“Not my circus, not my monkeys.” Ever heard that one? It is one of my favourite linguistic imports. If you are not familiar with it, it is the very visual Polish take on staying clear of problems that are not yours to solve, and for me it captures what might be a...
Start with WHY. If you’ve kept current with leadership content on the web in the last decade then you might know that this is Simon Sinek’s thing, making him famous after a 2009 TED talk that went viral The talk itself looks slightly retro if you watch it again now –...
“All that is very well,” answered Candide, “but let us cultivate our garden.” -Voltaire I was fuming. I could feel the blood surging up to my head, fuelling a litany of judgmental thoughts. Brexit. Trump. That maniac on the M1. Something had...
You know how sometimes recently the world seems to be upside down? Well for most of last weekend my world was upside down, and I’m not talking about the geo-political farrago that is our daily fare of late. I was in fact upside down, learning to do a free-standing...
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.
Ever heard of desire paths? Although the name might conjure an image of the trail of underclothes between the sofa and the bed in a Hollywood love scene, the reality is slightly more prosaic (not to mention less fun). According to Wikipedia, desire paths are...
In this episode, Todd Brown and Robert Peake talk about how to navigate the straits between information overwhelm and fear of missing out (FOMO) using the GTD methodology. Click to play this episode Subscribe to the Podcast
If you want to know what clean edges in a system looks like, take a peep through a microscope. Life, in its simplest form, is about integrity. When the walls of a cell break down, the cell is finished – returning to the primordial elements that once made it up....
For the fourth year in a row I’m out walking Il Camino, the pilgrimage in Spain. It is an amazing experience, but the connection to GTD® might not be obvious. Still, apart from the obvious checklist for all the things I want to bring – ranging from walking boots to...
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.
Written by Moni Danner. When new parents return to work after maternity/paternity leave, they are often noticeably more efficient than before. Managing family life, especially with small children, forces us into a tighter temporal corset, and that demands pretty...
Todd Brown and Robert Peake talk about how GTD can help you achieve–and perhaps redefine–your own heroic journey. Click to play this episode Subscribe to the Podcast
A striking advertisement for dental hygiene depicts people whose eyes are bleeding, pointing out that if any part of one’s body besides one’s gums were to bleed, they would seek immediate medical attention. Likewise, I believe that if people were able to...
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...
When you sit down at your computer after a morning of back-to-back meetings and you’re greeted by 87 new emails, you’d be forgiven for cursing technology under your breath. Today, however, is the United Nations World Communications and Information Society Awareness...
How to Get More Balance in Life with GTD (Video) Todd Brown talks about how it is important to get balance in life, and how Getting Things Done® (GTD®) helps to create better balance through the Threefold Nature of Work Model. Click to play this...
The email intrigued me somewhat. Not its content but its timing, as it had been sent at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning. The message, in reply to a speculative sales email I’d sent, said: “Thanks, but we don’t need GTD® here.” “Au contraire”, I thought,...
In this episode, Todd Brown and Robert Peake discuss how GTD can help dramatically reduce stress levels, even in complex and challenging circumstances. Click to play this episode Subscribe to the Podcast
True story: A few months back, a well-dressed Italian woman in her early sixties walks into a local Sicilian cafe in search of a panettone for Christmas. Having surveyed a ceiling sagging under the weight of dozens of them, suspended from festive ribbons, she...
In this episode, Todd Brown and Robert Peake discuss where GTD can have the most impact, and the types of people who gravitate toward the methodology and have success with it. Click to play this episode Subscribe to the Podcast
Are you lazy? If you’re reading this, probably not. As my colleague Todd Brown explains over on our YouTube channel, GTD® tends to attract people who are already motivated and successful. To paraphrase Steve Jobs, GTDers are usually folks who are looking to put a dent...
Toni Basil. Los del Río. Baha Men. You may not recognise these band names, but if you lived through the 80s, 90s, and 00s, you are almost certainly familiar with “[Hey] Mickey”, “Macarena”, and “Who Let the Dogs Out?” All of these...
I was at a dinner party recently where the conversation – implausibly – turned to ‘paperwork’. We’d exhausted topics like real-estate trends (luxury – in; affordable – out), our ongoing Circus Brexitus, and the ambient geo-political madness. Things had clearly gotten...
