When a leader of a team or an organisation ‘gets’ GTD® for themselves, there is a desire – often felt as a burning need – to offer it to their wider team. The desire to pass it on can be altruistic (“this has been great for me, would be good if others had it too”),...
Tim Sismey first encountered GTD in 2006, and within a week of implementing his system he was sleeping better, making more informed decisions and delegating more effectively, whilst simultaneously more able to focus on his family, friends and his passions of music and...
In his own words he looks like an accountant or a dentist, so how did an English gent from the Cotswolds become the undisputed world champion of the Reggae soundclash, a gladiatorial arena where DJs compete track-by-track to win the crowd, and only the brave survive?...
Artificial intelligence has made impressive gains in our time. That said, I am still more excited by the possibilities of the human mind. In particular, I am interested in how our vast collective investment in thinking about how to train computers to adapt and solve...
Occasionally, readers with writing aspirations of their own will ask something like, “How do you manage to produce those blogs every month?”. Mostly I’m kind and offer a one line response. Occasionally, if I’m feeling mean and/or expansive, I’ll check first that they...
David Griffin is a senior consultant at Cambridge based 42 Technology, which offers pragmatic engineering innovation, design and development services to clients in a range of industries. He first started with GTD in 2003, when Palm Pilot devices were no longer cool...
“Ready when you are!”, I hollered. My wife looked back at me and sighed, “We’re nowhere near ready to go.” “Sure we are!”, I beamed, holding up my personal packing list, each item carefully ticked. I was, after all, a faithful...
Orson Welles was an astonishing talent. Famously brilliant, he produced, co-wrote, directed and acted the lead role in Citizen Kane, a film that won an academy award and has consistently topped the ‘all time best film’ lists in my lifetime. We can quibble about...
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...
This week’s blog highlights Next Action Associate’s pro bono work in higher education and gives a few suggestions about how GTD might help if you’re a student (or if you know someone who is). Just around the corner from tonight’s gathering of the University of...
Last night I scattered my father’s ashes on the waters of the Ganges at Varanasi, the holy city to which Hindus come to die and end the cycle of death and rebirth. India had exerted an ancestral pull on my dad his whole life but he’d never managed to...
“Oh Dad! You promised!”, my son shouted through the Travelodge lobby at an hour that will not have gone down well for those with Boxing Day hangovers. He was not happy. He’d just discovered that there was no all-you-can-eat full English at the Epsom branch, just a...
Somewhere in an office near you…. Mid-September – Office Christmas party invitation received today. Really? Christmas already? It was January just a few weeks ago. Speaking of which… still time to complete this year’s resolutions: lose 10kg (that ought to get...
David Griffin is a senior consultant at Cambridge based 42 Technology, which offers pragmatic engineering innovation, design and development services to clients in a range of industries. He first started with GTD in 2003, when Palm Pilot devices were no longer cool...
It’s that time of year when we start thinking about Christmas. For many, it’s not all red-nosed reindeer and fairy lights, however, because Christmas is in fact one of the most stressful times of the year – mostly due to the amount of planning that...
Given the electoral earthquake across the pond this week, the decision to develop a third runway at London’s Heathrow Airport somehow feels like it all happened ages ago. It was actually only a fortnight, but its origins do indeed go back years. The UK government’s...
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” -Robert Burns, “To a Mouse” It happens about once per seminar. During the practice session, where people are clarifying their project outcomes and next actions, a hand goes...
My knuckles tightened spasmodically on the steering wheel as I sat in traffic watching the minutes tick by on the dashboard clock. I had 30 minutes to make my meeting in a hotel across town and I was stuck in a rush hour jam on the Manchester inner ring road, in a...
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...
Mr Melnyk, my grade 2 teacher, was a lovely guy. As one of only two males and the only Ukrainian on the teaching staff at my primary school, he was a poster child for diversity well before his time, and a great athlete to boot. In theory, someone for little boys to...
In a recent seminar I clocked that one of the participants was not happy. He was trying to be, but his question betrayed considerable doubt: “Love the lists”, he said, “but I still don’t have any more time than I did before. When am I going to actually do the things...
