Productivity Without The Push

Episode Resources

• Getting Things Done by David Allen
• Things
• Come see Melissa and I live on the Open Wide Tour around Australia in January and February.
• Listen To Take Me Down
• Watch Take Me Down

I just want to say thank you first of all because I woke up this morning and had what it looked like about a hundred direct messages, private messages on Instagram. So I went in and I started responding. And I try to respond to every single person. So first of all, thank you for that. And it turns out, I think you guys actually broke Instagram because there was way more than a hundred messages. And I promise I’ll get back to each and every one of you, but I wanted to say thank you because this gave me full permission to really go for it with this podcast.

So I asked, you answered, and The Nick Broadhurst Show is now official. And this is episode number two. And today we’re going to be talking about productivity without the push. And this actually comes from a listener yesterday. It was a really good question actually because — and I think it’s very timely, as we’re going into the beginning of the year. We all have goals, we all want to achieve things, but how do we achieve them without the push? How do we do it without the overwhelm? Right?

For me this is really important because overwhelm sucks, pushing sucks. And there is a time and a place where you have to kind of get in there, and you’ve got to get stuff done. Right? But ultimately, what you need, what you want is a system that you can always fall back on that’s going to deliver to you a way to get your stuff done without you getting overwhelmed. Okay?

So this may be new for some of you, and it may not. It’s a very well-known system called Getting Things Done. And now, I don’t want to get too heady and go into massive amounts of detail with this. I want to give you the high-level concept of why this works so much. And I can honestly say this completely, completely changed my life. Totally changed my life. So if you haven’t read the book, Getting Things Done, I highly recommend it. It’s by David Allen. And there’s an amazing app that was created to go along side this by a different company called Culture Code, and the app is called Things. And Things literally rules my life. And when Melissa and I met, I used to see all of her to-do lists and just think, “Oh my God. Like, how do you even live with all these things you’re trying to get done without having a system?”

And Getting Things Done is basically that, it’s a system. Okay? And it fricking works, like it works so well it’s not even funny. And you know from my recent videos, I’ve been reflecting a lot on 2017. And I realize I spent a lot of that year in overwhelm. And to be quite honest, I did not use this system properly at all. I used it, but I used it in a way which actually created overwhelm instead of doing the opposite, which is overcoming overwhelm.

So the question actually came from a direct message in Instagram. And it was, “I love the podcast idea. I’m so excited for you to share your learnings, your knowledge, and ideas.” Awesome, thank you. “How do you do it all? You have so much going on in life, family, business, dreams, and goals. How do you get it all done, envision it, and then see it through? For example, is the podcast just instinct, and then it just comes to you so made time for it? Or is it something that you’ve been thinking about doing for a while? I’ve got so many ideas and wants, but they end up being just dreams and I never follow through. I can’t see how to get it all done without it coming from a space of ‘go, go, go’ pushing, rather than creating from love.”

So I think the first thing there is to talk about creating from love. And I think that when you’re doing something that you absolutely adore, when you love doing what you’re doing, it’s very hard for it to come from anywhere from love, but that can turn into push if you don’t have a system. And I’m all about systems. I’m all about leverage. I’m all about trying to get as much done in this lifetime as I can, but without ruining my health, my relationships, and my purpose. Okay?

So let’s talk about Things. So Things is actually, it’s actually really simple. And the way it starts out is — actually, I’m talking about the, not so much Things, the app, actually, Getting Things Done, the book. The way it starts out is that you do a complete clean out of your entire life. Right?

Now, I’m not talking about just the things in your head. I’m talking about the things that are in your cupboard, literally. Right? So when you first start the Getting Things Done process, you literally clean out everything in your life. Everything that no longer serves you. Your garage, your wardrobes, your underneath the kitchen, laundry, everything. Right? You literally go through and you de-clutter your entire life. And if you start using this system and you haven’t done that, it just will never get off on the right foot. Because what you need to do is you need to be collecting all the stuff that’s hanging about in your life that needs to be done that hasn’t been done. There could be something in the garage that you meant to hang on the wall and you just didn’t get around to it, but it’s still sitting there, and every time you walk past it, it creates that feeling of overwhelm. Well, when you start this process you get that stuff done. Okay? And then what happens, you end up with this clean slate. Your life is no longer cluttered, it’s organized.

So then you move into everything that’s in your head. So you might have a current productivity system which you have things written down on notes, you might have a list, you might have something on your phone, on your computer. It’s now time to amalgamate all that stuff into one system. Okay? So you literally do that. You literally put it all into — now, I use the Things app, which I love, and I recommend it. And then you get every single idea that’s in your head, everything you can possibly think of that’s in your mind right now, and you just literally like vomit it into this app. You capture it all in the app. And you end up with like literally hundreds of things, hundreds of things that you’ve go to do.

But what it does is it now enables you to go through that and start to organize it. And you organize things literally into projects. Okay? So if anything takes more than one step, one step, if it’s two steps, three steps, that’s a project. Okay? And you also tune into some core feelings behind it because it helps you stay motivated to get things done.

So ask yourself the question, “Why am I doing this?” Visualize, well what does it look like when this thing becomes a success? And then that becomes something which I put in each project is a little bit of motivation. I’m doing this because… Why am I releasing this song? Because every time I release a song there are literally hundreds of things that have to happen. Why am I doing this? Well, it comes back to my purpose, and that is reconnecting people with their heart. Right? That’s why I do it. So it’s always nice to have a feeling behind what you’re doing. And you always ask yourself the question, what is the next step?

Now, the reason this works is because every morning I get up, I do my morning routine, and before I start the day I look at Things, I look at my projects, and I drag them around. You can drag and drop them. This is why technology is so amazing. And I’ll make sure that the things that I have to get done, my most important tasks, or my MITs, that they’re at the top. And I literally just go down and I just tick the list, just tick, tick, tick, tick, and I just do them. Okay? They’re in order, I know what to do, I don’t have to think about it. Right? So every day is organized; there’s no overwhelm.

The other key thing is whenever you think of something that you want to do, anything at all, it could be literally something you need to buy from the shops, or someone you need to message, or something you need to do at work, anything that comes in your mind, you literally just quickly throw it in the inbox. There’s an inbox in this particular app where you just collect stuff. Okay?

So you literally throw it all into the inbox. And then every morning I look at my inbox and I organize those things back into the correct projects in the right order and then I know what I need to do for the day. So I know exactly what I need to do today. I know what the first thing is. My first thing is calling up a shop, a music shop, and there’s a few things I need to order for my upcoming tour with Melissa — which you can get tickets at NickandMelissa.com. Which is around Australia January and February. Please come along, we’d love to see you. And I know I’ve go to do that. I know there’s a timeline on that, I know there’s pressure on that, I need to get that done today. So I don’t need to wake up and think, “Oh my God, I’ve got so much to do.” All I know is I’ve got one thing to do. One thing. And that is to call the shop and organize that.

And then once I’ve ticked that off, I know I’ve got to send the quote to my music director. It’s already written down. Every single step in ordering this gear for the tour is already laid out. I know what to do. So at any point in time I only have one thing, just one thing that I’ve got to do. That is how you overcome overwhelm. It’s that simple.

Now, the actual system of Getting Things Done, there’s more to it than that. I just wanted to give you a brief overview of it, so you can discover it for yourself and try it out. And as long as you have just that one thing that you need to do today, then you’ll actually do it. And then when you tick it off, it disappears. It’s the best feeling ever. And then, boop, up pops the next thing you need to do, so you do it. Simple, huh?

Now, I hope that’s been really supportive, and let’s get all the things for 2018 that we want to do, let’s get them done this year. Let’s get them done. And if you haven’t organized your life into a system, give it a go. You’ve got nothing to lose. And I promise you, if you do this properly, and last year I didn’t do it properly — and I will add, actually, so when you process your inbox every single morning, that’s a very important part of it. There’s another rule, which I love, if it takes less than two minutes to do it, you do it now. You don’t move it anywhere else, you just get it done. You don’t move it from the inbox, you just do it. Okay?

The other thing is doing a weekly audit. Now this is where I went wrong. Last year I wasn’t doing my weekly audits. Every Monday morning, the first two or three hours of the week is dedicated to going through every single little item that’s in there, and it even includes a lot of my goals, a lot of my wishlists, it’s all in there. I capture all this stuff in there. It’s on my phone, it’s on my iPad, it’s on my computer. It’s unbelievable. So make sure you do the weekly audit. My gosh, if you do that, it will completely change your life.

I would love to hear from you, so please tag me @IAmNickBroadhurst on social media, and use the hashtag #TheNickBroadhurstShow, or leave me a comment below ( I read every single one!) Thank you for being here! And as always, listen to your intuition (and maybe your Doctor because I have to say that) when implementing any new practice into your life.