Don’t Look At Your Lists!

Don’t Look At Your Lists!

When we all started with GTD® we had to build our GTD system from scratch. This meant that you, like everyone, had to spend a lot of time with Capturing all your stuff, then Clarifying and Organising this into your tool of choice. These first three steps can therefore...
Never Decreasing Circles

Never Decreasing Circles

I’ve been reading a book on human movement concurrently with a book on the lives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. The rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle of a productivity expert, for sure. These days, the fittest of us get something like 300 minutes – or 6 hours – of movement...
There’s No Such Thing As An E-Lunch

There’s No Such Thing As An E-Lunch

“Not that way.” At the end of a brief meeting with a potential coaching client, I’d stood up to go for lunch with them, and headed for the door I’d been let in through. My error, apparently. “I thought we were going to lunch,” I said. “We are. I just don’t want to go...
How GTD® Can Help in a Business Turnaround

How GTD® Can Help in a Business Turnaround

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...
Internal Affairs

Internal Affairs

“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,...
Not Gobblefunking, Just Getting Things Done

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...
Working Standards: Where Do You Want to Go Today?

Working Standards: Where Do You Want to Go Today?

In the second blog in this series, we looked at how you might get a sense of what the current reality around working standards is in your team or organisation. If that exercise – of uncovering current standards – highlighted the need for change, what to do...
Guest blog: Why GTD is for everyone

Guest blog: Why GTD is for everyone

Karly Edwards is a Senior Secretary at KPMG, and discovered GTD as part of an internal initiative for partners at the firm. She soon adopted GTD herself and has never looked back. I have worked at KPMG for 10 years as Senior Secretary, and for nine of those years I...
Working Standards: an Approach to Transformation

Working Standards: an Approach to Transformation

Imagine for a moment you work in an organisation where people no longer respond to their e-mail. One where it has become ‘normal’ to have to send messages two or three times – then pick up a phone and call people – to get a response on some issue you are working on....
Leading with GTD

Leading with GTD

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”),...
Is that yours?

Is that yours?

Sometimes simple questions can provoke profound responses. Take, for example, the question, “Is this your project?”. Most busy professionals, once they have built a trusted GTD system to manage all their commitments, end up with upwards of fifty projects...
A wagon full of hope

A wagon full of hope

I bumped into a former GTD participant earlier this week, and I could see from her body language that she wasn’t keen to see me. Initial pleasantries past, I found out why. “I’m off the wagon”, she said, sheepishly. “That’s great!” I countered. This did not seem to...
How refined are your open loops?

How refined are your open loops?

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...
A penny for your thoughts

A penny for your thoughts

It’s a sun-filled summer afternoon and you’re strolling happily down the street when a flash of light catches your eye from pavement ahead. You instinctively tell yourself it’s probably just shiny litter but your eyes linger, widen and then sparkle with delight. Yes,...
The alarming drag of auto-nag

The alarming drag of auto-nag

Like so many of us, I have a love-hate relationship with the alarm clock on my phone. I often hate how early it wakes me up, but of course love that it does so reliably. Like the bookmark, whose simple virtues I extolled in a previous article, the alarm clock is...
You’re Already on the Journey

You’re Already on the Journey

When it comes to making things happen, does your world look like this?  Things that need your attention arrive. Some are generated by other people and appear without any effort on your part, like email, or your friends’ Facebook posts. Other things that grab your...

Spider Webs and Squirrel Droppings

August is done, but–as I try to catch the wave of work here in September–I’m feeling a tinge of nostalgia for the month just past. August means many things for me, and one of them is that it’s Tool Shed Month. Pretty much every August for the...