Commitments - GTD Summer Series Part 3 - Episode #308 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.

00:11 Jason Atwood: This This is the 308th episode of Cloudflakes Weekly for the second week of August 2019. This episode is titled Commitments. Caught for the cocked to you by you If you love this padcast Share with someone or drop us a review wherever you subscribe and listen to it Ding dang done. I'm host. Padcast. Huh, that's a crossover. Crossover episode. I'm your host Jason Atwood and joining me co-host 308 times in a row Committed so committed to the podcasting world although he's tried to hall of fame it

Justin Edelstein: How's the summer going It's a nice easy summer.

Jason Atwood: It's really nice. Awesome. Awesome. Cool. me too. Having a great one. So we are now on our third part, our summer series, GTD summer series, part three. this week we're going to talk about def commitments, de commitments. We talked about first one we talked about GT Summit, which we're still kind of reeling about I'm reading through all those books Then we talked about I have a Kindle.

Justin Edelstein: Yeah, you have a Kindle. How you liking your Kindle digging it? Which way do you get paper? Yeah, I got the waterproof cover I know you have the leather cover which yeah, which felt really nice in my hand, but I remember if you recall back up Couple however long ago that was when we recorded the first one like a month and a half ago I had those habits that I wanted to yeah create and reading was One of them that I didn't even mention cuz I was I was afraid of making an external commitment that I wasn't gonna be able To keep so I wanted to keep that one internal and we'll talk about these things this in a few minutes, but I got the Because it in and of itself is waterproof. Yes, so I got the waterproof case so that I can take it out on the kayak with me sit in the middle of the lake and Just sit there and not worry have to worry about like my Kindle ball You know like if it falls in the lake, I'm probably not gonna be able to find it, but In the event it does fall in the lake and I'm quick enough to get it right?

Justin Edelstein: It won't break It's great for the beach. It's great. I mean kindles are awesome That's why I got the waterproof line and like the leather one was super nice But I was like i'm just gonna ruin this I think so i'm just gonna get this

Jason Atwood: Waterproof I got my daughter one that looks like a composite book like the book like the old school Yeah, that one's kind of cool. Yeah, because you don't kind of want to look like a kindle because then it's like oh, sachie snatchie

Justin Edelstein: I don't know how good Kindle or like bringing a library to the beach with you Like now I go to I go to Long Beach from my buddy's place and I always just have it with me I know I I barely ever take it out But I bring it with because we're just hanging out on the beach and I'm you know If you're sitting there reading a book you're sort of anti social just sitting there reading a book But I quite enjoy it's one way to get into reading too

03:27 Jason Atwood: Is like I find Like even with GTD, bring about GT, one of the things to get yourself into GTD is also to give yourself a kind of a reward, like that's the power of habit. Charles Duhigg, the chocolate, Sunday. You gave yourself a reward. So one way to build a habit, you were trying to build a reading habit, give yourself a reward, a piece of technology, something you can play with. I bought a Kindle. We talked about OmniFocus last time. You're getting into GTD. Buy yourself an army focus. Here's a new tool to play with. Sometimes that reward system helps out. All right, but we're not talking about rewards. We're not talking about habits. We're talking about commitments.

Justin Edelstein: Commitments, and I just mentioned an external, an internal one that turned into an external one. Well, why do you help me? Sure.

Jason Atwood: And just start off by, let's define what a commitment means in GTD world. Sure.

Justin Edelstein: So anytime that somebody maybe asks you to do something or anytime that you have stated that you are going to do a thing, you have essentially made an agreement, which we can read the agreement commitment to me, they're virtually the same. You've made that commitment to doing that thing. I'll give you a very concrete example of, and I'll tie it to GTD. I have committed internally and externally to practicing GTD, and for me a very key core part of practicing GTD is making sure that I do a weekly review at the very least once a week. that I have kept that commitment is by making it very visible to the public. And I've, I've made the first thing that I do whenever I start a weekly review, I tweet out into the universe that I'm doing it.

Justin Edelstein: Why do I do that? Now a lot of people probably see, and I've actually seen some Arkeys who do this as well now and they like that tweet and they do it themselves and I like their tweets and all that fun stuff, which is really cool. I love that you fellow Arkeys are doing that, but that is a really great way of keeping that commitment because I've stated I'm doing this thing and... I'm making it visible so that everyone can see that I'm doing it. So I'm committed to doing this thing. I'm not going to break that commitment because it feels stinky to break those things. And I'm going to make sure that I let people know that I'm keeping this commitment to do this thing. And, you know, sometimes there are, you can't do the things.

Justin Edelstein: So you've got to figure out a way to, you know, renegotiate that commitment with yourself or with someone else. But boil it all down to, I said I was going to do this thing by this date.

Jason Atwood: You've got to do it. Let's break down. So I'm going to break it down a little bit more.

Justin Edelstein: I don't know why you ask me things.

Jason Atwood: No, I'm going to just want to like, no, I'm going to do a different take on it. That's your take. That's my take. I'm going to go more of the GTD. The GTD, not the GTD, why? Because let's go back to why people even, why I started with GTD. Why I started with GTD? Because I was breaking a lot of commitments, and I felt bad. That's the basis of it. Procrastination is not doing something and feeling bad about it. Procrastination is not fulfilling a commitment and feeling bad about it. There's millions of things I'm not doing right now, but I don't feel bad about them. Most people feel bad about the things they're not doing and these commitments they make to others and to themselves. And they feel bad about it, which creates stress. So stress free productivity, the book, the name of the book is really about saying, hey, you have all these commitments, but you don't know all of them.

07:23 Jason Atwood: You don't, you forget some of them. You don, don't live up to them. And that makes you feel bad. And you don't like living in a world of not feeling good, feeling icky, breaking them, not forgetting to, you know, lend that book to your friend that you said them, or they sent the resume and you said you'd get back to them on Monday with having read it, but you didn't read it. And so they come back to you on Tuesday and say, hey, did you read that resume? I need it for tomorrow. Like, oh, crap, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Like that feeling is not good. Or the, you know, you're going to make it to your. Your daughter's recital or something and then you forgot to fill out the paperwork so then she couldn't go to it Well, couldn't he feel bad?

Jason Atwood: Like the whole point is that you have Hundreds and hundreds of commitments all the time some you make Right. Some are just sort of part of your life like paying your taxes. It's a commitment You don't have a choice in the matter. And then, we like to break them into external and internal. External means something you commit to somebody else. And then they're right to the world. Whether it's your boss, your client, your spouse, your friend, your whatever, your kid, your family member. Those are external. You're going to do something for somebody. You're going to help them. And you make them all the time and people make them all the time But you know how it feels when someone makes a commitment to you and says oh, I'll do this for you and then doesn't do it You like thanks.

Jason Atwood: God, that's not nice of you Yeah, like you said you return that to me and you didn't and I had the on vacation without the thing that you said You're gonna turn it Then there's the internal We make tons of these. We make internal commitments all the time. Things we want to do to be better, habits we want to build. Want to be healthier, more mindful. I want to go to more yoga, whatever. Your trick is actually just taking an internal commitment and making an external. That's right. As to create some.

Justin Edelstein: I create visibility to my internal commitments so that I'm not accountable only to myself. I'm accountable to the world.

Jason Atwood: And the whole idea behind GTD is All those commitments, right, so all those commitments are what we consider non-time-based commitments, right? Right. The ones you think about, we're actually going to talk about that next time, next time on CloudFocus. We're gonna talk about all the commitments. And everybody's very equipped at doing time-based commitments. That's a calendar event. You have a thing on your calendar to go out to dinner with somebody, you go. You have it. You're going to go. The plane is going to take off. You're going to make it because on your calendar, you know when to leave. The recitals at Monday at 10, whatever. Everybody's very good at it. Or you're not.

Justin Edelstein: Or you're not. Right. That's the thing.

Jason Atwood: Like you may not. Well, you may miss the recital. Well, I'm saying, but it's but it was very good at having a trusted system that they don't. that, you know, they trust their calendar. Nobody doesn't. No one tries to memorize what they're on the calendar. No one tries to, you know, just try to go through and they know to put things in their calendar and they look at it, they review it weekly daily, every day before they get up, they review the first thing in the morning. What is my, what are my time-based commitments today? GDD is saying, Hey, that's great. Time-based commitments are awesome. You got that down. What about everything else? What about all those other things in your life that don't really have a time to them? They're not on the calendar.

10:40 Justin Edelstein: And what, what GDD allows you to do with those commitments is to understand your capacity at that moment and empowers you to say the word, no. Yeah. That that you just jump to like black black belt. I understand. But that relenting, if you get there to the point where you understand your own capacity and you understand what you can do in a moment in time, because again, I'm bringing this back to what I learned at the summit and I'm still still chomping on it months later, just still chewing on it. It's like, man, we, we really have the ability to do all the things we want to do. We just can't do them all at once. Like that's the deal. Sorry. Knowing where you are and what you're committed to doing and what you're not at any given moment helps you to understand whether you can do more or less.

Justin Edelstein: And that power of all of your internal and external, the.

Jason Atwood: I can then go either, sorry, I got a lot on my plate, or I can look at my commitment. I go, and I go, hey, that one, that one, I'm gonna renegotiate. MIT, most important task.

Justin Edelstein: Like, what's- It might be something super important that someone came out to resonate with. Yep.

Jason Atwood: I'm gonna and stress comes from My feelings, my whatever, living in a GTE world, its stress comes from being over committed. I have too many things on my plate and not enough time, only 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you. Whatever, 300, 300 days a year and 70 to 800 years to do it. That I'm over committed and I can't get it all done and the stress is... A, I can't get it all done and I'm gonna miss and break some of those commitments which makes me feel bad. Or B, there's some of these commitments I don't even know what they are and I'm overly stressed because my brain is not doesn't even know what the commitments are and therefore I'm kind of stressed like in the oh I keep remembering the other commitments that I forgot and that's a high level of stress.

14:21 Jason Atwood: People generally like to be relaxed. When? When to be the most relaxed? because they can't do them because they're not vacation, they're vacation and they feel less stressed. But I'm like, why is it? That's actually horrible that in our world, that in our world, only less stressed stressed and not stressed two to three times a year, two weeks, three weeks, this is the three weeks a year, you're not stressed. So the other 49, you're totally stressed. How horrible is that? Why don't we just say no? And I don't feel that way. I don't live my life I look at a number. There's a number that shows me how many active projects I have and I use that as a gauge. I know my number is 30. It's 30. Active projects 30. Anything over 30? It's getting too much.

Jason Atwood: Anything under. Under 30? Down to 20? I'm looking for things to do. It's like, hey Justin, what can I do now? I just know. I've done done this for so many years. That's where GTD can help you with your commitments is that if you know what they all are You can look at them. You can renegotiate with people. You can say no to stuff. And you're not stressed. It is, I know it's like going back to the whole thing, productivity, like stress-free productivity, but wouldn't that just be wonderful if you don't, if you're not stressed more than twice or three times a year? It would be the...

Justin Edelstein: The greatest and I mean some of these some of these commitments and the non-time-based commitments types of things are like things that can rattle around in your head like Like why should that be rattling around in your brain? Like that's a commitment. You have a cat. You bought a cat. The cat needs to live. It can't buy its own food. You'll love the cat. The cat can't go get its own litter. The cat can't. Go get its own food. The cat can't take itself to the vet. You can make it to keep it alive. Exactly. That's the huge picture commitment. This cat is going to be alive as long as I can possibly keep it a lie. Right. And if you miss getting the cat food because you just had too much else on your mind and then all of a sudden you go to feed the cat and you're like, oh no, no food.

17:22 Justin Edelstein: Like, come on, come on, people. Grow up. Like, get the commitments out of your head. It's not for that reason. You already know that you need to buy the cat food and you know how often you need to buy the cat food So just put that on autopilot put that commitment on autopilot and let it go And free yourself

Jason Atwood: And it will and it does actually work again I don't want to get too much on the preachy side But that's that's sort of the big thing is if you can really look at all of your life's commitments and say, this is it. And there's some that are coming up. That's where I think one of the great things of a week review is that, what do you do? You look forward. You look back weeks in your calendar. I go back three weeks. I look at things. I just scan the calendar. I'm looking for any past commitments that might. might actually either turn into future commitments or things that I might But there are some of them are time-based. Some of them are time-based, so you need to do something about now. What's funny is you just...

Jason Atwood: You hear about that key?

Justin Edelstein: That key was me, yeah. That's me just capturing something. Okay, you can capture it. Well, that was the thing that we saw, right? Was, I think it was one of the first speakers on day two in the summit. Man, it was a while ago. It's hard for me to remember, but it was the woman who... Started vital smarts. Emily Gregory. Thank you. Good job. She talked a lot about your phone being an incredible capture tool. And she gave us a little skill. where oftentimes if you and I are having a conversation, it would be rude if I just pulled my phone out in the middle of it and started typing on it. You don't know what I'm doing. Probably texting your wife. I might be texting. Exactly. I might be tweeting. I might be on Instagram.

Justin Edelstein: I might just be checking my email. I might just be ignoring you because whatever, because you're boring. Right. There's a little trick, a little skill. It's like. Tell the person, hey, that was really what you just said. It sparked an idea in my brain. I just need to write that down for a second. Sorry. Right. And then what do you write down? Just write it down. Wasn't what you're writing down. I don't want to tell you. Oh, OK.

Jason Atwood: Who's that? That's an internal commitment. Alrighty, well I just made you go red, but.. That's why Omni's focus is encrypted. Your stuff is not out there in the public.

Justin Edelstein: Anyway, so... No, I'll tell you what I'm writing down. Okay, you can. I need to ask you which Jets games... now that we're like basically at the precipice of the start of the season, like, which ones am I really going to?

20:27 Jason Atwood: Okay. We've reviewed that before, but we can review. They have it. I have it in Evernote. I can tell you. Right.

Justin Edelstein: I know you do, but I need, I need to put them on my calendar. They're not actually on your calendar. They're on my calendar. Right. But they're not on my, cause I don't have that Evernote note.

Jason Atwood: No, I actually put them on my calendar count you could say can you invite me to the ones that are that's on? I just captured it. I'll do that. Yeah. Well, you just do that now so Again, I just think this is a big concept of of a mommy focus. I'm sorry of GTD It is something that people really struggle with I really want people to start thinking about those. Think about your internal external commitments. Think about where you're putting them and think about when you're reviewing them. You review your calendar, your time-based. All the time, Monday, Tuesday, you review it, you look at it. It's constant.

Justin Edelstein: That is creating stress in your life, and it's not good. So here's a fun commitment that I've made. It's sort of a relationship commitment with my wife, the little lady. She loves getting flowers. She just really loves having them in the house. She likes the way they smell. She likes the way they look. They brighten up the place. And it makes her feel good to know that I... I think about her and get her flowers, right? I don't think it would disappoint her to know that it's GTD that keeps me on town, on her flowers, but I have a commitment now where I buy her flowers every eight days. Every eight days? Correct. So that's how long flowers last in the bay? Just about. Yeah. All right. Like I've sort of. Figured it out like you I saw you doing this the other day and I was like Why don't you subscribe to like a counter of the week thing?

Justin Edelstein: It's it you can subscribe You don't have any real control. I like to pick the flowers right and write the card and Exactly, right the card like it was it was a different card last week than it was two weeks ago It's depending on what's going on in my life. What's going on in her life? She's getting flowers every eight days. Maybe 16 days. Maybe 16? Maybe like get a bigger one. I don't know. Depends to start a fight. Depends exactly. I was wrong. But it's something that she's now like almost expecting, I think. Right. Like, oh wow, flowers just show up every week. This is great. Well, that's a commitment now that I've... We haven't necessarily agreed, hey, I'm gonna buy you flowers every week, but she really loves getting them, and I really love seeing her happy, getting flowers, and it's such an easy thing for me to do, to remind myself every eight days to get her flowers.

Justin Edelstein: And how would I do that? Would I throw that on? on a calendar as a recurring event every eight days? Like that's a weird thing to do, but it would be a way to capture it. Here's the thing that doesn't scale well. That's why I would say that would not work. Everything that you have to do every four days, every eight days, every six days, like where does that like your calendar would look like a mishmash of nothing. Right.

23:41 Jason Atwood: And I again, just one last thing and then we'll get off commitments, we'll come back, we'll go do something else for next week, but I think when you start to think about it, you start to think about commitments as not just being things that are, they are people, right? They are other people in your life. Your friends, your friendships to others is a commitment. I'll say that again. Your friendships to others is a commitment. There is a commitment. There's a level of commitment. It's actually a commitment to, you know, to celebrate them or to know that they went to the hospital and and to ask them or see if they're okay or whatever. Like your family members, your children, your pets. So you don't just think of this like getting dog food. Sure, that's the low level task.

Jason Atwood: The commitment is you bought a dog. You have another life that you have, that you've told that you're going to keep alive and treat well. So that's why I think it becomes easier. Like again, I keep all my, in my, me focus. I have a project for each one of my employees, my direct reports. Let's call it. just because I have a commitment to them, right? They are, and so when I'm going through my week review and I'm capturing things, I can, I can go and look at them and go, oh, oh, right, I need to do this for that person. Sometimes I capture all the waiting fors and we've had whole things about waiting fors. That's their commitment back to me. And that's also important, right? I have a key command to pull up.

Jason Atwood: I won't give the person's name. but it's a shift command and then a letter and I can pull up the way. You won't even give the letter. I won't even give the letter because I only have. Probably the start of their name. Probably start. Wait, do I have one? I have, I have, I have two people by two names, so I could give a one letter, but it would, wouldn't give away, but it will then bring up everything I'm waiting for from that one person. I built a custom perspective just for that. I have a perspective that I can show just all the stuff I'm focused on with my daughter. All the things, because again, massive commitment. Again, it depends that something's going on and out like that, but vacations, trips you're going to take in the future.

Jason Atwood: Again, all the stuff you do around the house, all this repeating stuff, all these things that are in your life, they're all commitments and they all... Where at reminding you when you need to do them you're in the shower They had a thing at the GT summit two months ago ideas come when you best idea is in the showers because you're cut off From all the other stuff, but it's also the worst time to get a good idea I can't write it down and write it down how many times you bought

Justin Edelstein: Us waterproof note pads, like two years ago, right? And I used to use it because you've seen the showering like, Oh, crud.

Jason Atwood: Because your brain, if then given the chance to have clear space, the shower, it goes and then has ideas and has concepts and thoughts. I mean, just that's a big thing. But those anyway, so that's it. That's it for commitments. Maybe the last moment is renegotiating. If you make commitments to people and you have a place that you put them and you review them, it also allows you to renegotiate. Hey, and this works more in business, I think, with my two business partners, you and the one that should not be named. Sometimes I just go and go, I'm overloaded. I said I was going to do X, I can't do X. So I need to do Y. Like, can you do it? I can defer it. Or is this really the most important thing? I made the agreement to do it, but let's renegotiate it now because I've got too much on my plate right now.

27:09 Jason Atwood: Or I made a commitment to get a deck to somebody the other day, and I went back to them before it came up and it's been in my system, and I went, hey, I need more time to work on this. But I did it not and, not ten days after it was due, I did it before it was due, and I said, here's why. You know, I've got some stuff I want to put into it, blah blah blah. And that type of stuff is, again, goes from, oh crap, I forgot to do something, to, oh yeah, I know that's coming, but I know I don't have the time to do it, so let me renegotiate it now. And that changes everybody's behavior towards you, and it's a really, really, really cool tool. So, that's commitments.

Jason Atwood: Next week, we'll be back with counter management, man. We can talk about counter management for 16 hours, but we won't. And that'll be the last of the series. Man, it's going to be crazy. But that'll be the end of this month. So until then, it's Justin Jason saying enjoy those cloudy days.