{"id":13007,"date":"2015-05-27T13:06:27","date_gmt":"2015-05-27T20:06:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gettingthingsdone.com\/?p=13007"},"modified":"2021-05-23T16:45:43","modified_gmt":"2021-05-23T23:45:43","slug":"podcast-02-david-allen-talks-to-daniel-pink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gettingthingsdone.com\/2015\/05\/podcast-02-david-allen-talks-to-daniel-pink\/","title":{"rendered":"Episode #2 &#8211; David Allen talks to Daniel Pink"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How do we combat information overload? In this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gtdconnect.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">GTD Connect<\/a> preview, David Allen &amp; best-selling author <a href=\"http:\/\/www.danpink.com,%20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Daniel Pink<\/a> (<em>Drive, To Sell Is Human<\/em>) discuss technology&#8217;s impact on our decision making. They cover GTD&#8217;s timeless solution to the current problem, as well as Dan&#8217;s personal GTD setup.<\/p>\n<h2>Listen Now<\/h2>\n<div id=\"video-container\"><iframe style=\"border: none;\" src=\"\/\/html5-player.libsyn.com\/embed\/episode\/id\/3579581\/height\/360\/width\/640\/theme\/standard\/direction\/no\/autoplay\/no\/autonext\/no\/thumbnail\/yes\/preload\/no\/no_addthis\/no\/\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Subscribe or Download<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/getthing-things-done\/id999098861\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">iTunes<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.stitcher.com\/s?fid=66868&amp;refid=stpr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Stitcher<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/gettingthingsdone.libsyn.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Libsyn<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/music\/m\/If5n66lnvvompn4q7yqu4cqxax4?t=Getting_Things_Done\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Google Play Music<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/21mSaFgOhfR7TT8MKxF41n\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Spotify<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/user-697578497\/tracks\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SoundCloud<\/a><\/p>\n<h2>Podcast Transcript<\/h2>\n<p>Note: This is the original transcript from the In Conversation with Dan Pink.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Hi, I\u2019m David Allen, back In Conversation, giving you a window into the world of interesting folks in our GTD\u00ae Network. This time, I\u2019m talking with someone who probably doesn\u2019t need much introduction for those of you who\u2019ve been readers of best selling non-fiction books in the U.S. over the last two decades. Dan Pink is the author of Free Agent Nation, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, A Whole New Mind, Drive, and his new book just released, To Sell is Human. Dan is a brilliant journalist and researcher, as well as a many year avid GTD enthusiast. Listen in.<\/p>\n<p>DA: I\u2019m delighted to be In Conversation now with a person who\u2019s become, I hope I can say it, a good friend, Dan, certainly from my side it is.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Absolutely!<\/p>\n<p>DA: And someone that I was delighted to find out, not only did I discover you as a resource, but discovered that you had discovered me as a resource, way back then. So I love the sort of mutual back scratching that turned out to be. But before I go any further, let me just toss it to you. First of all, Daniel Pink, and by the way, if you have not heard of Daniel Pink then you obviously have been not very engaged in the popular business cool books over the last 5, 6, 8 years. So wake up! But I\u2019m sure most people listening to this know, at least I\u2019ve heard of you Daniel, if not read one or more of your books. But let me back off and let you give everybody, at least a reasonably long paragraph here about who Daniel Pink is, and\u2014you know.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Yeah, let\u2019s see here. So, I was\u2014Can I do like five decades? Almost 50 years in 50 seconds \u2026 want to know some things?<\/p>\n<p>DA: Oh sure. Yeah! Absolutely! Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Alright, so I was born in Wilmington, Delaware. That\u2019s my secret. That\u2019s my one dismal secret here. I was born in Wilmington, Delaware, but I grew up in Columbus, Ohio. I grew up in central Ohio, Columbus, Ohio, Middle America\u2014football on Friday nights, Fourth of July parades, just a total kind of middle\u2014I mean, the American-ness of my upbringing is breathtaking when I look at it from other vantage points. I mean, I played\u2014my entire childhood was about team sports and watching television in the basement and I was very fortunate growing up in Ohio which has always had and continues to have a very strong public library system, public library. So team sports, public libraries and sitcoms I should not have watched, really shaped my childhood.<\/p>\n<p>But fortunately I left central Ohio. I went to college at Northwestern. I was interested in a number of different things and I ended up through a series of quirks, majoring in linguistics, which is a fascinating subject area. It is, to me, the quintessential major for the liberal arts, in that it combines both the fine arts, literature, social science and the hard sciences. So I would go from class to class and some of my classmates would be poets and some of my classmates would be computer scientists. Some of the core courses for linguistics were also the core courses for computer science. Some of them were also the core courses for English and literature majors. So it was a great major. We only have four other people, four other students in my department. So I had almost like a graduate school experience as an undergraduate. I graduated with linguistics\u2019 degree and all the job prospects attached to there too.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Which you could count on half a hand, right?<\/p>\n<p>DP: Yeah! I moved to Washington and worked here, where I\u2019m talking to you now, Washington D.C., where I worked for a little while. I did some traveling overseas and finally, kind of because I was clueless and risk averse, went to law school. I managed to graduate from law school. Really didn\u2019t enjoy it, didn\u2019t do very well, it wasn\u2019t for me. It did, as I told people before, have a dramatic upward swing in my lifetime earning power, because in law school I met my wife, whom you know David. So otherwise, law school was a complete loss for me.<\/p>\n<p>So I graduated from law school and started working politics and that was really what I was most interested in and did a lot of economic policy, worked on campaigns; always very, very interested in economic policy. That was really my, to the extent that I had any kind of formal specialty, that was it. Not so much budget and tax side of economic policy but work force development, trade, technology, those kinds of things were my daily work when I was doing policy stuff.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Wait a minute! How did you flip from linguistics, and sort of the anthropological and literary and all the implications of that to how the world\u2019s working in terms of money and resources?<\/p>\n<p>DP: Well, some of it had to do with having that legal background actually, so I shouldn\u2019t dismiss law school altogether. Also, the other thing, basically the subject matter of linguistics to me is less relevant than the thinking style that it gave you because it actually allowed you to kind of toggle back and forth between, at some level this very literary way of thinking, but also an extraordinarily analytical way of thinking. Certainly, the time that I was studying linguistics was a time where it was really the triumph of almost a computer sciencey approach to understanding language. It was sort of the height of (I don\u2019t want to empty the virtual room here by talking about Noam Chomsky, but it was sort of the apex of the acceptance of Noam Chomsky\u2019s view that there\u2019s a deep structure<\/p>\n<p>of language and that the spoken languages goes through a series of transformations that allows it, individual languages, to be different but that actually are rooted in the deep structure of language which is why computer sciences were interested in it. In any event, it was what I was interested in and what I thought was cool and I\u2019ve always been a reasonably hard worker and I find that, that helped me out a lot in getting smart on stuff. And the other thing was working in politics, particularly campaigns, one reason I liked working on them, and I did really like working on them, is a number of things. First, they are project with a discrete beginning, middle and an end, and they also have an outcome, which is unlike a lot of ventures, and it\u2019s very intense. And there are some really good people who work there. And they also end up being internally very much meritocracies, because the pace is so quick. And that\u2019s basically how I became a speech writer. Somebody needed a speech at some point and I was a fast typist and they turned to me. And I did it and I did it okay and then I did it some more, and then suddenly through no really great desire of my own, I became a speech writer.<\/p>\n<p>So working as a speech writer for a while, here in Washington; worked for a few years for Robert Rice, the labor secretary, then became chief speech writer to vice president Al Gore for a few years in the 1990\u2019s, and then to make this long story \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0longer, I couldn\u2019t take it anymore. I grew really disenchanted, really sick of politics, one of the things that I was most interested in\u2014politics. And I became really disenchanted and I decided to leave and I went out\u2014but I was interested in other things.<\/p>\n<p>I felt like what was really going on interesting in the world was in the realm of business and work and technology and those sorts of things.<\/p>\n<p>And now we\u2019re up to the late, middle 1990\u2019s and it was at the time that Fast Company magazine and Wired magazine were coming out and there was a sense in the business press that things were changing and there was a different way to do this kind of stuff and I ended up just riding that wave a little bit, going out on my own, trying to write my own stuff, and that was 15-1\/2 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Since then I\u2019ve written a bunch of books\u2014not a bunch, five books, and try to make a living understanding the world, explaining it, giving people a new way to look at it and then, as you do David, try to give people one or two ways that they can do it a little bit better.<\/p>\n<p>DA: And give me the five books, one at a time and two sentences about each, just so everybody can frame that.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Book number one: Free Agent Nation, came out in 2001\u2014remains in print to this day, selling tens of copies every year. I can read from my last royalty statement to prove about the tens of copies it sells. That was a book about the rise of people working for themselves.<\/p>\n<p>DA: And that came out of your Fast Company work, right?<\/p>\n<p>DP: It did actually. I was writing a lot for Fast Company and ended up doing a cover story called Free Agent Nation and I realized there was a lot more to it. And that was about people leaving large organizations to work on their own. Then the second book was called, A Whole New Mind. And that book makes an argument about the skills that are necessary in work and a move from left brain, logical, linear, sequential abilities to more right brain, artistic, empathic abilities. So that book came out in 2005. And then I did a smaller book in 2008 called The Adventures of Johnny Bunko. And that was a career guide in the form \u00a0of a graphic novel. I had gone over with my family to Japan to do a fellowship where I studied the manga industry. Manga are Japanese comics. And in Japan, comics are used for everything. They\u2019re not just for kids or freaks and geeks. They\u2019re used as a way to convey ideas in every kind of realm. And so I did a manga style graphic novel business book, the first of its kind in the U.S., called The Adventures of Johnny Bunko; subtitle, The Last Career Guide You\u2019ll Ever Need.<\/p>\n<p>And then I wrote another book called Drive, and that was about the move from\u2014looking at some of the social science, the move from relying on carrot\/stick kinds of motivators to a different set of motivators and really looking at the social science behind why a lot of those carrot and stick motivators fail. And I am about to come out with a new book called To Sell is Human, which is about\u2014wherein I\u2019ve tried to write the first book on sales for people who would never read a book about sales.<\/p>\n<p>DA: And by the way, by the time people hear this, I actually have the book in my hand, so I know it is now\u2014you can say, \u201cThat book is now out!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DP: And that book is wildly successful in bookstores all over North America and the world, I hope.<\/p>\n<p>DA: And \u201cwildly successful\u201d. It\u2019s a fabulous book, by the way.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Thanks.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Yes, it\u2019s super. I have to then intersect here because we had interesting intersections. First of all, my book came out in 2001, and at that time, I was delving into, I was very much involved and engaged around Inc. magazine, and Fast Company magazine, so I knew you were on the radar then. Having read A Whole New Mind, you turned me on to Brian Bomeisler.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Oh, right!<\/p>\n<p>DA: And drawing on the right side of the brain. So Kathryn and I took advantage, Brian is now, I consider him a close friend, so thank you for that. And then Drive, I believe I saw you at, I believe the ASTD convention.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Ah\u2014uh huh.<\/p>\n<p>DA: There was an annual convention in Chicago, I believe it was. And I went, \u201cWow! That is such great stuff!\u201d And so I don\u2019t know how we then finally intersected, but fabulous! And interesting vector about all of that: If you step back a little bit, then what\u2019s the thread, what would you say if you look back and somebody said, \u201cLook, there\u2019s a DNA in all of that that\u2019s very common\u201d. I don\u2019t have the answer to it yet. As I\u2019m thinking about these, it\u2019s as much stylistic in the most positive way I can think of style in terms of how you write, how you think, how you research, how you pull all that together. And as some of the accolades that have been written about you are somehow \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0you make\u2014this is learning that doesn\u2019t feel like learning. So you\u2019re a phenomenal educator at least literarily.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Yeah, is there a thread? You know, it\u2019s an interesting thing about threads. Because I think that a lot of times people find threads or even confect them after the fact. And so for me, it\u2019s so not the case that anything I\u2019ve done is working from some kind of long term plan, to put it mildly, at all. It\u2019s different from that. I think if there is a thread it is that I\u2019m very interested, I\u2019ve always been deeply, deeply interested in work. Why people work, how people work, what they do, why it matters to them, how it\u2019s organized. I\u2019ve always just had a very deep and peculiar interest in that part of life. And it\u2019s an important part of life. It\u2019s a part of life that I think doesn\u2019t get enough attention. We spend half of our waking hours at work, so it becomes this way to look at, in many ways, the human condition, and so all my books ultimately are about work. Beyond that, there\u2019s really not any kind of grand plan. At some level, it was just what I was curious about next.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Uh huh.<\/p>\n<p>DP: And at some level, each book carried me to the next book. For instance, in A Whole New Mind, when I said, \u201cHey, right- brainers are\u2014these right brain skills are really important\u201d, I got emailed from readers saying, \u201cOkay, if you\u2019re right or if you\u2019re more right than wrong, how do we motivate the people to do these kinds of tasks? How do we configure organizations of the people that are motivated to do this?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So I started looking at it and I found that a huge body of research on human motivations and I thought, \u201cWow! This is really interesting! Maybe I\u2019ll write a book about that.\u201d When this book Drive came out saying: These contingent motivators, these \u201cif\/then\u201d motivators didn\u2019t work all that well, I got emails from people saying, \u201cOkay maybe you\u2019re right but what about sales people? What about sales commissions?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And I said, \u201cOh, okay. Hmm good point! And so I started looking at the sales and became absolutely fascinated with sales and that\u2019s what led me to the next one. So, I\u2019m interested in work and, I mean sometimes I\u2019m interested in work and personally I\u2019m interested in doing something that isn\u2019t boring.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Yeah\u2014right!<\/p>\n<p>DP: You know, just doing something that\u2014you know, just basically doing something that I\u2019m curious about. I mean I hate to be so self referential about it, but as I think about it, as I reflect on it, which I, honestly David really, I rarely do, then I reflect on it and it\u2019s like, well I want to do stuff that I\u2019m curious about and write something that, \u201cHey, if that book were out, I\u2019d read it.\u201d And that\u2019s really all that it is. There isn\u2019t any kind of grand\u2014there is no grand plan. And anybody who sees in a grand plan in it after the fact is in some ways just confecting it.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Interesting as you mentioning that though. I was an American cultural history major myself so the whole idea of work, \u00a0you know in my work oftentimes the concept shows up \u201cwork\/life balance\u201d, so when you say, \u201cPeople spend half their waking time at work\u201d, the whole concept of \u201cat work\u201d is actually historically quite a new concept\u2014quite a new event.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Exactly.<\/p>\n<p>DA: You know, the farmers have never thought of work and life as anything different from each other. There\u2019s just what is. And we\u2019re constantly\u2014and my universal definition of work is going, \u201cget something done that you want to get done\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>DA: You know, and that could be cook dinner, put the kids to bed, clean up after the dog, or go build a building. It\u2019s in a way all the same kind of thing, but as I\u2019m thinking about all the stuff you\u2019ve written about, it\u2019s really more about the discretionary world of choosing work and getting people motivated to do things that\u2019s not self evident and driven by the simple survival necessities of life. So it\u2019s almost like all the stuff you\u2019ve written about is because now we have discretionary time if there is such a concept.<\/p>\n<p>DP: You know what? I think that that\u2019s actually really\u2014I think actually that\u2019s a very, very good insight. And it\u2019s a very, very good insight. And I\u2019ve written about this in a number of different ways. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever really nailed it. In Free Agent Nation, I did talk about, as you\u2019re suggesting, especially here in America, that there was\u2014that for a long time, not even in America, for humankind, there was this kind of natural affinity between work and home, between work and family, that they weren\u2019t these two separate domains, and then those domains split apart in say the nineteenth century and now I think \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0at some level they\u2019re fusing back together again and that might be more \u201cnatural\u201d; that is the divide between what is work and what is family, what is work and what is home, what is work and what is leisure, might be this moment in time that could in retrospect look like an aberration. The other thing though that I think you\u2019ve identified is that is, if there is a theme, is that things have gotten better. You know, one of my frustrations\u2014among my frustrations, we don\u2019t have\u2014if you want to do like a telethon for 24 hours we can talk about all my frustrations, but one of my frustrations \u2026<\/p>\n<p>DA: Daniel\u2019s rants. We should do that.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>DP: One of my frustrations is that there is in sort of popular conversation, one is always consider smarter if one is negative and pessimistic, rather than positive and optimistic. And the truth is that the trajectory of this country certainly is a slow and steady progress. Not in one smooth line, but in general the arrow points towards progress. And if you look at the standard \u00a0of living in this country compared to 50 years ago or 100 years ago, it\u2019s breathtaking\u2014I mean breathtaking improvements<\/p>\n<p>in standard of living. And I think that\u2019s affected our lives more profoundly than some of the things that might get the headlines. And this is partly connected to our brains. Our brains\u2014one of the things that gets our attention both in terms of individual behavior and also media coverage is bad news that happens quickly. Okay? Because we need to be attuned to bad news<\/p>\n<p>that happens quickly, so we can get out of a burning building or run passed the saber tooth tiger who suddenly came into our camp.<\/p>\n<p>But, what affects our lives more profoundly I think is good news that happens slowly and that is, in many ways, the history of this country over the last hundred years. Not perfect, we\u2019re always moving toward a more perfect union, but this good news that happens slowly has transformed people\u2019s lives in some very, very profound ways with implications to how they work, so that\u2019s maybe a latent theme.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Maybe that\u2019s your next book?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>DP: You know what? I\u2019ve tried to write about this before. I wrote about it a little bit in A Whole New Mind and I wrote a little bit about in Free Agent Nation \u2026<\/p>\n<p>DP: Yeah, well I\u2019ll tell you, the guy who wrote the book, the best academic account of this is a book by a guy named Robert William Fogel, at the University of Chicago. He\u2019s an economics Nobelist and he wrote a book and I\u2019m spacing out on the title of it. It\u2019s a popular book it\u2019s called The Fourth Grade Awakening. It came out about ten years ago. And it\u2019s essentially saying, \u201cHey, you know, things have gotten pretty good and it\u2019s changed our lives.\u201d But there\u2019s always more to do.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Well I think you\u2019re up against something probably deep and primal, which is the evil eye. Like, \u201cOh if I say anything good, I will hex the whole situation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DP: Yeah, I think that\u2019s part of it. I also think part of it is that people who are self proclaimed smart people are very good at deconstructing things rather than constructing things. They\u2019re very good at deductive reasoning, maybe less good at inductive reasoning, and so, if you come up with something that is more true than not but isn\u2019t airtight people are going to always try to take you down. But there is this bias, I don\u2019t know where it comes from, I think there\u2019s even research on this, showing \u00a0that if you\u2014I remember looking at this paper, I can\u2019t remember which journal, but the paper basically said they had a review of a movie and one review was a very negative review and one review was a very positive review and then they had the participants in this experiment assess the intelligence of the two reviewers and uniformly people said, \u201cOh the negative reviewer is more intelligent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DA: And this may speak to your new book, which I would love to get into, because the \u201cta da\u2014salesman\u201d, the buck shoe\u2014 whatever is always so super positive that you\u2019re going to love this car\u2014as opposed to \u201cNow wait a minute, you\u2019re not going like this and this is probably not for you\u201d, in which case you\u2019re probably going to want it! Fascinating about that One other thing before I lose the thought on it too because when people come\u2014when I get interviewed, a common question is: \u201cGee David, what about this 24\/7 lifestyle that we\u2019re all in right now?\u201d And I go, \u201cSo? When did you not have a 24\/7 lifestyle?\u201d And of course they\u2019re talking about all the electronics and everybody is always on, always wired and always connected.<\/p>\n<p>But I think to your point that we may be coming back around to a much more natural state. That\u2019s why kids are texting and on phones and on the text stuff. It\u2019s a very natural\u2014it\u2019s the closest thing to nature you could be in, in terms of horizons and interests and variability and stuff that\u2019s not particularly dangerous, but kind of fun and changing, and organic.<\/p>\n<p>DP: I just don\u2019t\u2014I find these lamentations about, \u201cOh the always on\u2026\u201d I guess I should be more empathetic towards it. It even reminds of that old joke where a guy goes into a doctor and he says, \u201cDoctor it hurts when I do this.\u201d And the doctor says, \u201cDon\u2019t do that.\u201d You know? All these devices have an off button. So you can put on an auto-responder. I just don\u2019t have a huge amount of tolerance for that. And I also don\u2019t think\u2014and you know the other real test for that is when the people who complain about being always on, when they can\u2019t get a cell phone connection or when you take away their phone, they start going into delirium tremens. So people have to figure out what their\u2014people have to figure out how to use these tools. But for me, as you know, I\u2019ve been a GTD devotee for a very, very long time. I mean GTD has been helpful on that, particularly in not getting too caught up in the tools but really getting understanding in, \u201cOkay, what\u2019s the next action? What\u2019s the desired outcome, and what\u2019s the next action?\u201d And the tools end up being extremely helpful in figuring out those two things.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Well it\u2019s interesting Dan because people often say, \u201cWell gee, you never get to leave work.\u201d And I go, \u201cHave you ever been a writer? Have you ever been an artist? When do you get off? When do you get to leave work?\u201d When does work stop for you, relative to\u2014how many things could you write or think about? How much more value could you add. So I think, maybe to the point there that maybe you bring that up, if we kind of combined on the right side of the brain and the kind of new world that we\u2019re in where there is no time, or it\u2019s all time, or we\u2019re sort of in the experience now on a moment to moment, minute to minute basis. You don\u2019t get a chance to go, \u201cOkay now I\u2019m going to be productive and conscious in my life and then I\u2019m going to go unconscious\u201d; unless of course, you do.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Yeah, no I mean, that was my answer. It\u2019s like\u2014I mean that was really when you said, \u201cWhen are you not working?\u201d I said, \u201cOkay\u2014now let me just\u2014when I pass out or something!\u201d You know, that\u2019s what \u2026 And the big problem, the big challenge at least, which we alluded to later is that we\u2019ve often thought in economic terms that work is a disutility. It\u2019s something you do in order to get enough money to have leisure. But I think, for a lot of us, not everybody, work itself is a utility. We like\u2014we\u2019re not going to like every second of it, but we kind of like some of it. It\u2019s challenging, interesting, it\u2019s meaningful to us. And so, if it\u2019s a utility rather than a disutility, it\u2019s something you seek, not try to avoid. And so for me, given\u2014and it may be partly unique to what I do, if I am at dinner with somebody or having dinner with my family or going out for a run, or\u2014I don\u2019t know\u2014whatever, and I come up with an idea for an article, or \u201cHey, this might make a good book\u201d, and I write it down in a little notebook that I carry with me (not one of your notebooks, but another kind of notebook)\u2014that\u2019s a good thing! I don\u2019t say, \u201cOh the oppression of 24\/7!\u201d I say, \u201cOh man, I\u2019m psyched! I came up with an idea!\u201d You know?<\/p>\n<p>DA: Right.<\/p>\n<p>DP: So, you know, I just think it\u2019s a different\u2014we\u2019re biased in that if we take\u2014they\u2019re certain things that we take, if we\u2019re born into certain ways of doing things. If certain things exist prior to us, we think that somehow it\u2019s the norm or somehow natural. When in fact, it\u2019s just the way things were when you were born. And so, when we\u2019re born, when we were born, there was this kind of Chinese wall between work and home and work and family, and there\u2019s nothing natural about that. There\u2019s nothing that\u2019s really good about that. And the fact that, that wall is falling down, isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing. In fact it can be a good thing.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Yeah, the reason, you\u2019re right\u2014the nineteenth century is when we started to split them because as soon as the breadwinner went away to win the bread (from home), and they came home at the end of the night and they\u2019re wasted because they\u2019re tired from working all day somewhere else, and whoever\u2014the homemaker has been there and they\u2019re wasted and burned out, and how much energy do they have to update each other. I don\u2019t think so!<\/p>\n<p>DP: Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n<p>DA: So then there became kind of the split both personally, as well as family-wise, about all of that simply because there was not this integration of life and work, but maybe the virtual world is producing (maybe I\u2019m just repeating ourselves right now), but the virtual world seems to be making that much more on. And of course, the new generation of kids, at least the millennials (we don\u2019t know what the new generation is yet) \u2026<\/p>\n<p>DP: Right.<\/p>\n<p>DA: But at least given the millennials of people that are studying those, they\u2019re basic idea was one of our In Conversations recently with Deb Smith-Hemphill, who\u2019s an expert in generational psychology and behaviors and the millennials, they produce just as much work, but they\u2019ll do it at 3:00 in the morning and then go out for a run, and then do emails in the afternoon, and then work at the computer at night. It\u2019s called, \u201cDon\u2019t fence me in!\u201d And work has got to be fun and fun has to be meaningful. So it\u2019s becoming much more of an integrated life and lifestyle.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Right. Right. The other thing is that we, I mean again, we tend to extrapolate from industrial notions of work, where you have to be physically present at a work place to get something done, where there is this perfect\u2014not perfect but a very tight alignment between time devoted and output, whereas, today, both of those things don\u2019t make sense anymore, but I think our vocabulary and our metric haven\u2019t quite caught up to that.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Cool. Okay\u2014let\u2019s shift gears here because all the people listening to this, in our GTD Connect universe out there and they love to hear, just to hear the productivity side of the game, so interesting \u2026<\/p>\n<p>DP: Right.<\/p>\n<p>DA: A guy who\u2019s been studying work from the high level and a long term view level, and an interesting, very cool level, bring it down to how did you come across me or GTD? What was your\u2014how did it impact you? What did you think about it? What surprised you about it? Anything\u2014any and all of that would be rich stuff for people to hear.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Alright! So, Fast Company did a story about you in what\u20141997, 98? Something like that?<\/p>\n<p>DA: Yeah, they did a one-pager and then Keith Henman did a several pager.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Yeah, but the first piece was maybe 1997 and 1998, and what\u2019s curious about that is that right around the time that piece came out, maybe a little bit before it, I had a friend who had gone to one of your seminars. I don\u2019t know how many seminars you were doing at that time, but she had gone to one of your seminars, either in New York or Chicago, in any event, and she said it was\u2014she was just going crazy. She said it was amazing. I said, \u201cYeah right, just what I need. I need some schmoe to tell me like how to be more productive. It sounds like\u2014you know, I\u2019m not sold on this. And she said, \u201cNo I\u2019m serious. This is different.\u201d And I kept coming back, because like in any kind of realm there are all of these kinds of charlatans and shysters and certainly in the realm of personal productivity, there are folks who are pedaling kind of\u2014I don\u2019t want to call them shysters, but it\u2019s not that well founded, it\u2019s not that interesting. And she said, \u201cNo, no, no! This is different, this is different. This is different, seriously Dan, this is different.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And so I got the\u2014I did end up getting the cassette tapes. This must have been about\u2014well, back when we used cassette tapes. But this must have been about 98, 97 or 98, but right around the time the story came out. And I listened to all the tapes. I still have them on cassette tapes, and in fact I should tell your listeners you were over here at Pink Inc, World Headquarters, and I showed you those cassette tapes and my daughter who is now 14, looked at those and literally, not joking around said, \u201cWhat are those?\u201d She had never seen a cassette tape. So I listened to those tapes and somehow I became a convert. I really did. I went out and bought a labeler. People think it\u2019s silly, but I still have the same labeler that I bought then because I don\u2019t think any other labeler since is adequate to the task. And so, I\u2019m now like searching e-bay for used labelers because I only want one kind of labeler. So I started using the labeler. I converted it to\u2014I mean I really did. I\u2019m not quite orthodox on this, but I\u2019m fairly observant, so what helped me were labels. In-boxes helped me a huge amount. I can\u2019t tell you how much this notion of the in-box helped a lot because part of the time I was working on the third floor of our house, so there would be a kind of business stuff in the \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0main part of the house and my work stuff upstairs and so the in-boxes helped really clear that away and make that more efficient.<\/p>\n<p>The two-minute rule where if you can get something done in two minutes, do it right away\u2014was a total game-changer and I\u2019ve become basically an evangelist of that to everybody who I know. And so I became kind of a GTD devotee. This is now \u00a015 years ago or so. And if you look at my\u2014I mean, I sort of have some of the trappings of GTDness here because I have these beautifully labeled file folders and I have\u2014I mean, I\u2019m totally not making this up listeners, but truly as David and I are talking, one of the things I have, I have a very short little post-it of the main things that I wanted to do today and one of them, truly, I wish I could take a picture\u2014I should take a picture. It says, \u201cWeekly Review\u201d, so today is the day that I\u2019m doing my weekly review. I found that the idea of dividing things into desired outcome and next action was very, very\u2014really, really helpful to me. I hadn\u2019t thought about it that way and the other breakthrough for me on that was\u2014sometimes the next action is waiting for something. If you look at my weekly review, there\u2019s a lot of \u201cwaiting for\u201d and that\u2019s just\u2014again, I\u2019m preaching to the same here, but that just offloads that concern from your brain to a piece of paper and I can just, \u201cOh yeah, I\u2019m waiting for that. I don\u2019t have to think about that anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DA: And are you high tech or low tech in terms of how you keep track of that? You\u2019ve got those on digital lists somewhere, or you keep it in folders or notebooks, or what?<\/p>\n<p>DP: What, the weekly review?<\/p>\n<p>DA: Any of the lists, any of that stuff.<\/p>\n<p>DP: I\u2019m actually, it\u2019s interesting, I\u2019m actually fairly\u2014I\u2019m a mix, but not particularly high tech. I have my weekly review as a Word document, basically a table where I have\u2014here, I\u2019ll pull it up here. Let me just see here. And like all GTD people, it\u2019s like I love talking about this stuff. Hold on. Let me\u2014I got to\u2014what I have here is basically, I created a table in Word and it has\u2014it\u2019s like a grid and it has three columns and then gazillions of rows and the column is Project, the left column, middle column is Next Action, third column is Desired Outcome.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Cool.<\/p>\n<p>DP: And so, and I do that. And I will\u2014I\u2019ll sometimes\u2014I\u2019ll mostly do it on my computer, but\u2014and then I\u2019ll look for those\u2014this is, I\u2019ll look at that and then try to fashion a sort of a daily list, it\u2019s actually a much more conventional kind of To Do list.<\/p>\n<p>And then, let\u2019s see what else I have. Oh yeah! Oh my gosh! This is a total\u2014I love this. I just think it\u2019s fun, is the Someday Maybe list, which is really, really useful and I have\u2014I think it\u2019s pretty much the same one for maybe ten years. Not the same list. What I\u2019ll do is I go back to it periodically, add stuff, take stuff away, and in fact, a lot of my book ideas are on Someday Maybe lists.<\/p>\n<p>DA: I was going to ask you about that because when I talk to authors or people who, for whom writing and research is a lot of their work and their thought process, curious about how you do that. You get an idea\u2014are these scraps of paper in file folders based upon topics, are these\u2014have you digitalized that so you can sort of search it?<\/p>\n<p>DP: Yeah, on ideas for books and articles and things like that?<\/p>\n<p>DA: Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Well again, I mean I hate to\u2014I mean, I sort of feel like this is one of those televangelist hours where I\u2019m coming up the stage and I\u2019m testifying and witnessing to the glory of God here.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Now you can see Daniel. Now you can see!<\/p>\n<p>DP: Yeah, I was blind and now I see. No, but seriously, I mean\u2014I mean\u2014I really\u2014I mean\u2014I want to like invite your listeners here to say, \u201cLook! Look! Look at this stuff! Look what I have here!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So what I do, so I carry around\u2014a lot of writers do this and you ____ it too. I carry around a notebook and it\u2019s a small notebook. I have a fur kind of notebook that I carry around. It\u2019s not a moleskin, it\u2019s something called Field Notes, from a company, a really cool little company in Chicago, and they\u2019re 48 page notebooks that fit really nicely in shirt pocket and what not, and what I will do is if I have an idea or if I turn a phrase even, I will write it down in the notebook and then what I\u2019ll do is I\u2019ll tear the pages out of the notebook and put it in my in-box. And when I process my in-box, that\u2019s how I start dealing with things. Now, for particular ideas I do two things. Number one is that I have a folder right here, with the very inventive name of Ideas\u2014 actually it says, \u201cIdeas, Misc.\u201d for miscellaneous.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Right.<\/p>\n<p>DP: It says, \u201cIdeas, Misc.\u201d And so what I\u2019ll do there is, if you look at this folder, we\u2019ll go here in real time, so I\u2019ll pull it out right here, okay? So what I\u2019ve got right here is\u2014Okay, so I got a few newspaper clips, a few article clippings. Oh, so here\u2019s a note. Okay, so here we go. This is, oh yeah\u2014okay. So here I am at the\u2014God that was a good day! Okay, so I was at the Gateway Conference Center in St. Louis, apparently, because there\u2019s a piece of notepaper from there and I had two ideas in that (that\u2019s rare for me)\u2014two ideas in one setting. And I just wrote those ideas on\u2014one of them is for different\u2014it\u2019s a long story (I won\u2019t explain them all). So I put those in there. I\u2019ve got a few more newspaper clips, a couple of more articles, a couple of ads that I\u2019d seen, and again\u2014oh here we go, some torn up pieces of paper. So I have that and I also have electronically, I have a file \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0in my email file called Ideas, because I\u2019m a really creative guy, and that one, when I see something online, I\u2019ll stick it in there, and that has\u2014there are a couple of items, subfolders in there that have\u2014there are a couple of books that I might be more interested in than others and I\u2019ll even file them within those particular subfolders there.<\/p>\n<p>DA: And do you review them just ad hoc or when the mood strikes you, or do you have some sort of consistency with \u2026<\/p>\n<p>DP: It\u2019s not that consistent. What I\u2019ll do is\u2014I will review them at various junctures and so\u2014because my life tends to be very project based, so I\u2019ll have a book and I\u2019ll be working and I\u2019m a terrible, terrible, terrible multitasker. So I\u2019ll focus\u2014I\u2019m very much a serial processer rather than a parallel processer. It\u2019s hard for me to work on two important projects at the same time. Call it the way my brain is wired or call it a character flaw or whatever.<\/p>\n<p>So what I\u2019ll do is I\u2019ll devote huge\u2014basically almost all of my attention to a particular project and then when the particular project wraps, those kinds of junctures are when I\u2019ll go to my physical idea file, go to my electronic idea file and go to my Someday Maybe list.<\/p>\n<p>Now, what\u2019s interesting\u2014let me give you another thing here. So, now I also did some GTD coaching, because earlier this year with Meg [Edwards], and I needed kind of a booster shot, because I was really not making a lot of progress on my book and<\/p>\n<p>I was getting very much distracted by a whole bunch of different things and so I needed a booster shot which Meg gave me over a few weeks, but one of the things that she gave me, which I thought was really interesting was a sort\u2014I guess a first cousin of the Someday Maybe list that she called an Incubation list.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Right.<\/p>\n<p>DP: That is, there were things in the course of working on this project, this latest book project, that were kind of maybe shorter time horizons than a Someday Maybe list\u2026<\/p>\n<p>DA: Uh huh.<\/p>\n<p>DP: \u2026but, not anything I could deal with right now and so one way to offload them was by putting it on the Incubation list. And in fact, my wife and I\u2014I mean, I sort of did &#8211; I sound like a crazy man here, but my wife and I actually reviewed the Incubation list a couple weeks ago because it was things that I couldn\u2019t deal with at the moment, but that had some amount of interest in the short term, and so we\u2014I just pulled out my Incubation list and we went over that.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Cool. By the way, that\u2019s very much when Kathryn, my wife and I, got\u2014bought a house that was,\u2014 one of those, you know, with a lot of potential. One of those!<\/p>\n<p>DP: Yeah, yeah, yeah!<\/p>\n<p>DA: When you first move into those places the volume of projects, just doing a site walk around is so totally overwhelming, we had to make an Around the House projects list like that. So it\u2019s exactly the same kind of thing called\u2014if you don\u2019t have either the money or the time or the band width to do it, but we will do it kind of in queue. So it\u2019s actually a great category.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Yeah\u2014the things were different from, just for those of your listeners who haven\u2019t done that, they\u2019re different from the Someday Maybe lists.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>DP: They are. They\u2019re things that needed to get done, that you could execute a little bit faster. So there were things like certain exhibits that I knew, there were a couple of art exhibits that I knew would be around only for a year, or for 8 or 9 months or so, and so I knew I wasn\u2019t going to see them while I was working on the book, but I wanted to make sure that I didn\u2019t forget that they existed, so when the book was done, I would look at the incubation list and say, \u201cHey, what\u2019s on our list now? We got to go see that Lichtenstein exhibit at the National Gallery before it leaves!\u201d Boom\u2014get that done!<\/p>\n<p>DA: Oh, I remember that one. My books, when I finally, the final manuscript was turned in and suddenly how many new projects I went and grabbed\u2014to the same effect.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Right! I think the other thing that is interesting about the Someday Maybe list, at least for me, is how your\u2014I guess how your life changes, or how your interests change. So there would be things that I think, or just how your perspective changes \u00a0or maybe you get smarter or more mature, so there were things that I would put, say on my Someday Maybe lists, maybe potential book ideas or whatever and I\u2019d go back and look at it periodically. And I look at my Someday Maybe list maybe three times a year. I\u2019ll occasionally go back to those things and say, \u201cOh my God! That is the worst idea I\u2019ve ever heard!\u201d And I almost want to delete it so no one ever sees it, but at the time that I put it on there it seems like the most awesome thing in the world. So\u2014it\u2019s a good\u2014I like the exercise\u2014I like the Someday Maybe list because it allows you, in some ways, to revisit your previous self. That is, it allows you to see: What was I thinking then? How have my interests changed?<\/p>\n<p>And one of the things that I\u2019ve noticed in some of the ideas for books and what not, is that they more and more have a kind of a personal component to them. The trajectory is a little bit away from grandiose economic theories, more toward the unit of one.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Well, to that point, let me ask you something Dan. I\u2019d be curious, you know, I have sometimes described GTD and my work and my research and fumbling around with all this stuff for 30 years is really uncovering the art of work itself and thinking of work itself as an art and craft. Because nobody really things about how they work, they just work.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Yeah!<\/p>\n<p>DA: They may think about what their work is.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>DA: But they don\u2019t think about work itself as an art and craft. And I\u2019ve always thought about that\u2019s something that the late great Peter Drucker would say, \u201cDefining your work is your most important work. And so, the art of work has a lot to do with: How do I define what it is, and all the different shelves of agreements I have. That goes on that shelf and that goes on that shelf and that goes on that shelf. So, interesting because you\u2019ve got sort of a larger or longer perspective in the same way that I have about work, you said that was your interest. So I\u2019m curious, how do you see those things tied together? I mean to your point that a lot of what you\u2019ve been addressing has been a lot about how we as individuals engage with what we call our professional world out there.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Yeah, yeah\u2014I think what\u2019s interesting, I mean I think it\u2019s an interesting\u2014I think it\u2019s an interesting insight. One of the things that I saw\u2014I mean I saw this in my first book Free Agent Nation, where I basically thought I was writing a book about economics and how the ____ forces of information age capital were tossing people to the periphery and then we I actually started doing the work and researching it and talking to people, I realized that it had a lot to do with psychology, it had a lot to do with aspirations, it had a lot to do with these things that we often derive as soft, values, aspirations, feelings. And it seems like that there is this\u2014that work today is in some ways a confluence of these more humanistic thoughts and values along with the hardheaded side and at some level the hardheaded stuff is easier to write about. It\u2019s a little bit more comfortable. You can take a certain distance to it, but I think it would be really interesting to do something that really matters and to do something that\u2019s relevant to people\u2019s lives, you do have to go to that personal element and it goes to what you were saying earlier: It\u2019s very hard to disentangle the professional and the personal. I think for a lot of us it\u2019s all bound up in one.<\/p>\n<p>And what\u2019s interesting about that is that our mutual friends Alan Weber and Bill Taylor who are the founders of Fast Company, they put that\u2014one of their\u2014their credo which went on the cover of the first issue of that magazine nearly 20 years ago (which is kind of remarkable) is: Work is personal. That was one of those: Knowledge is power, is one thing that they said.<\/p>\n<p>Computing is social (little did they know); and work is personal. And I think those insights ended up being really powerful, that work is personal for people. And there\u2019s a reason, there\u2019s something\u2014there\u2019s a reason, I mean if you think about personal productivity, I think one of the things that you helped people understand is the personal side of personal productivity.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Uh.<\/p>\n<p>DP: That\u2014it isn\u2019t a task of industrial engineering, it\u2019s actually\u2014there\u2019s a personal side to it and it has to do with: What do you care about? What matters to you? What are your values? What are your priorities?<\/p>\n<p>DA: Yeah. Well, speaking of you trying to sell books and me trying to sell people on GTD, let\u2019s talk about To Sell is Human.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Alright! Cool!<\/p>\n<p>DA: Because I remember when you were just formulating your initial ideas about this book, I think we had dinner back then too, and you were talking about, selling. And I\u2019m one of those people, those pinging you called, \u201cHow do we work this sales model and compensation models?\u201d And things like that. We were going through: How do we restructure my company so it\u2019s more self organizing and sort of aligned with the way we think work should happen? You know, big question mark most people had was: How do you manage sales people? Are they a different breed than the rest of the people in our company? So give folks a pitch or at least just a quick condensation, I guess, of what you discovered in all of that. I think its great stuff.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Well, a few things. I mean I guess, and you\u2019re right, what got me into this was the work on this\u2014this book Drive, \u00a0which talks about the poverty of some of these carrot and stick motivators and people said, \u201cOkay, what about sales? Sales people are coin operated, they run by commission. If you don\u2019t give them a commission, they\u2019re not going to do anything.\u201d And strangely, I started hearing from companies, all over the world, literally all over the world, saying, \u201cHey we eliminated commissions for sales people and saw sales go up\u201d, which was a complete world-crusher. What? How did that work?<\/p>\n<p>And so I got interested in this topic of sales and I started looking at it, I mean I\u2019m a fairly\u2014my default mode is very analytical and I\u2019ve kind of learned to work the other side a little bit, but my default mode is analysis. So I started looking at some of the numbers and we had this belief, that when you see it out there all the time, \u201cOh, sales people are being disintermediated.\u201d We don\u2019t need them anymore because of the internet.<\/p>\n<p>And if you look at the numbers, that turns out not to be true. In 2000, there were 1 in 9 American workers who worked in sales. That is, their job was to convince other people to buy stuff, to make a purchase.<\/p>\n<p>Now, 2013, you look at the numbers and this is after a decade plus of wide spread broad band, smart phones, tablets, social media, Twitter, Facebook, I mean all of these disintermediating technologies. In 2000 1 in 9 American workers were in sales, today, 1 in 9 American workers are in sales.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Wow.<\/p>\n<p>DP: So, it hasn\u2019t had that effect. There are still plenty of people out there pushing products and services.<\/p>\n<p>But I think the other interesting thing that\u2019s gone out there and it goes to some of what we were talking about earlier, is that if you look at the nature of what white collar workers actually do each day, a huge portion of it is a form of sales. They\u2019re \u00a0not cranking out widgets. They\u2019re not even processing paper. What they\u2019re doing is they\u2019re persuading, convincing, cajoling,<\/p>\n<p>they\u2019re doing this thing that I call non-sales selling, which is essentially persuading people to make an exchange, to part with resources, but in a way the cash register doesn\u2019t ring. And for this book, again, my default mode being analysis, I went out and did some fairly extensive survey research and we asked 7,000 adult full time workers in the U.S.: What portion of your time is spent trying to convince other people to part with resources? That was a version of the question, and we came back with 40%. We found people spending 40% of their time in this thing called non-sales selling; that\u2019s 24 minutes of every hour.<\/p>\n<p>And so the big catalyst, sort of the animating idea here is that 1 out of 9 people are in sales\/sales and 8 out of 9 people are \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0in non-sales selling, meaning that like it or not we\u2019re all in sales now. And I think that\u2019s a big change in the nature of work and what it leads to though when you tell people, \u201cHey! We\u2019re all in sales now\u201d, is 19 times out of 20, people say, \u201cOh God! You\u2019ve got to be kidding! This is horrible!\u201d Because we hate sales and we think of sales of sleazy and cheesy.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Yeah and if you think everybody\u2019s in sales, you see all these people out there in checkered pants pushing each other around.<\/p>\n<p>DP: And you know what so funny about that \u2026<\/p>\n<p>DA: And it\u2019s not rude for everybody to push everybody around.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Right! But what\u2019s interesting about that\u2014I mean you said \u201ccheckered pants\u201d and it\u2019s actually\u2014there\u2019s \u2026 Let me focus on that here for a second. Among the research that we did, again asking 7,000 adult full time workers these questions, because I wanted to come out\u2014I had this notion that we\u2019re moving more towards\u2014we\u2019re all in sales now but everybody hates sales.<\/p>\n<p>I sort of had that as my hypothesis. And the thing is if you\u2019re a writer, you can go out and find the sources to support any hypothesis, but I said, \u201cOkay, I want something more analytic here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Again, so we did this massive survey research and among the questions that I ask, one of the questions that I asked were: \u201cWhen you think of sales or selling, what\u2019s the first word that comes to mind?\u201d And what we got there, when you look at the adjectives, the top adjectives people used were all these pushing, sleazy slimy terrible words like that.<\/p>\n<p>But then the other interesting thing which I tossed in there almost as a throw away question, but ended up being very revealing was this: I said, \u201cWhen you think of sales or selling, what\u2019s the first picture that comes to mind?\u201d And uniformly, it was: \u201cMan \u00a0in a suit selling a car.\u201d Some people even mentioned plaid sport coat, checkered pants. I mean, truly, literally! We have this old fashioned notion of sales. Do you remember from WKRP in Cincinnati, the radio ad salesman, Herb Tarlek view of sales.<\/p>\n<p>And my view is that idea of sales as slick and slimy and sleazy tells us more about the conditions in which sales have long taken place, rather than about sales itself. And the idea there is that most of what we\u2019ve known about sales and mostly\u2014 a lot of sales training until very, very recently was for a world of information asymmetry. The seller always had more information than the buyer. When the seller has more information than the buyer, the seller can rip you off. This is why we have this principal, to some extent in law, to a larger extent in life, of caveat emptor, buyer beware, when the seller knows more. So you go 20 years ago to buy a Chevy, the Chevy dealer knows a lot more about cars than you\u2019ll ever know.<\/p>\n<p>Today, that information asymmetry is disappearing. That is, buyers can know as much as sellers in many cases. Cars are a great example of it. I can go into a Chevy dealership\u2014my mother can go into a Chevy dealership and know just as much about cars as that Chevy dealer. She can go in with the factory invoice price of the car.<\/p>\n<p>So when you have this world, not of information asymmetry, but of information parity, along with the fact that people have lots of options and the fact that they can talk back, caveat emptor or buyer beware is still good advice, but it\u2019s been accompanied now by caveat venditor or seller beware. That when buyers have just as much information as sellers, and lots of options and \u00a0the means to talk back, the sellers are on notice now too. What\u2019s that\u2019s doing is pushing people to the high road and if we\u2019re \u00a0all in sales and sales isn\u2019t what it used to be, what I try to do then is figure out: Okay, what does it mean? What do we have to get good at? What do we have to be able to do? And identify some personal qualities and some particular skills, once again rooted in the social science in how we can do better in all respects.<\/p>\n<p>DA: And probably there will be\u2014as I was reading the book, I sort of recognized, people have often said, \u201cGee David, I get around you and I just want to go do GTD.\u201d And I go, \u201cI don\u2019t sell.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DP: Right!<\/p>\n<p>DA: But it is the new selling\u2014is a not sale selling.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Well yeah, and the other thing about it is, is that there\u2019s a much greater premium. See, in the world of information parity, there\u2019s a much greater premium on genuine expertise. Not knowing a little bit more than your utterly clueless buyer, but actually having some expertise, being able to take a welter of information and make sense of it. And there has been this idea and almost every good sales person has refuted this. There\u2019s this notion, \u201cOh, look at Fred! He\u2019s a great salesman. He can sell anything. He can sell Winnebagos, he can sell computer systems, he can sell tickets to\u2014he can sell artisanal pickles at the Farmer\u2019s Market, and what people were telling me over and over and over again, \u201cNo, no, no, no, no\u2014not today.\u201d You actually haveto know a lot and you actually have to care. And that having some expertise and having some conviction about something has become not quite mandatory, but close to mandatory today, and what that does is that sense of enthusiasm, that sense of conviction, that sense of genuine interest actually is winning, but it is not a kind of clap somebody on the back and say, \u201cWhat can I do to put you in a Buick this afternoon?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DA: Cool stuff. Daniel, what else, folks who may not be sort of tapped into you as resource in terms of committed, caring and expertise, which you\u2019re full of, by the way, what are your avenues of distribution mechanisms now? You\u2019re blogging. Are you doing podcasts? Aside from you book?<\/p>\n<p>DP: We\u2019re trying all kinds of stuff here. So I\u2019ve got: DanPink.com, where I blog occasionally. I do this occasionally radio-ish talk show called Office Hours. I\u2019ve got an email newsletter. So looking for all kinds of ways to keep the conversation going and it actually goes back &#8211; I never even made this connection until just now; this move from information asymmetry to information parity, actually effects writers too, and so this idea that a writer knows everything and the great unwashed simply take it as \u00a0it is, is completely outdated.<\/p>\n<p>And I\u2019ve been quite the beneficiary of that on small things like readers finding\u2014emailing me about typos. I had actually a mistake in drive, a pretty bad mistake, I don\u2019t even know how it got in there, that a couple of readers found that I was able to fix. And then more and more readers ask questions that get me thinking and that often leads to the next project. And so my goal on these avenues is actually to have these avenues go two ways. Whether it\u2019s to email a newsletter or a radio show that happens to be a call in, or a blog thing where people can leave comments, I\u2019m really keen on hearing from people and I find that most people are really sharp and really generous and really make me thing.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Fabulous. Great segue to my almost final question here Dan, which is: If folks want to get in touch with you in any way, shape or form, what are the best avenues to do that? How would you recommend it?<\/p>\n<p>DP: They can just go to my website at: DanPink.com and there\u2019s all kinds of stuff there, and if you want to send me an email, just go to that site, and there\u2019s a little contact button there. It says, \u201cSend me an email\u201d, but it says, \u201cI\u2019m not going to help you with your school project or read your book proposal\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Gotcha.<\/p>\n<p>DP: You wouldn\u2019t believe how many school projects come over the transom, or how many people who say, \u201cOh I really want to write a book, but I just don\u2019t have the time\u201d, which is about the worst thing you could ever say to a writer.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Yeah, indeed. Indeed.<\/p>\n<p>Dan this has been fabulous and hopefully and probably will be a start of some interesting synergy showed up in my mind, anyway, with your work, your thought process and the research you\u2019re doing and where we\u2019re going with GTD. So hopefully, you\u2019ll stay in our camp and we\u2019ll keep going.<\/p>\n<p>DP: I am a permanent member of the camp to the point where I\u2019m trying to keep the camp across generations. I bought a copy of your book for our 16 year-old daughter, who, instead of going back to school for 10th grade, she decided to take, basically a sabbatical year to do her own stuff, make a movie and do her own research and as a result, she had to manage her time in a way that you don\u2019t have to in school.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Right.<\/p>\n<p>DP: And I bought that book for her and one of the delights as a father was in September, knocking on her door to her room at 9:30 at night and you know, where a lot of teenage girls would be\u2014I don\u2019t know, watching Katie Perry videos, or going on Facebook, or texting their friends, my daughter was sitting there in her beanbag chair reading Getting Things Done.<\/p>\n<p>DA: What a great image to end on!<\/p>\n<p>DP: It was awesome! I thought it was great! And she\u2019s a thoughtful kid and so she\u2019s taking some principles there too. Anyway, so I\u2019m doing my part to move this across generations.<\/p>\n<p>DA: Thank you. More to come and please consider me and our team as a resource for you as well. Really appreciate it.<\/p>\n<p>DP: Great.<\/p>\n<p>DA Concludes: It\u2019s really great to hear the thought processes and stories from someone like Dan and especially how he keeps himself fresh with his work and focus, a good example for all of us, I think. Thanks for joining me In Conversation, and I encourage you to stay connected through our forms, webinars and podcasts, honing our craft of winning at the game of work in this business of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How do we combat information overload? In this GTD Connect preview, David Allen &amp; best-selling author Daniel Pink (Drive, To Sell Is Human) discuss technology&#8217;s impact on our decision making. They cover GTD&#8217;s timeless solution to the current problem, as well as Dan&#8217;s personal GTD setup. Listen Now &nbsp; Subscribe or Download iTunes Stitcher Libsyn &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gettingthingsdone.com\/2015\/05\/podcast-02-david-allen-talks-to-daniel-pink\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Episode #2 &#8211; David Allen talks to Daniel Pink&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,715],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-podcast-2","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.8 (Yoast SEO v26.8) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Episode #2 - David Allen talks to Daniel Pink - Getting Things Done\u00ae<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"30 Minute Listen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/gettingthingsdone.com\/2015\/05\/podcast-02-david-allen-talks-to-daniel-pink\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Episode #2 - David Allen talks to Daniel Pink\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"30 Minute Listen\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/gettingthingsdone.com\/2015\/05\/podcast-02-david-allen-talks-to-daniel-pink\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Getting Things Done\u00ae\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/gettingthingsdone\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-05-27T20:06:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-05-23T23:45:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/gettingthingsdone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/podcast.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"291\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"292\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"GTD Times Staff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@gtdtimes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@gtdtimes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"GTD Times Staff\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"48 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/gettingthingsdone.com\/2015\/05\/podcast-02-david-allen-talks-to-daniel-pink\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/gettingthingsdone.com\/2015\/05\/podcast-02-david-allen-talks-to-daniel-pink\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"GTD Times Staff\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/gettingthingsdone.com\/#\/schema\/person\/52d8dfa5db8d4e8792586794625c12a4\"},\"headline\":\"Episode #2 &#8211; 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