What Does Perspective Mean in GTD?

Voiceover Artist | 00:00

Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a more fulfilling, productive life? Then you’ve come to the right place. Welcome to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. Here are your hosts, Ray Sidney Smith and Augusto Pinot with Francis Wade and Art Gelwix.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 00:18

Welcome back, everybody, to Productivity Cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. I’m Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto Pinaud | 00:24

And I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade | 00:26

I’m Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks | 00:28

And I’m Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 00:29

Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this week’s episode. Today, we are going to be talking about perspectives as a contrast to last week’s episode on the GTD concept of control. 

So in order to start off the conversation, I want to lay the groundwork with perspectives. The Getting Things Done March 2015 edition appendixes. Glossary of terms definition given for perspective. And it says, one of the two key elements of self and organizational management, along with control, and it refers to point of view, focus, altitude of horizon. We have this concept of horizons of focus in getting things done. And what I’m hearing from the definition is that David Allen is saying that each one of those horizons of focus is a perspective. That’s what the terminology is talking about. And so with that in mind, I wanted to ask, Is. Perspective the right term? And what does perspective mean to you in your own.

Francis Wade | 01:33

My mind perspective is a pseudonym for context. And as someone smart said, context is decisive. The background story from which you take your actions is all important. And it’s malleable. And most of us just wake up into the context that human beings wake up into every day, which is something close to survival. Survival, desperation, fear, you know, how can I make it through the day kind of, point of view. I think that’s the default. 

And then to Create a new context, tics. Or any perspective takes. Conscious act for the most part conscious action it takes deliberate effort. I think this is all important. I think the book GT is really about that. And perspectives is one way of seeing it. I think this idea that… The context of your life is decisive is an idea that’s been around probably since the Greeks. And that’s something worth paying attention to. 

So yes, it’s vitally important.

Art Gelwicks | 02:41

What I think is interesting about this looking at perspective and how it breaks down is that often perspective is not related to ourselves. If you look at the GTD structure you’ve got, and I’ll work from the bottom up, Actions, Projects, Goals, Vision, Life The first four of those categories are often… Stolen for lack of a better term by corporate and work environments. To set the messaging. For everything that you’re supposed to be doing and that becomes the context, for lack of a better term, that those get applied in. It’s difficult for us to translate goals, vision and life into actual real life things, because every time we think about it, we think about, you know, the next five year plan at work. 

So… If we think about it from the perspective of how they relate to each other, perspectives in my book, are pretty much whatever you’re dealing with and the thing above and the thing below it. 

So projects is a good example. If you’re working on projects, The projects need to align to the strategic goals that you have. If it’s business, obviously you have business strategic goals. If it’s personal goals, The things that you’re doing should align to those. You have to determine what those are, but they should be tied to it. And below that, the actions necessary to execute those projects. 

So the perspective is less… What the term would lend me to believe, which is a view on things and more of a relationship.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 04:27

I certainly see perspectives for me. As a vertical planning tool. And so each of the additional perspectives above the actions level or the ground level in at least GTD lingo, you are seeing a different and therefore you were planning at a different time. “layer of time” So it’s for me, I always think of time horizons is that, you know, projects are within our time bound within about a year and then you keep stepping up to further and further distances of time. Accepting the horizon too, which is areas of focus and accountability, which ends up being something that is it’s a maintenance level. 

So, While each of the time horizons keep going up in that sense, Horizon 2 is the exception there because it’s maintenance. It’s ongoing maintenance. And if you’re like me and you’ve created other horizons, other perspectives, then you may have other time horizons in that sense as well. They’re not going away. And so that has an infinite horizon in essence. 

So I’m looking at it on a regular basis purely because it’s perennial. It’s always going to be there. The interesting thing about perspectives for me is that I think that there is a clear… I don’t know if I want to say contrast or argument between other systems, other methodologies, other thought processes on this and perspectives. I’ll give you one example, which is Dr. Stephen Covey’s The Eighth Habit, where he talks about the concept of the four intelligences. And if… Control and perspective are really the only two vectors of a productivity system, then Where does something like the four intelligences fit. And I would say that Dr. Covey would say that this is perhaps a completely different dimension. 

You know, the four intelligences being mental intelligence or IQ, physical intelligence, PQ, emotional intelligence, EQ, and spiritual intelligence, SQ. And so he has this perspective on the four intelligences and how they map to all of the rest of how you would develop in his language, you know, finding your voice and helping others find theirs. And so I’m always… I don’t know if I’m conflicted because I have myself learned to deal with where these things fit in my own system. But I can see that there can be a difficulty for folks to think about how Picking. IQ, PQ, EQ, SQ, and turning that into vision, discipline, passion, and conscience in the eighth habit world, and then seeing the somewhat limited I wouldn’t say limited, but more simplistic view of the perspective concept. And I’m curious from all of you, Do you see a conflict or do you see… Perspective is just basically holding other I.

Art Gelwicks | 07:38

Think perspectives are a more tactical term. Approach. They’re more tangible. We associate them with things and activities that we have going on. Stephen Covey’s concepts are more to understand people. I want to say spheres of influence. I don’t know that they necessarily relate directly to each other. There is no dotted line. It is difficult at best. To translate. For example, projects into mental intelligence, you’re not going to be able to make that connection easily without it stopping. Significant amount of work.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 08:18

Yeah, but to interject right there, like, so if we step up a few horizons and we get to vision and purpose and principles, then we’re really starting to connect. The concepts of what he’s talking about there at the very top levels of the system. 

So it’s not really closer to the tactical level, but more when he starts talking about, you know, creating vision, right, which he defines kind of as applied imagination. And then he we keep stepping down to these other, not stepping down, but going around the four quadrants, right? To figure out passion and discipline and conscious and otherwise. 

So it’s, At those upper horizons, it starts to bleed over one another. I.

Art Gelwicks | 09:01

Mean, I will give you that there is… It doesn’t translate well at the lower end. Maybe that was a bad example to use. But I think that raises the bigger issue then. We don’t live, we don’t operate on a daily basis in this high altitude environment. We operate at ground level. We operate at 5,000 feet, 10,000 feet if we’re lucky. 

So when we take something and say, you know, how is this tied to my mental intelligence? How is this tied to my emotional intelligence? 

You know, what is my grand vision for my life? I think a lot of people struggle with that because it feels very fuzzy. It feels warm and fuzzy kinds of things. It feels very… I don’t want to say hippy dippy. It’s that kind of thing that’s like, I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know how to translate into something. And that’s where if somebody asked me to create a structure to be able to use perspectives, One, I think… Stephen Covey stuff is a different conversation in my book. There are two… But if you’re looking purely at perspectives, I would say you start with the bottom and you build upwards to determine Are you even doing things? That are tied to things that you want to do. It’s a really hard question to go up to somebody and say, hey, Francis, what’s your goal for your life? That’s a hard one. That’s going to take a lot of time and a lot of thinking or, you know, Hey, Augusto, what’s your vision for your life? Even that one’s still a hard one. But to be able to start at the bottom of what you’re doing and then say, do these tied things that you can see as part of your vision for your life. Helps you identify What you don’t want to be doing, where you don’t want to be, which casts a light on what you do. 

So. Being able to use the perspectives to determine how things relate to each other, I think, is much more powerful. And much more useful than starting at the upper end of the scale and trying to break things down because it requires, at the 50,000 foot, it requires a massive amount of self-awareness. That takes a long time to build. And it’s very difficult. 

You know, you don’t take off from 50,000 feet. You take off from ground level. 

And then you travel to 50,000 feet. That’s where you cover the biggest distance. But then you still have to land at some point.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 11:35

And I think you bring up a great point, which is using that altitude analogy, which is the original analogy that David Allen used in the original Getting Things Done book. He uses this analogy of as you take off, right, you’re going up to 10,000 foot, then 20,000, up to 50,000 feet at the purpose and principles level. And if you are in a plane at 20 or 30,000 feet, the ground below you becomes less and less detailed, right? It becomes a mass of land or a mass of water. 

You see clouds, you know, and the clouds are going to be far more detailed to you because they’re closer to you than the ground is. And that’s the point of perspectives. I think that You bring up an important piece here, and I’d like to have a conversation about that, which is. Because perspectives are not the plane of existence in which we are. Operating day-to-day. We then need to step into that each of those perspectives at some point to look at them strongly define any one of them. It can be, you know, live a year, Make a little modification, live another year, make a little modification, or we can live five years and then revisit some of the higher level perspectives because you have all of these questions, but you live into the answers. I think that we have to lean into that a little bit more, which is looking at things and correcting course as we make our way forward. 

So plans are great, but the reality is that you don’t know until you know. So as we know, the horizons of focus are in a way a level of altitudes. And as we think about the various altitudes, we go from Basically, ground level or the runway in David Allen’s altitude analogy. 

And then we step up to 10,000 feet. At 10,000 feet, you could probably see pretty fine detail of the houses and of the people below and that kind of thing. But then as we keep creeping up each of those various areas, altitudes, we see less and less fine detail of the world. And I’m curious, how do you perceive those perspectives in your own productivity systems? Do you define the various horizons of focus based on that kind of height perspective where you don’t necessarily see as much granularity, which allows you to then maybe correct course. On a further out timeframe. 

You know, like if you are dealing with projects at the 10,000 foot level, right, that’s on a potentially day by day, week by week basis where you’re looking at your various projects, you’re identifying actions, and then you’re rinsing and repeating. You may not do that with, say, your… Two to three year goals or your three plus year goals because those are further out. 

So you’re going to look at them less often. How does that all play into your own worlds? Who wants to get started? I’ll go. Go for it.

Francis Wade | 14:38

We’re talking about the six, in particular, the six levels, or are we talking about any perspective system? GTD goes from purpose to vision to goals to areas of focus to projects to actions. The system I learned back in the 90s, somewhere there, started with something like domains or areas of interest first. And the domain or area of interest could be something like work or career. Or business. And I found that that’s more useful because it sort of allows you to focus on one big chunk of your life at a time. 

So you might have four to… 6, 7, 8. PONKS And I think it’s in terms of organizing your thoughts. It’s a little bit easier to think of one chunk at a time. Rather than to think of I love a purpose. Then what’s the vision behind that, then goals, and then get down to areas of focus where it would apply to each chunk. 

So, My practice has been to chunk first. Then stay within the chunk. And drive all the way down from purpose to actions within the chunk. Is that making sense?

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 15:51

Yeah, and I would just, to clarify, For me, when we think about the areas of focus and accountability, which used to be called areas of responsibility, the idea behind that is what you’re talking about, which are basically these life domains. I see them pretty synonymously in David Allen’s GTD lingo, those would be maintenance and for you. Thinking through the concept of life domains or whatnot are really for a different kind of work. Than say identifying and working on specific actions toward the completion of an outcome. 

So if we’re thinking from a perspectives level, above the ground level or your next actions is and you step up that level, then… Those areas of focus and accountability, life domains, life categories, whatever you call them, those become useful on a level because you’re able to reflect and or plan on things in just a different way.

Francis Wade | 16:56

I think you’re talking, we might be contrasting bottom down versus top. Bottom up versus top down. I think both could be used. I’m more of a top-down person where I would say, What about big interests? 

And then within each interest, What’s my purpose, my vision? And then I go all the way down to the actions. As a post-hoc. Asking yourself what are the actions and then what are the projects, what are the areas of focus I’m working on? I think you’re going out of the direction. I think it’s iterative. I think it just depends on it. It’s a matter of taste, I think.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 17:32

And I would argue that. Yeah. And I think what I’m arguing is that actually you’re starting from the center and moving outward. Right. 

So it’s like they’re concentric circles from which you’re starting. Like if it’s like a pie more than it is a. A set of horizons that you come down from. 

Like you, if you think about your world in concentric circles, you, Each circle can be wider or smaller, but they’re bands, kind of like a tree’s bands, you know, inside the trunk. Each of those bands represents some amount of time you’re going to have spent working It’s like the bands represent some portion of your life. And you are spending time on those pieces of it, whether that be in reflecting or planning, but then how much time you’re actually dedicating to each of those pieces. And so it’s for me, like the whole concept of top down or bottom up is actually obtuse, because what I’m really doing is I’m seeing how much time I’m spending in any one of those areas of my world. That’s a time horizon issue, not a planning problem. From a top-down perspective, but more of a How much do I want to spread myself across a particular surface of space? 

Right? Because time is space. 

So, I’m very curious about your thoughts on that. I.

Francis Wade | 18:49

Think we have different mental models. I think for our listeners, The key is to have one that works. Has accomplished as a practical result I don’t believe there’s one right or wrong, but I think there is better and worse. I think each person needs to have one that does the job as long as it’s thorough enough and it covers all the bases. Everyone has to go through a process of step one, step two, step three, step four. And the mental model that they hold. May shape the sequence of the steps but it shouldn’t Sheep. I think, you know, as people are listening in, as we’re talking with each other, We each have our own model of how. To construct these I think. The place to listen from is How can we execute our the steps within our model so that we get to the end result. We all get to the same end result, regardless of the path that we happen to take. I.

Art Gelwicks | 19:43

Find myself working, it’s kind of It’s hard to describe. It’s almost a wave type of effect. 

So I have the highest level horizons kind of mapped out. And then it’s a constant… Evaluation of the activities at the lowest level and do they align back with the upper and then dropping back down If they don’t, what are the change necessary to those lower activities to make sure they aligned. 

So I have that constant cycling back and forth. And often when I’ve looked at strategies around the six horizons. It’s much more of a start at a place and be very progressive down, you know, work logically through the structures and all. But I don’t find that I do that typically. I find that it has to be more of constant course corrections than anything else. And most of my time is spent within if I wanted to use the altitude thing between ground level and I would say horizon three, which is the one to two year goals. Because those are the most tactical ones, those are the ones that are easiest to adjust the course When you start to look at three to five, they have a much larger impact scale. 

So I have to say, if I’m looking at a three to five year goal, well now… I’m dealing with a lot more unpredictable values as well. 

So I’m much more comfortable operating within that one to two year and below.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 21:13

So with that in mind. Let’s talk a little bit about how we actually… Effectuate perspectives in our own systems. 

So if we think about any level of planning that we need to do of the work we need to do, whether we’re GTDers and we’re doing that from a week-to-week basis and then stepping up a level to higher horizon levels on some other cadence. How do we actually implement perspectives in our own world. I have a set of I’ve created. You can call them life domains or otherwise. 

And then I have, so they represent about 13 to 15 of them, and some of them actually modify ever so slightly on any particular year basis. And so they’re not All that malleable but there are some that do come and go. And the strongest set of them have some subcategories. 

So for example, the business category. 

Relate those together and review them together. So it’s grouped together for both effectiveness and efficiency, just as we look at the concept of GTD contexts, right? 

Like we’re looking for limiting criteria, but we’re looking for efficiency among those pieces. And so I’ve created those levels of hierarchy and or my ability to plan and reflect. But I’ve looked at them for grouping together for what’s going to happen on which time horizon. 

So I’ve created those life categories and those life categories are my way of reviewing the rest of my world. So they’re kind of like a circle, and the circle represents all of the time I’m going to spend in my life. And each of the concentric circles represent some piece or portion of it. And so those bands are the life categories. Inside of the life categories, I can see my perspectives as being what it is that I’m doing. 

So if you take like any. Particular portion kind of placing a larger or smaller dot inside of any one of the bands as projects or actions that represent work. In those particular areas. That’s how my brain, that’s how I mentally map out the life categories or at least all of my perspective within that space. And since I understand my life is finite and… I need to, in some way, shape or form, know what is going to happen across these timeframes. And it will change over time. Obviously, you know, like there are things that are going to be, you know, bands that are larger at some portion of time in my life and smaller and others. At some point, work wasn’t represented on my in my life categories because I was a student, right? And so then all of a sudden it became the largest portion. It became the largest band of my life. And at some point in the future, it will become a much smaller portion or smaller band in my life. And so we have to remember that it’s a bit elastic in that sense. And so it’s really helpful for me. But then I’m able to drill down below that to answer each of the questions that kind of David Allen asks relating to each of the perspectives, each of the horizons. And that helps me start to generate what the projects are and the various items, roles, responsibilities, and whatnot are for each of those various categories.

Augusto Pinaud | 25:15

Mine is like that. You know, there are different fixed categories for the personal life. 

You know, what are… The health and the learning and the career. 

And then I got like you in detail on the business. But there was something… At the beginning, that really What’s a trouble for me? When do you read Cobby? Okay, Kobe goes and said, okay, go, you know, from the top down. Okay, find your mission in life, then get. That was impossible for me. Then when you go… And work with David Allen says, no. Start by buying bread and go up. And that works better. But it still wasn’t that great. And what I learned is you need to give to this perspective and this planning and what is inside of the things a lot more elasticity. There are moments in which you will be able to see that clear goal and go and But there are many other moments where you will not be able to and what the best thing to do is to go start from where you can see any kind of vision and develop from there. Or down. And I think Is that… Lack of understanding on the elasticity needed for this clarity where some people get in trouble because they get, okay, no, but I need to get it at this lower level in order to go up or I need to get at this higher level in order to go down. And Especially for me, this happened a lot more on the business than on the personal side is much easier, at least for me. But on the business, I need to start where I am and then try to go a little bit up, a little bit down and continue expanding that until I get the whole vision. Because when I try to start sometimes on one extent or the other, I can. And what I see with my clients when I’m doing coaching is sometimes you don’t have the knowledge, the skills yet to really see the whole vertical. 

So you need to go from where you are and expand little by little to really get there. A good perspective of what your life is.

Art Gelwicks | 27:42

If you carry excuse me, the altitude analogy further. Think about Azure flying. We don’t fly in a stair-step motion. We don’t take off, get to about 5,000 feet, and then fly flat for a while, then climb to 10 and fly flat for a while. We will climb gradually to an altitude and then stay at that altitude for as long as we need to and then change accordingly. 

So it’s okay within the structure to actually pass through a horizon. To go from projects all the way up through maybe to three to five year without stopping at the intermediary steps every time. That said, you’re passing through those recognizing that everything’s okay here. I can move on to the next one. Without spending a lot of time there.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 28:35

And I think there’s a motivational component here as well, which is that when we don’t recognize the value of doing the mundane at the very least, say, lowest tiers of the perspectives when we’re on the ground level and we’re like, why do I need to, you know, call this client back. If you step up to each of those higher horizons, at some point you get to maybe your role in the company and you’re like, I want to keep my job. And keeping my job, you know, answers the why as to why I should call Susan back about this thing that I don’t care about. Because you care about your job. And if you have a standard of excellence toward that position and that role in your life and you care about that role in your life, then doing that mundane task actually has great meaning to you. 

And then I get this sense of responsibility to the mundane for the title or role you have at the higher horizons. And so I think there’s something very valuable to that as well.

Francis Wade | 29:34

A little bit from my own experience. I got out of value when I did this exercise in the 90s and defined everything. And since then it’s been a bit of a set it and forget it kind of thing. Situation for me because Once… 

Well, Once I got the benefit of defining everything at the highest level and then all down to the lowest level, Like it’s just by accident I realized that The ones at the lowest level change the more frequently. And at the highest level, they almost never change or change once a decade or once in a blue moon. I am conscious that they are, I do have commitments at different levels and the ones at the highest change the slowest. And those are the most important ones. But I don’t have a rigorous process of reviewing them. Mostly just because it Again, back to set it and forget it. Revisit. From my own point of view.

Art Gelwicks | 30:32

It’s easy to struggle with The higher altitude ones, at least it is for me. Because. They are so broad in so many cases. That you can create a definition, like say, you know, I want my company to be X size in Three years. Detail defines action. 

So it’s easy to set these broad categories and then look at them every so often. Yeah, I’m on target. I’m on target. It’s defining what are the actual steps to make sure that truly is on target that I think is the hardest part. At the upper levels. Because it’s often easy to justify our actions saying, yes, that’s getting me there. But how do I know that? How have I created within my structure? That dotted line path, that metric track to indicate that, If these things happen, I will be on the correct trajectory to get that. And to go back to our analogy, course corrections are not made in broad sweeps. They’re made in little adjustments. 

I mean, if you think about a ship on the ocean, It’s not. Hard left, hard right. It’s little tiny course corrections to get you where big, broad adjustments.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 31:49

And what if it wants to capsize?

Art Gelwicks | 31:51

Well, that’s true. I’d like to see you do that with an aircraft carrier. 

I mean, you know, the old carrier tactics is that type of thing. But that’s exactly the challenge. When you’re overcompensating, and you can use it with the driving analogy too, you’re not swinging left and right. It’s little adjustments. But that far horizon goal is something to focus your vision on but it’s not the thing mandating. Do I turn a little bit left or a little bit right now? There’s a lot of other factors that are in play around you. To make that adjustment, you’re going to check your windows. You’re going to see, is there a car next to me? Am I going too fast? Is the on-ramp or off-ramp? But then you still have that far milestone. 

So I think often… Individuals and organizations can get hung up on these grand vision plans. And that’s fine. It makes senior execs feel like they’re actually contributing to the process. But it doesn’t actually do anything. 

So.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 32:53

Understanding the perspectives is one thing. Another is to actually effectuate them. And at each of these various perspectives. Horizons of focus, whatever you want to call them, it becomes potentially more or less difficult for some. For some, they have a quote-unquote big purpose, and they know what that big purpose is, and that helps drive them down. If you are spiritual or religious in some way, shape, or form, many people have a directive or drive from God their higher power. They know what that higher power is telling them that they should do. And therefore, everything kind of falls from that point perspective. For others who are secular, they don’t have that perspective. And therefore, they can choose what meaning is in their world. And therefore, they have more of a bottoms up approach to these things, or they have difficulty in choosing what those upper level pieces are because they have to choose what meaning is. And so I’m curious how you go through that process of developing perspectives in your own systems or how you help others define those perspectives when they come to you and say, Why am I here?

Francis Wade | 34:01

In my strategic planning activities… We’ve used a particular approach for the last couple of decades or so. Which is to Ask. Groups to define these Basically, visions of the future. And we asked them to go 15 to 30 years out. And it starts off by doing it in words. 

And then we convert the words into numbers. So they… Say 20 years out, they want A, B, C, D, and E. They say, okay, How does that What does that mean in terms of actual tangible, measurable accomplishment. 

And then when that’s done… We take them through a process of backcasting. Where they start 20 years old and they work back to today. As you can imagine, they discover all kinds of gaps and wishful thinking and bits of nonsense and everything. Illogicality and all kinds of stuff. At the end of the exercise. And the activity. They have a cause and effect plan that looks feasible to them based on what they know in the moment. No, Wendy. Have this thing looking at, you know, looking back at them from, screen or whatever it is. A lot of things fall into place. A purpose statement. Mission statements, vision statements They start to make sense because… You have… As an organization, and this applies to individuals as well, you have all these impulses and thoughts that aren’t necessarily assembled in a way that could produce a result. They’re more like Feelings, thoughts and feelings. And in this process that we take these companies through, what they’re basically doing is lining up all their thoughts and feelings. Addressing each one. And saying, okay, well, some of these are wrong, inappropriate. 

So these need to be strengthened. Some of them the capabilities, By going through this whole process, they are able to address everything at every perspective. And include some things, throw some out. But at the end of the game, they have something that they can stand behind. I go through the same process each year for each of the businesses I have, so to speak, or lines of business. And I just finished one this week, actually. I did it with my wife. And, you know, sure enough, we went through… 

You know, It’s business planning. It’s personal planning. What do we want for ourselves? How long do we want to work for? When do we want to retire? Where do we want to retire to? What will our retirement look like? 

So we answer all those questions at the same time. And I think there’s a way an individual can By getting down to that level of specificity, answer a whole bunch of questions at the same time. And come away with something looking coherent. And I think… When it looks coherent, then you don’t. Have these other thoughts that intrude that, yeah, but what about this? Because you’ve already considered the extraneous thing that you Thought you might forget. 

So it does take a bit of a discipline process. It took her and I… Four to six hours or so of sitting down, but it’s well worth the activity to do. At the end of it, have something that is way, that you can actually put your hat on. As opposed to a whole bungle of thoughts and feelings that don’t really fit together.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 37:32

Didn’t help myself.

Augusto Pinaud | 37:33

No, for me, as well as… For coaching Usually this starts on the personal side. Even though a lot of times the client comes from the business perspective, what I found is that they have a lot more clarity on the business because of the expertise than on the personal side. 

So the personal side, I cover 13 categories. Health, learn and grow emotions, spiritual life, character, love, parenting, social life and relationships. Then they go to career, financial, and the quality of life. And we work in that order. Because You work in the order of the stuff that you have more control to the stuff that you have less control. After we define that, and usually As Francis said, this is not a one-swip. It’s a process because as you start getting to the character, say, yeah, and I want to do really this from my learning and growing, so you need to go back and continue building this. After we build that image, that initial goal, then we add the business or businesses. That they have. And there is a series of categories, sales, marketing, you know, accounting, taxes, and, you know, regulatory and a bunch of other things for that business and build now that image. But more importantly, make sure that image of the business will fit into the image that they are creating personally. Because one of the things I found on the issues is when those two start being So when you want to retire in the Jersey Shore as Francis wants, but now you live in Jamaica and there is nothing you can do. Okay. They need to match. And, you know, those questions, as you said, in your life, you may think, well, I want to retire at 65. On the business side, you are launching an initiative that is going to last you 20 years. That means really a retirement maybe at 75. 

So how those two match and it’s identify… Those things that don’t match that make at the end of the day, that document a really powerful document. Usually I advise them to revise it every six months. It’s not a big review. It’s to read and start pinpointing where things have changed. Are on good track and where things are fall apart. 

You know, you said, Hey, I want to start doing exercise because that is really important to accomplish these things. And six months have happened and you continue eating McDonald’s every other day. You get a lot of principles to be able to keep these perspectives in order, to be able to do adjustments in a much effective way, because instead of trying to build something, the ship again. You just go and now fix the components that may be out of alignment.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 40:31

I’ll say that for folks who have struggle defining their upper horizons, Like, for example, what’s your purpose in life? I know that can be very difficult for some folks. And again, I started in the Covey world where I came to the concept of the mission statement building and I immediately knew what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it. And so the way in which I have evolved engaged people in kind of snapping out of the kind of mission statement building block kind of call it writer’s block for mission statement building or purpose building is to just ask the question why at all the lowest horizons so like why are you doing this project and that becomes an answer as to why what the purpose is answer at the areas of focus and accountability levels do you have your Why do you want to raise this child? Right. You do want them to be a productive member of society. And do you want them to be better than you? Which is what most parents I presumably hope would want. Right. That their child actually has a better life than them. As you answer all of these smaller questions, what you come together is a grouping of answers as to why, which then becomes really, in essence, your purpose. It’s kind of a grounds up development of purpose. The upper level or the highest level horizons. And I think that’s a lot easier to manifest. And once you look at that, If, as Augusta was talking about, you see incongruence… 

Beautiful child that I have. But this career path is making me look like a horrible human being. But say that you have a particular career path that is making you look like you are doing something wrong to, say, the environment or to a group of people or to something like that. You can now look at those two pieces and say, Raising this child in a particular way with a particular set of morals and values is more important to me. This career has to change. And now you can create the project, start studying new degree programs or looking at different jobs that are going to put me on a career path that’s going to align better with this child seeing their parent raise them with the appropriate skills. Shell, the appropriate set of boundaries. 

So like you can start to see how these things work and interplay together by comparing and contrasting them with one another. So I think that’s really helpful, I think, for some people to really identify. One of my values is to enjoy my free time. 

And then they look at their And they’re like, I don’t actually enjoy free time when I actually have it. And so, okay, well, then what do I do with that time? How do I make that a productive part of my life? And there are some people who just really don’t enjoy that and want to see changes. And so I think we should all change. Kind of take heed to that point, which is like, look at the data, and then start making changes toward what the data tells us about ourselves as opposed to what we just think, what we feel is going on.

Francis Wade | 43:30

Francis? At the same time, I have some compassion for people who have not done anything like that. Because I vividly remember when I had done nothing. 

So I bought Tony Robbins. Book. Forget the name. It was an unlimited poll. It was the one that came after that. 

Anyway, I bought the book. And it sat on my coffee table for a year. And I was… Afraid to read it. At that point, I had the American dream. I was 20. 627. Married, house in New Jersey. Nice new car. Two nice new cars in the driveway. Great job. With AT&T, with Kind of job where you couldn’t get fired unless you came in there with a gun in the place. And even then, You probably wouldn’t get fed. Lifetime employment or something like that. Real close to it. And everything I wanted. Well. Materially anyway. And I didn’t want to read this book. And it sat on my coffee table for a year. And it wasn’t until… I saw an ad, a Tony Robbins ad, one of these midnight specials. Where he used to come on and tell you that, You did it. You need to find your power and are you living the life you want? And he said, I have this tip set. It’s like $195. Tapes of our cassettes. Hannah goes with the book. 

So I bought it. I paid, spent 195 bucks. And while I was commuting to work, I listened just like you did, Ray. I listened to the cassettes in the car. And went through the whole exercise. 

And then read the book, which was a great companion. And then he interviewed a bunch of other thought leaders. And published the interviews. What was then like a beginning podcast, but he had cassettes. It was all on cassette. 

Anyway, so I went from being afraid to even… Contemplate my future. To the point where Years later, I fulfilled the commitment I had to return from living in the States to living in Jamaica. And between that point, about 1990, 2 and 2003. It was about a decade. Personal development But I remember what it was like before I hadn’t read any kind of personal development books. I’d done… Very little programming and I was just really afraid. Because it seemed like I would be putting everything I had accomplished up to that point in jeopardy if I were to really seriously ask myself what I wanted. I have some compassion for folks who are… Afraid. Of really digging into these things. And boy, I can only promise that The fears aren’t really real. What’s real is what you really want. And if you can trust yourself to execute it in a way that’s not… Injurious to yourself and others, you probably can be trusted. You’re not good at me. Scary mistakes that, you know, I know folks, for example, who are afraid to go into therapy because they’ll get divorced if they do. 

You know, I mean, sometimes that’s the result, but you can trust yourself to make smart decisions along the way. It’s not like you’re going to all of a sudden go to the first session and come back and say, I’m leaving. There is a process that you’re going through and the resistance is a part of it. But the next part of it is not sudden decision. I think.

Art Gelwicks | 47:11

The key takeaway for me would be It doesn’t matter if you start at the bottom or if you start at the top or work from the middle out or whatever. The key is that there’s importance to all the different levels. And they all should be viewed and should be addressed. 

Some are more painful than others. Some require more time and more consideration. But none of them should be neglected.

Augusto Pinaud | 47:35

The message for me. Is to things. Remember one, it takes time. Two, it takes a lot of kindness, self-kindness to do. But more importantly, One of the things I found sometimes is, well, I don’t know where to start. It doesn’t matter. It matters because even if it takes you five years to figure it out, okay If you decide not to do anything, The five years will happen regardless. Don’t delay a start on the process. Again, it doesn’t matter. I agree with Art. If you start on the top, just start on the bottom. Just start in the middle. Just start. Start making that progress, even if you feel it’s really slow. Because The time will pass. No matter what. 

So The sooner you can get this and the sooner you can start working into this process, the better that future.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 48:34

Will be. Fantastic. Thank you, gentlemen. This has been a really fun conversation around perspectives, both in the GTD perspective, but thinking beyond just GTD perspectives and how the various ways in which we have all grown in our own systems have changed. Changed and potentially blended with some of the GTD perspectives, concept of the horizons of focus, whatever, and how they have continued to endure. I think, especially for me, how they’ve continued to endure in these ways in my own personal productivity system. And so with that, we were going to close out the conversation. While we are at the end of our discussion, the conversation doesn’t stop here. If you have a question or comment about what we’ve discussed during this cast, please visit our episode page on productivitycast.net. Feel free to leave a comment or question. We read and respond to comments and questions there. As well, you’re invited to join our listeners group inside Personal Productivity Club, a digital community for personal productivity enthusiasts that I host, where you can interact with the Productivity Cast team directly. To join for free, visit productivitycast.net forward slash community, and you can get started there. By the way, to get to any ProductivityCast episode fast, simply add the three-digit episode number to the end of ProductivityCast.net forward slash. 

 So episode 100 would be ProductivityCast.net forward slash 100. On each episode page, you’ll find the show notes. 

 So links to anything we’ve discussed are easily jumped to from there, along with text transcripts to read and download. If you have a topic or question about personal productivity you’d like us to discuss on a future cast, please visit productivitycast.net forward slash contact. You can leave a voice recorded message or type a message into the message box and maybe we’ll use it as a future episode topic. I want to express my thanks to Augusto Pinaud, Francis Wade, and Art Gelwicks for joining me here on ProductivityCast. I’m Ray Sidney Smith, and on behalf of all of us here at ProductivityCast, here’s to your productive life.

Voiceover Artist | 50:34

That’s it for this episode of ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, with your hosts, Ray Sidney Smith and Augusto Pinaud, with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.