists and and what it is it's like it's an adapted getting things done system for for being a teacher and that's what and like man did that get me through my teaching career like I remember that clipboard and the checklist that I had every day and the couple of sheets and all of that came out of getting things done and I would never have gotten through teaching without it I would never I would never have gotten through teaching without it but so yeah I I recommend the book but I by no means think that it is some kind of incredibly gripping flawless piece of work you would never have gotten through teaching without it you say yeah is it impossible that you just would have figured this out like a lot of people do like did you did you need like because you use the term yourself like a lot of the stuff in there is blindingly obvious and like so and you know how it could be argued he presented it in the right way at the right time perhaps but but would you not have just figured some of this stuff out like I remember when when I first started all the YouTube stuff because my at the BBC my life was pretty basic and I knew what I'd go to work and then I'd pretty much find out what I was doing that day and then I'd come home and then I'd go to work again and I didn't keep a diary and then when I started all the YouTube stuff and I was meeting with Professor X at this time and I was meeting with scientists B at this time at first I was just remembering oh that's on Wednesday night and that's going to be on Friday and then eventually it was like oh I need a calendar like I didn't need a I didn't need a book to tell me to get a calendar it was just like I need a calendar this is I just can't remember this much stuff like like what I guess what I'm asking is tell me the secret what's like save me all the trouble of reading it and tell me what the thing is in this book that I don't already know or is it I know I know it's a bit more to it than that no no no no the thing is like you can you can write on an index card the core features of this system like it ultimately it is very simple can you tell me that index card yeah I guess if I had to summarize it in a few bullet points one would be the first thing that I said before which is write everything down don't keep it in your head yeah the next thing is that you want to have a list of projects and the idea is it is every single project that you might possibly be working on right now yeah and the key piece of that again comes from the first point of like everything there's a huge advantage when you can look at a list that encompasses everything in your life that you're trying to accomplish as opposed to a list that's like 85% complete right and I can I can speak from experience that it is it is a different experience to have a complete project list versus an almost complete project what's an example of something that would be on Grae's complete project list that wouldn't be on an incomplete normal person list what would I forget to put on well the thing is the the complete project list usually has a lot of just like little stuff that you wouldn't normally think of it's again it's the kind of things that you would try to keep in in your mind like like buying a buying birthday present so yeah like okay so yeah I'm just pulling up my own omnifocus here to just take a look at what's in here so if I can give you some examples of like small things that I have yeah yeah um okay so I have a couple of things that are like related to uh doctors visits on here right that are things that I know past me would have just had in my brain and then just like oh you know I'm gonna see the doctor like that kind of thing but now it's it's written down like it's part of this little system here there's a few things that I want to set up in the house which again are are very very minor things that need to get done but they're still written down they're still here yeah the it's like the thing is it's not about the big projects it's really about having the little projects as well but you wouldn't call this such a do list no the project list is like is a different thing from a to do list and that's that's what kind of makes it special and it's funny because I kept I kept looking for something in the getting things done book that I think oh I thought this was in here but I think actually a either I pulled this from somewhere else or it's something I stumbled upon on my own but I always write the projects as a past tense sentence as in like this is the thing that needs to be done so it's like doctor visit scheduled is the way I write down the the projects or um youtube video on topic x online yeah I've got a problem here like wife's computer fixed like that's the way I will write those things down right the next bullet point on this little index card is that you have a separate list that is the actions that need to be taken to move those projects to completion so every project has a signed sub list breaking out of it yes every project then like you you go through your projects and you very consciously say okay what what are the physical actions that are then required to move this project towards completion this is the point where it feels like the amount of work to run the system is becoming greater than the amount of work I'm willing to do what what we've just talked about the these three ideas don't keep anything in your head have a project list that is separate from the the actions that need to be done like that that's basically the getting things done system there is more to it but that's like the core yeah the way I would try to describe it is that it is what you're trying to do is like separate times when you are thinking about okay what are all the things that I need to get done okay how can I move this project forward to completion blah blah so what you have then is is when you're actually working a set of actions that you can just as close as possible just grind through and just do like I already know what I need to do to move these projects forward like this is what I do every week I sit down and I write down the next step required to complete these projects and now my job is to just go through this list of things and and the the key thing here is like the actions have to have a verb in there there needs like if you haven't written it down with a verb like you haven't really thought through what you need to do to to get this thing completed how many projects are on your current project list I can tell you if the more is it non-need focus it's somewhere in here I'm actually curious to look at this number so just take a second currently I have 200 projects in my system okay now I know this is I know some of them are big and some of them are small some just going to ask you to guess here on average how many actions does each project have in its sublist normal let me go through my normal little little projects here there's one action associated with that two actions three one four one three yeah so most of my little projects have like one to five things associated with them right but something that's something like uploading your next video will have like 20 things in its checklist yeah I mean I can pull it up I can pull it up right now why but I mean then this starts to get to stuff that I feel like this is this is like professional work stuff like it's just not not a normal person's list anymore so yeah so my checklist for a video from idea to finish product is 71 items long right and an enormous number of those are just tiny little things like the stuff I don't mind mentioning is create the thumbnail for the video after the video has been uploaded make sure that the video looks okay on YouTube because every once in a while I run into a problem where the the video and the audio fall out of sync for some unknown reason yeah when I upload the video I want to turn off unskippable ads for the first 24 hours then I have to compose the email list that's going to go out like like there's all of these just little items and it's it's actually quite easy to come up with 71 tiny steps that need to happen of course I can imagine so you've got this you've got this project list with say 200 things on it yeah and then and sort of hidden under the under the hood all these sublists what how often do you look at the project list like what's the daily or weekly thing like when you wake up in the morning how do you know what you're doing this is the kind of key to the whole system is like you should not be looking at all of this all the time you will you will just be a crazy person if you're like let me look at my 200 things yeah like a key point of the system is to only be able to see the things that you can actually do right now and to back this up I will say the reason why getting things done made such a huge difference to me and and this is one of the things that I like now this doesn't work for me as well and I have frustrations with it but so if you imagine you have a list of all your projects that you need to get done the idea is that you then have these these where you put those actions for like moving those projects forward they should be lists that are limited to a particular place like okay and or so let me describe the situation what changed my life was okay I'm going to write down all of my projects and I'm in teacher training right now and instead of just having one big to-do list that I'm constantly looking at and feeling anxious about all the stuff that needs to get done instead I'm I'm only going to look at when I am at university I will have a separate piece of paper which it used to be that just has the actions that I can perform at university right then I have a separate list which just has the actions I can perform when I go to my training school okay yeah right and then I have a separate list which is all of the items that I need for when I'm talking to my advisor and I wouldn't have very many pieces of paper like that it was maybe four or five lists for the four or five places that I was yeah that was life changing for me like that that is what made the difference I can say that helps you in that situation I cannot say how that helps you now or would help me now because the list of things I can do when I'm sitting at my computer in the morning with a blank canvas is seemingly infinite like what what does your list look like for I'm sitting at my desk in my office today must be massive this is why I have this this big list of notes and this this review that I keep I keep referencing of getting things done that I've been trying to write and trying to publish for a while because this is this has been my core frustration with the last several years of my life in particular since I've I've gone to YouTube is that I can do almost anything in my life from almost anywhere that I have basically no physical constraints and I'm really aware that with my new bigger phone the very few things that I felt like oh well I can't do it if I just have my phone it's like well guess what now the number of things that I can't do on my phone is like three I can't record a podcast I can't animate a video and I can't do my taxes right I need a specific piece of software for my computer right so it's like everything else in my life I can do and that is where like I have found that over the years the getting things done system has been working less and less well for me and that's partly what I've talked about before on this podcast of this this feeling of I used to live in a world where I had like a very large number of very small things that needed to be done and now I don't live in that world anymore like I everywhere I am I can potentially do all of the things that I need to do and so I've been I've been kind of cobbling together and trying to do my own system with that but like getting things done was the perfect system for the perfect time in my life but if you if you read the original book like it is oh clearly a book that is written before anybody is carrying internet connected cell phones with them all the time yeah hey talk he talks like about these you know your pda's like these amazing things but basically you more you're more often dealing with bits of paper in a basket on your desk yeah and it's it's one thing where it's like like reading the new edition I was keenly looking out for stuff that had been updated for the modern digital world and my opinion is that he he blows past this fundamental problem and kind of pretends as though you have been very many more of these these places that you are limited by then is the truth like in in in GTD slang this is called a context like what is the context you are working in and it's like my whole life is one context called I have a super phone in my pocket right I can always do everything how are you getting around this problem because this seems like a big deal it this has been like the central problem of my system for two years now yeah and I this is kind of why like I know you make you make fun of me for for changing stuff but this is one of the reasons why I'm kind of always experimenting with stuff is I feel like oh I used to have the system that worked well and I kind of lost it because the nature of my job and my work has just changed so much if I was still a teacher to getting things done thing system would work great because that's still a world of like limits and offices and paper and like everything would be fine but that's that's not where I am now and and you can't do it I mean I'm not suggesting you throw your iPhone in the lake but could you could you not do it artificially could you like could you because it kept you so much sainer and happier could you not create these contexts artificially and just have like golden rules like whenever I am you know in my desk I'm in context day where I'm where making videos and sending emails is an option and whenever I'm at Starbucks that's when I'm allowed to do B and C and whenever I'm you know you could just create these things frankly yeah that that is precisely the kind of stuff that I try to do but but of course it's like having a genuine hard boundary that is something that you cannot break versus a soft boundary that you're trying to create for yourself it doesn't work very well and there's a lot of then you are going to have to throw you fine in the lake there are some tricks that I definitely do to try and influence like to try and set for myself hard limits but there's a lot of really interesting cognitive science that talks about the the limits and the drain on mental capacity when you're when you're doing that kind of thing right it's it's the old like yeah in theory you can die it in your house with ice cream everywhere and just not eat it but you can actually see that like this even if someone is successfully able to do that to go on a diet and not eat the ice cream that's in the refrigerator you can measure how their cognitive performance is limited in all kinds of other ways right because some part of their brain is reserved to the don't eat the ice cream part like even if you think like oh look at me I'm like I'm so great I don't have to eat the ice cream it's like yeah but if we start having you do tests of mental math like you do worse than someone in the exact same position who just doesn't have ice cream in the house great stop saying ice cream you're making me hungry but that's the reason I'm bringing it up as an example so there are lots of things that I try to do but like this this has been the fundamental problem for me and I've I've found ways that are helpful but I feel like I haven't had a really rock solid system in in really since I became self-employed sans at the time is right for a new book you should swoop in and be the next David Adam yeah if I can if I can figure it out I'll I'll do that yeah that's right you've actually got to figure it out first ain't that's what yeah that's the problem but once I figure it out then I can start my own cult
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