In the dream, the client has deep pockets. Deep conviction too. They are a long-term GTD® user who has leveraged their practice of GTD into a promotion, and wants their new team to get the same benefits they have personally experienced from using the approach: more...
Again? Can’t be. We stopped paddling to allow ourselves to focus. Sure enough, there they were: an older couple, drifting along in their inflatable canoe. Ahead of us, again. My canoeing partner and I exchanged minor expletives under our breath. We were about 90...
In my thirties I was an amateur triathlete. I wasn’t good at it, but I showed up for the training and finished a few events per year. At the same time, I was also a 5-a-day smoker of cigars. Big ones. In this, I excelled. Even at the time, I was aware that training my...
There was a time when discipline and willpower were seen as the keys to making the consistent behavioural changes that would lead to success. Implicit in that belief was the idea that success was linked to your inner strength – your ability to get yourself to do...
I’d like to tell you it was virtue, but it wasn’t. At a certain point, I just couldn’t take it anymore. The desire for change came slowly, then suddenly. I can pinpoint the moment. It was when I saw a picture of myself with a seriously overweight dog on my lap. Lucy...
The lines in the centre of the road had become the key to survival. Somehow, within a matter of minutes, my life had been reduced to a series of yellow lines on the highway. Why? A blizzard that became a whiteout. If you’ve ever driven in one, you’ll know it’s...
“I’m trying to get you the same result, but with less effort.” I was surprised to hear this from someone other than myself, but I wasn’t the one coaching this time. It was Youness, my surf coach. Under normal circumstances I’d have had a fair amount to contribute to...
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...
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,...
In my last blog, on dealing with what might be called ‘morning mind’, I mentioned the idea of a default setting, and that out of the box (or bed) that setting isn’t necessarily optimised for relaxed productivity What would a useful default setting be? Well, at a bare...
It is in the morning that we are most vulnerable. Barely awake, the thoughts start coming. Sometimes positive, but often not so much. The reason for that negative start-of-the-day slant I’ll leave to others more qualified, but after 30 years of coaching and mentoring...
I’m not a fan of fitness. What’s to like? Basically it hurts while I’m doing it, again the next day, and then – go figure – it’s worse again on the day after that. Seemingly not a lot of upside in all of that, but by day three after a workout I’m feeling great and...
“I thought you said we didn’t need my tent!” I had been happily setting up what I thought was my tent for the evening, but this snippet of conversation from the other side of the clearing dragged me out of my wilderness reverie. We were 18km into a four-day canoe...
When we started the business 10 years ago, ‘inbox zero’ was a bit of a holy grail for our clients. If we let slip in conversation that we had a means of attaining and sustaining that standard, ears pricked up all Spock-like. A decade later, most still like the sound...
“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,...
In five weeks’ time, 1500 of the worlds most interested – and interesting – GTDers will congregate in Amsterdam for the GTD® Summit. I was privileged to be in the room at the last one 10 years ago in San Francisco, and am thrilled to be moderating a panel on GTD’s...
As the son of a mother who lost her father to drowning, I was going to learn to swim, and swim well. Not that I had anything against it, but I wasn’t given any choice in the matter either. Let’s just say my mother was very committed to this project; at just a month...
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...
I wasn’t planning to set any goals for this year. Many areas of my life are in reasonable shape as we start the year, so I thought I’d cut myself some slack and had resolved not to be quite so resolute with my targets. It turns out it isn’t that simple. After four-ish...
I had a lovely exchange with a taxi driver the other day. That might not seem like news enough for a blog, but if rarity drives value, then such a thing in a London cabbie is very valuable indeed. They are a self-selected bunch, and the filters for job success seem to...
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®...
I was flying out to Lisbon the other day, and noticed – yet again, with almost self-harm triggering frustration – just how crazy long it was taking to get us passengers onto the plane. To give them credit, the airline was going through the motions of making it faster,...
“What do you see?” The question took me a bit by surprise. I was just settling in for lunch with my friend Dan. Pleasantries had been exchanged, and I was scanning the menu when he’d reached his wrist across the table and held it where I couldn’t miss it. “Uhm, your...
“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...