Ep. 334: Working with People Who Don't GTD

Hi everyone, this is John Forrester and welcome to our GTD Connect office hour. Great to see you here. This is a very informal... time for us to just talk about GTD and related productivity topics. So that could include questions you may have, answers you may have. I love to hear answers from you. So answers are fine. Questions, ponderings, whatever you've been musing about, considering, that sort of thing.

we're set to go here for an hour we don't have to stop exactly at the top of the hour but we generally aim to finish close to on time there so that if you have other commitments you can get to them And one other thing I'd like to point out, let's see, is that one of our participants here is Thais Cotinho, who is... To call her well-versed in GTD is the biggest understatement of 2025 for me so far. So welcome to Thais. She's a longtime practitioner and is also a trainer in GTD.

Just very, very well versed in GTD and has worked with many people on it. There she is. She came on camera and is waving there. Hi, Thais. Hello. Hi, John. Thank you. Please know that I welcome your participation here. I just wanted to introduce you and let folks know that you're there. And if you want to dive in at any point here...

When I do these things with Ana Maria, she and I often get into, I won't quite say sparring with each other, but I'll have a point of view, she has a point of view, and then the... The other people on the meeting get to find out what it's like when two people who've been at this for a long time don't necessarily have the same approach to something. I'm not assigning you or anything like that to be contrary with me, but if you feel like you want to or vice versa, that's all good. All right.

So let's see. Any other housekeeping? I think that's it. I think that's it. So. We're happy to have you all here. I could talk about where you all are in the world, but it's spread out a bit. So where is Thais? Where are you located? There you go. Thank you. Hi, I'm in Brazil, São Paulo. Great. São Paulo, Brazil. And Mark, are you in the Salt Lake City area still? Yeah. Okay.

All right, great. I'm in rainy Southern California. So it's not a sunny sky behind me there. And I don't know, I don't think you'll hear too much rain. coming off the roof, but it's very rainy here. We're having monsoon season at least for a few days. All right, so this is a time to talk about anything... It's been on your mind. So, Joseph, you can speak up if you'd like to or chat or just not have anything to say. Primarily listening is good.

Mark, if you have anything on your mind, go right ahead. And one other thing, which is if nobody has questions or comments, I can always come up with prompt type questions, things to...

stir the pot a bit so first i wanted to give you a chance to say what was on your mind if you've got anything on a an office hour agenda so i do have like a couple of questions so first off i'm doing my I mean, it sounds really late to be doing them in February for 2025, but that's the pattern that we follow in the organization I work in. So, and I'm trying to.

I don't know how to say influence others to to more use a GTD methodology versus the standard year after year. I mean, I've worked for this organization for. 13 years now so um any suggestions on how to i don't want to say subtly but even just to get that into the the pattern and the flow of a of a larger organization

Or even just within my own team. I don't lead the team. I'm a project manager slash scrum master right now. I've stepped back from being a manager, you know, managing people to more managing. projects and um anyway just suggestions that way is what i'm interested in because i'd like to try to get some others interested so to speak that's it

That's a great question, great topic. It's a perennial kind of a concern for people. Once they start implementing GTD, they start looking around and going, wow, how can I get my... my co-workers my boss my direct reports to do this stuff too how do i uh how do i get my spouse my children my my parents to to do all this kind of stuff it's everybody in our world we start wanting to help them help them learn this kind of stuff too so it's a great question

Let's see. I may toss this over to Thais a few times. Thais, I'm just going to let you know, anytime you have anything to say, please dive in. Interrupt. Don't be polite. And I'll just say, I've always heard from David Allen, the best way is to lead by example with this, that if other people see you demonstrating relaxed productivity. They're going to say, what's your secret? Mark, how do you do it?

Have you found that people ask you what your secret is or how you do things? Are there sources of friction and are there ways that you've already found that people are getting sparked by what you're doing? Well, on the project management side of it, some of my peers are, I didn't want to say. So when I got my PMP certification, I'm just familiar with that. Project management. Agile. Yeah. Agile didn't exist. That's how long ago that was.

So at least it wasn't a concept that was actually shared out to the organization that way. But, you know, I just I try to coordinate. Like for this year, I have three major goals that I personally say these are what I'm going to do. But I have to play with others, you know. And so that's why I'm trying to, I'm just, I'm not doing a great, I don't feel like I'm doing a great job of getting others.

I don't want to say march the same direction, row the boat the same way, or however that should work. But I think if we could do that, if they could adopt some of the principles, at least we would get further along. than where we are right now. And yes, I've tried to share specific principles and stuff. I'm just barely reading team, you know, getting done with others right now. And I've shared some quotes and things from that, but.

it's not a, yeah, I don't know. I just don't feel like I'm being super successful in that endeavor, you know, and I think it would be very helpful for others to try to. Use some approach. I'm being judgmental here, but I don't think they have any. And in fact, most people in the organization, they write the goals and then they shelve them. Yes. Until the end of the year.

and then try to oh yeah i did this and i'll check this off for that and you know things like that versus having an idea of a concept of this is what i'm trying to do and And even to identify the next step, it's just not a common practice in the group that I'm working with. So anyway, that's all. I don't know there's a miracle cure for any of that.

If there is, please share that. I guess another strategy you can try is to identify people's pain. points and needs and you can for example in a one-to-one meeting you can ask what's overwhelming you the most right now or is there something that is uh constantly on your mind that you never seem to get around to so making those questions you can introduce small GTD practices to help them to ease those burdens. You don't have to teach the full methodology all at once.

So you can start by encouraging them to capture everything, undermine, clarify next actions. So from one simple point of pain. Great approach to it. People love to be asked a question like, what's your pain point here? That kind of thing. They love to be invited to share about what's a concern for them.

And I suppose the danger in that with a meeting is that people tend to hijack the meeting with their own agendas. So it does help to have a lot of structure. And I'll say more about structure in a moment.

Carrie, it looks like you have your hand raised. I don't know if that was an accidental tap on an icon. Thank you very much. And again, excuse the car. I thought I was just going to listen. But if I may... Sure. What I hear Mark saying, and if I misinterpret, please let me know, it sounds like he is working with people like me, which is the entire reason why I...

I'm trying to dive into GTD for 2025 because I do want to be actually one of those participants that feels like they have everything together so that they can actually have that brain space. to be able to operate at a higher, I guess, higher horizon. But right now, one of the things I appreciate about David Allen actually even admitting or even talking about this, it normalized that for people like me.

who would love to be working with people like Mark at that level, is because we feel like we need to handle our life. And so this is why it's so exciting. I wonder if people, Mark, on your level... I assume they're still at high levels as well. I wonder if they have life management that maybe is taking up that cognitive or psychic space that they're not even aware that they have.

than the capacity, or they don't yet have the capacity to operate at the level that they would love to with you, Mark. Good insight. I did hear a question in there. Mark, do you want to address anything in there?

Well, I think there's two sides to this. Part of it is I deal with a lot of very technical people. Uh-huh. And there's things that interest them and things that don't interest them. Yeah. And yet I am... charged with kind of not necessarily leading them but well yeah leading them within a specific project within i i don't necessarily i'm not their human resource leader so to speak but i try

and and even just to me that seems logical that you would have a project you know and there's steps that are happening anyway it just is hard to get through that and especially it's come to light with these goals because I would love to have others in the organization be in track with what I'm, and not necessarily, I don't have to jump in exactly the way I'm going, but anyway, I don't know that. There's other things where too.

you know, I have, I have, I report to people within the organization that are higher up and yeah, they don't necessarily seem to care. I don't know how that works because I work for a nonprofit organization. It's not, we're not, our goal is not to. to make money. Prior to coming to this organization, I was in financial services and banking, and so I really had very specific targets that I would set.

and get and reach them regularly you know so it's just a very different environment it that's why i'm kind of struggling a little bit but um yeah and you've been there 13 or so years so Yeah, which I never thought I would be. You're doing something, right? I know. So then, actually, I've kind of shifted gears here. And I'm sorry I'm monopolizing this, but my next question is...

I am looking at a retirement goal here before too long. And I'm really at that kind of, I feel like I'm on a cliff edge sort of. And so I would be interested to see. Are there things that in some of the other presentations that have been going there about using GTD in a less stressful or a retirement type situation? Is that out there? I haven't played around in the... I mean, I sometimes go in to see some of the different presentations that are there.

I haven't done a, as far as I know, we haven't done anything like a recording or anything that's specifically about GTD and retirement, but I think it's a terrific topic and I've asked a few people who are in that. transition, either they're going too soon or they have just retired, about how GTD helped with that process and helps them now that they are retired. So I don't have a piece of content to point you to.

directly other than to say it's a great topic and from what I've heard anecdotally from people it's GTD is very helpful even if Even if they're not working at a 9-to-5 job anymore, people who have retired generally, well, if they were interested in GTD before, they're just as interested after retirement because they're still so fully engaged with life that...

The only thing that changed is they're not getting a paycheck from a particular employer for it the same way, but they have projects, next actions, they're busy, so GTD applies as much as ever.

That's part of the reasoning that I asked the first question is because I would like to leave some sort of a, I don't want to say a legacy, but the idea that I've gained, I've benefited. from this, an extensive career. And so I would like to share that with others. I mean, I first got involved with GTT when I had a boss who was highly critical of me. and told me I needed to get some sort of an organization, a methodology in my life. And that's when I started exploring.

stumbled across GTD really, but that's why I'm kind of saying in this goal process and in working with others, I'd like to get them at least introduced. better than I have historically. That's kind of why I asked that initial question is to try to get them at least to be an awareness of what's going on. And then sometime next year, I'll... Retire. Anyway, I've said enough. I don't know. Well, sometime next year, you will hear from me saying.

Mark, let's do a recording about what your life is like now that you've retired and how is GTD applying. So you're on my list to be the one to talk to about that before long. Yeah. Kerry, you've got your hand up again. You're being very polite. As far as I'm concerned, you can just dive in as soon as there's any kind of any daylight in the discussion here. Just dive right in.

Okay, thank you very much. One of the things that I was thinking about was what Mark said, which was kind of like the miracle or the life-changing aspect of GTD. And I think... Speaking from the experience of somebody who, what I do with my job is actually I work with a lot of people that are kind of at the stage of needing some sort of organization, especially with personal knowledge base being a lot of my clients are knowledge workers, things like that.

So what I'm taking away from what Mark is saying is he is on like the having having been the type of person who then implements the system and sees the life changing aspect of it. And I think what I'm taking away is that maybe a few years out, me doing this work and then religiously doing it and then changing not only like how I manage my life, but then have the capacity then to work with.

at a higher level because now I can have the brain space to be able to actually think and create more, then that actually will be helping clients do the same. which then hopefully will have the ripple effect of people working in nonprofits, like Mark is talking about, being able to operate and have those skills in place. I feel like it's a life skill, like a life. A human skill, excuse me. Very much. Yeah, I completely agree. It is a life skill. One thing that occurred to me...

as you were talking, Mark, is I'm wondering if some of what goes on there could be helped with, I'll just use a broad term, governance. Like, are there... Things that you're finding where you're trying to get something done and others aren't lined up with it, where it's more of a... It's not about your skill. It's more about a governance issue. Like, do they look at you as somebody who doesn't have the authority to guide them in this area?

Or are they looking to you as an authority when in fact you're not and things like that? I was really surprised the first time I was in a meeting and had identified. a real, I thought a fail, a real fail in cost thousands and thousands of dollars. And the person responsible said, oh, my bad.

In any other organization I had been in previously, that would be, they would be gone, you know, by the end of the day, in all likelihood, unless they were the... owner or you know somebody with you know the son of the owner or something that way but but no um it was not a there was not a direct causal effect there of you know But it just, we went on, which, yeah, it was a big change. But that's come around. The governance has changed quite a bit, but still. So I.

I'm going to drop here in just a couple of minutes because I'm, I'm going on a call with my counterparts in, in Europe. Oh, okay. And that's the end of their day. And I need to get on there before they leave. Right. But yeah, it's a multinational. organization i i work for a church so anyway but and you know and um yeah it has improved over time but yes there is that there's not that same

intensity, I guess, of how this happens. That's why I say even in the goal setting for this annual goal setting, I'm much more intense in that than... Anybody else that I interact with. Yeah. And maybe that's why. And I do want to have some sort of a, I don't want to say legacy, but I would like to pass the torch somehow within that organization as I anticipate what's coming up.

I suspect that you've had more influence than you're giving yourself credit for. If we were to talk with some of the people you work with, they'd say, oh, yeah, he told me this whole thing about a waiting for list. He taught me that you don't do a project, you do a next action and you have a project as a defined outcome. But it's all about these next actions where I'll bet people would say, I learned a lot from you. And one good thing about the organization is that they're very accepting of...

of commingling of business and personal, you know, there's, that is very generous, more so than any other organization I've worked in. Yeah. And I've worked in several other multinational. financial organizations. So yeah, it's good that way. Maybe I just need to mellow out a little bit. I don't know. Okay. I need to drop. So thank you very much. All right. We'll see you later. We'll be in touch, Mark. Thanks for being on. Thank you. Bye.

So, let's see. Joseph, good to see you. I mean, see you as in there you are on webcam. Yeah, it's funny. Anyway, I was having lunch, so I apologize if it happened. No need to apologize. We've all seen somebody eating on webcam more than once by now, I think. Yeah, yeah, it's good to see you anyway. I've seen your name so many times over what seems like forever, but nice to put a face to it. And Kerry, thanks for hopping on too. Good to see you as well.

It looks like you're out of the car and into a different place now. Yes. So thank you. Thank you very much. You're welcome. All right. Either of you have anything more you'd want to say about to give an answer to Mark? Now that he's gone, we can give the answer he was looking for or bring up something that you've had as a concern.

The only thing I would just say about Marx, I'm kind of a beginner, I guess. I've been doing it for maybe almost three years now, but so I have nothing to say. I'm the kind of person where I get overzealous about something and then try to evangelize to everybody to get disappointed. So I wouldn't want to, you know, but.

um i just noticed that like i'll tell you know 50 people about it and like one person will be interested and even that one person will only like do half of it you know which is which is not a bad thing necessarily so yeah i have i feel like that's a dilemma like i don't understand why you wouldn't want to have something that would help you but i'm sure there's lots else going on in people's lives so you know um

I had another question though, if that's okay. Sure. This is wide open. Yeah. So I'm going through kind of a, try not to get too personal, but I'm going through kind of a career change while attempting to make a career change at least. And, you know, I have a family and everything. And so, you know, put in, you know, eight to nine hours a day for work. So I'm just finding that my time is so squeezed for doing things like.

And so like I have an annual review that's on my list to do. I have a monthly review. So I have all these reviews that I kind of keep not getting to them because I have like very small windows of time when I can just. make this transition that I'm trying to do it to a new career, which is like I've already sort of identified it subconsciously. If not, it's not on a list anywhere. Well, actually it is sort of on a list. I mean, it's a project.

And I've just identified like that's my number one goal in the next six to eight months. You know, it's just that I just have to put all my energy into that. So I keep finding that I am kind of skipping more reflective time. in favor of just doing, doing, doing, doing, doing. I'm trying to learn software development. So, you know, just, it's just a ton of practice, you know? And again, I have so little time, I feel like outside of work. So.

Within the work context, I'm just religious about daily review, end of day review, waiting for less. I mean, just like, and it helps a ton. I do my weekly review every week and I wouldn't do without that. But outside of that, I find that I'm just sort of...

like skipping a lot of those those reviews because in my mind like I know what my goal is in the next six to eight months and I just need to put all my action time towards that like any minute that I have I just wondering if you had any thoughts about that kind of a situation if you felt like that kind of an attitude might backfire um you know like i'm not doing an annual review because it's like i know what i need to do this year you know

And I'm just kind of using like my daily list task manager as a thing of like, I have to do this thing on that day. Like if that, if I don't do that, you know, my life will slip, et cetera. But I'm kind of. trying to create more space to just do, do, do, do, do. So, I don't know if you had, if you or anyone else has any thoughts on that. Yes. What I suggest is...

something that you probably are doing already that is capture everything on your mind because a career shift comes with a flood of thoughts, concerns, to-dos and so if you're doing if you do a mind sweep, doing a mind sweep helps you to get everything out of your head so you can process it systematically and then you can identify if there is an

immediate next action like update your linkedin profile or something or is this part of a larger project and you can also use horizons of focus to guide your decisions so Because when you think about your career, it often requires big picture thinking. the model of Horizons of Focus can help you to align your next steps with your long-term vision. So what kind of work aligns to your values?

Where do you want to be professionally when we talk about Horizon 4 and what specific milestones will get you there and so on. So that's my talk. That's really helpful. Give me one second. The coffee is boiling and I have to... There's nothing like... Something like that to give you an immediate focus. It means everything else on my list goes away if the coffee or something else is boiling. And it's guaranteed that whenever the coffee starts boiling, people start.

People start saying super interesting things and then I have to like interrupt them. It's always happened. So no, that's really helpful. And yeah, like I have all those lists and I kind of try to do that. But it's like there's this sort of always this thought at the back of my mind. It's like.

Should I take an hour to clarify? Should I take two hours to do an annual review? Should I take an hour and a half to do a weekly review? Or should I just be doing? Because it's like that kind of existential... And I realize it's probably a false dichotomy, but I was wondering. I think you got something there where you said a false dichotomy because you could try it both ways and experiment a bit.

My hunch is that you could experiment more with the side of... clarifying, getting control at the ground level more, like getting the inboxes at or near zero more regularly, because you might find that that relieves pressure in a big way. One of the things I've heard David... Alan say is often when we feel overwhelmed about everything, it isn't everything. It's usually one or two things that are most of the cause of it, but they sort of...

they color, they cast a pall over everything else because they're not in balance that way. So it could be that if you identify one thing like... I don't know what the thing is for you. I work with it constantly to figure out what the thing is for me that's most, that if I do that one thing, everything else seems easier that day. So you would not recommend skipping even like let's say an annual review or a monthly?

review in favor of just like hey i know what this goal is in my mind you would still recommend going through the process because you're saying like in the process of doing that you might realize that whatever that subconscious focus is on like this one thing that just has to take everything

could you know you could well first of all you could figure out that like so there's something major in your life that's going on and you just need to take care of it of course but you could also realize that there's a realignment of focus or even values or something like that, that you might not have anticipated, that might be buried. That could be there.

i don't i don't do a whole lot of annual reviewing at least the last couple of years but uh if that's something that keeps showing up for you as a it's got your attention i think i should do it then it could be that you have spent I'm just going to throw out a number, 10 hours thinking about that over the last month, and the actual annual review could take an hour. So even if it doesn't...

create any value other than it gets it off your mind, you'll have saved nine hours in the next couple of months that you don't have to tell yourself, oh, I should be doing the annual review. That's such a good point, yeah. If it keeps bothering you, even if it's... Even if it isn't important, if it keeps bothering you, there's something there to look at. There's a reason your mind would keep bringing it up, even if it's on a list. People are often surprised when we say,

If your mind brings it up, there's something about it that you need to pay more appropriate attention to. Either it's... a project, but you only had it as a next action and not a project, or it's a project, but you haven't defined what the outcome really is. There's some reason your mind, which is very smart and creative, is still latching onto that. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Yeah, it's funny. It's like I don't know if it's like the kind of person that I am or if it's the kind of work environment that I am in. But I find that, well, I do. I'm the kind of person who will just spend. way too long reviewing things like I think I've even been on these webinars once and was like you know my professional weekly review takes me three hours and my personal one takes me two hours and Anna Maria was like well there's

You could find ways to shorten that, you know. Maria probably said, oh, you're broken, Joseph. You're irretrievably broken. No, no, she was nice about it. But so I am the kind of person who can just take away too long.

thinking about things versus doing things so there's that that element i'm also in a work environment where i feel that people are a little bit disdainful of like over organization and over planning etc and so i have that perception of like oh man i'm spending too much time reviewing that so i wonder if that might be covering it too um so obviously i know there's a balance there between over planning and and just doing reviews so that's also something else that i

just been trying to trying to balance but um but i but i appreciate what you all are saying about just paying attention to that thing that's bothering you you know one of the things that i listening to both mark and Joseph is how we're at different stages of our organization. And I know David Allen says that the people who often need it the most.

are the ones or the people who need it the least are the ones that are actually the ones that are so excited about this. And so, and I absolutely can see that. And when Joe was talking about the people maybe having a disdain for. over-organization, let's just say, or people who are over-organized, I think that people secretly want to be you and they're just, they don't know how to do it. So they feel like they're kind of broken.

And so when they see somebody else, they're like, I'd love to be that because if they had experienced it, they would know how much more freeing and peaceful it is. They just can't, they just don't know how to achieve it. So that's what I appreciate about David Allen, just kind of just talking about how this allows you actually to get to that place of having that experience. But quickly.

This is my first office hour. How long do these run? Well, they're scheduled for an hour. So we've got something like 19 minutes left. But there have been times, there were a couple of times when... People were so engaged that we let it go on for 15 or 20 minutes longer. Oh, wonderful. Because I have another meeting not too long after this and things like that. We'll end pretty close to the top of the hour. Okay.

Wonderful. May I just jump in really quickly and just ask a couple questions as a new practitioner? That's what we're here for. Fantastic. Thank you.

One of the things that I am struggling with, and I actually hopped on to the Reddit thread about GTD, which has been helpful. As a knowledge worker, I have been doing a lot more mind mapping. which has been extremely helpful, externalizing instead of trying to, you know, do the organization of like writing down your notes in a thoughtful process. My mats have been amazing. I know at one point I heard David Allen saying he's got like 200 stored somewhere.

My question is, now I have a lot of mind maps. So maybe that's a project then for me.

it turns into a project like what do i do with all the mind maps in a way that can be in a a retrievable uh process for me so that i can not only store them but then like be able to retrieve them in a way that works for me um because you're right as you do this work and as you do your mind sweeps now all of a sudden you have so much more creativity because my things are now on on lists so maybe i could throw throw that back is that even a

I guess the GCD thing is, is that a project for me? Or it may not be that it's even at the point of asking, is it a project for you? It might still be. that your mind map is something to put into a mind sweep where you say, do I have any more attention on this or did just having that mind mapping session do it for me?

Do I have anything, when I look at this mind map, do I have any actions I want to take out of it and kind of capture it? What occurs to me is you could pretend you had a meeting with yourself. Okay. And you were on the meeting with you, and you took meeting notes in the form of a mind map. One of the things that we do with meeting notes after the meeting is process those as if they landed in our inbox, and now we've got notes to process and say, do I have any action to take on this?

If I have an action, put it on my next actions list and then ask myself, is there still a larger outcome? Then that's a project. That kind of thing. And it could be that you look at your mind map and say, that did it.

It was kind of like a mental sneeze. It's over now. I don't need to do anything more with it. And there are maybe others where you look at the mind map and say, this is full of... treasure this is gold i don't want to lose this and you capture many things out of it so so what you're saying so i thought i was just asking organization of my mind maps question

But actually what I learned was I haven't finished the thinking on the mind maps. I think I'm done after I've mind mapped, but I need to then look at the mind map and say, are there any additional actions, next actions based on this mind map? If there are, and it's one step, I'm going to put it on a next actions list. But if there's multiple things, I'm going to put it on a project list specific to whatever the mind map says.

It very well could be that I answered the wrong question or answered the question you didn't ask. And I got some missing pieces, actually, because that's what's happening is I have a lot of mind maps everywhere. So as far as organizing goes, and then I'm going to make myself shut up and see what Thais has to say about this.

I go back to David's quote, which is organized means things are where they have meaning for you. So if you have a mind map about a particular topic, the place to organize it might not be with all your other mind maps. It might be. organize it with your support materials for that topic or something like that.

I'd like to give a short message to those of you who've been participating and playing with GTD Connect for a while and sort of remind you that all of us with this GTD methodology and this set of practices go through cycles. You know, I still go through cycles myself. Initially there's kind of the inspiration and there's a lot of material to ingest and to get familiar with. And so people oftentimes when they first come on to Connect are just potentially overwhelmed by how much...

information there is in a way it's just a huge library where we've been able to archive so much different information from so many different perspectives and people and points of view and so understood that it's like walking into a library oh gee where do i start

So that's oftentimes the initial phase of this and many people after a year or two you know probably get on some level or some plateau where they go well i kind of got it now i've got my system set up and everything's fine and i'm fine tuning and you may find yourself at that point also finding yourself saying, gee, I'm now becoming a resource of this methodology for people around me.

people asking me for assistance and help in this. And we've seen in the forums a number of people now sharing ideas about how to get your teams more involved or families more involved with this information. So some of that information is in there as well. but i think you'll find yourself going through cycles of this and you may find that much like if you've ever read a software manual i remember when i read

when I learned Microsoft Word to begin with. For instance, I read the manual like, wow, this is really cool. And I started to use the tool and didn't need the manual anymore. As a matter of fact, a good example of that right here, the manual for this camera that's taking this picture right now.

Initially, I read this, got it all set up. That's really cool and that's really fine. And so pretty much everything was under cruise control. I didn't need to go back to my library to make this really work. And then, of course, as I started to get more sophisticated in terms of the stuff I wanted to do, got more inspired about some things I saw other people are doing, I go, ah, how do I do that?

Went back to the manual and went, oh god, I didn't realize I could do that. I didn't realize I could do that. I remember at least two or three iterations of going back to Microsoft Word back in the days when there actually was a manual for that as opposed to just all online. and realizing oh my god i didn't realize that oh i could do that now i could do that now and i think that's what you might find with connect too

is that it's a gold mine of stuff. Many people have read Getting Things Done more than three or four times, and every time they read it, they get something new out of it. So I think you may find Connect the same way and probably even easier because, hey, it doesn't take much to just click on, surf around. see what might be new or what might be of interest to you. And pay attention. You know, there's more than meets the eye in there.