The Power of Trust: How Authenticity Transforms Leadership, with David Allen
Like it or not, leadership isn’t just about making decisions and getting things done—it’s about how you get things done. Productivity without purpose leads to burnout, while purpose without action leaves potential unfulfilled. What if the secret to stress-free leadership lies in balancing both?
In this episode of Spirituality in Leadership, host Andrew Cohn sits down with David Allen, the mastermind behind Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Together, they explore the intersection of leadership, authenticity, and inner guidance, revealing how GTD principles can help leaders not only manage their workload but also lead with clarity, trust, and intention.
From overcoming overwhelm to embracing the “still small voice” within, this conversation offers powerful insights on how leaders can create an environment of engagement, psychological safety, and true effectiveness. Whether you're a seasoned executive or just starting your leadership journey, this episode will challenge you to rethink productivity—not just as a tool for efficiency but as a pathway to deeper fulfillment and impact.
Ready to transform the way you lead? Tune in now and discover how to integrate stress-free productivity with authentic leadership. Don’t forget to subscribe, share the episode, and let us know your biggest takeaway in the comments!
Key Takeaways
The intersection of spirituality and leadership
How authenticity boosts engagement and trust within teams
The importance of accepting current realities
The balance between personal productivity and collaboration
The role of inner guidance in decision-making
Managing leadership challenges and information overload
Building psychological safety in teams
Clarity of purpose and direction in leadership
Trust, vulnerability, and authenticity in leadership dynamics
Integrating spiritual wisdom with practical productivity strategies
Teaching productivity principles to the next generation
In This Episode:
(00:04) – Welcome and introduction
(00:36) – Meet David Allen
(01:39) – Authenticity in leadership
(02:47) – Embracing the current reality
(03:57) – Tuning into your “still small voice”
(04:51) – Balancing practical and spiritual approaches
(06:01) – Understanding authenticity
(08:11) – The cost of inauthenticity
(09:11) – Developing your authentic self
(10:30) – The significance of embracing the current reality
(12:07) – Managing overwhelm as a leader
(14:29) – Tools vs. authenticity
(15:03) – Encouraging authentic leadership in others
(16:07) – Framework for authentic conversations
(19:17) – The importance of vulnerability and trust
(20:36) – Engagement and leadership
(21:21) – Spirituality’s role in leadership
(21:30) – The power of spirit in leadership decisions
(23:16) – Authenticity and shifting perspectives
(25:48) – Revisiting the “still small voice”
(27:13) – Trusting your inner wisdom
(28:45) – The power of intention in leadership
(29:00) – Drifting vs. intentionality in leadership
(30:38) – Acceptance and cooperation
(31:54) – Efficient use of energy
(32:54) – Completion and creation
(34:55) – GTD for teens
(36:34) – Integration of wisdom
Resources and Links
Spirituality in Leadership Podcast
David Allen
Website: https://gettingthingsdone.com/
LinkedIn: https://nl.linkedin.com/company/david-allen-company
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280
Andrew Cohn
Music:
Kodiak: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4rURKtnJr3jeHvZ0IVRQCe
Listen to the podcast
Watch our podcast episode
Transcript
From your conversation or from your introduction, Andrew? I'd say the key word that pops into my mind is authenticity. Are you real? Are you who you really are? Should be need to be in terms of how you intersect? Can't get any deeper or broader than that,
Andrew Cohn: right? In terms of relationships with people. So then how does one in your experience and develop that authenticity and share it and express it?
Intro: Welcome to the Spirituality in Leadership Podcast, hosted by Andrew Cone. Andrew is a trusted counselor, coach, and consultant who works with leaders and teams to increase productivity and fulfillment in the workplace. If you'd like to connect with Andrew about individual or team coaching leadership workshops or team alignment, please go to www.lighthouseteams.com.
Enjoy the podcast.
Andrew Cohn: In this episode, I speak with David Allen. David is a world renowned consultant and thought leader in the area of personal productivity. His book. Which came out approximately 25 years ago is called Getting Things Done, the Art of Stress-Free Productivity. He's given seminars to tens of thousands, if not more, of people in the working world and also outside of business organizations.
That's how I became aware of his work as well as through some personal connections decades ago, and. David operates in a space that is both very grounded and practical and specific and tactical, but also more spiritual, especially as he's gotten older and has just a remarkable way of connecting things that are both deeper and broader concepts and principles.
With more specific, how can we operate more effectively and more fulfillingly in the world? And this conversation, no exception. To the other conversations I've had with him that really touch upon a bit of both. So we talked about leadership qualities and authenticity really being the key to engage with people.
Are people attracted to you or repelled by you as a leader? Will they follow you? Will they accept the invitation of authenticity that you extend to them? And he talks about the need to understand what are. Current reality is to really understand it and accept it. He talks a bit later in the podcast, especially about acceptance as a core kind of law.
Some people have called it the First Law of Spirit, but this notion of acceptance, can we accept our current reality, understand it, and then unload the things that have our attention so we can relax. And that's largely what his Getting Things Done Methodology is all about, is unloading the things that have our attention and organizing those things.
Our intention. He talks about the need to accept and engage with our current reality openly, and that's really what authenticity is in his view. He talked about that. He talked about maybe what's happening with all of us in his belief system on a spiritual level and how Spirit is really driving. I. All of what's going on here, and as we begin to understand that, then we're not overly concerned about what's happening here on the physical level, but perhaps only in relation to its connection to what's happening on a broader level, which I see says we can't, uh, we can't understand.
We certainly can't control. But he talked about, he used a phrase that I've heard others discuss as well, and this notion of a still small voice within each of us that can help us and protect us. But we have to ask for it. We have to ask for its support, both for big and small decisions. I. That wisdom that's within each of us is ours.
Not to run, not to control, but to pay attention to. And again, the practicality of tuning into that still small voice. So this conversation about perspective and invitation and cooperation, connecting spiritual beliefs.
The notion that we as humans are here for completion and creation as he discusses it in his belief system, which is really beautiful in how the getting things done. Methodology addresses both of these, and we don't need to go into the broader spiritual dimensions that may be running, et cetera. That's really more personal.
But on a practical level, how can we address what's got our attention? And consider what is our direction and our intention as individuals, as leaders, really in all areas of our of our lives. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Welcome back to the Spirituality and Leadership Podcast. I'm Andrew Cohen and I'm really happy to have with me David Allen, an old acquaintance friend, colleague.
You've circled around my life in many ways over the last 35 years or so. So I'm grateful to pin you down at your home in Amsterdam and, um, so grateful to have you with us. I know you've heard a little bit of this podcast before and I'm just grateful to have an opportunity for a conversation with you.
Welcome David.
Yeah, thanks Andrew and, and thanks for the tic.
Andrew Cohn: David is probably best known for the Getting Things Done Technology and bestselling book. His latest book, which we can plug later or now, is called Team Getting Things Done with Others that he wrote with Ed Lamont. And, uh, we may talk about that a little bit, but, uh, we'll see what this conversation.
I'll stop for a second and say I'm sort of torn between which way to go in a conversation with you. I could follow the format of the podcast or I could say, just talk to me, David, you have a sense of what this is about and you do a lot of these podcasts, but I guess what I would say, just to shape this a little bit, is these conversations are about the intersection of these spiritual dimensions of us as people and.
Leadership, particularly in in organizations, but even just leadership in our lives and where are those intersections between these things about us humans that may be called spiritual like purpose and loving and forgiveness and acceptance and leadership in the organizational corporate world. That's what these conversations are often about, and I know that GTD is a lot about, well, you could tell me what it's about, but given all that.
Where should we start? What do you think is important to say given this kind of a setup
from your conversation or from your introduction? Andrew? I'd say the key word that pops into my mind is authenticity. Are you real? Are you who you really are? Should be, need to be in terms of how you, so if you.
It's not about charisma, it's not about, well, yeah, all that's cool stuff. Collaboration, and a lot of leaders have big visions, but then inspire other people to get engaged with that vision to make that happen. But then there's a graveyard of crash and burn of organizations that were built by those leaders.
And so what happened was they didn't have the capability to be able to engage with people appropriately, engage with the people they needed to engage with to make sure stuff happened. But authenticity, boy, come on. You and I could unpack that forever. What's real right now? What's real? How you feeling?
What's going on? So the authenticity, the authenticness of how someone manages other people has a whole lot to do with, with whether those other people are attracted to you or repelled by you. They go, oh, well you're saying da, da, da, but you don't do that. You screw you. And oh.
You wanna come on board, here's who I am, here's who I work, here's what I do. And so I think authenticity is the, is the, probably, at least for now, Andrew, is, that's the key word for me about are you real? Are you real about who you are, where you are, what you're doing, how you communicate, who you communicate to, what you care about, can't get deeper or.
Andrew Cohn: And without that authenticity, the person in charge is heading up the mountain alone, or perhaps
people, well, or they're heading up the mountain and nobody else wants to follow them, right? Because their authenticity said, wow, that's not something we wanna play with. So it doesn't mean that everybody has to follow everybody who's authentic.
It just means that that authentic person needs to set the game out and then let people play as they will.
Andrew Cohn: For me, the operational question that follows is, how does one develop and or share this authenticity? And the other question I have for you, of course, is tell me about how your work has been connected to that over the years.
Because I know that GTD is so much about efficient use of energy, which I think is. Largely about authenticity as well. Am I gonna pay attention to the little task things that don't matter, or the ones that, for example, the ones that connect me with people, but I won't answer anything. I'm gonna shut up and see what you do with that.
Well, you just ask a big question that I, we, we need 20 years to, this is
Andrew Cohn: why we're here. I mean, we, we don't have time for little questions. Your first question was. Gimme a break, remind me. So then how does one in your experience and develop that authenticity and share it and express it? Because of course you don't develop
authenticity.
You are that, or you express that you don't develop that. So have you I, yeah, come on. We all develop each other. We develop ourselves as we grow over all these years. You. I'll be smarter, smarter than I'm right now. So we grow that things happen. Authenticity says, here's where I'm, here's the reality. Here's what the current truth is.
And a lot of my consulting and coaching over the years has been about, well, let's get a grip on current reality. What is it? What's got your attention right now? What's up? What's. How do we now engage with that so that you can get that off your mind and get a clear head about how you move forward in a positive, proactive way.
So yeah, it's like current reality. Go back to the stoics. Fabulous stuff. I just read about the stoics. They weren't about cynicism or constraining yourself. They were like, you need to accept
David Allen: current.
What's going on now? Where do you want to go? So if you can't accept your commitments, everything you've come up with, you'll overcommit. You won't know what you're doing. You're gonna be stressed out by all the things you could possibly could, would, should, maybe, might wanna do, but you don't have that inventory in front of you, and your brain is just a crappy office.
So what I uncovered over all these years was a way to. I have a methodology that allowed you to unload all the stuff that has your attention into some externally trusted format so you could relax as opposed to be wake up at three o'clock in the morning like, oh, I should have,
Andrew Cohn: how dumb is that? And I know from my own personal experience and some people I've worked with, the challenge with that very simple methodology is.
I don't give myself the time to do it. I have to discipline myself to slow down. I mean, it's a little like, you know, we slow down to a line and when we're aligned, we can speed up from a team's point of view, but even individually, I can slow down to evaluate personal inventory, audit internal audits, and then choose what's worth taking action on based on what you're, I think what you're saying is the identification.
Okay, what is the best option? And I gotta be real in order to identify that
I'm 78 Andrew, so I still have to do that. You know, every night when the dogs are asleep and my wife is asleep and I got a good glass of wine, I still have to regroup and recalibrate.
David Allen: Okay, come on David. What's next? What matters you know now,
and how do you allocate yourself in the next 24 40 hours to engage with that appropriately?
I. That's been true. That's true for you. It's true for me, true for anybody ever about how do we engage? What's different now, Andrew, is the speed and volume of inputs that people are allowing into their ecosystems for which they need to look at it, say, oh my God, I need to make some decision about that, or I need to do anything about that,
David Allen: and so they're getting overwhelmed with the inputs.
They're having good to deal with. Hmm.
Andrew Cohn: Well, and I, I harken back to hearing, um, Jean Houston speak once, and she said, talked about the level of stimulation we experienced now versus a hundred years ago, and the level of evolution of our nervous systems and our bodies and our quote unquote abilities to handle all this.
And to her conclusion was, we need to learn to cook on more burners. I love that expression,
but quite frankly, our consciousness has kept up with the technology. Technology. Technology has outstripped our ability to think about how to use it.
Andrew Cohn: Joel, I'm sorry. Our consciousness has not kept up with the technology.
David Allen: No.
Andrew Cohn: Our conscious, our ability to
think about, how do I think about Slack, Evernote team, all this channel creep has now shown into people's world that have things that they might, would, could, should make some decisions about or, or think about, and they. And so they're just letting it all pile up and that's creating a lot of the stress.
Andrew Cohn: Hmm. Right, right. And what I'm hearing as you say that is the, what I observe is sort of this drive to create more tools. And I'm not sure that, I mean, yes, we could always use more, better tools, but that's not, I. Really what it's about? No, I'm slightly biased just because of the work that I've been doing for years, but it's not necessarily about the tools, it's about which tools that surgeon or engineer or archer pickup.
Yeah.
If you're not a
Andrew Cohn: good
carpenter, you don't know how to use a good hammer. If you are a good carpenter, you could take a bad hammer and make it work, right.
Andrew Cohn: Hand me aiv. It's really not gonna be all that good.
Yeah. So from a leadership point of view, 'cause I, again, I just given your experience and what you've seen, I'm just, I'm wondering if you could share a few observations about how we can encourage, invite nudge leaders to be more authentic, if that's the theme, to express that authenticity. Maybe if there are ways to invite that are more helpful, because that's the world that I often operate in and people ask.
What can I do? Especially if I might say, if I'm not the CEO, or actually even if I am the CEO and I need to invite somebody above my head, somebody on the board or, 'cause it's never me who's not being authentic, David. It's the, it's my boss or my wife or my something. So how to enter into that conversation about first modeling and then inviting.
Well, the first thing is, wait a minute, what are trying to authentic. What I think about that, if you don't have that framework of conversation, you know who cares, right? But you need to say, wait a minute, here's where we're going. Or here's, we are a team. We are a team because here's why we are a team.
There's some purpose for being a team. You're only a team because you're trying to accomplish something, right? That you need other people engaged to. You need to say, okay, here's where we're going. Here's what I think we're supposed to do. But guys, I am, I'm toast. I have no idea how to approach this. You know, we just had a major change in the corporation or the company, and I got a new boss.
I don't know what he or she thinks. Like where are we? That's authenticity, right? So do we.
All you have to do is to be, is to accept and engage with current reality like that, which might, might uncomfortable. It might be, I don't know, you know, that might push up against people's comfort zone in terms of their status or whatever, but that's authenticity. Guys. What do we do? You know, I got a good, very good friend, very senior person.
He. In front of all of his staff, staff meeting, here's what's got my attention right now. Here are all my projects. Here's what's going on. And he's just so authentic himself in terms of how I am and where I am right now, so that then he doesn't have to then handhold people in terms of decision making for the next week.
They all know what his priorities are. It's very clear, and that clears the air so
David Allen: well. But for any of us, hi Andrew. Here's who I am. Here's who
you are. What do we wanna do?
David Allen: Right?
What do we need to engage with in order to get us onto the positive game that we think we might wanna play together?
David Allen: Hmm.
It's that simple.
And, but that, hmm. Complex because as soon as you know, you could be clear, I can be clear, but we get together and go, oh wow. Now Andrew, you and I have something we need to do together. Is this yours? Is this mine? What's gonna have, how do I check on what you're doing? How do you need to know what I'm doing?
How do engage together? Then ongoing. That's why aut. It was about, okay, we could all be clear and productive personally, but boy, as soon as you get together with other people, you've exponentially increased the complexity and necessity to then get real. Get real about, okay, how are we? Where are we? What do we need to do?
How do we need to do that? And very few teams are that sophisticated.
Andrew Cohn: As I hear you talking about with that example of authenticity, I'm hearing transparency. I'm willing to be transparent about what I know and what I don't know, what I'm confident about, what I'm not. For example, I'm new. This is a merged team.
We're in a new business, whatever it is. I haven't done this before and I'm willing to share that with you, which is vulnerability of course. So you're building vulnerability based trust, which is, there's a lot written about that, but an openness and a willingness to say, this is where I think we should go.
What do y'all think about the destination? So there's that. What conversation before you even and which is so critical and what I'm hearing is that clarity is so key before you get to the how.
You can
Andrew Cohn: argue with that. Or you may say,
I don't care what you guys wanna do, here's where I'm going. Mm. You hop on the train or not.
Right? So it's not about consensus, right? It's about clarity, about what's driving me. The environment that I'm in right now, so I don't wanna make any, A lot of my stuff is not about making any hard rules about that. Mm-hmm. You need to make sure, wait a minute, here's what's true. Here's what needs to happen in terms of what I'm driving, especially if I own either their relationships or whatever, and then hop on or not.
So sometimes it doesn't need to be necessarily consensual driven, right?
Andrew Cohn: Mm-hmm. Right, right. And it's, you are putting that dot on the wall that says, that's where we're going. People tell me how we're gonna get there. And implicit in what you're talking about is all these other things that are being discussed, you know now about psychological safety and that about inclusion and about the openness to receive new ideas.
I could put that down on what do you.
If you care about where you're going and either people play or they don't, you just need to have good parameters about how people play and how you're engaging with them so they can engage with you positively.
Andrew Cohn: Hmm. How people play and how you're engaging with them. Nice. Yeah, for sure. I think, and it seems to be what.
A lot of the book is about, especially as you talk about the five dimensions of control and the five horizons of focus. Is that what we're talking about here? Is there an opportunity to weave some of that in? What do you think is, that's just true for everybody all the time, so we can talk about it or not.
Doesn't matter if that's going on. Right. So here's where I need to throw in this word. What, if anything, is quote unquote spiritual about what we're talking about? Is this just, it's
all spiritual?
Andrew Cohn: Please say more.
Come on. You know, spirit's driving all of this. Who's pumping your blood? Who's breathing you When you go to sleep at night, there's something that's bigger than you that is driving the engine that you have as a body right now.
So at what level you wanna perceive who's doing that? That's kind of up to you. But that's been what the spiritual, spiritual explorations have always been about, called Who am I? Who is this? What is this thing that's driving this? I've been involved in that kind of work and that exploration and whatever for 50 years.
So I say, yeah, there is a whole lot more reality in the Bible. They say there are many mansions. No kidding. So there's a lot of stuff up there. Other levels that are actually driving in, that are influencing, that are available to you if you wanted to access them. And if you wanna wait till you die to find out that, yeah, fine, you know, you'll do that.
But even then you may find there a lot of levels that you don't are are not ready to a access because you're not involved enough spiritually. To know that
Andrew Cohn: I appreciate the simple way you're laying out the pillars of a belief system like that. I love the simplicity of that. And what's the impact of a belief system like that on, for example, authenticity.
We connect different parts of this conversation. It's like there's, I'm looking at your face here. It's like how do you bring that belief system? How does it impact my ability to be authentic? As a leader, you start to not care about here. So perspective
you only care about here. In relationship to the relationship of here to there and there is not really there.
And there is really here, it's just multiple levels of intuitive, uh, sensitivity. Because you and I are both on multiple levels right now. So when you say authenticity just says, look, relax. If you're dishonest, that's gonna bite you in the butt. If you're not real, then that's gonna be something that has your attention, that will keep you, uh, from being able to access other sub more, much more subtle levels of who you are and how you are.
Hmm. Those things are there. They're always there. The universe doesn't stop when you meditate. It's not like slowing the universe down, it's like slowing yourself down. So you start to pay attention to the subtler things. Those are in me that drive me, that, uh, that I pay attention, that I should pay attention about or that, that I'm engaged in and contracted to.
Whatever you call, it's like, yeah, that's you. And so I don't know if that answered your question, but that's kind of where, where my brain went when you poked me.
Andrew Cohn: No, I appreciate that. And that's, it is an answer. It's also the introduction to a treatise of some kind. But if I were to try to focus this without trying to focus this too much, what I hear is to have a belief system like that as to recognize perhaps what's my, what's my kind of place in all this?
Like I don't really know what's going on, but I know there's something more that's going on. There's a humility that comes with that. An honest, practical humility, both in terms of reducing my chances of being incredibly arrogant and also, you know, willingness to be open, which is that type of authenticity you demonstrated.
That said, I don't know how we're gonna get there. I just know we have to get there, and I sort of recognize my space in the field. I'm not the king and commander. There's a lot more going on. I'm gonna do the best I can. I invite you to do that with me.
Yeah. That's very rich and very healthy.
Andrew Cohn: Hmm. I also hear an invitation to zoom out.
I hear, uh, perspective. I hear balance, like I'm not gonna get wrapped around the axle if we miss this deliverable or whatever it is. Collectively, there may be a price to pay. I'm not gonna run from accountability, but I'm not gonna let it define me. There's something more going on here that's arguably much more important.
Well, my coaching is still. Everyone has a still small voice, loves you, will protect you will do everything it can to help you, but you have to ask it because it will let you then go play and stumble and fall and do all kinds of weird crap, you know? And then when you come back to, oh my God, what am I really doing?
And this little small voice comes back to you, says, well. Here's what you chose, here's the results, whatever. There's a still small voice inside of everyone. I didn't learn that until my thirties. I'll be 79 in a couple months, so I didn't learn until my thirties that there was a still small voice I should pay attention to that said.
Right or wrong. And that's about any small little decision. Should I spend time with my wife at night? Should I, should I go out and take the dogs right now so that I take that off? And the still small voice says yes or no, or oh, that's the best thing to do. So I think we all need to learn to trust. There is a wisdom inside of all of us that comes from, you can call it spirit with a small s or whatever you wanna call it.
This is not yours to run. This is yours to pay attention to. Hmm.
Andrew Cohn: It's yours to cooperate with. Not try to control.
Yeah. Or listen to anyway, and then decide what you wanna do with it. 'cause it doesn't care your choices. It's non-judgment. It says, okay, screw up as many times as you want. Come back as many.
Incarnations of a million if you.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah, man. So what I'm hearing perspective, I'm hearing invitation, I'm hearing cooperation. This is coming up energetically for me. I'm also reminded, yesterday I was listening to a podcast with Rick Hansen and the quote that I wrote down is, the more time that people can clock in simply being, the more resourced they become.
Yeah. So tuning into that still small voice is very practical.
Yeah, very practical. Very practical. You'd be amazed if you could actually stop the world and hop off and sit down. Just be quiet and listen to what's going on and pay attention to that. But you do need to have some level of intention. There needs to be some level of, yeah, I'd love to be more relaxed.
I'd like to have more fun, or I'd like to make sure I make more money. I don't know, whatever it is. So some level of intention. If that's embedded inside of you, then you sit down and relax. Just have pen and paper close by. Hmm.
Andrew Cohn: But say more about that. That intention is needed because without it, it, we can just sort of be drifting, floating.
We need someplace to put our attention, but
that might be okay. If drifting and floating is all you wanna
Andrew Cohn: do, go for it. But if there intention, I'm wondering what we would miss. Why is the intention important? I don't know. It just is.
David Allen: Okay.
Seems to be. I mean, we are intentional beings. You know? My spiritual teacher said God is intention.
David Allen: Hmm.
So basically the fact that you need to go take a crap, the, the need to go handle whatever happens out of this interview, whatever is, that's just built into that the spirit that you are, that you're engaged in this world. Otherwise you wouldn't be engaged with this world. But you incarnated here. You embodied here simply because this is a learning.
Where you put your intention and your energy or whatever's gonna give you feedback, and then you could course correct or whatever. And so you can't stop. You couldn't stop it If you tried, if you said, how do I stop? Then you're gonna try to, how to figure out how to stop. You can't do that. You can't do that.
You an intentional being by the way that you embodied.
David Allen: About that agreeable without it,
you know, that's a very cool thing to do.
Andrew Cohn: Hmm. Yeah. It's cooperating. Yeah. I often think of it in terms of cooperating. Often my intention, if I'm in something that I don't understand, it feels overwhelming, is how can I cooperate with what's happening here? Well, you need to even just to see it, and the first spiritual
law is acceptance.
David Allen: Mm-hmm.
And to accept what's going on. Oh, I'm feeling this, or this is, it's going whatever. You better accept that as opposed to try to deny that. Once you accept it, then you need to cooperate with it. Okay, here's what's going on. Here's how I cooperate with it. Then you need to understand what happened. So acceptance and cooperation and understanding are the three key elements that I've experienced anyway, spiritually.
My own spiritual awareness and
Andrew Cohn: growth. Yeah. So another guest on the podcast talked about that also eloquently, and one of the things that I appreciate about what was shared, I'm curious to know what you think about is that cooperation involves action. So the action precedes the understanding. Well, maybe a cooperation just says, look.
Screw it. So what, I'm gonna open up my hands instead of either keeping them clamped on something or maintaining fists.
David Allen: Yeah.
Andrew Cohn: Right. Mm-hmm.
So, and understanding may, may simply be that's what that is. That's why that was, and I don't need to do anything about. Hmm.
Andrew Cohn: Right. Well, and to recognize I don't need to do anything about that is all about efficient use of energy.
I don't need to waste my energy with that. That's sort of like the prime directive, you know? Acceptance and not wasting my energy in places that don't need to be. Yeah. Which we can do. We talk about that often here when we work with people on the horses here in, in Santa Fe is how our horses can be amazing teachers in efficient use of energy, compare how they move and interact with how the dogs do.
The dogs are masters of wasting energy. That's why there's so much fun to watch very often and watch them do what they do, like a fire hose. And the horses are efficient, their animals of prey. As opposed to the dogs, which plays a role in that. But this notion of efficient use of energy is something we talk about here, and I know that's a critical part of the whole getting things done, methodology.
So there it is. Anything else about this intersection of spirituality and leadership? Just as a softball question in any way? And you could approach it any way you like. Of course.
Well, one of. What I uncovered as what became the GDD, the getting Things done methodology was that we're here for two reasons.
Completion and creation. You create a finish up stuff that you've started,
David Allen: stuff you put in motion and you're here to, then once you're
clear about that, be conscious about what you're creating. So in up something.
You didn't have to understand any of the subtlety about how powerful that is or how subtle or sublime that is. You just need to be, okay, what have I put in motion? How do I need to handle that? And then once I'm clear about, once I'm clear, where do I now put my focus? 'cause
uncover something. I don't know if you'd call it spiritual, I just call it, that's why we're on the planet, Andrew. You wouldn't be here if there weren't things you needed to complete and need to be responsible about creating, frankly, from my experience. So that's what you hear about. So I had, I was, had the grace to uncover and, you know, recognize and, and create an objectified version of it.
Of how do we manage that no matter how, whether you're eight years old or 85 years old, these are all the same principles. Okay? What do you have that has your attention? You know why? What's not free inside of your own head so you can be available to the bigger game and you're here to do.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah, it's one of those simple but not easy until it is kind of principles, but yeah.
Well, I also wonder in what you just said, you could be eight years old. Is there getting things done for kids coming out at some point? No, there's getting things done for
teens that's already out there as a book. Oh, cool. Great. Thank you. I didn't know that. Right. And there's a new, one of the guys who co-wrote that is a teacher in Minneapolis, and so.
He and a good friend of hers have designed a training about training kids from K through 12, basically how to think this way
David Allen: about all this stuff. So yeah, we knew that was the
big, a big opportunity to be able to teach a lot of people because once they're 12, they.
So somewhere between 12 and 22, forget it. It's once they're 22 and have a have a kid, or they get promoted into a whole new level where they never had to manage a whole lot of other stuff. Then they get interested in what I came up with,
Andrew Cohn: right. Well, many people have told me, just recognize that for some period of years your son's gonna tell you don't know anything.
And then at some point he's gonna say, you know, everything. Like, all of a sudden you're a genius. I'm like, well, no, same guy. So we grow. Greatest teacher. Yeah. Cool. Well, I, I definitely will look for that book for, um, for teens and also that training. 'cause I might need to meet that at some level myself and participate in that.
Thank you for this. Thank you for your time. The new book is Team Getting Things Done With Others. The classic book is Getting Things Done, and I appreciate your wisdom. I listened to your podcasts with you and John and others and appreciate them always, and I've always appreciated the way you can just integrate wisdoms and teachings with just getting things done.
To me that's, it's such a beautiful space with which to operate, just to open up and make those connections and that integration. Yeah. Thanks, Andrew. Yeah. Yep. To be with you. And, um, until the next time,
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