Who do you think you are?
It’s the 4th of February today. Set any new resolutions at the beginning of this month? I didn’t think so. Strange how we do that in January, but in February not so much. Still, I have to ask: how did you do? In January, I mean. Research shows that although millions...
End of Year Inventory – Bad Things that Didn’t Happen
There is still a lot to do this week, but many of those I’m meeting are already starting to move into end-of-year mode. With that often comes a review of the past year, sometimes done with columns for positive and negative things that happened along the way. That...
Nothing to !&%£ but !&%£ itself
It’s a four-letter word. A bad ‘un. So awful is this word that its use has been de facto banished from organizational discourse. And yet the feeling this word describes is probably the biggest barrier there is to getting game-changing things done. It lurks in every...
A Simple Tip for a Magic Memory
One of Shakespeare’s most famous lines is, ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’. Fabulous metaphor. Love it. The problem is that – as I’ve gotten a bit older, and the stage has gotten more crowded with each passing year – I can’t always...
When in Rome, do as the Romans do*
(*Unless the Romans are morbidly obese, diabetic, mobility-scooter jockeys…in that case, do pretty much anything but what the Romans are doing) The summer holidays are a distant memory for me now, but a couple of things have stuck with me from my trip back to ‘the...
To e-, Or Not to e- . . . Handling e-mail on Holiday
Like much of Europe, I’m off on my summer holiday. Unlike much of Europe, I’ve had a an e-mail arrive with a question about how to handle e-mail while on holiday. What to do? The sender did a seminar a year or so ago, and since then has been working at implementing as...
For Whom the Cell Tolls
“You work too hard to be successful.“ Tom had been having a quick look at his e-mail under the table of the sidewalk café, but this last sentence from across the table jolted him back to reality. He considered himself a moderately successful individual, so he was a...
Buffer Your Life
For the inveterate movie hound that I am, the streaming of movies over the internet seems a huge leap forward for our civilization. No more clicking through several hundred channels of an evening to find a speck of gold in a mountain of televisual dross; now I can tap...
Inbox Zero? Pfah! So Noughties
When – in desperation – I first skimmed the book Getting Things Done back in 2004, I had a number of epiphanies. One of them was that there were people who were regularly able to empty out their e-mail inboxes. This information, in and of itself, re-defined the game I...
Goodbye Discipline – Hello Motivation
One of the clients I worked with recently had quickly understood GTD as a concept and wanted to do it, but was struggling with actually doing it consistently. He finally cracked the problem when he clarified why he wanted GTD, and what it would get him if he...
A World Without Email – Charades anyone?
I recently got a message from a client who was all excited that a consultancy that works with her organization had announced that from 2013 the consultancy would no longer be using e-mail for internal communications. There was a hopeful implicit subtext that...Getting Your Hair Cut: A Turkish Delight
I had a haircut the other day. Well, not just any haircut, THE haircut. The best of my life. One that changed my day, and – to a certain extent – my life. One that I’m still telling people about 3 weeks later. This was no ordinary haircut. The circumstances...What Your Problem Is NOT…
…Or how dodging misattribution could save your job and your sanity. To solve a problem efficiently – or solve it at all – it is necessary to correctly identify the problem. This sounds obvious. It also sounds much easier than it actually is. For starters, there...You Can’t Slow Things Down by Speeding Up
It always starts small, and – in the beginning – it always make sense: “I’ll just stay here over lunch to take care of some things I didn’t get done this morning”, or “ I’ll stay a bit later to work on that report for tomorrow”, or – more and more – “I’ll...Lists? What lists? Oh, those lists….
Years ago, when I was only a GTD baby, I remember one of the GTD grown-ups saying something like: “Anyone can do the inbox thing. It is what happens once the inbox is empty that is what really counts.” As someone who – at that point – was not yet consistently...The (Shortcut) Key to Life – How Sometimes the Small Things Make a Big Difference
“Wow. That is fabulous.”, she said, a huge grin spreading across her face. “That will make a huge difference”. The woman in question – a senior banker in a global bank – was not prone to outbursts of enthusiasm. What could provoke such a statement? A diet...
The Affordance of Things
That is not a typo. I’m not talking about the cost but the affordance, or what something in our environment allows us – or invites us – to do. A simple example would be a button on a device. The button invites us to push it or twist it, while a cord...
Future Shock: 21st Century Work in the Paper-full Office
Yes, you read that correctly. The paper-less office has been talked about for decades, but few people are experiencing it as a reality yet – despite years of peering hopefully from between piles of paper looking for it (and its close cousin, reliable speech...
Catching the Wave
For most of us, it is over. This year’s Christmas and New Year’s break — with its oh-so-elegantly placed statutory holidays and weekends — has been a good long rest. Judging by e-mail volumes, there was an un-discussed but somehow mutually-agreed...Have yourself a Merry little Checklist
There was frost on the rooftops here in London last night, and I’ve had to trade in my fall overcoat for a winter one in recent days to keep from shivering my way through the day. No idea if that will continue, but we are definitely moving winter-wards and into the...
Mega-moments – Are You Ready for Your Close Up?
Usain Bolt is an amazing sprinter. The fastest man ever recorded. Interestingly, he doesn’t actually sprint all that much. More than me for sure, but relative to the time available to him it is a miniscule fraction that he spends running out on the edge...Vision Part 3: Into Action
In part 3 of this series, Ed Lamont shows us how to craft a vision that will stick, using whatever works–including Lego.
