In the week that the latest iPhones were launched, I’d like to encourage you to take a mental journey back to classical Greece, for some helpful advice about modern life. Those of you who have been reading my blogs for a while will know that I’m a history buff, and in...
In this episode, Todd and Robert talk about how GTD can dramatically improve organisational and team effectiveness. Click to play this episode Click here for Part II Subscribe to the Podcast
“Just Do It” – Nike marketing slogan I did a quick search on Amazon this morning and found more than a dozen books with the phrase “Do It Now” in the title. These are books on eliminating procrastination, increasing effectiveness, and getting more done. The implied...
In this episode Todd and Robert discuss the higher horizons of GTD, which can help create a sense of direction, purpose, and higher perspective. Click to play this episode Subscribe to the Podcast
Do you ever have days where your work is driven by your email inbox, where you’re constantly replying to emails – barring the odd meeting or a hurried lunch at your desk? With the average office worker receiving around 70 emails a day, it’s no surprise that the...
In this episode, Todd and Robert talk about the final, critical phase of mastering workflow–choosing how to effectively engage, or simply “do”. Click to play this episode Subscribe to the Podcast
If you’ve been to one of our seminars or had a bit of our coaching, you’ve no doubt heard us talk about ways of working that allow you to deal with email backlog. If you’ve attended one of our two-day seminars and implemented the new ways of working in your email, you...
From the outside the restaurant looks promising, and you’re hungry. You get a table and the waiter brings the menu. You have a browse. A few things look OK, but you’re not really that up for anything on offer. With a sigh, you order something that looks acceptable but...
In this episode, Todd and Robert talk about reflecting at the right horizons in the right rhythms–including that all-important habit: the weekly review. Click to play this episode Subscribe to the Podcast
If you’ve ever been in a speedboat, or seen one on video, you may have experienced that magic moment when, as the boat accelerates, it reaches a “planing” state. Once up on a plane, the boat skims over the surface of the water rather than ploughing through it....
Well, we’re almost at the end of a year. I type that with a bit of a sigh. And yes, I know that many of you will be very glad to wave 2016 goodbye, and your plans to do that might well include some combination of too many mince pies and too much mulled wine. But if...
In this episode Todd and Robert talk about how to structure the results of your thinking effectively to maximise your experience that “meaning matches location”. Click to play this episode Subscribe to the Podcast
In our increasingly always-on, too-much-to-do, pay-attention-to-me-now world, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that stress in the workplace is on the up, but in a recent study we have some hard data to ponder. Stress was at the top of the list of health and...
It came to me, as many of my moments of inspiration do, when I was doing something completely unrelated. I was enjoying a beautiful walk in the hills with my wife last weekend, and it occurred to me: “we all have lots of things we need to do, our ‘open...
In this episode Todd and Robert talk about the first and one of the most fundamental steps in the GTD process: capturing what has your attention effectively, often, and well. Click to play this episode Subscribe to the Podcast
Earlier in the month I took a week off, as I do every year, to join a group of about 80 musicians who gather to play jazz music in the hills of Surrey here in England. It’s an intense week, about 14 hours a day for seven days, filled with rehearsals, workshops,...
In this episode Todd and Robert discuss how to make best use of summertime to unleash creative thinking and relaxed focus. Click to play this episode Subscribe to the Podcast
On Wednesday this week Next Action Associates turned seven years old. We’re quite proud of that. We live in a world where many start-ups don’t make it past the toddler stage, and the majority fail before they begin primary school; yet here we are confidently making...
“There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labour of thinking” – Sir Joshua Reynolds Doing a bit of a spring clean this week, I came across a book I bought back in the early days of the web called “Don’t make me think”. It was written by...
Over the years in my blogs I’ve naturally quoted a lot from David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done. David has an astonishing ability to encapsulate powerful ideas in pithy sayings that stick with you.* But one of my hobbies is also collecting quotes from...
When I’m working with clients helping them to try out GTD best practices, skeptical questions pop up pretty regularly. I don’t mind, actually. I understand that behind the skepticism are important considerations about the effectiveness of GTD, and whether it’s right...
There’s a road here in London that’s undergone a transformation over the last several years, and it has lessons for those of us interested in productivity. Exhibition Road runs from Hyde Park about a kilometer down to the busy South Kensington Tube station. It’s...
That’s what was on my mind on a beautiful summer’s evening in southern California in 2010. I was just getting started as a GTD trainer, and had travelled to the headquarters of the David Allen Company to work with some of the people there. David Allen had...
