My GTD® Bromance with my Future Self

My GTD® Bromance with my Future Self

I know this great guy–lots of potential, very well-intentioned, full of interesting ideas. I like him a lot. But he’s a bit of a fixer-upper really. He forgets things. He gets distracted. In short, he just needs a good companion to help set him up for...
Ring The Alarm

Ring The Alarm

In his book ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Japan’, Pico Iyer describes something unusual that happened on Japanese television during coverage of an important baseball game; “In the final game of the Japan Series, with the entire seven-month season on the line, suddenly, in...
Shirt Happens

Shirt Happens

The shirt had been white. It mostly still was, but the crisp pressed cotton now had a fan-like pattern of tomato guts sprayed across the front. Perfect if I had been heading off to film the climax of a horror movie, but my meetings that morning called for something...
Nobody’s Business But Your Own

Nobody’s Business But Your Own

  “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...
I Wonder…?

I Wonder…?

Last Christmas I was given a gift so special I became teary-eyed. It was a book by my favourite author and inside the cover was a touching handwritten message from him to me. However, what I found even more remarkable about it, I realised only later, wasn’t the gift...
Difficulty is Not Optional

Difficulty is Not Optional

Near the end of a seminar someone will often say some version of the following: “I like the sound of what you are proposing, but I think it will be difficult”, in a tone that makes it clear that they feel it shouldn’t be. Here is my take: given the benefits GTD®...
Guest Interview with Alex Lee, University Manager

Guest Interview with Alex Lee, University Manager

Alex Lee manages the strategic communications, planning and policy development for Library & Student Support Services at Sheffield Hallam University, leading a team of seven. Her role as Head of Management Services covers a broad range of service delivery for a...
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...
Of pale ales and rabbit trails

Of pale ales and rabbit trails

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...
Scenes from a seminar – #254 – Trust your gut

Scenes from a seminar – #254 – Trust your gut

“That’s it?” It was expressed as a question, but if it had been written as dialogue there would definitely have been an exclamation point added, as in, “That’s it?!”. That is what he said out loud, but I heard from his tone that what he meant...
Citizen Kane and productivity

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...
Watchmaking

Watchmaking

Gundula Welti is a certified GTD Trainer and has 21 years of experience in both buying and sales roles within a large international corporation. She is highly specialised in sales and negotiations and uses GTD in all aspects of her life. She says that GTD helped her...
How to get ahead at university

How to get ahead at university

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...

A dog’s breakfast

“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...
Jingle hell – a cautionary Christmas tale

Jingle hell – a cautionary Christmas tale

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...
GTD at Christmas

GTD at Christmas

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...
Stressed at work? You’re not alone.

Stressed at work? You’re not alone.

In our increasingly always-on, too-much-to-do, pay-attention-to-me-now world, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that stress in the workplace is on the up, but in a recent study we have some hard data to ponder. Stress was at the top of the list of health and...
What about the middle bit?

What about the middle bit?

“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...
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...