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Transcription of interview with David Allen interview on April 8, 2013.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP�, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
David Allen is an author and a consultant. He is the founder and CEO of The David Allen
Company. He has been recognized by Forbes as one of the top five executive coaches in
the United States.
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Allen on Arutz Sheva
Radio.
Douglas Goldstein: You�ve written a number of books including one called Getting Things
Done and Making It All Work. These are such important topics for investors. Unfortunately,
a lot of people have a problem. They can think of good ideas but they can never quite execute
it. What are some of the suggestions that you usually bring to those people?
David Allen: First of all, you need to determine what next actions really are. As simple as
that concept is, it�s something people often avoid doing and it�s a way to train yourself
about a thought process that�s fairly easy to do, profound when you do it but people
avoid it like the plague. If you have to go and move the needle on that thing right now
and you have nothing else to do in your life, what are you going to do about mom�s birthday,
what are you going to do about that credit line that you need to expand, what are you
going to do about the doctor�s appointment you�ve been avoiding, what�s the very
next physical thing you need to do and where does that happen. It�s a great exercise
in your mind.
Douglas Goldstein: Do you think that should people start thinking about that on a moment
to moment basis or is this part of planning your day or your week?
David Allen: The way you get things done is first of all you need to define what �done�
means, but then you also need to say what is doing look like and where does it happen.
That is a thought process you can start training your kids out from age 2 or 3 or 4 and they
should be but we�re not born doing that. You and I didn�t hop out of the wood going
high, what do we try to accomplish, what�s he next step, is it yours or mine, that�s
a learn to behavior.
Douglas Goldstein: Retirement is actually a
good example of saying it�s hard to figure out when you�re done.
David Allen: There�s actually a simple criteria, when does it get off your mind. That�s what
you need to figure out because what�s not on your mind is gravity and yet it�s killing
you. Just because something has a potentially detrimental effect doesn�t mean it�s bothering
you. It only bothers you when you actually think you would, could, should opt to be doing
something about it but you�re not.
Douglas Goldstein: When someone already walks in to my office, he knows that there�s something
that he needs to do. It�s just a jump from knowing that he needs to do to actually signing
on the paper or buying the stock or changing your budget. That�s where people seem to
get real hang up.
David Allen: They get hang up because they�re so smart, creative and intelligent and sensitive
and those are the biggest procrastinators. It�s the smart, creative and sensitive people
who in half a second can think about retirement, �Oh my God! What are all the things I�m
going to have to do and I have to think about but if I make the wrong decision, the potential
negative consequences.� You have to know what some of tricks are to
stop yourself from freaking yourself out is to get it down to a bite size chunk, what�s
the very next thing you need to do because that what you can handle without freaking
yourself out. How about boot computer, how about pickup pen, how about call your friend,
few of these things. It really is about getting engaged because you don�t have to finish
this stuff to get it under cruise control. You just have to make sure that you appropriately
have your hand on the helm.
Here�s another thing people tend to avoid especially people who like to think of themselves
as smart is that I have to have it figured out before I can start moving
on it. You need to be smart enough to figure out what it is that you�re really after
and is that a good intelligent decision and then you need to be smart enough to dumb it
down to a real thing to start doing about it and then course correct. We have a general
philosophy called �dynamic steering� we use in our company which means any plan is
up for grabs and for change as soon as you get better or different data. Start moving,
it�s a ready-fire-aim game out of here. You need to start moving on it. It�s tricky
because at some point, you�re going to need to invest your attention if not your money
towards something and when you do that, you divest it from something else. Everything
is a risk.
It�s like the way you ride a bike. You don�t lock your hands and here�s the direction
I�m going and I�m not going to move my steering. You�re constantly shifting. You
do that when you drive a car. You�re constantly course correcting based upon the feel of
the road. Just apply that to life. There are a
lot of people that if they hear the bump-bump-bump, they just grip and they�re like �Who cares
about bump-bump-bump? I will just deal with the bump-bump-bump.�
Douglas Goldstein: A lot of the problems that people have in dealing with money is simply
that they�re stressed out about whatever psychological hang ups they might have or
whatever the reason might be. I�ve seen that there are some people who are more stressed
and some people who are less stress. Why do you think that is? What can people do to lower
the stress so that they can begin to make logical decisions?
David Allen: First of all, stress is not a bad thing in on itself. If you didn�t have
any stress, you�d never grow or expand or expose yourself. If you want to get out of
the room and you�re not out of the room yet that is a stress. The way you get out
of the room is you start to relax that stress by starting to engage the cause of it. There�s
nothing wrong with stress in on itself.
Negative stress is �I want to be out of room but I have to do that too and I have
to do that but I want to be out of the room now but I have to do this at the same time.�
Now you�re spinning in a negative spiral and that�s what most people refer to when
you refer people are stressed out. In other words, they�re not appropriately engaged
but you throw yourself out there in a stormy sea, you�re going to be in appropriate stress
as long as you grab hold at the helm and start managing yourself in that sea. It�s really
about getting appropriately engaged. It�s not getting things done, it�s about being
appropriately engaged with your life or your career or your retirement or your money or
your family or whatever and appropriate engagement is a real core key concept.
Douglas Goldstein: How you should be appropriately engaged?
David Allen: When it�s off your mind.
Douglas Goldstein: How would if you just delegated a way to a financial advisor or to an executive
coach?
David Allen: If that�s gets it off your mind then you are appropriately engaged so
can fool me but not you. You�re the one who knows whether that was sufficient for
your or not because some people are going to hand it over to a financial advisor, but
not let it go and they�re going to go surf and research everything and say, �Why it�s
not in it?� and some people don�t handle it. There�s no better or worse. There�s
only better or worse for them personally about was that sufficient for them to get that off
your mind. People don�t have to go very far to find out what you need to do, just
start to notice what�s not on cruise control because there�s an inverse relationship
between on your mind and getting done. If you�ve got your investments on your mind,
there�s some decision about them you have not made or you have not parked the results
in some trusted way.
If something happened that was not what was supposed to happen in terms of what I delegated
to him or her, now it�s not on cruise control again and that�s back on my mind, so what
you need to do? Get another one, call him, fire him, do it yourself but at that point,
that�s where you make that decision so back to how we started this conversation. That�s
where what�s the next action, what do I need to do because that will then indicate
appropriate engagement. The appropriate engagement with your retirement or with your investment
is not about figuring it all out and finishing it. It�s about �Wait a minute, I need
to just make sure I�ve got some outcome that I�ve identified and then I can remind
myself at that outcome in some appropriate way at some consistent basis and I�ve got
next actions determine that are moving the same forward at whatever pace is comfortable
or appropriate for whatever the thing is. You don�t actually have to fill in all the
blanks in between. It�s out from an action, the zeroes and ones of getting things done.
Douglas Goldstein: How can people follow your work?
David Allen: Www.davidco.com is our website. There�s lot of cool introductory products
and educational CDs and things like that and my books are on the site and lots of information
around there.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP�, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host
of the Goldstein on Gelt radio show (Monday nights at 7:00 PM on www.israelnationalradio.com.
He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel. Securities offered
through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, NFA, SIFMA. Accounts carried
by National Financial Services LLC. Member NYSE/SIPC, a Fidelity Investments company.
His book Building Wealth in Israel is available in bookstores, on the web, or can be ordered
at: www.profile-financial.com (02) 624-2788 or (03) 524-0942.
Disclaimer: This document is a transcription and/or an educational article. While it is
believed to be current and accurate, divergence from the original is to be expected. The original
podcast can be heard at https://sites.google.com/site/goldsteinradioshows/. All information on this website is purely
information and should not be used as the sole basis for making financial decisions.
The opinions rendered herein are those of the guests, and not necessarily those of Douglas
Goldstein, Profile Investment Services, Ltd., or Israel National News. Readers should consult
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