Getting in control and creating space | David Allen | TEDxAmsterdam 2014

you [Music] I'm gonna give you a slightly unique kind of presentation because I'm going to invite you to engage with me and interact a little bit in a couple of minutes I'm going to invite you to take some notes about a specific topic that I'll be suggesting just for yourself and you'll get maximum value out of what I'm going to share with you if you play in order to play you need something to take notes with so if you already have some sort of note-taking device that'll work fine if you don't underneath your seats the TEDx folks have put a pen and a blank card which should work fine if you use both sides of that I love having clear space inside of myself with absolutely nothing on my mind which gives me the freedom to be as much me as I can be wherever I show up and whatever I'm doing and also to be able to trust that what I'm doing is the best thing to be doing given my intuition and spontaneous judgments that's cool state to be in so I developed some processes that really allow that to happen now that's because I needed them tremendously myself first and then I have the great opportunity to share a lot of those ideas with a lot of people around the world now I spend a lot of years not feeling clear and not feeling free and having my stuff bounce me around much like a pin ball in an old arcade game and one of the things well we teach what we need to learn the most and I discovered though that most people also have something that is hanging them up something that they should be thinking about something that's pulling on their attention something that's draining their energy usually it's some project some problem some situation coming at them and they're just resisting hopping into it and thinking about it appropriately to be able to be appropriately managing it until of course the last minute how many we can relate to what I'm talking about if well I discovered the best technique for handling those kinds of things and I've worked with a CEO of a major corporation that used it to quickly manage a strategic issue I used it with two people that used it together to get agreement about who to invite to their wedding and lots of things in between all of that here's the cool thing you already know how to do this so I'm gonna take invite you to take a little short test drive with me on something very real in your world right now something that you have attention on and if you think about on your radar what's coming toward you a project an event something you need to deal with a speech you need to give somebody you need to hire a party you need to give something you need to celebrate something you need to organize or think about do you have something that some part of you is thinking you ought to be thinking about a little bit more and close your eyes just for a second and let emerge whatever most has your attention of that nature and then in your notes would you just write that down pick a topic an event or a project a real thing right now that perhaps is most on your mind has most has your attention now years ago I was quite curious about what's the best way to plan I didn't seem to see any particular planning model that worked for everything universally and was foolproof so I went in search of who knows how to do this I went in search of the master planner and I found him or her you all know it very well it's your brain now there's some things your brain does not do very well it forgets where it laid out laid your keys down and it doesn't handle trying to track more than four things at once but there's some things your brain does brilliantly automatically can't help it and one of them is plan your a planning machine you're planning all the time you can't help plan you planned what to wear here today you planned how to get here you planned where to sit you planned lunch you planned what to talk to people about on the break you can't help it you are a natural planner it's going on all the time probably because of evolutionary you know over millennia the brain figured out that if that was something that got got it to survive survival of the species gee how do I get away from the bear coming at me how do I get fruit out of the tree or how do I create a relationship with that attractive person survival of the species so you're doing it all the time and it's you know grown over millennia to actually do this naturally and even for you personally you've been planning since you were six months old because it's six months is when the executive function wakes up in your forebrain and that's when you decide to throw a tantrum to get something you don't have yet and you've been planning since then you're really good at this so I asked myself not wait a minute what is this natural planning model that we're all using all the time and I came up with some interesting stuff and I discovered that this natural planning model is actually a recognizable five phase model organically that we use to take anything from impulse into reality let's take a couple of simple with examples to walk you through that and also what you picked as a topic will also let you apply it to that see what happens let's suppose that this is 30,000 years ago and you encounter this guy or it's tonight and you're thinking about dinner going out now what would cause you to think about anything about those situations right well obviously bear shows up first thing on my mind is survive live no pain all body parts intact dinner tonight why would you think about dinner tonight well the nothing in the kitchen and I'm hungry or I want to sign a business deal with a prospective client or romance with somebody but what starts natural planning to begin with is a real purpose some real intention something that you need to have occur or happen what I'd like you to do right now is take a moment and think about whatever it is you picked as a topic or project and answer this question just very briefly for you self in a phrase or a sentence what is the main reason this thing exists or what is the primary purpose for this event just jot down think for a moment what that is and jot that down now by the way if you decide you're not writing you just want to think about it that's fine but you'll come up with better and more ideas if you actually write stuff down what happens next well next what happens is not some detailed plan about your thing next what happens as you play writer producer director and in your mind you go out to the end and you produce a vision of success what is my final ideal scenario and outcome going to be on this in terms of the bear oh I want to be back in my own warm cave with my mate safe and warm in terms of dinner hey be a fun evening good food and wine maybe a signed business deal maybe romance and multiple forms you create a vision first so would you take the next few moments and ask yourself okay what would success mean to me for what I picked here how would you describe and you can you know develop this out later so grab some key words or just thoughts just quickly now jot down what would mean success for you with this event or this thing you picked go this would happen fast I told you now what do you do next well what happens next assuming you want this vision to actually occur is you're gonna have to deal with an image of reality that does not match by your current reality that creates tension in your brain so if you've imagined a reality that's not true yet some part of you goes ah there's a delta there's a gap between where I am and what I want so what your brain does then is try to relieve that pressure and it does it by generating all kinds of ideas potentially useful ideas or potentially relevant ideas about how to get from here to there it does it in somewhat random order by the way no particular logical sequence or wait they just start to show up what might be relevant about this situation in terms of the bear who how BIG's the bear how big how sharp is my spear is there a tree I could run up is it is it angry or isn't hungry in dinner well I guess where we gonna go and what's the weather like and what time would we go and people I'm going with and am I dressed okay so what starts here by the way is a storm that happens in your brain by holding this picture it's called brain storm exactly so what I'd like you to do now is take the next few moments and come up with as many things as you can possibly come up with in just a few moments here little things big things doesn't matter jot down anything that pops to your head so draw a line and just make a huge list or a mindmap or whatever you'd like to do real quick anything that might be potentially relevant about your project or topic against assume you want to have this thing actually occur some part of you is gonna take those somewhat random ideas and start to create a structure you're gonna start to organize them and this is where you're going to bring they're critical logical rational thinking to bear now you're going to evaluate big versus little best what's the best idea what's the first thing I need to do what's the most important thing so usually you will start to structure your data based upon sequences of things or critical components or priorities you know if it's the bear I go whoa okay first of all I'm gonna I need to see how the bear feels I need to see how far that tree is out there and then I'm gonna slowly move that way in terms of dinner well let's see I need to find out if people want to go I need to call my favorite restaurant we need to see if they can take us etc and so that's the kind of structuring we do now we can start to lay that out what I'd like you to do is take the next few moments and just pick the three most important things you think you need to handle or deal with in terms of whatever you've picked here two or three and if you've already written them down circled them or number them just a simple little plan now what do you naturally do and this may be the most important piece of the natural planning model now what you do assuming you want to have something happen is you're gonna take all that thinking and drill it right down into what's the very next thing that needs to happen to move this thing forward what is the very next action that needs to happen on this so in terms of the bear I'm gonna go okay I'm gonna sit still for 10 seconds and I the tree over there in terms of the restaurant I'm gonna call the bistro and see if they can take two of us at 1900 for your thing if you were gonna walk out right after this and the only thing you were going to do is make progress on what you're thinking about and working on right now what's the very next physical visible action you would take is it an email to sin phone call to make conversation to have with your boss something to surf the web about something to buy at the hardware store what is it and it needs to be very specific visual thing I could see you doing so set meeting is not specific enough how would you set the meeting what activity so take a couple of moments decide what the very next action is you would need to take to make forward progress on your thing and write that down so how many of you actually came up with a reasonably trustworthy next action I'm curious okay cool how many of you at least found this a constructive two minutes of thinking you feel a little more on top of your game a little clearer about what your stuff is anyway okay well welcome to the natural planning model now I'm sure the burning question for many of you is David so what here's the so what that's the natural model is this the normal model is this how your wedding reception was planned is this how your off site was managed is this how you launched your product this how your PR campaign was set up what I've discovered is the natural model is not necessarily the normal one what's more normal that I've seen is something that I refer to as the unnatural planning model what's that you ever had a boss or manager or director bring together the team because they're gonna try to be collaborative they bring you all in the room because we're now gonna think together about a problem or a project and they approach this by saying okay who's got a good idea here now where does that automatically you assume that you are in the natural planning model because to know a good idea that's your critical rational logical thinking about what's good better best where's that stage for Stage four in order to make sure you have the right idea or a good idea you need to make sure purpose has been defined that the vision is clear that you've generated all the potential that potentially relevant data that might need to be taken into consideration before you can hope to know what's a good or best idea guess what folks we now have the genetically-modified planning model unnatural and if you try to start that way that's so unnatural people naturally resist and they don't play oftentimes it's passive resistance they just on a team or even for their own selves they do that yeah then what happens is people don't really plan and if you don't really plan what happens Oh trouble it falleth on thy head did you get that I didn't get that I thought that and the conflict and the lack of clarity last minute crises pressure stress no fun right but then people in all integrity say okay well I guess we have to handle the situation and they move into what I've discovered is the reactive planning model what's that first approach let's get busy work harder more people over time then you get busy burned-out stressed-out people at this thing oh hey that is not handling it we need to get organized or reorganized okay and then you have spreadsheets and you know analytical reports sprouting spontaneously out of closed offices somebody at some point realized that a well analyzed problem doesn't handle the problem say well I guess we need some more creative input let's bring everybody together let's have a brainstorming who's got a good idea right that doesn't work so well we must have used up all of our internal creativity dried it up on the last reorder well guess we have to get it from the outside time to hire a consultant that's right and if they're you know worth their salt at some point they're gonna look around and say well excuse me what do you folks trying to do here no wonder we pay this consultant so much money just straighten us out so folks it's not a matter of whether you do the natural model but when and at what cost so why does this happen why do we resist this from my experiences because the greatest human fear is the fear of being out of control and the way that translates on our ordinary day-to-day basis is we really don't want to be wrong or make a mistake we hate that any of you hop out of bed this morning say I can't wait to go be an incompetent jerk today no we can't stand that so we tend to not want to jump into anything we don't feel like we can engage with successfully most people don't trust they know how to plan so let's blame somebody it's not our fault it's mrs. Williams fourth grade for me in the States fourth grades when we learned to write you know topical papers and to write a really successful paper she taught us the first thing we had to do was we had to write an outline the way you do that is title at the top with major headings major subheadings you can't have just one you have to have two and you can't have a little one without a two you can have three not one and under that you're gonna have sub sub sub headings I look at that said Kat looks good looks great looks to me like if I feel about out to begin with should write a great report thanks mrs. Williams for this key so I went home that night to write an essay about my favorite topic frogs sat down and froze I don't think I ever wrote an outline first I just wrote the report hoped it was okay filled in the outline after the fact how many of you ever did that yes welcome to the basic unnatural planning model folks we have got to recondition and decondition that and reframe it it's actually easy to do why folks just know that at anytime because you already know how to do this you can get on top of anything and create a lot more creative space and take a lot of that pressure off and don't worry you're a natural as long as you decide to be thanks for listening [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 606,362

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Id: kOSFxKaqOm4

Length: 17min 48sec (1068 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 28 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/TheProject2501]

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