Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 314: How to Get Things Done with David Allen

Transcript

BPS 314: How to Get Things Done with David Allen · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

0:03
You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
0:08
podcasts, just go to IFAH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof
0:13
Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three, fourteen False when things change, I'll be
0:19
happy True, when I am happy things will change. Kyle Sea's broadcasting from
0:25
a dark, windowless room in Hollywood when we really should be working on that
0:29
next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business
0:34
of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your
0:39
host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting
0:44
Podcast. I am your humble host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is
0:49
sponsored by Bulletproof Script Coverage. Now. Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof
0:56
Script Coverage actually focuses on the kind of project you are are in the goals
1:00
of the project you are, so we actually break it down by three categories
1:03
micro budget, indie film, market, and studio film. There's no reason
1:07
to get coverage from a reader that's used to reading tentpole movies when your movie
1:11
is going to be done for one hundred thousand dollars, and we wanted to
1:15
focus on that. At Bulletproof script coverage, our readers have worked with Marvel
1:19
Studios, CIA, WME, NBC, HBO, Disney, Scott Free,
1:23
Warner Brothers, The Blacklist, and many many more. So if you need
1:27
your screenplay or TV script covered by professional readers, head on over to cover
1:34
my screenplay dot com. Enjoy today's episode with guest host Jason Buff Without any
1:42
further Ado, let me get to David Allen a quick introduction. He is
1:45
the author of the amazing book Getting Things Done. It's a book that's influenced
1:49
tons and tons of filmmakers out there, in addition to people. You know,
1:53
he's spoken at Google, he's done Ted Talks. I'm really lucky that
1:57
he's come on the show because he influence me a lot too. You know,
2:00
as a creative person, I'm kind of all over the map and fairly
2:05
disorganized, and his book really kind of lays out a plan so that you
2:09
can, you know, basically get things done, how that you can you
2:13
know, start working on things not having a million things in your head,
2:17
you know, especially for screenwriters or people who are trying to produce a movie,
2:23
it's hard to know. Sometimes you know what to do next. You
2:25
wake up and it's like it's such a large enterprise writing a screenplay or producing
2:30
a movie or whatever you want to do. It's so huge. It's like,
2:34
what am I going to do today? What am I what's the one
2:36
thing that I'm going to do today to start moving forward? And you know,
2:40
his book lays that out and talks about a lot of different things,
2:44
and we'll get into that. So anyway, here's my interview with David Allen.
2:47
For the people who you know are listening to this are mostly writers,
2:52
producers, people that want to make independent films. And I was hoping that
2:57
you could take a moment just to talk about the system to getting things done
3:00
system and what the ideas behind it, the concepts behind it. Sure,
3:07
one of the basic concepts is that your heads for having ideas but not for
3:10
holding them. People actually don't need time, they need space. I mean,
3:15
how much time does it take to have a creative idea in zero?
3:20
But you need room? So what the GPD system is? It really was
3:24
over the years this sort of unfolded as to what are the techniques that actually
3:30
you're that allow you to actually clear your head, get stuff off your mind,
3:36
but not necessarily having to finish them and still be committed to them.
3:39
So how do you manage all those agreements with yourself in some external way as
3:44
opposed to having your head as an office. Your head's a crappy office,
3:46
by the way, it's a crappy studio, it really is. I mean,
3:50
it'll if you have stuff in your head, there's a part of you
3:53
that thinks you should be doing all of it all the time. So your
3:58
head is consistent trying to multitask, which you can't do. That is,
4:01
you can't focus, you know, with focused attention to more than one thing
4:05
at a time. But there's a part of your head that's trying to do
4:08
that if your head's the only place it's holding stuff. So just like people
4:14
keep calendars called you know, I say, well, why do you keep
4:15
a calendar? Well, because my head can't do that. Well, why
4:17
do you think your head can do everything else? And not that it's like,
4:21
well, doesn't make much sense. You know, if you don't want
4:25
to track stuff out of your head, throw away your calendar. Don't be
4:28
intellectual to dishonest. So it's really about how do I externalize and objectify all
4:34
of my work, and work in the broadest sense called anything you want to
4:38
get done that ain't done yet. That's get cat food as well as you
4:42
know, have been to do business plan as well as you know, produce
4:45
the next movie. So all of those things just need to be externalized.
4:49
That that allows you to see the difference and actually, you know, cognitively
4:55
catch the difference between and of weight between dog food or cat food and duce
5:00
movie in your head. Believe it or not, they take up about the
5:02
same amount of space, and either one will wake up at three o'clock in
5:06
the morning when you actually can't do anything about it. Your head is actually
5:09
kind of a dumb terminal and it really it. You'll be driven by latest
5:15
and loudest by things in there, right, So it's really about all that's
5:20
behind it. So, but they're specific techniques. You can't just you can't
5:25
just clear your head by meditating or drinking. You know, you know I
5:31
do both, I know, so I know you know you can leave your
5:35
head or numb it out, but it won't clear it, right, So
5:41
can you talk about some of the techniques that you recommend. Sure, I'll
5:45
give you the twenty second version. Whoever's listening to this, hang on ready,
5:49
capture any potentially meaningful thing on your mind in some trusted place that you
5:57
then clarify exactly what that thing means sooner than later in terms of whether it's
6:01
actionable, and if so, what you're going to do about it, and
6:04
the next action and the outcome you're committed to. Then step back and review
6:11
those things in appropriate categories, so that some part of you is constantly maintaining
6:15
an inventory of your gestalt, of all of your different commitments and all the
6:18
different horizons, and trust your heart or your gut or see your pants or
6:21
your spirit or whatever you trust to make a good intuitive judgment call moment to
6:26
moment about what you do. That's it. Okay, that'll take you two
6:34
years to build that as a happy Yeah, that was a very quick explanation.
6:39
Even if you understand it, it's easy to understand. It takes two
6:43
minutes to understand the model. It's about two days if you actually were going
6:46
to implement it like literally it literally empty everything out of your head and go
6:49
through and make next action decisions about them and create an organizational structure you know
6:54
that holds all that and then about two years to make that habitual so that
6:57
you'd feel uncomfortable if you weren't doing it right. So you talk a lot
7:01
about taking notes. I mean, what in a typical day do you just
7:05
like, how do you organize all those things that are going on in your
7:10
life? Or how should people try to do that to get it out of
7:14
their head? Yeah, it's they're capturing stuff is very different than organizing.
7:17
So I've got you know, I've got notepad right on my desk right now.
7:21
You know, it has a phone number on it. I tried to
7:24
call and nobody answered or it was busy, but I got to call him
7:28
again because I can make an appointment about my eyes. So it's just on
7:31
that notepad. If I, if I don't finish that, call that notepad
7:34
by the way that we'll go. We'll get torn off that page and thrown
7:38
into my in basket. In which case then later on, you know,
7:42
sooner than later, I will drive all that to empty by deciding, okay,
7:45
where does that go? Where do I park a reminder about that that
7:47
I that I need to do. So capturing happens all day long, you
7:51
know, just at any time point in time, you know, I carry
7:54
a little notepad around in my pocket, right, and you know it's a
7:58
great little app called a brain Toss that I can just pop up my iPhone
8:03
and talk into it and it'll show up right into my email as a as
8:05
a as a sound file as well as you know, text about it,
8:11
right, you know any that any of those things work. But you know,
8:15
I want to have the freedom to have a thought but not have to
8:18
decide exactly what to do about it. Yet that actually allows and frees up
8:22
my creative thinking process. I throw away probably half or three quarters of my
8:26
notes, you know, But when I have I'm I'm not sure what they
8:28
mean yet, but they might mean something significant, and so I don't want
8:31
to lose any of those. But then I need to loop back around from
8:35
another part of my brain and then assess that stuff and get executive about it.
8:39
Call Okay, David, what are you gonna do about that? If
8:41
anything? What does that mean at a restaurant you really want to track?
8:45
Or is that a phone number that you need to put in your telephone and
8:48
address? Is that something you still need to do about that? And those
8:52
are the clarifying questions you need to ask yourself to decide what this stuff really
8:56
means. So step one is to capture. Step two is to claire five.
9:00
Step three is the organize the results of that thinking in that decision,
9:03
make it okay. That's how that's how you get your kitchen under control.
9:07
By the way, what is it looks like? You know, tornado hit
9:13
it? Oh my god, I got guess coming over. The first thing
9:16
you do is you recognize what's not on cruise control. You capture, you
9:20
identify stuff that's that you probably need to decide and do something about. Number
9:24
two is you need to clarify is that still good food goes in the fridge?
9:28
Is that trash that goes away? Is that is that dirty dish?
9:31
Or is that cleanland? And then you organize those You put spices where spices
9:35
go, You put dirty dishes where dirty dishes go, You put trash where
9:37
trash goes. Big duh. But that's what you need to do with every
9:41
email, with every thought, with every creative thing that pops into your head,
9:45
if you want to get it under control and not have it run you
9:48
Right, We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now
9:56
back to the show. Yeah, that's a huge thing, especially when it
10:01
comes to you know, screenwriting, and most of the writers I know that
10:05
day and I'm also a writer, but you you know, we're constantly with
10:09
notebooks because you never you you have these ideas and if they're gone, they
10:15
you know, sometimes you're just like, you know, what, what was?
10:16
I had this amazing idea and now it's gone, you know, And
10:20
so we we've gotten in the habit of taking notes. And what you know,
10:24
I get a lot out of the um GTD system is that you should
10:31
be constantly taking notes, but about every aspect of your life, so that
10:33
you're not constantly in the state of being overwhelmed by thinking, I've got a
10:37
million things to do, I don't know what to I don't know what the
10:41
next step is going to be right, And you obviously don't need to write
10:45
down the fifty thousand thoughts you have a day. You just need to write
10:48
down the ones that aren't complete when you have them, there's still something I
10:52
might need to do about that, as opposed to just grazing in your mind.
10:56
M Okay, Now, what is your feeling towards things like multitasking or
11:03
you know, people who can kind of sit there and do like five things
11:07
at the same time. They can't. They can rapidly switch, but whether
11:11
they're actually increasing their performance by doing that is in question. There's a couple
11:16
of new books out that have come out in the last year of a lot
11:20
of cognitive science research that has basically proven that's you know, that's bs if
11:24
you think you're that's going to actually increase your capability to be able to do
11:28
that. Now, that said, if you can rapidly switch your focus with
11:33
a placeholder. In other words, if you sort of interrupted me, Jason,
11:37
you came in, you suddenly walked in and say, hey, David,
11:39
by the way, could you do explain and Z let's talk for three
11:41
minutes or whatever. And I was in the middle of doing something. As
11:46
long as I have a placeholder for that thing I was doing, so I
11:48
don't have to keep re remembering that I need to do that. In other
11:52
words, I'll throw the notes or what my work literally right into my own
11:56
physical in basket and I'll turn around it and engage with you. Why because
12:00
I got a placeholder that as soon as I stop engaging with you, I
12:03
can pick that right up. But that leaves my brain clear to enough focus
12:07
on you and whatever's going on there, as opposed to trying to keep hanging
12:09
onto it. So that's why having an external brain and having the capability to
12:15
be able to capture and placehold stuff that's not finished in some trusted place will
12:20
allow you to switch rapidly. If you don't do that, then you truly
12:24
and they've proven this that that you your cognitive function is suboptimal. You're trying
12:30
to You're switching costs are huge. You trying to focus over there, but
12:33
there's a part of you that's still hanging your focus back to where it was,
12:35
that doesn't want to forget it. But then you're so you're not fully
12:39
present really with any of that. And people can get pretty good at what
12:43
it looks like. But this is a you know, there's new there's a
12:48
lot of data out there now that that proves that's not true. They've they've
12:52
even found that that even using hands free phones in your car is as dangerous
12:58
statistically as texting, simply because of the switching costs in your mind. So
13:03
you'll think, you'll you'll think you're driving in the you know, in the
13:07
right lane, and the brain kind of will kid you to think that's true,
13:11
and actually that's visually what you see, But your mind went off somewhere
13:16
else on that phone call that you were talking about, and it's actually that's
13:20
actually not true. Surprised me to read that data, but that's yeah,
13:24
that's all that's you know, what happens. Your brain is really wasn't designed
13:30
to hold onto more than about four meaningful things at once. It does that
13:33
very well, by the way. That's how you survived on the savanna.
13:37
That's how you could eat and not be eaten. But that brain took you
13:41
know, however, many millions of years it developed to be able to do
13:43
that very well. So your brain can recognize brilliantly, even better, way
13:48
better than any computer. Yet you walk into a room, you recognize patterns.
13:52
You see, that's a light, that's a chair, that's a person,
13:54
that's a thing, that's a printer, And the computer still can't even
13:58
do that. Yet you're doing that all the time, by the way.
14:00
Your brain is brilliant at that, using long term memory, pattern recognition,
14:03
making sense out of your world. But it's totally present when it does that.
14:09
What your brain can't do is remember where you left your keys. But
14:13
you know that was one of the really things. I loved your Ted talk
14:16
when you were talking about how the brain has almost stay you know, and
14:20
correct me if this wasn't what you were saying, but the brain's tendency to
14:26
be a natural planner to the point of or that we've kind of gotten away
14:31
from the way that the mind works and we've started kind of changing the way
14:37
that we accomplish goals in a somewhat unnatural way. Yeah, yeah, it's
14:43
fascinating. It was fascinating to realize that that, you know, what we
14:46
automatically do and how we naturally plan is not how most people actually plan the
14:52
more complex things. It's how you get out of beds, how you get
14:54
dressed, it's how you cooked dinner. But when people then say, okay,
14:58
now I need to I need to, you know, be the production
15:01
manager for a movie, how do I plan? You know, how do
15:05
I plan budget and all this other stuff? And you know, anything anymore,
15:09
or even just your wedding or how about just a big party you want
15:11
to give or your next vacation, And most people, you know, either
15:16
don't then plan them at all, or they're sort of driven by whatever the
15:20
latest and loudest thing is as opposed to learning from ourselves in terms of how
15:22
the brain really naturally doesn't. It was fascinating to me just to uncover that.
15:28
Yeah. Right, So if somebody's you know, sitting there today,
15:33
you know, working towards a project. Let's say, for example, their
15:37
their ideas they want to produce a film. M but you know, when
15:41
it comes to screenwriting and when it comes to producing, um, you know,
15:46
something artistic or you know, films are basically like a little business anyway,
15:50
you know. I mean a lot of people don't think of it like
15:52
that. But so a person, we kind of get into this abyss where
15:58
you don't know what to do next, and you're starting out and you're kind
16:00
of like, Okay, I know this is the end goal, and I
16:03
know kind of where I'm at right now. How do I get you know,
16:07
from point A to point B to point Z, you know, and
16:11
not just like be completely overwhelmed all the time with I have ten million things
16:15
I have to do. Yeah, well with all of it externalizing it,
16:18
getting out of your head, you know, get yourself pen and paper,
16:22
just you know, pull up some computer files, pull up a word doc
16:25
and just dump it out. All the ideas, every single thing you might
16:27
need to think about or whatever about the film or about what your project.
16:32
I mean, that's that is part of the natural planning model is once you
16:34
have a vision and it's not that met by current reality, it creates this
16:38
dissonance that says, what God, I got to try to get I try
16:41
to got to close the gap between the vision I have in my head and
16:45
where I am right now. So there's you know, so you do a
16:48
part a of that, which is, okay, any potentially relevant idea I
16:52
need to capture, get out of my head. And that's what most people
16:55
refer to as brainstorm. But that's and that's you know, that's the first
17:00
thing is don't you know, don't let your brain get constipated by you know,
17:03
oh I got a ten minute things to do. I don't know where
17:06
to start. Well, write down where you might start, all the places
17:10
you might start. You know, as line of said, the best way
17:11
to have a good idea to have a lot of ideas. So get them
17:15
all out now, you don't leave them all out just in terms of then
17:18
willy nilly, you get them all out, and then there's a part of
17:22
you that will then naturally start to recognize patterns and start to recognize components and
17:26
sequences and priorities. Oh that's more important than that. Oh yeah, I
17:29
need to handle that. You know, first thing I really need to do
17:32
is ye, and that's just good sort of natural thinking. But you have
17:36
to, you know, sort of go with the flow in terms of how
17:37
your mind really thinks and and capture that as opposed to it's got to be
17:41
right before I write it down. That's death. And that's how we were
17:48
taught. That's what planning was all about. If you if you know,
17:49
if you're old as I am, you we were taught outlining in school,
17:52
you know, to write reports and that's you know that you sit down and
17:56
start by trying to create an outline. Well, good luck that that forces
18:02
your mind to try to figure out what's Roman numeraber one. And you know,
18:04
there's quite a bit of thinking you have to do before you even can
18:07
trust what you think Roman umera one's going to be. And so giving yourself
18:12
permission to have the freedom to be to use the creative aspect of who you
18:17
are and how your brain works. I think that's you know, it's our
18:19
educational system that that sort of constipated all that. But there there is a
18:25
way you can really make all that work, you know, I mean,
18:29
you know, come other. You know, some of my biggest champions were
18:30
the Simpson writers. Yeah, and really Joss Whedon and I can talk about
18:36
him because they mentioned it publicly. I mean, Jos in a fast company.
18:40
The article said, look, you know when he when he did the
18:41
last you know, when he shot much ado about nothing in his backyard,
18:45
he said, wow, you know, if it wasn't for David Allen's Next
18:48
Action concept, I never could have done that. In the three days we
18:51
did it, you know. So you know, and you know Howard Stern's
18:56
a huge fan of mine, really changed changed his life. He would tell
19:00
you that he's spoken about it on you know, on the air for months
19:03
right once he once, you know, he sort of got coached with our
19:07
with our model is really freed up because of what it does is it frees
19:11
up space for these guys. That's that's what the creative people want. It
19:15
actually frees up space for anybody. But you know, and what you do
19:18
with that space is up to you. If you're a rock musician, you'll
19:21
use space to get more music. Ideas and to make sure you finished the
19:23
song instead of just start them. You know, if you if you're a
19:27
fifty five year old executive that's about to merge with another company, you'll use
19:32
space to be more strategic in your negotiations. And you're thinking about you know,
19:37
priorities, and if you're a writer or a screenwriter, or you know,
19:41
if you're an indie producer, what would you do with more space?
19:45
You know, there's a whole lot of things you could do with more space,
19:49
I would imagine, But the space is what you need. And you
19:52
know all GTD they getting things done, modeled in. But say, okay,
19:56
here's how you get space. We'll be right back after a word from
20:00
our sponsor and now back to the show. And you don't want to go
20:08
very far to know where to start. Just ask yourself what's on your mind?
20:15
You know, Jason, if I ask you, if you if you
20:18
weren't talking to me right now, what where would your mind go? What's
20:19
the most on your mind? Right? Yeah, whatever you answer is very
20:26
probably going to be something that's hung up, and you're the bottleneck. The
20:29
reason it's on your mind is because there's some decision about it. You haven't
20:32
made or you haven't parked the results of that thinking in some in someplace you
20:36
trust, right, Yeah, I mean, I'm your The book is pretty
20:41
much for people like me. I think that, you know, I have
20:45
too many things going on in my head, and you know, it's it's
20:48
really helpful just to say, okay, you know I went through when you're
20:52
doing the Ted talk, you had the thing where you take notes and you
20:55
get all the things out of your head that you're that are kind of occupying
20:59
your time, and then taking that and figuring out, you know, what
21:03
exactly are you gonna you know, what are the next actions you're going to
21:07
take? And the really important thing for me was the concept of what can
21:11
you actually do right now? And what you're just sitting there worrying about unless
21:17
you can actually take action on it right now, there's no point in worrying
21:21
about it. You know, put it in, put it there, and
21:22
know that you have to do it. But don't sit there and like kind
21:25
of go you know, churn the wheels over and over thinking about that,
21:29
and focus on things you can do. Sure there are no problems, there
21:32
are only projects, so you'll only cause something a problem if you think something
21:38
ought to be fixed about it, you're just not willing to figure out or
21:41
take a risk to try to do that. Right, right, I mean,
21:48
so taking anything that's an issue or problem you need to decide, look
21:52
to your point, can you do something about this or not? Ninety percent
21:56
of the time you probably can and just haven't figured that out or you haven't
22:00
that down and force yourself to make that decision. Wait a minute, what
22:02
more information do I need? Wait a minute, who do I need to
22:04
talk to about this? What do I need to do to move the needle?
22:07
If I if I was going to pay you a million bucks just to
22:11
start making progress on that problem, that issue, that opportunity, where would
22:15
you go right now physically, and what would you do? And that kind
22:19
of rigor, you know, to your point of that the next action thinking
22:22
is so powerful, it's so mundane and yet so you know, it's it's
22:26
the silver bullet usually. Now. One of the things that I really enjoyed
22:32
about the book is also the concept of tricks. And you know, some
22:37
people now would just would refer to that as hacks for you know, organizing.
22:41
Can you talk about a few of your favorite hacks or tricks for um
22:45
you know for implementing the GTD system in your life. One of the best
22:51
is the two minute rule. Anything you can finish once you decide the next
22:55
action, if you can actually take that action within two minutes, if you're
22:57
ever going to do that action, and I'll do it, then it'll take
23:00
you longer to actually stack at track it and look at it again than it
23:03
would be to finish it when it's in your face. If you just did
23:07
that around your house or your apartment or your flat or wherever you live.
23:11
If you just started to implement the two minute rule flashlight that needs a battery,
23:14
it would only take you two minutes to go get that battery and stick
23:17
it in there. You'd be amazed how much cleaner your house is going to
23:19
be. It would be if that's all you've got out of what I did
23:23
is two minute rule. You know that that's one of the most popular hacks
23:29
you know of that emerged out of all of this. But go ahead,
23:36
sorry, yeah, you know, it's not really a hack. It's just
23:38
a it's an absolutely necessary principle, which is just right stuff down, have
23:44
an in maask and have a physical intro throw stuff in there, and then
23:47
get it empty every you know, twenty four to forty eight hours. I
23:49
mean that there's there's no bigger, better habit. People say, David,
23:53
what rituals and habits that I installed? That's the main one. You know.
24:00
There's all kinds of stuff I hate to have to think about and have
24:02
to decide about it. But because I'm so now addicted to getting my in
24:06
basket empty, it forces me to make those decisions so I can empty it.
24:10
It's one of the best that's one of the best tricks in the world
24:12
in terms of being productive, because people just avoid next action decisions about all
24:17
kinds of things, so they just spread stuff around in their life and then
24:19
and then it starts to create this ambient stress because it's yelling at them all
24:25
the time. Let the just numb out to it. Now, Can you
24:30
just go a little bit more in depth with the next action concept just for
24:36
just second. Yeah, well, you know, write everything down this on
24:37
your mind, right, then take each one of those things one at a
24:41
time, and go, Okay, if this is something to move on at
24:44
all. It may have been just a hair brained idea or something else,
24:48
but is there something to do about this? What specifically physically visible action would
24:53
would I need to take to start moving toward closure on whatever this thing is?
25:00
If it's if you wrote down cat food, what's your next action?
25:03
I need to buy cat food or great? Do you know where to buy
25:06
it? Yeah? I do? Uh? Where do you do you keep
25:10
a list of stuff to buy when you go there? Yeah? Right up
25:12
on the fridge? Great, go stick it there, cat food on the
25:17
post, It on the refrigerator. Now you're in. Then it's off your
25:19
mind. Some part you says, okay, who did that? But you
25:22
have to decide what's the next step on that? Be gay? Okay?
25:25
New indie movie idea? Fabuleus? What's the next action? Oh? God?
25:30
Yeah? Well I'm even not sure how to start? How would you
25:36
figure it out? You know? I want to talk to somebody who actually
25:40
produced it? Indie failing. I've never done one before, and I should
25:41
talk to them. Great? How would you? How would you, you
25:44
know, plumb their brain? Maybe you should have lunch for them? Great?
25:48
What's your next action? Set up a lunch? How would you do
25:52
that? Got an email to send their phone call to make let me let
25:55
me shoot them an email? Great? How long would that take? Thirty?
25:57
Seconds go, Suddenly you know, suddenly you're off and running, but
26:03
you still haven't the foggiest idea how to do an idio. You just made
26:07
a decision that it got you in the driver's seat of this situation as opposed
26:11
to feeling the victim of now over committing and having to beat you up.
26:15
Yeah, and it's so simple, but it actually, I mean, it
26:18
does completely change everything. You know, if you start thinking like that,
26:22
I call it the magic of the mundane. Do you you actually have a
26:27
Do you have to have a physical in I mean, you talk about your
26:30
in basket, and you know, everything that I do, if I have
26:33
papers, it just becomes out of control here. You know, I do
26:37
everything virtual, but you think it's it's better to have your physical there.
26:41
You don't. You still have a physical driver's license, You still you still
26:45
get some bills in the mail. You certainly get certain some physical mail.
26:48
You get FedEx's don't. No, Well, I'm an expat like you,
26:53
I live in h I live in Mexico, so you know, we don't
26:56
get mail where I live, but I get your points. Yeah, but
27:00
you know, believe it or not, there's a lot of stuff that I
27:03
need to print out from my computer and throw it into my inbasket because there's
27:07
stuff that I need to do or think about that and I want to I
27:11
want to have a written, you know, thing to that helps me think
27:14
about it, you know. Uh, Or I'm halfway through something and I
27:18
need to remind myself that that's not finished yet and I need to come back
27:22
to it. I'll print it out and throw it in my inbasket, which
27:25
then is a trigger to then Oh yeah, no, let me pick that
27:27
up and and and keep going with that. Uh. There's certainly a lot
27:33
less paper now than there was, you know, twenty thirty years ago,
27:36
for sure, But even even so, uh, you know, where do
27:40
you throw back? You get flashlights that get dead, batteries, you know,
27:45
I throw those in my inbasket if I don't have the batteries, you
27:48
know, you in anything. And if you take any kind of notes when
27:52
you're on the run, what do you do with if you're doing any kind
27:55
of creative writing by hand? You know, what do you do with those
27:57
notes? And if you're taking notes on a phone call? Right, do
28:03
you ever do that? Yeah? Yeah, what do you do with those
28:07
notes? Uh? Well? I just usually I just use ever notes,
28:10
so I'm just I type faster than I write. But I've also got a
28:12
you know, a notebook. Whenever I go to a store, I just
28:17
buy like five or six notebooks and just have just have it there, you
28:19
know, because you'll you'll be able to jot stuff down. Well. You
28:23
know, if I were to sit down next to you desk side, you
28:26
know, uh, Jason, and I'd say, I'd say, do you
28:30
still have any of those notebooks? Probably not, Well, that's fine.
28:33
It means you've processed them. That'd be my point if you still had them
28:37
lying around, because they were still stuff in there that you hadn't decided what
28:41
it meant, and it was still potentially pulling on you make a decision about
28:44
it. You know. That's that's unhealthy. You know. Spial notebooks are
28:49
dangerous, you know, because I use a spile notebook, but I use
28:52
one that's PERF so you can so I tear it off so it stays empty.
28:56
Yeah, you know, but but the stuff like tear off goes into
29:00
my inbasket if it's if it's if I can't finish it at that moment,
29:04
so I still need a physical inbasket. If you can get by without one
29:07
thing. There's no there's no right or wrong about any of that just says,
29:11
okay, got anything in your head? You know? And if you
29:15
do, there's some because of some something you have not captured somewhere. Now,
29:22
when you say you've got it in your head, I mean like subconscious
29:26
thought. I was wondering how you feel about like a subconscious thought. We'll
29:33
be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
29:40
show. How is that affecting you? I mean, are you are the
29:45
things that are in your head? Like you know, if you've got like
29:47
twenty things that you're kind of like organizing trying to keep track of. Are
29:52
you conscious that you're doing that or is that something that you're just kind of
29:56
doing and it's affecting you know, just your men till you know alertness or
30:02
being able to be present. I'm not sure exactly. Obviously, if it's
30:07
unconscious, you're not conscious of it, I'm not aware, right, So,
30:11
but essentially what I do, because I've externalized all of these commitments,
30:18
then it frees me up to just trust my intuitive judgments, and that intuitive
30:22
judgment is being matured and constantly I'm thinking all the time, I'm constantly reassessing
30:26
what should I do? Where's the thing? Where? What do I feel?
30:30
You know, like I need to put my energy and focus right now?
30:33
You know that my system doesn't get rid of that. It frees you
30:36
up to do that frees you up to be making good, intuitive choices instead
30:40
of just being driven by the latest and loudest and then loops and and hoping.
30:44
You know, so you want to move from hope to trust basically in
30:45
terms of just your judgment about what you're doing. But I'm you know,
30:49
I'm constantly thinking what should I do now? Where's the you know, where's
30:53
the optimal place for me? Should I take a napution to have the peers?
30:56
Should I should I go hang out with my dog? Do I need
30:59
to take a walk? You know? Should I be you know, cranking
31:00
on this you know, uh slide deck that I need to upgrade right now?
31:06
So, I don't know if it's your unconscious I think that I think
31:11
you don't have to go very far just to start to pay attention to what
31:14
has your attention, you know, and what do you then need to do
31:17
to take that pressure off your head? You know, what's the next thing?
31:21
That that should be telling you what to do, whether that's coming where
31:23
that comes from, you know, the oracle or God or or your your
31:27
liver or I don't know whatever, the source of your intuitive knowing is right,
31:33
you know who knows. So this is not about, you know,
31:37
sort of structuring your life in some ways. A matter of fact, a
31:38
lot of people are uncomfortable with how unstructured getting things done is because they want
31:45
to feel more confidence that they that they really nailed it all down and and
31:48
and and and can tack it all down and nothing's going to move, you
31:52
know, and come out from under them. Good luck. Well that that
31:56
was what I was going to ask you about. You know that that you
31:57
talk about the false and of control that you get from you know, having
32:02
everything in your head, and there is that aspect of control that I mean,
32:07
I oh, yeah, that's encounter that resistance that people are just like,
32:10
oh, I don't want to you know, I don't want to stop
32:14
having all this and I don't want to put it on a piece of paper
32:15
because that might mean that something might happen to it, or it might you
32:20
know, yeah, you'll might happen. Yeah, you'll make you feel more
32:22
out of control about how out of control you really are. But people get
32:30
mad at me for their list. I go, excuse me any my list,
32:34
dude? And you orders, you know, your choices. Where do
32:37
you want to track that stuff? And I just and I'm not in convincing
32:39
anybody. I'm just look, I'm just sharing information with you, right,
32:44
and prove me wrong. Implement these processes, and I absolutely guarantee you,
32:50
without fail, you'll feel more in control and more focused so that you can
32:53
deal with and have more mental and cognitive space to do the more meaningful things.
33:00
How did how did you build? How did you come upon this?
33:02
I mean when you were in your life, were you also kind of just
33:05
like one of the people that was overwhelmed with stuff and had to I mean,
33:09
how did you discover this system? I've just been a you know,
33:13
I'm a freedom guy and I love it and I love clear space, right.
33:17
You know, I've always been attracted to the zen aesthetic, you know,
33:22
sort of the negative space. You know, I was I read all
33:23
of Suzuki and Watts by the time I finished high school. So I've always
33:29
loved that that kind of minimalist aesthetic. But then, you know, when
33:32
I got into sort of the personal growth game, and you know, how
33:37
do you grow yourselves and how do you find enlightenment and all that good stuff?
33:39
You know, missus California in six season seventies and discovered that actually there
33:45
there are things you can actually learn to do that actually give you more of
33:49
a sense of personal freedom and more of a sense of space. And a
33:52
whole lot of that had to do with your agreements. You know, that
33:54
was a big aha and the Personal Growth livement, which was you know,
33:58
how do you manage your agreement? And what's the price you pay if you
34:00
break an agreement? Now, what do you mean by agreement? Well,
34:06
if you stick yeah, said, compromises you make. Yeah, No,
34:08
the agreements you make, Hey David, let's meet at you know, let's
34:13
do this podcast on you know, this date at this time. That's an
34:17
agreement. And I say, yeah, I just made an agreement. So
34:20
an agreement just says any commitment you've got to do something whether and all agreements
34:23
are with yourself. Many of them involve other people, but they're all with
34:27
yourself. You've agreed with yourself, you're going to do that. You tell
34:30
yourself, I need cap food. It's made an agreement. You know,
34:34
oh yeah, I just agreed with myself, but yes, I'm going to
34:37
get captured somehow, in some way. So understanding that when you keep an
34:40
agreement feels fabulous improves your self confidence. If you break an agreement, it
34:45
will undermine your self confidence automatically. It's an automatic price you pay. You
34:50
just sent a great trust if you didn't show up. You know, if
34:53
you know the people I love dearly, but I don't trust further than I
34:57
can throw them top to show up when they going to tell me they're going
35:00
to show up, just based upon that there's nothing wrong. I don't judge
35:04
that. I just that's just data. But I don't trust them. I
35:07
don't trust them to keep to you know, they tell me something, I
35:10
doubt that they're going to do it, and shouldn't organize my life accordingly.
35:15
But they're all of these agreements with yourself. What happens then if you a
35:20
broken agreement automatically create stress. So all those things you've told yourself to do,
35:23
and most people have between thirty and one hundred projects and between one hundred
35:28
and fifty and two hundred next actions, if they actually sat down and truly
35:30
inventory their commitments personally and professionally involved the things they think they should do and
35:36
told themselves they need to do. So if you want to get rid of
35:40
the stress of broken agreements, either don't make the agreement, you know,
35:44
throw the list away, let's say, you know, I'll live spontaneously,
35:47
you know, good luck. Or complete the agreement, go finish it all.
35:52
Of course, if they wouldn't finished everything on your list to three days,
35:55
you'd have a bigger list because you get so excited having done all that,
35:59
you'll take on bigger, more incomplete stuff. But the real key is
36:02
how do I then I renegotiate those agreements. See if you said, hey,
36:07
David, let's do this podcast here, and then I came back and
36:09
said, you know, I agreed to that before, but something came up
36:13
really really critical and I have to handle. Can we do it another time?
36:15
And you go, yeah, then I renegotiated the agreement. I don't
36:17
have a broken agreement. But you can't renegotiate agreements with yourself. You can't
36:22
remember you made That's again why keeping track of all of this stuff so that
36:28
you can look at it and go, no, I'm just going to do
36:30
this podcast with Jason right now, that's the best thing to be doing.
36:32
But the only reason I can be present talking to you right now is because
36:37
not long ago I looked at everything else that I might would, good,
36:39
should ought to do and said, you're in. But I couldn't. I
36:43
can't do that in my head. You know, I could remember about four
36:45
things and that's about it. Everything else that becomes this huge jumble and jungle.
36:52
But once I've got them out and have all these decisions made about the
36:54
actions and just all I have to do just glance at those action lists,
36:57
to look at my calendar, doesn't think very long, and just feel comfortable
37:01
that this is it nothing. I'm not missing anything. Now. I may
37:05
have made a mistake, you know, maybe talking to use the wrong thing
37:07
to do. I'll find out, live and learn, But at least I'm
37:12
confident that this is the next mistake I want to make. That makes me
37:17
yeah, definitely. Um. Now, you mentioned Howard Stern, and I
37:21
know Howard Stern's really big into transcendental meditation, and a lot of this seems
37:28
to be influenced by Eastern thought. Is that something Eastern Thought just came up
37:34
with the same thoughts I did. They all read your book, you know,
37:44
but I mean just the concept of you know, meditating and emptying your
37:46
mind in that way and being present. And you even mentioned in your book
37:52
the mind like water um concept. Yeah, well, you know that was
37:55
I had, you know, several years in the martial arts. You know,
37:58
I got a black belt many years ago in in karate, and there's
38:01
there's quite a bit of training about how do you clear your head in the
38:05
martial arts. You know that Bruce Lee was a guy who sort of made
38:08
famous the whole idea of be like water Grasshopper from his gurup. Because you
38:15
know, the idea is don't over underreact, to be totally open to the
38:19
to the to the present moment. You know, be soft and hard as
38:22
needed be don't over underreact. And that's that's the idea, is that you
38:27
don't want to take one meeting into the next. You don't want to take
38:29
home to work. You want to be able to be present. Really,
38:31
the whole idea of GPD is about being present. That's your optimal productive state.
38:37
Whether that's the best way to hit a golf ball or tuck your kids
38:39
into bed at night, or make spaghetti. You know, you just want
38:44
to be there when you're doing it, as opposed to having your cognitive functions
38:49
split. So that's in a way, this is just a mechanical process.
38:52
It's not something to believe, it's not something that It's not some cult there.
38:59
Look, the brain sciences have now validated all of this. You know.
39:04
I took me thirty five years and learning it on the street and watching
39:07
spending thousands of hours with some of the best and brightest and sharpest people on
39:12
the planet, busiest, and watching what happened when they started to implement this
39:15
and how much it changed their life and their work without exception. So that's
39:21
why I wrote the book, I said, I guess I've been to write
39:22
Nanuel. Now, Now, what were the Are there any books you can
39:29
aside from your own book? Are there any books that were out there that
39:31
influenced you and you could recommend as well, or any resources out there that
39:36
people could look. Look, there were there were a lot of them over
39:38
the years. I'd you know, one great book, by the way,
39:42
for especially for creative types, would be Stephen Pressfield's book The War of Art.
39:50
Oh yeah, yeah, that's a great one, fabulous book. We'll
39:53
be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show.
40:02
And that's one and the two I mentioned by the way, if anybody's
40:07
interested in the cognitive science stuff, I mean, it really is quite fascinating.
40:12
And two have shown up in the last few months. One's called The
40:15
Organized Mine by Dan Leaviton l E v I t I N. He's head
40:22
of cognitive science research at McGill University and come back or where where we're in
40:30
Canada is And a Belgian named Theo compernalem p e r n O L l
40:38
E has just written a book called brain Chains. Two words like chains around
40:44
your brain, brain chains, and you know, he he he was a
40:51
child psychiatrist and then an MD, and then I got into cognitive science.
40:54
And now he's been he's doing quite a bit of executive coaching in terms of
40:59
stress management, simply because he became fascinated with this whole idea of the brain
41:06
as a tool. And he's he's accumulated aggregated six hundred different studies from the
41:13
cognitive science field and world in the last decade or so. And you know,
41:17
and it kind of reads the Riot Act to everybody about multitasking and what
41:22
the digital world and social media and so forth, or are the addiction that
41:27
that's making so easy for people to get invested in and engaged in, that's
41:31
then stopping a lot of other, you know, real cool stuff, like
41:36
real conversations and real relationships. And he's got he's not against technology. He's
41:40
just saying be careful because this is highly addictive and that they've now proven it
41:45
truly is an addiction that if you if your social media, even just having
41:50
your smartphone in your pocket wondering who's texting you creates a dopamine rush. So
41:55
you literally are getting the same kinds of things that you do an opium or
42:00
heroine. Well, it seems like, you know, the older I get,
42:07
the more I realized that my life is determined by the little things that
42:09
give me a little dopamine rush, you know, like the career that you
42:15
choose and the people that you are around, and all the little thing you
42:17
know, even the color of paint that you choose in your house or whatever.
42:22
It's like everything is determined by that little rush you get from it.
42:27
There's nothing wrong with that. I mean that exercise does that. So you
42:29
can't fault exercise which is which which are the healthier dopamine rushes. You know,
42:37
what do you want to get addicted to? You want to get addicted
42:38
to working out, or you want to get addicted to you know, uh,
42:43
you know amphetamines, right. I also like the idea of you know,
42:49
you were talking about how you you want to write stuff down because your
42:52
future self is not going to be in the same state of mind that you're
42:57
in and and always, you know, you always need to be somewhat um
43:01
aware of you know, how your brain changes from maybe one time of day
43:07
to another time of day, or how you're in a certain kind of state
43:10
of mind where you're being very creative and coming up with ideas and appreciate the
43:15
fact that maybe later on in the day or maybe whenever, that's going to
43:17
kind of disappear, and you're leaving kind of like future notes. You're like
43:22
note to future self, you know. Because it's funny. I had a
43:23
friend who would go out and drink a lot, and he would always leave
43:28
himself voice messages and he would wake up the next day and be like,
43:30
Okay, what you know, what's going on? And he'd be like,
43:34
dear future Mike, you know, this is what's happening today. Welcome on
43:40
your You know, I think it's the really intelligent people that realize they're only
43:45
inspired and intellig and and and you're only inspired and brilliant, you know,
43:51
at very random moments in your life. And you know, so what you
43:54
want to do is, if you're lazy and smart, what you want to
43:58
do is capture those potentially useful, inspirational, intelligent things so that when you're
44:02
kind of thick and dumb, you do smart things, right, So you
44:07
know, Yeah, it's the it's the kind of thick and dumb people that
44:09
think they're smart all the time. Yeah. I think the strange thing is
44:15
is that when you are inspired and have an inspired thought that that place,
44:20
that that that we seem to operate from there has no sense of space and
44:23
time. You're in your zone, So it doesn't it's not kind of that
44:28
consciousness is not so aware of history or future. It thinks it thinks you'll
44:32
be inspired and smart all the time. So it's it isn't was intelligent of
44:38
your friend to realize, hey, when I'm inspired, that the future me
44:44
may not be so inspired, So I better grab that and throw it at
44:47
them. Yeah, I'm always surprised if I go back and look at my
44:52
note. Sometimes I came up with, like, you know, I write
44:54
every day. I write in the morning and that's like when I'm focused,
44:58
coffee's going and everything, and I always shock, you know. I go
45:00
back sometimes and I'm like, yeah, I remember everything that I wrote down,
45:04
and I'll go back and see those notes and it's like, oh,
45:07
wow, that was a really great idea. But I just, you know,
45:09
for whatever reason, it wasn't there anymore, you know, the my
45:13
ability to recall it just had gone away. So can I want to wrap
45:19
it up? Because I know you you know, have things to do.
45:22
Can you just talking to people who are out there in our audience it's filmmakers
45:27
and screenwriters and people who are working on projects, Can you you know,
45:30
what do you think is a good idea for them to start doing? What
45:35
can they do today? To really start moving forward and not being frustrated and
45:39
getting their projects, you know, on the road to being you know,
45:44
completed. Welcome on. I would be remiss and not saying get my new
45:50
version of getting things go bo and read it if you haven't. Yeah,
45:55
I mean truly, it is the manual for all of that and it will
46:00
be pretty evergreen for lots of years to come in terms of you know,
46:04
what we've uncovered and what we've discovered about it. So that's that's essentially a
46:08
you know, a great resource. That's that is a way. That is
46:12
a way to start. But quite frankly, it just make sure you've got
46:15
some you know, take up. You might want to take a few hours
46:19
at some point if you can carve that out of your life and say,
46:22
okay, I'm going to do this dumb thing called sit down and write down
46:24
every single thing that's on my mind, you know, anything about anything,
46:30
you know, little things, big things, personally think, professional things,
46:32
creative things, anything, and truly keep going. You know, most people
46:37
can do that in about an hour or two at least you can get most
46:39
of it, and then you know, go through each one of those and
46:45
say, okay, what is exactly my next action on this? What's my
46:49
next action on that? What's my next action on that? So just capturing
46:52
and then applying the sort of next action cognitive rigor to these things, and
46:58
then you're gonna have to then you'll have to get creative to decide what do
47:00
I want to do if I can't take that action right now. Where do
47:02
I want to park it? How do I create a list? How do
47:05
I create you know, some sort of organizational system. If you don't have
47:07
one already, you need to then go through that process. So ideally,
47:13
you you know, set up a whole day and get my book, because
47:15
I actually walk people through this exercise, you know, blow by blow part
47:21
in part two of the book. That's one of the reasons I wrote it
47:24
that way, so that people didn't have to hire a coach to walk them
47:28
through this. But you're not born doing this and it doesn't come, you
47:31
know, automatically. You actually have to sit down and put cognitive horse power
47:36
to this game. And it does take an investment on the front end.
47:39
It doesn't take a lot of time and energy to maintain it. As a
47:42
matter of fact, it takes much less than what most people are trying to
47:45
do once you actually get this set up, but it does take an investment
47:47
on the front end. Well, David, I really appreciate it. Thank
47:51
you so much for coming on the show. It's it's a pleasure to have
47:54
you here with us today. Hey, it was fun, Jason, this
47:58
is great. I want to thank Jason so much for doing such a great
48:01
job on this episode. If you want to get links to anything we spoke
48:05
about in this episode, head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot
48:08
tv. Forward slash three fourteen. Thank you so much for listening, guys,
48:12
As always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk to you
48:15
soon. Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.