I’m old enough to remember life before email, and it makes me shudder. I love email (and, truth be told, text messaging too) because it’s asynchronous. I write the message when it suits me to write it, and you read it when it suits you to read it. Unlike an...
Over the past few years, I’ve become aware of the idea of “cognitive load”. This refers to the extent to which your working memory is occupied by things your brain is processing. It has been a subject of study in the last 20 years or so, particularly with reference to...
An action list should be continuously changing. Things get added, things get crossed off as done, and occasionally things get removed because the world changed and they are no longer needed. Above all, it keeps flowing. If there are things on your lists that...
In probably my favourite Peter Sellers movie, the protagonist (Chance, the gardener) is blissfully unaware of anything more complicated than that which is right in front of him in the moment. The closing line of the film, from a speech by the US President, is: “Life...
Any parent with more than one child knows that however identically you think you treat them, kids grow up completely different to each other. It’s a humbling realisation, how little influence you really have. I have two children who have moved through high school two...
Imagine you’re the CEO of a huge corporation. You’re naturally very busy, and your time has to be carefully managed from moment you get to the office in the morning to the moment you leave at night. But you have the best PA in the world, at your side at all...
Someone once explained to me how to think about computer backups. She said “every night when you turn off your computer, just think what would happen with your data if the hard disk died and the computer simply wouldn’t start up again the next day”. Once you start to...
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...
