A conversation with Chris Crouch, author and creator of the GO System - Part I [Matt's Idea Blog]
Continuing my interview series [1] with the top experts in personal productivity, I’m very pleased to share highlights from my conversation with Chris Crouch, creator of the GO System and author of Getting Organized: Learning How to Focus, Organize and Prioritize. Chris’s company runs a certification program and sells products like an implementation kit. He’s published some free articles here.
I wrote about Chris’s book a few months ago (see Some thoughts from the book “Getting Organized” by Chris Crouch), but frankly I had no clue about the depth of his understanding around that and many other topics. Luckily, they came up in our long and wide-ranging conversation - passion, the human nervous system, why getting productive is so hard, mythology, and more. So if you like big ideas and lots of great book references, enjoy!
(Note: Because there’s so much interesting stuff, I’ve broken the interview into two relatively arbitrary parts. Stop by next week for the conclusion.)
How did you get started in this work?
I guess the genesis of all this is, when I started as a CPA, I started with (back then) one of the big eight firms, and it’s a fairly rigorous environment. If you want to survive, you have to be able to handle a lot. So, I was fortunate enough to not only survive but progress fairly quickly. It was that kind of thing and I quickly got myself in a position where I said my old way of doing things is not going to get it done here. So, I realized that - I am a naturally spontaneous person, so I realized that I have got to learn some skills or install some skills, learn behavior that will help me cope and survive and prosper with all of this.
So, I initially got interested in the topic there and started studying various forms of personal productivity. Then, that sort of morphed into really getting pretty good at it. I guess at some point in time, I ended up working with a Fortune 500 company; and the CEO, whether I deserved it or not, he had said, I don’t know how you are doing this, but you seem to be one of the most productive people in our organization of literally 12,000-14,000 people at the time. He said, “Can you teach others to do this?” And of course that was like throwing me in the briar patch. So, I was allowed to be an executive in the company. I was allowed to pretty go anywhere, do anything, buy any book, buy any tape, listen to anyone, hire people, to sort of sift through all of this to see what made good sense and what did not.
And in my seminars I joke about this, but I tell them, there is so many things in these books that make so little sense and are so counterproductive at living a productive life and my example is, handled everything once. You see that on a lot of the books. I tell them, that’s a good rule for toilet paper and - you know the first season but it won’t work in the real world. So, that sort of started my journey to, “Let’s find things that are practical; let’s get out there and go to the farthest reaches of information.” Like, I may study quantum physics, the philosophy of religion, but when we bring it into the classroom for people, let’s make it as practical as possible.
It’s just been a long journey; it’s a passion. It never was a job; it never was a hobby. It went well beyond that, it was something that I couldn’t stop studying this if I wanted to.
What are some of your biggest influences or models early on?
Probably a guy up in your area had a lot of influence, a guy named Robert Fritz. He wrote a book called The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life.
It’s a very organic way of looking at creating desired results in your life; he was huge. Jonathan Livingston Seagull was huge because all the lessons between the lines of that book. As a Man Thinketh. I can go on and on and on. Surprisingly, you won’t find many traditional organizing books on my list. I know you are a David Allen fan, and that would be high on my list if you went to that particular kind of books. I like David’s stuff; I don’t totally agree with everything but I am sure he wouldn’t agree with all of mine. I like Hyrum Smith’s book [10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management] - he was involved with Franklin Planning.
Then as far as really getting personal, I like Karen Kingston’s book Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui.
Chris Crouch: Those are probably the three of the - that’s what people usually expect you to spat out a list of organizing books and all that. Really most of those - I’ve got a shelf full of those, most of them did very little for me because a 300-page book on ‘Organizing’, who is going to read it, who is unorganized.
On writing his own book
So, when I wrote my book, the fear was, I am almost being superficial here because I am doing it with busy people with a short attention span. So, my fear was, this is going to be too superficial, but I was wrong; they have responded real well to it.
Well, what happened is, honestly that book - this sounds a little tacky, but that book is bait. I have got this nationwide network of the people that teach my course - and this book was simply to say, I like this kind of thinking and I think I may want to go to that course. And it’s worked quite well; we give everybody a copy of that book that goes through the course; there’s a whole package, a kit that goes with it.
Now, I say it’s bait - I don’t mean that in a bad way. The book itself has done people good, I think. It’s like when you are doing these preview presentations - Lunch & Learn - you’ve got to stay educational because no one wants to get up and do a 30-minute ad for yourself.
So I always try to give them enough to say that they walk away with something that they can go back and use. But I have two things on my mind as a teacher (I justify myself as a teacher by the way), and a teacher does two things - they disrupt current beliefs. And if you think about it, no new learning is going to take place if you don’t disrupt current beliefs. So, I am poking at people’s beliefs all the time and trying to get them to scratch their head and say, “Huh? What did you just say?”
And the second thing that’s important to me in my teacher role is that when the teacher is no longer present the learning goes on. So, I want to do things in my books and in my class that make people want to go get on this journey and - I won’t say ignite it - and let them go on their own. I am going to attempt to write six books, I don’t know if I’d pull it off in 2008.
On personal challenges to getting organized
I am going to divide this thing up into components and it’s like a Gordian knot, trying to get organized. Somebody comes to you, you have this happen, and “What can I do?” Well, there’s a big knot tied up here; we have got to untie it a little bit at a time. Maybe we can cut right through it with the psychological issues. If it’s baggage we might be able to use Transactional analysis or Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy - just cut the knot.
But basically I am trying to get people to get fired up about the topic; and then I am trying to provide resources once they get on that journey that can help them accelerate their learning. I took a position when I started this and said, people don’t just get disorganized for one reason - you have read the book so you know. There are six issues at least that I think are very powerful or influential. And having incoming items is an item is the one that most of the books address; the paper shelf, the emails or whatever. And that’s certainly an issue but that’s almost like a phantom, it’s not the real issue. But getting down into personality issues is where you can really do some good.
Again, it maybe something as simple as a workaholic tape, a perfectionist tape, a busyness tape - and by tape, you understand what I mean, just these things in your nervous system that have been installed. We don’t want to get into blaming parents, but maybe your parents were always saying, “Hurry up, hurry up,” and always rushing you. And of course you go with that as your comfort zone; you equate activity with value as a human. So, it might be some simple issue there.
On procrastination
Procrastination is a good example. There is probably at least a dozen things that cause procrastinations; one of the primary ones is Perfectionism - and of course that usually goes back to a childhood experience of trying to get it too right. It may have the parents pushing a little bit too hard for good grades or play the piano well or be a good athlete or things like that. So, the price of a mistake gets too high.
Basically I am trying to get people to understand that this is a big issue - it’s a fun issue by the way. It’s fun to unravel these issues and to understand yourself better. And I get into personality issues where, well gee, if you are naturally a spontaneous person and they put you in a methodical job like - let’s say you are naturally spontaneous and outgoing or an extrovert, which means you energize by interacting with people, and you take a job as a CPA, punching numbers in a spreadsheet in an office all by yourself. You’ll be unhappy.
None of these [organizing books] are going to help you until you address that issue.
On email
I read all these books on emails; I’ve read the Hamster book that you mentioned (The Hamster Revolution: How to Manage Your Email Before It Manages You), and I’ve read all these articles because it’s my job to do some of that stuff. The best one is “Bit Literacy” by Mark Hurst in my opinion (Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload). But what I don’t see in those books is, they are kind of going straight to the symptom or the thing that this issue is causing. Nobody is really asking the question, “Why would someone come into their office and turn their time, energy, and focus toward answering emails when they know they have got much higher priority work.?”
On top-down vs. bottom-up approaches
I don’t know where you are on this issue, but I emphatically disagree with that, that you would not start with a vision. And the way I always write that in class, I’ll take a simple puzzle, usually a child’s puzzle, and what I’ll do is say, there’s three approaches to working this puzzle - this is kind of a tie end of Robert Fritz’s book that I mentioned earlier, because he talks about, if you want to create desired results you have to have a clear vision; you have to do what he calls a Current Reality or Current Assessment. Where am I now? Where do I want to go is the Clear Vision, where am I now is the Current Assessment; and then an action plan which means that’s the specific measurable actions you are going to take to get from where you are to where you want to go. It’s a cycle of three issues - well, you can simulate that with a puzzle - and I pick up a puzzle in class and tell people, “If I pick these pieces up randomly and just try to jam them together,” and I’ll do that in class, I say, “Can I get this puzzle put together?” And the smart ones will say, “Yeah, you can.”
There are enough permutations and combinations that if you keep it up, you and a monkey could get that put together (see Infinite monkey theorem)- you are a monkey. But then I say, let’s lay this puzzle way out. I said, “Look, we have some blue pieces here, and these have a lot of red in them, and these seem to have a certain pattern,” and I kind of put them out in little piles in front of them. That’s sort of like doing a Current Assessment of where you are to me; the first one of course was the action plan.
And I’d say, “Now, have I increased the odds of getting this puzzle put together and will the be smoother so to speak?” And they’ll say, “Yeah.” And then I’ll turn to them and say, “How do you simulate the Vision step of this?” And usually the smart ones will say, “You look at the box first.” And I’ll put that box cover up and I say, “Yeah, once you have this in mind, then you kind of know how the pieces are all going to fit together; if you believe in synchronicity which I do, doors start opening for you and just start falling into place.”
So, I think it’s a false economy to jump in here and say, “I got to do this bottom stuff.” Yeah, it’s the Tortoise and the Hare story, it’s like a race car driver. I tell people if you - let’s say on the last lap. It is so counterintuitive when you are in the heat of battle to slow down, but that is exactly what you have to do if you want to finish the race - yeah, I would say Vision.
On short-term vs. long-term perspective
There are rare occasions when the vision wouldn’t come first. If someone runs - you see someone get run over by a car and they are bleeding in the street - no, you don’t want to say, “Oh! Let’s get a vision of good health for this person.” No, that’s a bunch of crap. You run over there and take action and stop the bleeding. But the point is, if you view all this as a cycle, as soon as possible, you start going around that cycle and doing the other two; now let’s do a Current Assessment and let’s do a Vision. In most cases - in business I see people, your nervous system, if you are in a hurry, if you are rushing, your nervous system is designed to chase that.
Well, there are rare occasions when the vision wouldn’t come first. If someone runs - you see someone get run over by a car and they are bleeding in the street - no, you don’t want to say, “Oh! Let’s get a vision of good health for this person.” No, that’s a bunch of crap. You run over there and take action and stop the bleeding. But the point is, if you view all this as a cycle, as soon as possible, you start going around that cycle and doing the other two; now let’s do a Current Assessment and let’s do a Vision. In most cases - in business I see people, your nervous system, if you are in a hurry, if you are rushing, your nervous system is designed to chase that.
The Hypothalamus, the Pituitary, and the Adrenaline are designed to help you chase that. So, it’s so counterintuitive when you are in a hurry and under stress to stop and slow down and get yourself back under control, but it is the only way to live in my opinion. We’re built to run from the Saber-toothed Tiger - we’re built to handle short term crisis, and what we are doing is, creating chronic long-term crisis, low grade stress we call it.
On the impact of stress on health
It’s my understanding that the Adrenal glands, when they start pumping out the adrenaline to help you deal with that short term crisis, that doesn’t hurt you bad. It’s like Cortisol - it’s sort of like those little tiny time capsules that keep on giving, and over time, you raise your nervous system’s set point so that you actually require more stress to feel comfortable I guess or whatever. And in that process, your body systems - your survival mechanisms are divided into two major categories; they are called Growth Categories and Protection Categories. Well, you just brought up the protection one, which mainly is the fight or flight, the Sympathetic Nervous System. Now, over on that side also is the Immune System, and the distinction is, the fight or flight is for external threats and the immune is for internal threats. So, we’ve got energies that can go down that path shall we say, or we have got energy that goes down the growth side and it mainly does cell replacement and generates new energy.
The Sympathetic Nervous System kind of overrides the whole thing. So when you put demands on it, it will take energy from the Immune System, it will take energy from the Growth and Cell Replacement and Energy Replacement System. So what I see people doing are chronically doing that; and when you do that enough, you raise your stress set point. Therefore, you are running your organs harder than they should be run; therefore, you are wearing your body out and you’re going to die sooner. It’s pretty simple.
You can joke around about operating under stress, but if you understand the way you allocate energy to your different systems, you are killing yourself, shortening you life.
What aspects of the business side are you still involved in?
Well, we built a network. Our goal was to build a network of about 100 trainers all over the country and then let that settle through to see who was going to be a serious player. And so, we’ve got these trainers that are teaching the GO System all over the country. We actually ended up at 99 - we shut our class down in September. We did our last class at least for a while, maybe forever - because if you study anthropology you realize that when a group gets to a certain size you lose a lot [2].
What we are going to do now is, take those 99 and fund it, so to speak. We are going to nurture the ones who are serious. We just had a two-and-a-half day conference last week where - this was the third year for some of these to come back through my training course; so we take them to a higher and higher level every time. We would like to get that down - and by the way, we are beating the daylights out of of The 80/20 Principle; we probably got 70 people who are active still.
How do you go about getting clients?
The way I see that works the best among our group is to do what I call these preview presentations where you start out with these Lunch & Learn things or you go into company meetings or whatever, and you give them 30 minutes shall we say. The reason that works so well is because two good things happen; they actually get to see your content and experience it and they actually get to experience you.
So, if you are good at what you do - when you’re a corporate officer or executive trying to decide on whether or not to hire some guy like me or you, you’ve got some fears - let’s call them concerns. If I bring this guy in, is he going to make me look good or bad? Am I going to look like I brought a good resource in or a bad resource?
So, that’s always going on if they don’t know you. And so if you can get on this little circuit at first of doing these luncheon speaking things, little presentations, you can remove those two fears because they get to see enough of your content, and they get to see you speaking, so that say, “Okay, I am ready to talk to this person now.” Now, the way I particularly did it because I am a - and this might work well for you. I wrote these White Papers - and immediately I published - NAPO was one of my big target markets, and so I said, “I am going to write these white papers.” I wrote one first of all on kind of what it takes to be successful in the organizing business if you are trying to develop business clients.
The second option, if you look at master fishermen or fisher people, I guess we should say now, they know what kind of bait they like, what kind of vegetation they like to hang around, what water temperature they like, how deep they like to swim, they know all of this stuff about them and so, they create something that will attract them rather than try to grab them. So I used my little papers to - again, this sounds a little tacky but it’s more like bait - because now I knew that somebody took the time to read that 20 pages, I’ve really reduced the odds that I am going to waste my time with this person.
How do you stay on top of your field? Do you read a lot still?
Yep! [I don't have assistants, but] I can’t help it; I love it. Occasionally somebody in our group will say, “Oh, Chris have you read this article, have you read this book?” So, yeah, I get a little feedback from them but I am like a hawk, I scour the environment looking for anything that might increase my profound knowledge, shall we say, which is always relative.
On information tracking/capture
I’ve got a system that captures information quite sufficiently. It’s real simple. I am a real believer in Paper Tiger (see my take here). It’s like a Google search engine for your own files. Now, I don’t sell Paper Tiger, so I am not pushing that, I use it myself; but what it allows you to do is use the computer power to index the stuff. So I have a set of reference files and I call it my GB System - that’s Mr. Green Binder. Let’s say I read an article that I like, then I will copy that article and I will put a little yellow sticker on it (you can buy these at any office supply store) and I would look at the next place available. I might put a GB 7-14 orange sticker. That means it’s in Green Binder 7, 14th item. And then you put in there the keywords; let’s say it has to do with - I’ve read an article on ‘Testing Darwin’, it has to do with evolution and how we evolve. Well, a year from now, I can put the word Darwin, Evolution, - it’s at GB 7-14, I go over there and find it.
Chris Crouch: On the books, I am a real journaler - I keep it really nice, I like leather journals because I want quality in my thoughts and everything, I don’t buy cheap journals, so I go out and buy these nice journals - and if I read a book, I just take it apart using the concept called Mind Mapping. I mind map it and extract the usable insights I call them and I put them in a mind map in my journal, and that’s where I taste it, digest it, play with it for a while. If it’s going to turn out to be part of my course, then I will use Mindjet.
I’ve got a whole another set of binders that are called RB because they are red - Red Binder. The Mindjet will go in there. So let’s take that article and find in Darwin. Should I decide a year from now, there is something in that article that I want to integrate into a course, well, I would just go Paper Tiger and it would probably say GB 7-14 it maybe RB 12-3. You pull that stuff out and in a few minutes you are already back up to speed.
Now after you do this by the way, when you put it in your journal and you decide that you’ve read it, you thought about it, you put it in your journal, you’ve Mindjet-ed it, it’s smarter than your memory; it’s starting to get encoded there. But see, my job is to stay way ahead of these folks that I’m teaching. So, I have a profound knowledge - my threshold of where I need to get - my rabbit hole needs to be deeper than theirs, or why would they come to me and pay me?
References
- [1] What can you learn from the world’s best productivity consultants? Let’s ask!
- [2] See The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes for example.
Original post here: Matthew Cornell
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