est. reading time: 4.5 mins Recently I was teaching GTD® to a group of about 20 people in London and the question that one of them asked made me laugh out loud; “Is GTD a cult?” After taking a few moments to collect myself, but still chuckling, I did a...
Earlier this month I was forwarded an article by Arianna Huffington regarding what she calls “burnout deniers” focused in particular on Elon Musk’s recent take-over of Twitter and reports of Musk giving “his staffers an ultimatum — they could commit to an...
It always starts small, and – in the beginning – it always makes 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 use a bit...
Isn’t it odd that we talk of ‘being in front of our computers’, rather than our computers ‘being in front of us’? Does this turn of phrase indicate that we feel our computers are in the seat of power? I recently asked a prospective coaching client “what do you do for...
As the bank holidays disappear in the rear-view mirror here in the UK, a public holiday that we don’t get will be celebrated in the United States in a few days – Martin Luther King day. As my calendar reminded me about this recently I realised that there’s a line from...
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. Remember buffets? It’s been a while since they’ve been...
When a business is in a cash crunch, collecting overdue invoices is one of the things you’d expect to be a top priority in the organisation. Strange as it might sound, that is not always the case. One leadership team I heard about recently was so busy fighting...
Sometimes, we just need to say no. When we are feeling overwhelmed we often need to just be firm about not taking on any more, but saying “no” is often a hard thing to do. Ignoring requests or showing resistance can also damage relationships –...
Ed Lamont interviews Alex Gisdakis, CEO and Partner of Breitenstein Consulting, on the nature of ‘new work’, the implications of remote working for agile teams, and optimising mental wellbeing.
“I think I might need to go back into therapy.” Close to tears, my friend was clearly in a bad place. “I’ve been having huge problems at work, and I feel like something really bad is about to happen.” She’d called me out of the blue, close to the end of her tether....
“The highest-performing people I know are those who have installed the best tricks in their lives.” – David Allen One of the characteristics of GTD® compared to other content in the productivity space is that it is decidedly not just a collection of time management...
When it comes to work, you can be as fast as you want to, because it’s all about efficiency. If you can reduce the friction in your working processes, you will inevitably work faster and with less effort, meaning that you’ll be more effective in what you...
In the dream, the client has deep pockets. Deep conviction too. They are a long-term GTD® user who has leveraged their practice of GTD into a promotion, and wants their new team to get the same benefits they have personally experienced from using the approach: more...
“That looked painful” commented my colleague from the university library. We were chatting after the meeting I’d just been holding with my IT managers and although he’d not actually been part of it, he’d seen the strange behaviour of one of my team through the...
In my thirties I was an amateur triathlete. I wasn’t good at it, but I showed up for the training and finished a few events per year. At the same time, I was also a 5-a-day smoker of cigars. Big ones. In this, I excelled. Even at the time, I was aware that training my...
My GTD® origin story is evergreen. There was a point in my life when I had a technical, fairly transactional role that I was doing well in, and to prove that no good deed goes unpunished, I was promoted to manager. I was rubbish at it: woefully unprepared for the rash...
There was a time when discipline and willpower were seen as the keys to making the consistent behavioural changes that would lead to success. Implicit in that belief was the idea that success was linked to your inner strength – your ability to get yourself to do...
When working from home, it can be challenging to achieve a true ‘work-life balance’ as the boundaries between work and home are blurred. With more distractions and less real distinction between work and home life, it is not uncommon to feel out of control,...
Martin Weber, Chief Customer Architect, Oracle Consulting. Martin has been working at Oracle since June 2019 as Chief Customer Architect (CCA). Before joining Oracle he worked at Siemens for 12 years in various roles. Since discovering Getting Things Done® in 2015,...
Mike Stenberg, Head of Digital Marketing at Siemens AG, is a long-term personal user of GTD®, and has implemented it on several teams that he has led or consulted for. Returning from vacation to find an email inbox with hundreds of unread emails is...
How do you delegate? Delegation isn’t always what you might consider as traditional ‘downward’ delegating – you can delegate to anyone. Here’s an insight into how to master the art of delegating.
“Hell is other people.” – Jean-Paul Sartre Have you ever wished ‘they’ would get GTD®? Ever thought that it would all be so much easier if your colleagues would finally pull up their socks and start being a bit more like your very fine and virtuous self? If so,...
In five weeks’ time, 1500 of the worlds most interested – and interesting – GTDers will congregate in Amsterdam for the GTD® Summit. I was privileged to be in the room at the last one 10 years ago in San Francisco, and am thrilled to be moderating a panel on GTD’s...
