You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three, fourteen False when things change, I'll be
happy True, when I am happy things will change. Kyle Sea's broadcasting from
a dark, windowless room in Hollywood when we really should be working on that
next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business
of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your
host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting
Podcast. I am your humble host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is
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my screenplay dot com. Enjoy today's episode with guest host Jason Buff Without any
further Ado, let me get to David Allen a quick introduction. He is
the author of the amazing book Getting Things Done. It's a book that's influenced
tons and tons of filmmakers out there, in addition to people. You know,
he's spoken at Google, he's done Ted Talks. I'm really lucky that
he's come on the show because he influence me a lot too. You know,
as a creative person, I'm kind of all over the map and fairly
disorganized, and his book really kind of lays out a plan so that you
can, you know, basically get things done, how that you can you
know, start working on things not having a million things in your head,
you know, especially for screenwriters or people who are trying to produce a movie,
it's hard to know. Sometimes you know what to do next. You
wake up and it's like it's such a large enterprise writing a screenplay or producing
a movie or whatever you want to do. It's so huge. It's like,
what am I going to do today? What am I what's the one
thing that I'm going to do today to start moving forward? And you know,
his book lays that out and talks about a lot of different things,
and we'll get into that. So anyway, here's my interview with David Allen.
For the people who you know are listening to this are mostly writers,
producers, people that want to make independent films. And I was hoping that
you could take a moment just to talk about the system to getting things done
system and what the ideas behind it, the concepts behind it. Sure,
one of the basic concepts is that your heads for having ideas but not for
holding them. People actually don't need time, they need space. I mean,
how much time does it take to have a creative idea in zero?
But you need room? So what the GPD system is? It really was
over the years this sort of unfolded as to what are the techniques that actually
you're that allow you to actually clear your head, get stuff off your mind,
but not necessarily having to finish them and still be committed to them.
So how do you manage all those agreements with yourself in some external way as
opposed to having your head as an office. Your head's a crappy office,
by the way, it's a crappy studio, it really is. I mean,
it'll if you have stuff in your head, there's a part of you
that thinks you should be doing all of it all the time. So your
head is consistent trying to multitask, which you can't do. That is,
you can't focus, you know, with focused attention to more than one thing
at a time. But there's a part of your head that's trying to do
that if your head's the only place it's holding stuff. So just like people
keep calendars called you know, I say, well, why do you keep
a calendar? Well, because my head can't do that. Well, why
do you think your head can do everything else? And not that it's like,
well, doesn't make much sense. You know, if you don't want
to track stuff out of your head, throw away your calendar. Don't be
intellectual to dishonest. So it's really about how do I externalize and objectify all
of my work, and work in the broadest sense called anything you want to
get done that ain't done yet. That's get cat food as well as you
know, have been to do business plan as well as you know, produce
the next movie. So all of those things just need to be externalized.
That that allows you to see the difference and actually, you know, cognitively
catch the difference between and of weight between dog food or cat food and duce
movie in your head. Believe it or not, they take up about the
same amount of space, and either one will wake up at three o'clock in
the morning when you actually can't do anything about it. Your head is actually
kind of a dumb terminal and it really it. You'll be driven by latest
and loudest by things in there, right, So it's really about all that's
behind it. So, but they're specific techniques. You can't just you can't
just clear your head by meditating or drinking. You know, you know I
do both, I know, so I know you know you can leave your
head or numb it out, but it won't clear it, right, So
can you talk about some of the techniques that you recommend. Sure, I'll
give you the twenty second version. Whoever's listening to this, hang on ready,
capture any potentially meaningful thing on your mind in some trusted place that you
then clarify exactly what that thing means sooner than later in terms of whether it's
actionable, and if so, what you're going to do about it, and
the next action and the outcome you're committed to. Then step back and review
those things in appropriate categories, so that some part of you is constantly maintaining
an inventory of your gestalt, of all of your different commitments and all the
different horizons, and trust your heart or your gut or see your pants or
your spirit or whatever you trust to make a good intuitive judgment call moment to
moment about what you do. That's it. Okay, that'll take you two
years to build that as a happy Yeah, that was a very quick explanation.
Even if you understand it, it's easy to understand. It takes two
minutes to understand the model. It's about two days if you actually were going
to implement it like literally it literally empty everything out of your head and go
through and make next action decisions about them and create an organizational structure you know
that holds all that and then about two years to make that habitual so that
you'd feel uncomfortable if you weren't doing it right. So you talk a lot
about taking notes. I mean, what in a typical day do you just
like, how do you organize all those things that are going on in your
life? Or how should people try to do that to get it out of
their head? Yeah, it's they're capturing stuff is very different than organizing.
So I've got you know, I've got notepad right on my desk right now.
You know, it has a phone number on it. I tried to
call and nobody answered or it was busy, but I got to call him
again because I can make an appointment about my eyes. So it's just on
that notepad. If I, if I don't finish that, call that notepad
by the way that we'll go. We'll get torn off that page and thrown
into my in basket. In which case then later on, you know,
sooner than later, I will drive all that to empty by deciding, okay,
where does that go? Where do I park a reminder about that that
I that I need to do. So capturing happens all day long, you
know, just at any time point in time, you know, I carry
a little notepad around in my pocket, right, and you know it's a
great little app called a brain Toss that I can just pop up my iPhone
and talk into it and it'll show up right into my email as a as
a as a sound file as well as you know, text about it,
right, you know any that any of those things work. But you know,
I want to have the freedom to have a thought but not have to
decide exactly what to do about it. Yet that actually allows and frees up
my creative thinking process. I throw away probably half or three quarters of my
notes, you know, But when I have I'm I'm not sure what they
mean yet, but they might mean something significant, and so I don't want
to lose any of those. But then I need to loop back around from
another part of my brain and then assess that stuff and get executive about it.
Call Okay, David, what are you gonna do about that? If
anything? What does that mean at a restaurant you really want to track?
Or is that a phone number that you need to put in your telephone and
address? Is that something you still need to do about that? And those
are the clarifying questions you need to ask yourself to decide what this stuff really
means. So step one is to capture. Step two is to claire five.
Step three is the organize the results of that thinking in that decision,
make it okay. That's how that's how you get your kitchen under control.
By the way, what is it looks like? You know, tornado hit
it? Oh my god, I got guess coming over. The first thing
you do is you recognize what's not on cruise control. You capture, you
identify stuff that's that you probably need to decide and do something about. Number
two is you need to clarify is that still good food goes in the fridge?
Is that trash that goes away? Is that is that dirty dish?
Or is that cleanland? And then you organize those You put spices where spices
go, You put dirty dishes where dirty dishes go, You put trash where
trash goes. Big duh. But that's what you need to do with every
email, with every thought, with every creative thing that pops into your head,
if you want to get it under control and not have it run you
Right, We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now
back to the show. Yeah, that's a huge thing, especially when it
comes to you know, screenwriting, and most of the writers I know that
day and I'm also a writer, but you you know, we're constantly with
notebooks because you never you you have these ideas and if they're gone, they
you know, sometimes you're just like, you know, what, what was?
I had this amazing idea and now it's gone, you know, And
so we we've gotten in the habit of taking notes. And what you know,
I get a lot out of the um GTD system is that you should
be constantly taking notes, but about every aspect of your life, so that
you're not constantly in the state of being overwhelmed by thinking, I've got a
million things to do, I don't know what to I don't know what the
next step is going to be right, And you obviously don't need to write
down the fifty thousand thoughts you have a day. You just need to write
down the ones that aren't complete when you have them, there's still something I
might need to do about that, as opposed to just grazing in your mind.
M Okay, Now, what is your feeling towards things like multitasking or
you know, people who can kind of sit there and do like five things
at the same time. They can't. They can rapidly switch, but whether
they're actually increasing their performance by doing that is in question. There's a couple
of new books out that have come out in the last year of a lot
of cognitive science research that has basically proven that's you know, that's bs if
you think you're that's going to actually increase your capability to be able to do
that. Now, that said, if you can rapidly switch your focus with
a placeholder. In other words, if you sort of interrupted me, Jason,
you came in, you suddenly walked in and say, hey, David,
by the way, could you do explain and Z let's talk for three
minutes or whatever. And I was in the middle of doing something. As
long as I have a placeholder for that thing I was doing, so I
don't have to keep re remembering that I need to do that. In other
words, I'll throw the notes or what my work literally right into my own
physical in basket and I'll turn around it and engage with you. Why because
I got a placeholder that as soon as I stop engaging with you, I
can pick that right up. But that leaves my brain clear to enough focus
on you and whatever's going on there, as opposed to trying to keep hanging
onto it. So that's why having an external brain and having the capability to
be able to capture and placehold stuff that's not finished in some trusted place will
allow you to switch rapidly. If you don't do that, then you truly
and they've proven this that that you your cognitive function is suboptimal. You're trying
to You're switching costs are huge. You trying to focus over there, but
there's a part of you that's still hanging your focus back to where it was,
that doesn't want to forget it. But then you're so you're not fully
present really with any of that. And people can get pretty good at what
it looks like. But this is a you know, there's new there's a
lot of data out there now that that proves that's not true. They've they've
even found that that even using hands free phones in your car is as dangerous
statistically as texting, simply because of the switching costs in your mind. So
you'll think, you'll you'll think you're driving in the you know, in the
right lane, and the brain kind of will kid you to think that's true,
and actually that's visually what you see, But your mind went off somewhere
else on that phone call that you were talking about, and it's actually that's
actually not true. Surprised me to read that data, but that's yeah,
that's all that's you know, what happens. Your brain is really wasn't designed
to hold onto more than about four meaningful things at once. It does that
very well, by the way. That's how you survived on the savanna.
That's how you could eat and not be eaten. But that brain took you
know, however, many millions of years it developed to be able to do
that very well. So your brain can recognize brilliantly, even better, way
better than any computer. Yet you walk into a room, you recognize patterns.
You see, that's a light, that's a chair, that's a person,
that's a thing, that's a printer, And the computer still can't even
do that. Yet you're doing that all the time, by the way.
Your brain is brilliant at that, using long term memory, pattern recognition,
making sense out of your world. But it's totally present when it does that.
What your brain can't do is remember where you left your keys. But
you know that was one of the really things. I loved your Ted talk
when you were talking about how the brain has almost stay you know, and
correct me if this wasn't what you were saying, but the brain's tendency to
be a natural planner to the point of or that we've kind of gotten away
from the way that the mind works and we've started kind of changing the way
that we accomplish goals in a somewhat unnatural way. Yeah, yeah, it's
fascinating. It was fascinating to realize that that, you know, what we
automatically do and how we naturally plan is not how most people actually plan the
more complex things. It's how you get out of beds, how you get
dressed, it's how you cooked dinner. But when people then say, okay,
now I need to I need to, you know, be the production
manager for a movie, how do I plan? You know, how do
I plan budget and all this other stuff? And you know, anything anymore,
or even just your wedding or how about just a big party you want
to give or your next vacation, And most people, you know, either
don't then plan them at all, or they're sort of driven by whatever the
latest and loudest thing is as opposed to learning from ourselves in terms of how
the brain really naturally doesn't. It was fascinating to me just to uncover that.
Yeah. Right, So if somebody's you know, sitting there today,
you know, working towards a project. Let's say, for example, their
their ideas they want to produce a film. M but you know, when
it comes to screenwriting and when it comes to producing, um, you know,
something artistic or you know, films are basically like a little business anyway,
you know. I mean a lot of people don't think of it like
that. But so a person, we kind of get into this abyss where
you don't know what to do next, and you're starting out and you're kind
of like, Okay, I know this is the end goal, and I
know kind of where I'm at right now. How do I get you know,
from point A to point B to point Z, you know, and
not just like be completely overwhelmed all the time with I have ten million things
I have to do. Yeah, well with all of it externalizing it,
getting out of your head, you know, get yourself pen and paper,
just you know, pull up some computer files, pull up a word doc
and just dump it out. All the ideas, every single thing you might
need to think about or whatever about the film or about what your project.
I mean, that's that is part of the natural planning model is once you
have a vision and it's not that met by current reality, it creates this
dissonance that says, what God, I got to try to get I try
to got to close the gap between the vision I have in my head and
where I am right now. So there's you know, so you do a
part a of that, which is, okay, any potentially relevant idea I
need to capture, get out of my head. And that's what most people
refer to as brainstorm. But that's and that's you know, that's the first
thing is don't you know, don't let your brain get constipated by you know,
oh I got a ten minute things to do. I don't know where
to start. Well, write down where you might start, all the places
you might start. You know, as line of said, the best way
to have a good idea to have a lot of ideas. So get them
all out now, you don't leave them all out just in terms of then
willy nilly, you get them all out, and then there's a part of
you that will then naturally start to recognize patterns and start to recognize components and
sequences and priorities. Oh that's more important than that. Oh yeah, I
need to handle that. You know, first thing I really need to do
is ye, and that's just good sort of natural thinking. But you have
to, you know, sort of go with the flow in terms of how
your mind really thinks and and capture that as opposed to it's got to be
right before I write it down. That's death. And that's how we were
taught. That's what planning was all about. If you if you know,
if you're old as I am, you we were taught outlining in school,
you know, to write reports and that's you know that you sit down and
start by trying to create an outline. Well, good luck that that forces
your mind to try to figure out what's Roman numeraber one. And you know,
there's quite a bit of thinking you have to do before you even can
trust what you think Roman umera one's going to be. And so giving yourself
permission to have the freedom to be to use the creative aspect of who you
are and how your brain works. I think that's you know, it's our
educational system that that sort of constipated all that. But there there is a
way you can really make all that work, you know, I mean,
you know, come other. You know, some of my biggest champions were
the Simpson writers. Yeah, and really Joss Whedon and I can talk about
him because they mentioned it publicly. I mean, Jos in a fast company.
The article said, look, you know when he when he did the
last you know, when he shot much ado about nothing in his backyard,
he said, wow, you know, if it wasn't for David Allen's Next
Action concept, I never could have done that. In the three days we
did it, you know. So you know, and you know Howard Stern's
a huge fan of mine, really changed changed his life. He would tell
you that he's spoken about it on you know, on the air for months
right once he once, you know, he sort of got coached with our
with our model is really freed up because of what it does is it frees
up space for these guys. That's that's what the creative people want. It
actually frees up space for anybody. But you know, and what you do
with that space is up to you. If you're a rock musician, you'll
use space to get more music. Ideas and to make sure you finished the
song instead of just start them. You know, if you if you're a
fifty five year old executive that's about to merge with another company, you'll use
space to be more strategic in your negotiations. And you're thinking about you know,
priorities, and if you're a writer or a screenwriter, or you know,
if you're an indie producer, what would you do with more space?
You know, there's a whole lot of things you could do with more space,
I would imagine, But the space is what you need. And you
know all GTD they getting things done, modeled in. But say, okay,
here's how you get space. We'll be right back after a word from
our sponsor and now back to the show. And you don't want to go
very far to know where to start. Just ask yourself what's on your mind?
You know, Jason, if I ask you, if you if you
weren't talking to me right now, what where would your mind go? What's
the most on your mind? Right? Yeah, whatever you answer is very
probably going to be something that's hung up, and you're the bottleneck. The
reason it's on your mind is because there's some decision about it. You haven't
made or you haven't parked the results of that thinking in some in someplace you
trust, right, Yeah, I mean, I'm your The book is pretty
much for people like me. I think that, you know, I have
too many things going on in my head, and you know, it's it's
really helpful just to say, okay, you know I went through when you're
doing the Ted talk, you had the thing where you take notes and you
get all the things out of your head that you're that are kind of occupying
your time, and then taking that and figuring out, you know, what
exactly are you gonna you know, what are the next actions you're going to
take? And the really important thing for me was the concept of what can
you actually do right now? And what you're just sitting there worrying about unless
you can actually take action on it right now, there's no point in worrying
about it. You know, put it in, put it there, and
know that you have to do it. But don't sit there and like kind
of go you know, churn the wheels over and over thinking about that,
and focus on things you can do. Sure there are no problems, there
are only projects, so you'll only cause something a problem if you think something
ought to be fixed about it, you're just not willing to figure out or
take a risk to try to do that. Right, right, I mean,
so taking anything that's an issue or problem you need to decide, look
to your point, can you do something about this or not? Ninety percent
of the time you probably can and just haven't figured that out or you haven't
that down and force yourself to make that decision. Wait a minute, what
more information do I need? Wait a minute, who do I need to
talk to about this? What do I need to do to move the needle?
If I if I was going to pay you a million bucks just to
start making progress on that problem, that issue, that opportunity, where would
you go right now physically, and what would you do? And that kind
of rigor, you know, to your point of that the next action thinking
is so powerful, it's so mundane and yet so you know, it's it's
the silver bullet usually. Now. One of the things that I really enjoyed
about the book is also the concept of tricks. And you know, some
people now would just would refer to that as hacks for you know, organizing.
Can you talk about a few of your favorite hacks or tricks for um
you know for implementing the GTD system in your life. One of the best
is the two minute rule. Anything you can finish once you decide the next
action, if you can actually take that action within two minutes, if you're
ever going to do that action, and I'll do it, then it'll take
you longer to actually stack at track it and look at it again than it
would be to finish it when it's in your face. If you just did
that around your house or your apartment or your flat or wherever you live.
If you just started to implement the two minute rule flashlight that needs a battery,
it would only take you two minutes to go get that battery and stick
it in there. You'd be amazed how much cleaner your house is going to
be. It would be if that's all you've got out of what I did
is two minute rule. You know that that's one of the most popular hacks
you know of that emerged out of all of this. But go ahead,
sorry, yeah, you know, it's not really a hack. It's just
a it's an absolutely necessary principle, which is just right stuff down, have
an in maask and have a physical intro throw stuff in there, and then
get it empty every you know, twenty four to forty eight hours. I
mean that there's there's no bigger, better habit. People say, David,
what rituals and habits that I installed? That's the main one. You know.
There's all kinds of stuff I hate to have to think about and have
to decide about it. But because I'm so now addicted to getting my in
basket empty, it forces me to make those decisions so I can empty it.
It's one of the best that's one of the best tricks in the world
in terms of being productive, because people just avoid next action decisions about all
kinds of things, so they just spread stuff around in their life and then
and then it starts to create this ambient stress because it's yelling at them all
the time. Let the just numb out to it. Now, Can you
just go a little bit more in depth with the next action concept just for
just second. Yeah, well, you know, write everything down this on
your mind, right, then take each one of those things one at a
time, and go, Okay, if this is something to move on at
all. It may have been just a hair brained idea or something else,
but is there something to do about this? What specifically physically visible action would
would I need to take to start moving toward closure on whatever this thing is?
If it's if you wrote down cat food, what's your next action?
I need to buy cat food or great? Do you know where to buy
it? Yeah? I do? Uh? Where do you do you keep
a list of stuff to buy when you go there? Yeah? Right up
on the fridge? Great, go stick it there, cat food on the
post, It on the refrigerator. Now you're in. Then it's off your
mind. Some part you says, okay, who did that? But you
have to decide what's the next step on that? Be gay? Okay?
New indie movie idea? Fabuleus? What's the next action? Oh? God?
Yeah? Well I'm even not sure how to start? How would you
figure it out? You know? I want to talk to somebody who actually
produced it? Indie failing. I've never done one before, and I should
talk to them. Great? How would you? How would you, you
know, plumb their brain? Maybe you should have lunch for them? Great?
What's your next action? Set up a lunch? How would you do
that? Got an email to send their phone call to make let me let
me shoot them an email? Great? How long would that take? Thirty?
Seconds go, Suddenly you know, suddenly you're off and running, but
you still haven't the foggiest idea how to do an idio. You just made
a decision that it got you in the driver's seat of this situation as opposed
to feeling the victim of now over committing and having to beat you up.
Yeah, and it's so simple, but it actually, I mean, it
does completely change everything. You know, if you start thinking like that,
I call it the magic of the mundane. Do you you actually have a
Do you have to have a physical in I mean, you talk about your
in basket, and you know, everything that I do, if I have
papers, it just becomes out of control here. You know, I do
everything virtual, but you think it's it's better to have your physical there.
You don't. You still have a physical driver's license, You still you still
get some bills in the mail. You certainly get certain some physical mail.
You get FedEx's don't. No, Well, I'm an expat like you,
I live in h I live in Mexico, so you know, we don't
get mail where I live, but I get your points. Yeah, but
you know, believe it or not, there's a lot of stuff that I
need to print out from my computer and throw it into my inbasket because there's
stuff that I need to do or think about that and I want to I
want to have a written, you know, thing to that helps me think
about it, you know. Uh, Or I'm halfway through something and I
need to remind myself that that's not finished yet and I need to come back
to it. I'll print it out and throw it in my inbasket, which
then is a trigger to then Oh yeah, no, let me pick that
up and and and keep going with that. Uh. There's certainly a lot
less paper now than there was, you know, twenty thirty years ago,
for sure, But even even so, uh, you know, where do
you throw back? You get flashlights that get dead, batteries, you know,
I throw those in my inbasket if I don't have the batteries, you
know, you in anything. And if you take any kind of notes when
you're on the run, what do you do with if you're doing any kind
of creative writing by hand? You know, what do you do with those
notes? And if you're taking notes on a phone call? Right, do
you ever do that? Yeah? Yeah, what do you do with those
notes? Uh? Well? I just usually I just use ever notes,
so I'm just I type faster than I write. But I've also got a
you know, a notebook. Whenever I go to a store, I just
buy like five or six notebooks and just have just have it there, you
know, because you'll you'll be able to jot stuff down. Well. You
know, if I were to sit down next to you desk side, you
know, uh, Jason, and I'd say, I'd say, do you
still have any of those notebooks? Probably not, Well, that's fine.
It means you've processed them. That'd be my point if you still had them
lying around, because they were still stuff in there that you hadn't decided what
it meant, and it was still potentially pulling on you make a decision about
it. You know. That's that's unhealthy. You know. Spial notebooks are
dangerous, you know, because I use a spile notebook, but I use
one that's PERF so you can so I tear it off so it stays empty.
Yeah, you know, but but the stuff like tear off goes into
my inbasket if it's if it's if I can't finish it at that moment,
so I still need a physical inbasket. If you can get by without one
thing. There's no there's no right or wrong about any of that just says,
okay, got anything in your head? You know? And if you
do, there's some because of some something you have not captured somewhere. Now,
when you say you've got it in your head, I mean like subconscious
thought. I was wondering how you feel about like a subconscious thought. We'll
be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
show. How is that affecting you? I mean, are you are the
things that are in your head? Like you know, if you've got like
twenty things that you're kind of like organizing trying to keep track of. Are
you conscious that you're doing that or is that something that you're just kind of
doing and it's affecting you know, just your men till you know alertness or
being able to be present. I'm not sure exactly. Obviously, if it's
unconscious, you're not conscious of it, I'm not aware, right, So,
but essentially what I do, because I've externalized all of these commitments,
then it frees me up to just trust my intuitive judgments, and that intuitive
judgment is being matured and constantly I'm thinking all the time, I'm constantly reassessing
what should I do? Where's the thing? Where? What do I feel?
You know, like I need to put my energy and focus right now?
You know that my system doesn't get rid of that. It frees you
up to do that frees you up to be making good, intuitive choices instead
of just being driven by the latest and loudest and then loops and and hoping.
You know, so you want to move from hope to trust basically in
terms of just your judgment about what you're doing. But I'm you know,
I'm constantly thinking what should I do now? Where's the you know, where's
the optimal place for me? Should I take a napution to have the peers?
Should I should I go hang out with my dog? Do I need
to take a walk? You know? Should I be you know, cranking
on this you know, uh slide deck that I need to upgrade right now?
So, I don't know if it's your unconscious I think that I think
you don't have to go very far just to start to pay attention to what
has your attention, you know, and what do you then need to do
to take that pressure off your head? You know, what's the next thing?
That that should be telling you what to do, whether that's coming where
that comes from, you know, the oracle or God or or your your
liver or I don't know whatever, the source of your intuitive knowing is right,
you know who knows. So this is not about, you know,
sort of structuring your life in some ways. A matter of fact, a
lot of people are uncomfortable with how unstructured getting things done is because they want
to feel more confidence that they that they really nailed it all down and and
and and and can tack it all down and nothing's going to move, you
know, and come out from under them. Good luck. Well that that
was what I was going to ask you about. You know that that you
talk about the false and of control that you get from you know, having
everything in your head, and there is that aspect of control that I mean,
I oh, yeah, that's encounter that resistance that people are just like,
oh, I don't want to you know, I don't want to stop
having all this and I don't want to put it on a piece of paper
because that might mean that something might happen to it, or it might you
know, yeah, you'll might happen. Yeah, you'll make you feel more
out of control about how out of control you really are. But people get
mad at me for their list. I go, excuse me any my list,
dude? And you orders, you know, your choices. Where do
you want to track that stuff? And I just and I'm not in convincing
anybody. I'm just look, I'm just sharing information with you, right,
and prove me wrong. Implement these processes, and I absolutely guarantee you,
without fail, you'll feel more in control and more focused so that you can
deal with and have more mental and cognitive space to do the more meaningful things.
How did how did you build? How did you come upon this?
I mean when you were in your life, were you also kind of just
like one of the people that was overwhelmed with stuff and had to I mean,
how did you discover this system? I've just been a you know,
I'm a freedom guy and I love it and I love clear space, right.
You know, I've always been attracted to the zen aesthetic, you know,
sort of the negative space. You know, I was I read all
of Suzuki and Watts by the time I finished high school. So I've always
loved that that kind of minimalist aesthetic. But then, you know, when
I got into sort of the personal growth game, and you know, how
do you grow yourselves and how do you find enlightenment and all that good stuff?
You know, missus California in six season seventies and discovered that actually there
there are things you can actually learn to do that actually give you more of
a sense of personal freedom and more of a sense of space. And a
whole lot of that had to do with your agreements. You know, that
was a big aha and the Personal Growth livement, which was you know,
how do you manage your agreement? And what's the price you pay if you
break an agreement? Now, what do you mean by agreement? Well,
if you stick yeah, said, compromises you make. Yeah, No,
the agreements you make, Hey David, let's meet at you know, let's
do this podcast on you know, this date at this time. That's an
agreement. And I say, yeah, I just made an agreement. So
an agreement just says any commitment you've got to do something whether and all agreements
are with yourself. Many of them involve other people, but they're all with
yourself. You've agreed with yourself, you're going to do that. You tell
yourself, I need cap food. It's made an agreement. You know,
oh yeah, I just agreed with myself, but yes, I'm going to
get captured somehow, in some way. So understanding that when you keep an
agreement feels fabulous improves your self confidence. If you break an agreement, it
will undermine your self confidence automatically. It's an automatic price you pay. You
just sent a great trust if you didn't show up. You know, if
you know the people I love dearly, but I don't trust further than I
can throw them top to show up when they going to tell me they're going
to show up, just based upon that there's nothing wrong. I don't judge
that. I just that's just data. But I don't trust them. I
don't trust them to keep to you know, they tell me something, I
doubt that they're going to do it, and shouldn't organize my life accordingly.
But they're all of these agreements with yourself. What happens then if you a
broken agreement automatically create stress. So all those things you've told yourself to do,
and most people have between thirty and one hundred projects and between one hundred
and fifty and two hundred next actions, if they actually sat down and truly
inventory their commitments personally and professionally involved the things they think they should do and
told themselves they need to do. So if you want to get rid of
the stress of broken agreements, either don't make the agreement, you know,
throw the list away, let's say, you know, I'll live spontaneously,
you know, good luck. Or complete the agreement, go finish it all.
Of course, if they wouldn't finished everything on your list to three days,
you'd have a bigger list because you get so excited having done all that,
you'll take on bigger, more incomplete stuff. But the real key is
how do I then I renegotiate those agreements. See if you said, hey,
David, let's do this podcast here, and then I came back and
said, you know, I agreed to that before, but something came up
really really critical and I have to handle. Can we do it another time?
And you go, yeah, then I renegotiated the agreement. I don't
have a broken agreement. But you can't renegotiate agreements with yourself. You can't
remember you made That's again why keeping track of all of this stuff so that
you can look at it and go, no, I'm just going to do
this podcast with Jason right now, that's the best thing to be doing.
But the only reason I can be present talking to you right now is because
not long ago I looked at everything else that I might would, good,
should ought to do and said, you're in. But I couldn't. I
can't do that in my head. You know, I could remember about four
things and that's about it. Everything else that becomes this huge jumble and jungle.
But once I've got them out and have all these decisions made about the
actions and just all I have to do just glance at those action lists,
to look at my calendar, doesn't think very long, and just feel comfortable
that this is it nothing. I'm not missing anything. Now. I may
have made a mistake, you know, maybe talking to use the wrong thing
to do. I'll find out, live and learn, But at least I'm
confident that this is the next mistake I want to make. That makes me
yeah, definitely. Um. Now, you mentioned Howard Stern, and I
know Howard Stern's really big into transcendental meditation, and a lot of this seems
to be influenced by Eastern thought. Is that something Eastern Thought just came up
with the same thoughts I did. They all read your book, you know,
but I mean just the concept of you know, meditating and emptying your
mind in that way and being present. And you even mentioned in your book
the mind like water um concept. Yeah, well, you know that was
I had, you know, several years in the martial arts. You know,
I got a black belt many years ago in in karate, and there's
there's quite a bit of training about how do you clear your head in the
martial arts. You know that Bruce Lee was a guy who sort of made
famous the whole idea of be like water Grasshopper from his gurup. Because you
know, the idea is don't over underreact, to be totally open to the
to the to the present moment. You know, be soft and hard as
needed be don't over underreact. And that's that's the idea, is that you
don't want to take one meeting into the next. You don't want to take
home to work. You want to be able to be present. Really,
the whole idea of GPD is about being present. That's your optimal productive state.
Whether that's the best way to hit a golf ball or tuck your kids
into bed at night, or make spaghetti. You know, you just want
to be there when you're doing it, as opposed to having your cognitive functions
split. So that's in a way, this is just a mechanical process.
It's not something to believe, it's not something that It's not some cult there.
Look, the brain sciences have now validated all of this. You know.
I took me thirty five years and learning it on the street and watching
spending thousands of hours with some of the best and brightest and sharpest people on
the planet, busiest, and watching what happened when they started to implement this
and how much it changed their life and their work without exception. So that's
why I wrote the book, I said, I guess I've been to write
Nanuel. Now, Now, what were the Are there any books you can
aside from your own book? Are there any books that were out there that
influenced you and you could recommend as well, or any resources out there that
people could look. Look, there were there were a lot of them over
the years. I'd you know, one great book, by the way,
for especially for creative types, would be Stephen Pressfield's book The War of Art.
Oh yeah, yeah, that's a great one, fabulous book. We'll
be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show.
And that's one and the two I mentioned by the way, if anybody's
interested in the cognitive science stuff, I mean, it really is quite fascinating.
And two have shown up in the last few months. One's called The
Organized Mine by Dan Leaviton l E v I t I N. He's head
of cognitive science research at McGill University and come back or where where we're in
Canada is And a Belgian named Theo compernalem p e r n O L l
E has just written a book called brain Chains. Two words like chains around
your brain, brain chains, and you know, he he he was a
child psychiatrist and then an MD, and then I got into cognitive science.
And now he's been he's doing quite a bit of executive coaching in terms of
stress management, simply because he became fascinated with this whole idea of the brain
as a tool. And he's he's accumulated aggregated six hundred different studies from the
cognitive science field and world in the last decade or so. And you know,
and it kind of reads the Riot Act to everybody about multitasking and what
the digital world and social media and so forth, or are the addiction that
that's making so easy for people to get invested in and engaged in, that's
then stopping a lot of other, you know, real cool stuff, like
real conversations and real relationships. And he's got he's not against technology. He's
just saying be careful because this is highly addictive and that they've now proven it
truly is an addiction that if you if your social media, even just having
your smartphone in your pocket wondering who's texting you creates a dopamine rush. So
you literally are getting the same kinds of things that you do an opium or
heroine. Well, it seems like, you know, the older I get,
the more I realized that my life is determined by the little things that
give me a little dopamine rush, you know, like the career that you
choose and the people that you are around, and all the little thing you
know, even the color of paint that you choose in your house or whatever.
It's like everything is determined by that little rush you get from it.
There's nothing wrong with that. I mean that exercise does that. So you
can't fault exercise which is which which are the healthier dopamine rushes. You know,
what do you want to get addicted to? You want to get addicted
to working out, or you want to get addicted to you know, uh,
you know amphetamines, right. I also like the idea of you know,
you were talking about how you you want to write stuff down because your
future self is not going to be in the same state of mind that you're
in and and always, you know, you always need to be somewhat um
aware of you know, how your brain changes from maybe one time of day
to another time of day, or how you're in a certain kind of state
of mind where you're being very creative and coming up with ideas and appreciate the
fact that maybe later on in the day or maybe whenever, that's going to
kind of disappear, and you're leaving kind of like future notes. You're like
note to future self, you know. Because it's funny. I had a
friend who would go out and drink a lot, and he would always leave
himself voice messages and he would wake up the next day and be like,
Okay, what you know, what's going on? And he'd be like,
dear future Mike, you know, this is what's happening today. Welcome on
your You know, I think it's the really intelligent people that realize they're only
inspired and intellig and and and you're only inspired and brilliant, you know,
at very random moments in your life. And you know, so what you
want to do is, if you're lazy and smart, what you want to
do is capture those potentially useful, inspirational, intelligent things so that when you're
kind of thick and dumb, you do smart things, right, So you
know, Yeah, it's the it's the kind of thick and dumb people that
think they're smart all the time. Yeah. I think the strange thing is
is that when you are inspired and have an inspired thought that that place,
that that that we seem to operate from there has no sense of space and
time. You're in your zone, So it doesn't it's not kind of that
consciousness is not so aware of history or future. It thinks it thinks you'll
be inspired and smart all the time. So it's it isn't was intelligent of
your friend to realize, hey, when I'm inspired, that the future me
may not be so inspired, So I better grab that and throw it at
them. Yeah, I'm always surprised if I go back and look at my
note. Sometimes I came up with, like, you know, I write
every day. I write in the morning and that's like when I'm focused,
coffee's going and everything, and I always shock, you know. I go
back sometimes and I'm like, yeah, I remember everything that I wrote down,
and I'll go back and see those notes and it's like, oh,
wow, that was a really great idea. But I just, you know,
for whatever reason, it wasn't there anymore, you know, the my
ability to recall it just had gone away. So can I want to wrap
it up? Because I know you you know, have things to do.
Can you just talking to people who are out there in our audience it's filmmakers
and screenwriters and people who are working on projects, Can you you know,
what do you think is a good idea for them to start doing? What
can they do today? To really start moving forward and not being frustrated and
getting their projects, you know, on the road to being you know,
completed. Welcome on. I would be remiss and not saying get my new
version of getting things go bo and read it if you haven't. Yeah,
I mean truly, it is the manual for all of that and it will
be pretty evergreen for lots of years to come in terms of you know,
what we've uncovered and what we've discovered about it. So that's that's essentially a
you know, a great resource. That's that is a way. That is
a way to start. But quite frankly, it just make sure you've got
some you know, take up. You might want to take a few hours
at some point if you can carve that out of your life and say,
okay, I'm going to do this dumb thing called sit down and write down
every single thing that's on my mind, you know, anything about anything,
you know, little things, big things, personally think, professional things,
creative things, anything, and truly keep going. You know, most people
can do that in about an hour or two at least you can get most
of it, and then you know, go through each one of those and
say, okay, what is exactly my next action on this? What's my
next action on that? What's my next action on that? So just capturing
and then applying the sort of next action cognitive rigor to these things, and
then you're gonna have to then you'll have to get creative to decide what do
I want to do if I can't take that action right now. Where do
I want to park it? How do I create a list? How do
I create you know, some sort of organizational system. If you don't have
one already, you need to then go through that process. So ideally,
you you know, set up a whole day and get my book, because
I actually walk people through this exercise, you know, blow by blow part
in part two of the book. That's one of the reasons I wrote it
that way, so that people didn't have to hire a coach to walk them
through this. But you're not born doing this and it doesn't come, you
know, automatically. You actually have to sit down and put cognitive horse power
to this game. And it does take an investment on the front end.
It doesn't take a lot of time and energy to maintain it. As a
matter of fact, it takes much less than what most people are trying to
do once you actually get this set up, but it does take an investment
on the front end. Well, David, I really appreciate it. Thank
you so much for coming on the show. It's it's a pleasure to have
you here with us today. Hey, it was fun, Jason, this
is great. I want to thank Jason so much for doing such a great
job on this episode. If you want to get links to anything we spoke
about in this episode, head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot
tv. Forward slash three fourteen. Thank you so much for listening, guys,
As always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk to you
soon. Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.