Struggling To See The Big Picture As You Work? The Horizons Of Focus Model Is For You (Video Podcast)

Struggling To See The Big Picture As You Work? The Horizons Of Focus Model Is For You (Video Podcast)

Sometimes we get so caught up in our day-to-day work, simply ‘doing’, often over-busy and fighting fires – that we lose the bigger picture. We can often find ourselves being driven by the ‘latest and loudest’ rather than the things that will really help us achieve our bigger goals and objectives.

This loss of perspective is normal, but the Getting Things Done® (GTD®) Horizons of Focus model can help ensure that your daily work is aligned to big picture thinking – the higher-level values and your wider purpose.

Todd Brown and Robert Peake discuss the Horizons of Focus model and how it can be used to help drive your work, be guided by your purpose, and see the big picture in everything you do.

Burnout – GTD As Vaccine And Antidote

Burnout – GTD As Vaccine And Antidote

“We help our clients get more of the right things done, with less stress.” There are more poetic, and more nuanced versions, but the above is the most succinct summary of our work I’ve been able to find. Twelve years ago, when we set up the business, most of our...
Is Your Work-Life Balance Optimal?

Is Your Work-Life Balance Optimal?

This blog is shaped by the fact we are in Mental Health Awareness Month. I was struck when I attended the 2019 MadWorld Summit, by their memorable event tag line: “We all have Mental Health”. I’m reminded of this when I’m explaining to people about Horizon 2: Areas of...
Burnout Prevention – That Lasts!

Burnout Prevention – That Lasts!

Carola Lanzendoerfer has been practicing GTD® for over a decade now, and has used it to dodge burnout, lead a team inside a large corporate, and organize a rich and fulfilling post-corporate life. Apart from her work with the long-term unemployed, she is an avid...
Does Mental Health And Safety Need A New Standard?

Does Mental Health And Safety Need A New Standard?

What happens when you hear the words ‘Health and Safety’? I’ll wager there’s maybe an involuntary eye-roll, or images in your head of jobsworth colleagues in a high-vis vest putting signs around a spillage. Of course, we all grudgingly recognise the role that Health...
My GTD® Bromance with my Future Self

My GTD® Bromance with my Future Self

I know this great guy–lots of potential, very well-intentioned, full of interesting ideas. I like him a lot. But he’s a bit of a fixer-upper really. He forgets things. He gets distracted. In short, he just needs a good companion to help set him up for...
Ring The Alarm

Ring The Alarm

In his book ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Japan’, Pico Iyer describes something unusual that happened on Japanese television during coverage of an important baseball game; “In the final game of the Japan Series, with the entire seven-month season on the line, suddenly, in...
Next (Trans)Action

Next (Trans)Action

Every day around the world, companies large and small are bought or sold. Huge sums change hands in that process, but also around that process. Because of the amounts involved, an entire industry of specialists has developed to facilitate – and earn from – these...
Why, O Why, O Why?

Why, O Why, O Why?

The world has changed a lot since David Allen developed his methodology and wrote the 2001 first edition of “Getting Things Done ®”: Filofaxes have been mostly replaced by laptops, Palm Pilots by smartphones, faxes by emails, and too many meetings by far too many...
Is GTD Time Management? (Video Podcast)

Is GTD Time Management? (Video Podcast)

While Getting Things Done® (GTD®) may not officially be regarded as ‘time management’, being able to manage your time well is a prerequisite for an effective GTD practice.

Todd Brown and Robert Peake take a deeper look at the aspects of time management that contribute to better work and life management.

Never Decreasing Circles

Never Decreasing Circles

I’ve been reading a book on human movement concurrently with a book on the lives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. The rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle of a productivity expert, for sure. These days, the fittest of us get something like 300 minutes – or 6 hours – of movement...
Your Personal Ping-demic

Your Personal Ping-demic

With coronavirus cases recently rising in the UK, every day hundreds of thousands of users of the government’s covid app were pinged and told to self-isolate.  The app mashes up covid test results and location information to determine who has been near an infected...
You’re So Money

You’re So Money

Complete this sentence: “You’re so money… a. “supermarket.” b. “you just don’t know it.” If you’re here in the UK you probably chose (a) because it’s the tagline of a major ad campaign for a price comparison website in recent years. If you’re also a movie buff,...
Shirt Happens

Shirt Happens

The shirt had been white. It mostly still was, but the crisp pressed cotton now had a fan-like pattern of tomato guts sprayed across the front. Perfect if I had been heading off to film the climax of a horror movie, but my meetings that morning called for something...
Tips For A Productive Summer

Tips For A Productive Summer

Todd Brown provides some useful tips about how to make the most of summer by using the time to get more productive. It’s an opportunity for you to review your organisational system, your lists, your tools, and your processes for work.  ...
Is GTD Time Management? (Video Podcast)

How Software Can Both Help and Hinder Your Productivity (Video Podcast)

Software is a permanent fixture for many of us, and while we often implement software platforms to enhance our productivity, it can in fact hinder it. Robert Peake, GTD® veteran who has an extensive background in software and technology, talks with Todd Brown about how best to navigate software platforms to support your GTD practice and overall productivity.

Apples, Bananas, Milk And Why Am I On Earth?

Apples, Bananas, Milk And Why Am I On Earth?

Don’t you find it odd, that although nearly everyone has grasped the fact that using a calendar is a useful way to organise their time-based commitments and they use one regularly, including sending invites, syncing them between their computers and phones, checking...
Should I Stay, or Should I Go?

Should I Stay, or Should I Go?

Monika Danner has worked in corporate HR and leadership roles for more than 15 years. She has been a GTD® practitioner since 2014 and works as a certified GTD trainer for Next Action Partners in Germany. My personal Covid journey is marked by entering the world of...
There’s No Such Thing As An E-Lunch

There’s No Such Thing As An E-Lunch

“Not that way.” At the end of a brief meeting with a potential coaching client, I’d stood up to go for lunch with them, and headed for the door I’d been let in through. My error, apparently. “I thought we were going to lunch,” I said. “We are. I just don’t want to go...