The 5 Steps of Mastering Home Flow
First and most importantly, I hope you and your loved ones and colleagues are safe. I hope you are reading this because you are indeed well and wanting to continue being productive in these strangest of times that we all find ourselves in. We are entering what, for...
Don’t Sprain Your Brain
Have you noticed just how much your performance varies from day to day? Some days you do the work of three people as if it were nothing, and other days it is a stretch to get dressed for work. You may have gotten used to that, but actually it is kind of a strange...
How Search is Killing Your Productivity
Search is amazing, but it won’t replace your brain. In this short clip, veteran GTD® coach Robert Peake talks about why we need to re-think our dependence on hoping we can find stuff later using search–and how to fix it.
Productivity and Self-Obsession Part III – Creating Your Future Self
As we move into the middle of the first month of the year, the most ambitious among you are either looking at – or still gently polishing – your goals for this year. Most people will have given this ‘new year, new you’ idea some thought as we rolled into a new decade,...
“…Try Something Else”
I was recently in the audience at a Q&A session with David Allen. My question to him was something I have answered many times myself while running seminars and coaching people and, although I think my answer is quite practised and complete, I wanted to see how...
Regrouping, Recouping, and Re-Engaging with GTD
Boxer, the horse from George Orwell’s classic text Animal Farm, had one answer to adversity: “The solution, as I see it, is to work harder.” It is a poignant allegory for Stalinist exploitation of working-class Russian revolutionaries. But it is also...
From WhatsApp to War and Peace: Getting On Top of Your Reading
I’ve found myself in a number of conversations recently with people who seem seriously unhappy with how little they are reading these days. In certain cases, I know this is not even close to being true because I’m party to what is hitting their inboxes on a daily...
Hurry Hurry, Come for Your Curry
Lamb jalfrezi, chicken korma, mutton biryani… while the rest of the world was going vegan last month (a.k.a. ‘Veganuary’), there was a defiant outbreak of meat-based curry-making taking place chez moi. The spark for these culinary adventures was the lovely new...
Discipline and Making Habit Stick
This week, I talk about GTD® and discipline. Sure, it takes time to make something a habit, but the benefits of GTD practice are obvious – the ability to become far more productive and less stressed. That’s where to focus.
GTD and ‘Orienting Maps’
Do you have a set of useful reminders to help you focus on the right things, in the right place, and at the right time? This week I talk about how GTD’s ‘orienting maps’ can help you reach your desired outcomes with greater...
Sweet Dreams
“Sweet dreams are made of this / who am I to disagree? / I travel the world and the seven seas / everybody’s looking for something.” -Eurythmics Sleep means energy, and energy is precious. Just ask any new parent, shift worker, or long-haul pilot. In...
Clarifying Your Commitments
In this week’s video blog, Todd Brown discusses the ‘clarifying’ questions in the Getting Things Done® (GTD®) methodology, to help you optimise your commitments in the most productive, stress-free way.
How to Reduce Friction in Your Life with GTD® (Video)
How to Reduce Friction in Your Life with GTD® (Video) Todd Brown talks about how Getting Things Done® (GTD®) helps to reduce or optimise the friction in your life for maximum personal benefit.
Not Gobblefunking, Just Getting Things Done
Andrew Ward, Director of Optimum Advisory, is a business and HR leader, organisation development consultant, and amateur GTD® evangelist. He has worked in and for organisations large and small, multinational and domestic, in the UK and US and in industries including...
Success is Personal
I’ve been thinking lately a lot about what defines success, and the messages that we receive in the marketplace of ideas about being “more successful.” Usually, those messages are based on the belief that success is externally defined, that there are objective...
Working Standards: Where the He?? Am I?
In my last blog, I opened a conversation about the possibility – and the value – of raising acceptable working standards in an organisation. If you liked the sound of that – or simply can no longer bear the waste you currently see in your place of work – this blog...
What’s Missing from Your Organisation’s Wellness Programme
In many organisations these days, wellness is ‘the new black’, a hot topic from board room to break room. In a recent report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, “The Wellness Effect – The Impact of Workplace Programmes”, the report’s authors found...
Permission to stare out the window
“Honey, I just realised – nothing is going to try to kill me out here.” My wife and I were ambling along one of England’s many public footpaths through gentle countryside. I agree it may sound like an unusual observation. But having come from...
Does your email inbox do strategy?
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...
Citizen Kane and productivity
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...
Life Lessons from a Street Performer
The parallels aren’t always obvious, but there are in fact plenty of lessons about productivity from the world of circus skills
Does your work feel like planing, or ploughing?
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....
