Capture - GTD® Series Part 1 - Episode #265 of CloudFocus Weekly

Machine transcript generated in 2026 from the episode audio (Whisper speech-to-text with automatic speaker separation). Speaker labels are automatic and may be wrong in places. Timestamps shown every few minutes.

00:10 Jason Atwood: This is the 265 265th episode of CloudFocus Weekly for the first week of July 2017. This episode is titled, Capture, GTT series part one. I'm your host, Jason Atwood, Jason Atwood, joining me as co-host, Justin Edelstein. This podcast not sponsored by anybody.

Justin Edelstein: No, no one would sponsor the GTC series.

Jason Atwood: Sponsored by David Allen. David Allen. He's going to sell a lot of books. Thank you David. So as we discussed on the last podcast, last week. We are going to do a four-part series in GTD. Now if you have starting from, if you're like, what is GTD? We have a podcast for you, episode 132. It was back in 2013. And we did I think an hour and a half episode on it. We've also done a one-on-week review. So we've done a couple of these. This is definitely something you can Google. It is a productivity methodology, but we figured for those who are listeners. We know there's a Venn diagram of CloudFocus Weekly listeners and GTD practitioners. We would kind of deep dive into some topics. I have some feedback from people.

Jason Atwood: We'll ask a couple of things. I'll try to put those in. and then we will kind of just go along four different topics for the next four weeks. What do you say? Right on, let's do it. The one thing I do want to say, just maybe just start is also like our experience. Just because why us? If you're the first time you listen to this, maybe if you just, if you literally came on this podcast because you search for GTD on the podcast app and found this podcast, who are you listening to and why? Because that could happen. I've actually done that. I downloaded a podcast because they were talking about GTD and just listened. I've never listened to them ever before. Were they good? Yeah, it's fine. But like I just wanted to listen to them talk about GTD.

Jason Atwood: I didn't know who they were. It's not like I followed that podcast. So, I think the reason we were both, you and I are GTD practitioners. We are. Again, episode 132 is our whole story. All your stories change in the last. when would you say, how long have you say you've been doing GTD, getting things done? I will never say getting things done. Oh boy.

Justin Edelstein: Well, you, you dropped the book on my desk when we worked together at the company that shower rain nameless maybe nine or 10 years ago. So let me ask the question again. And then wait, I was getting to the actual answer, which is when did I actually start? Yeah, so probably first started practicing the art, the deep art of GTD, maybe five or six years ago. Okay. I definitely didn't just pick that book up, read it and go. No. Even though you said, as my boss at the time,

Jason Atwood: Read this book. I also gave you Fire Your Boss, so that was a mixed message.

03:13 Justin Edelstein: It was... And there was also someone else at that company whom we've totally lost touch with who saw the book on my desk As he was walking by and was like, oh, that's awesome. I love I do that I that's how I get my things done right and we both actually thought very highly of that person Yes, I remember. I don't remember his name, but I remember coming to me. It doesn't matter. We're not gonna name him but I might Yeah, I remember thinking, oh, well, if Jason does it and if that guy does it. Oh, now I remember his name. if he does it, then then I won't do it. Maybe I should read the book, but I don't, I don't wait four years to read it. And I don't read books.

Justin Edelstein: So I don't know, you know, where this is going to head at this point. I took me a little while. I think you, the first time I think you started. So.

Jason Atwood: Backtrack just I've been practicing GTT for I think for 14 years now 13 So 2004 is when I think I marked the buying of the book Probably took me six months to a year to kind of get into it So I must have been doing something bad at work that you dropped this book on my desk, maybe Maybe you weren't capturing Look how I did there so so just so between us let's call it 20 years of experience. Let's round up. That's generous. Christine, we'll take it. Well, we also work at a company that we founded along with another partner. And we, I think the interesting thing for everybody listening is that we practice G-T-E-T company. Like it's not just something that you and I practice alone. No, no. It is something that we have of the core philosophy of our company.

Jason Atwood: Yes,

Justin Edelstein: Arkus is a G-T-T shop. Right. We will see you next week. Good night. And everybody speaks GTD. Like we speak to each other in ways that may not make sense to some people in the way that we ask each other certain things or expect things of one another around the company. Right. Because otherwise it wouldn't work if everybody wasn't on board. It... It... Well... I mean, it just would it would break down. So I think that's been these four episodes

Jason Atwood: A little bit now that I'm Thinking about it. We've talked about a little bit other we planned it now now as we're doing it Best way is we do podcasting to do it Maybe the next one will be better which is to really spin this around kind of How is working in a corporate environment and how does that help with your personal life and sort of more bringing in corporate work. We've talked a lot about being personal a lot. It's not that we spent an hour and a half talking about the personal side of it. I think now it will be interesting to bring it into a we've we've do teach. and hold everybody to a GTD standard, which is interesting. I mean, I know this comes out to the two, 300 people that do this as well.

Jason Atwood: But anyway, so that's what I think it would be. That's the spin that I'm going to put on the next four. Obviously talk about tips and stuff like, like that. But so let's talk about capture. Let's talk about capture.

06:16 Justin Edelstein: I oftentimes get asked. So what's the most important if I were to do one thing in GTD like what's the one thing I should do? And it's a super hard question to answer because I don't think there's one answer I think there's actually two answers to this question but one of them is certainly capture and And ubiquitously capturing is really one of the two answers that I would give people. And it's really around, you know, as information is coming at you and information comes at you nowadays in so many different ways on so many different channels and at such a high velocity. How do you understand what to respond to, when to respond to it, and how to even wrap your head around what you need to do? And that's how I think about capture.

Justin Edelstein: It's like as things are coming at me and as people are saying things to me as I'm getting emails As I'm getting slack messages and as I'm getting text messages I have to have a way to put it all in one place That I can trust to come back to. Right. And that for me is the process of capturing. Capturing what it is that I need to do next. The thing I might need to do next is go back and read the thing that I decided not to read. That's okay. And sometimes you're not... I need to get it. Yeah. I just need to write it down somewhere.

Jason Atwood: You're not capturing a task. You're just capturing an idea, a thought. You're capturing a date. You're capturing a... I mean, it happens all the time, but obviously I practice this stuff, but it's not always necessarily a to-do. Sometimes it's just a great thought. Sometimes it's, I mean, on the, we have those notes in the shower that I think I gave you one for one of the holidays, and I walked in, and we use it, the wife and I use it to write things down occasionally. And the other day, discuss update wills was written in the shower that I didn't capture it right this someone else captured my wife captured only the person in my shower and we then and it became like a thing because you know you're having, having a thought and it's like okay that's that's not it necessarily a to-do that's a big thing We gotta sit down and talk about it.

Jason Atwood: So it did and turned into things that went into GTD. But the important part was that at the start of it, and I guess it is probably one of the best or one of the things that is the first of the principles. But it's also the one that you can't nothing else will work without it. Like if you can't capture stuff, then the rest doesn't work. Yeah, there's no point in the rest.

Justin Edelstein: No. So that's why it is irrelevant if you haven't captured. the next thing that you need to do or the idea that spawns a project or whatever it may be. If you haven't put it in a place that you trust to come back to at a later point in time, then you've lost it. It's poof gone and then you're gonna waste time thinking about, what was that thing? Well darn it, I wish I wrote it down or I wish I... captured it in some way or flagged it or started or whatever. So these are all just different ways of capturing. You know, we're not, you know, in our series, we're not talking about. Oh, we are actually in the in the last set tools of how to capture tools. But if you write things down, great.

09:46 Justin Edelstein: Write it down. If you start things or flag things in email, great. Star and flag things in email. If you if you write things on whiteboards, cool. If you create lists great. If you have a never know, awesome. Like whatever it is, Because it frees up space in your brain to think about other things and think about the task at hand or think about things creatively. Because all those little pings and dings of like, I need to do this, I need to do that. I'm at ease. I've got those. I've captured them. I know I've got them. Mm-hmm. I'll get to them when I have to get to them so it's really at the core of it because otherwise you You can't get back to things that you haven't written down

Jason Atwood: And I want to just talk I go broader on capture too. People do think of that as there's many different levels of it. So there is the capture of you and I are Walking home whatever and you say hey, let's do something and you know Both of us whip out our iPhones and like write it down. There's that type of capture There's the capture of people send me emails and I look at them and I say I have to deal with that later. I star it. There's the capture of, you know, I want to do something. I want to, you talk about a TV show that I should watch and I throw it into Evernote, right? That's another capture.

Justin Edelstein: There might be two levels to that capture, by the way, right? There might be the, you have a list of TV shows. Yes. That's it. I may be talking to you like, hey, you should watch this show. You might capture elsewhere, put in my, cause the list might not be super handy. Right. That's why ubiquitous capture. You have to have something that's really easy. Right. To capture things with write that showdown in my list of shows. Safe. Yes. Captured, done. Got it. Like you'll get to it when you get to it. Yep.

Jason Atwood: Or sometimes it's just a piece of paper. Like someone hands me a business card. I know my process with it is I'll take the business card, I'll throw it in my physical inbox. I know it's still old school, but then I go through that inbox once a week and so anything that goes in there, the wife will leave me something. If she wants me to deal with something, she'll put it in my inbox. So I've I haven't captured at that point, but I kind of have that's my only house, you know if people so like there's Just don't think of it always as physical or as writing something down, or it could be both, right? It could be a digital thing that comes at you. It's about taking something, taking it, and then putting it in a place that you have instructed yourself to go back to.

Jason Atwood: So for us, we're capturing a tool that we know we're back in all the time. But if you can't just capture it right down on a post-it note and then stick it in the trash, like it has to go to some place that And this gets into the third week when we talk about this, but you have to be able to come back to it. You have to be able to trust it too. Right. It has to be trusted.

12:55 Justin Edelstein: And to a our guests, how it permeates throughout the company, you'll oftentimes say something to somebody. And it'll be a little spark and you might literally say to the person capture that right a like just to make sure like cuz it could be just this conversation and some little spark of brilliance came out of An ad hoc conversation or over lunch. You're just eating and you're like wouldn't be cool if we could do blah blah It's like oh good idea capture that And that's in our vernacular. That's normal behavior at Arkus to just be like, ooh, capture that. Because I think the thing that underlines

Jason Atwood: -lines that is that there's a responsibility to that thing. That you can't just throw out, you know, let's have lunch on the table. at Arkus and a GTD practitioner without someone kind of going, who's is that? Am I capturing that because I'm taking a follow-up on it or are you capturing? Now what's nice about being in an organization that everybody is sort of practicing the same way is it's very clear that one of those, that something like that needs to happen. It's like, oh, we, you need to go do this or you, someone should be capturing it and there's a sense of responsibility. Like if you capture it, that means you're got it. And you don't leave the meetings that you would, you know, thinking, like, well, who's who's is that, that right? Who whose job is it to do that thing?

Jason Atwood: It should be very clear. And when you get to the highest level of GTD, black belt, I guess. You feel dirty if someone says something to you and you don't capture it. It almost, I know it sounds weird, it feels weird when someone says, hey, can we do XX and X? And you're like, yeah, I think we should. And like there's no one writing something down or you pun to them and say, ping me next week. That's not me capturing. I do this all the time. I say, if that's something you want, dude? Pick me next week. I don't care how, you'll figure it out. Because that's that's so that's like I almost told you no you capture it and then send to me and then I'll then I'll handle it but When you do that an organization that everybody thinking that way it makes it so those Again, the drop balls hopefully or less and less because everybody's kind of highly aware of whose is this who should be doing it How are we doing it?

Justin Edelstein: Let's go. Yep. It's also an expectation that When you ask somebody to do something and they've accepted that They've accepted that responsibility That the person who has accepted the responsibility should and in most cases does have the expectation that you, the person who's sort of assigned that, have also captured it in a way that is... But I disagree with that. Well, I think until you get to a certain point... That's right. Where... okay. where we're playing the same game here. You've captured a waiting for, a waiting for, right? So that's what we can get into in terms of contexts.

16:43 Jason Atwood: While we just talk as a capture thing, it's another thing to capture. This is not a capture of things that I'm going to do or I want to think about or a brainiac-moment I had. This is, I'm capturing the fact that someone else owes me something. Right. And they have committed to something. They made a commitment. I'm going to get you x by y. I'm going to do this. We're going to send this. I'll send you an email, whatever it is. And depending on your level with that person, you capture it yourself to say, it's important enough that I need to make sure that this person does this. And so I'm going to capture the fact that they're going to get it to me. It's a fail safe because then when that thing comes up the two or two days and you and your system your tools will talk about in the Fourth episode when it comes up and it's like hey waiting for email from Justin Doing this day and I haven't gotten it from you.

Jason Atwood: Sometimes I got it. I'm like quick already got that Sometimes I'm like, hey Justin. Remember that what's have that email you said you're gonna send me right and I'll tell you it makes you it's right. It's built in suspenders If everybody's practicing GTD, you wouldn't need to do it. You and I, because we know each other so well and we've been practicing so long, I don't capture stuff that I hand to you. Because I know that you are at a level that I don't have to do that. That's a compliment. Well, do you capture stuff you send to me? Because you know if you send it to me, it's... There's a 99% chance that I'm going to execute on it in some way. It's very rare that it slips to the crack. It happens.

Jason Atwood: It's not like it's not forever. But that's powerful. And the way you feel about it, again, I was going back to, I was at this conference, not about this podcast, but I was at this conference, I find when I go to conferences, That's when capture becomes so important to me. I will come back and look at my tool at the end of the day or the conference or whatever the next day and it'll be littered in this inbox full of stuff that I wrote wrote down, books I want to do, people I should catch up with. And all of them are like, oh man, right. All that stuff yesterday that I talked about. Some of them are like, yeah, I'm not doing that or I did that already or I forwarded that email. But like when you are on the fly and going and, you know, not sitting in front of your computer and don't have tons of time to think about stuff.

Jason Atwood: The ability just to take little bits, whether they're ideas or tasks or to do's or follow ups or events. Say your friend's going to run the marathon. You just you might want to just capture it after throwing the calendar calendar. You know, it's there. Yeah, I have it.

Justin Edelstein: I was just looking, you know, you were talking about a conference site. This is just a regular week. I didn't go to a conference, didn't do anything, whatever. At, well, I mean, it was a holiday week, so it was a little short. But, I'm just looking at my inbox, in my, in my tool here. And, you know, it's Friday. I generally do my weekly reviews on a Sunday. Yep. I sometimes start a little bit on a Saturday, but we'll do a little episode on weekly review and we'll talk about our thing. That's episode number three. Part three. I've got, I'm looking here, seven things in my inbox. Which is just like, yeah, this is stuff that's not tied to a date. And And Be it easily, I will get back to that and it's by time Do date on an inbox waiting for me to get to

21:18 Jason Atwood: When I get to my weekly review, that's a thing. Well, you, you're going to get to it as we'll get to in,

Justin Edelstein: In the third, trying not to say like tool names and weekly review. Listen, I'm going to get through to my weekly review.

Jason Atwood: That's a thing. But that's, and that's when we'll come back in that, in that podcast and talk about it. But that is so important because they captured really, yes. If you just wrote things down, why I say there's like one of two things, they're all, I think.

Justin Edelstein: There's just capture. But when people are like, what's the most, what's the thing? R.I.P. Well, all right, but if you didn't go back to review any and any of the things that you've captured or never,

Jason Atwood: It wouldn't work either It's a great place and then we'll probably wrap this two types one is for those of you fall again and I hear the number one question I get When people hear I do GTD and whatever, they say, oh yeah, I tried that and I fell off the wagon. Or, you know, I, you know, oh, I tried whatever. Or I was just talking to an employee of Arkus who?Aa I who's new and who's going through the process of, reading the book as everybody has to. Kereas at arkusinc.com. I, it,. because I'm wanting to become a habit. So then she then she will feel like, oh, I don't know what I'm doing. If I don't if I don't write the things down, because of course she's, she forgets everything and she'll listen to this and she'll be like, yeah, I do forget everything.

Justin Edelstein: So someone who's falling off the wagon. Yeah. A few times. Yeah. It happens. I will say. The thing that's made. The thing that sort of comes back, is when you feel as though, and it can be clearly pointed out to you. So you almost need to be self aware and someone else, and you have to be able to take it from someone else to say, Hey. I've noticed a slip in and then fill in the performance, right? You know, responsiveness, whatever it is, right? You miss commitments, you've missed dates, you've, you know, you just aren't like, you're not yourself. You're not as on it as you were a month ago, or two months ago. And if you can be self aware, That's the greatest because you self correct you can course correct yourself yourself and say let me bring myself back to you know the optimal state of productivity and that's better than having it being pointed out to you.

24:55 Justin Edelstein: Now the best part about being in a GTD culture is that when someone does point it out to you, It's a coaching moment and not a slap on the wrist moment. And that's that's the best part about, you know, feeling a part of the GTD culture at Arkus, I'll say is is that everyone's doing it. Everyone's practicing it. And if you see that someone's sort of. you know, missing something or slipping on something. It's more of a teachable moment and a coachable moment to say, do you have a project for that? Did you capture the fact that you needed to do that? Can I see it? Right? Like, let, let me look at what you're doing to handle that situation. Right. And at that point, it starts to click back in like, oh, right. if I would have.

Justin Edelstein: Captured that I would not have missed a deadline on something or I wouldn't feel so overwhelmed because I'm being too reactionary and I'm not ahead of the game I'm behind the game if you capture everything and it's really an art it's like what to capture as it's coming at you versus what to just do in the moment It's like, oh, right, the two minute rule, like, I've got two minutes to do this. It'll take me a minute. Let me just do it versus I don't have the time to read that right now. Flag star, whatever. Capture the fact I need to get back to that at some point in time and trust in the fact that you will. That's the big thing. You got to trust the fact that you will get back to the thing that you a.

Justin Edelstein: And that will that will ease your mind in the equation. But it takes it takes a while. So just those who fall off and get back on, it takes a while

Jason Atwood: To get to that point where you are. Your brain, your brain will trust your other system. It'll trust those others, those other inboxes. It won't kind of try to remember because if it keeps trying to remember, you know, theories are the numbers dropping to how many things we can actually keep like remembering. Used to be like eight. Now I think it's down to four. Your brain is for having, you know, David Allen says all the time, your brains are having ideas, not holding them like get them out get them out just start doing it, even if you just make a simple list. Again, one of the things he talks about all the time is, if you're ever feeling stressed, you sit down, you write a list of the things you need, it doesn't just help, it helps.

Jason Atwood: Because all of a sudden you took this stuff and you organized it a little bit in front of you and it feels easier to handle. Oh, I gotta remember all the stuff. In the hardest times of I've seen people in, in their life, and I had some times last year, like just getting that person to say, let's make a list. and it just it helped. It doesn't help grief, but it helps like that kind of just overwhelmingness. So huge, huge capture. It's a great way to get started. You can read the book and then just start, you know, paper and just start writing stuff down, write some things you have to do, bigger things in your life. So that's capture. All right. So next week we'll come back. We'll I don't know. It's kind of difficult.

28:02 Jason Atwood: I think people don't get it and I think it's a kind of missing people talk about capture and weak review a lot They don't talk about the natural planning model, which is I think that's why we want all right. Right? So we'll do that next week Justin and Jason saying. Enjoy those cloudy