Cognitive Load

Cognitive Load

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...
Why Are You Still Here?

Why Are You Still Here?

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...
Watch What You Say: The Power Of Commitments

Watch What You Say: The Power Of Commitments

We all have a ton of responsibilities and commitments, whether personal or work related; so how do you make sure you stay on top of these? First it’s important to define the type of commitment and then implement a system to track them. Today Robert gives some great...
Filo-Email

Filo-Email

Isn’t it odd that we talk of ‘being in front of our computers’, rather than our computers ‘being in front of us’? Does this turn of phrase indicate that we feel our computers are in the seat of power? I recently asked a prospective coaching client “what do you do for...
Getting Things Unstuck

Getting Things Unstuck

If there’s something on your list that you’re struggling with, it’s just not moving forward, or you’re feeling stuck – today Todd provides one of the core principles of GTD® as a quick tip to get you moving again.
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...
Are You Being Bullied By Your Inbox? (Video Podcast)

Are You Being Bullied By Your Inbox? (Video Podcast)

Sometimes we get so caught up in our day-to-day work, simply ‘doing’, often over-busy and fighting fires – that we lose the bigger picture. We can often find ourselves being driven by the ‘latest and loudest’ rather than the things that will really help us achieve our bigger goals and objectives.

This loss of perspective is normal, but the Getting Things Done® (GTD®) Horizons of Focus model can help ensure that your daily work is aligned to big picture thinking – the higher-level values and your wider purpose.

Todd Brown and Robert Peake discuss the Horizons of Focus model and how it can be used to help drive your work, be guided by your purpose, and see the big picture in everything you do.

Haagen Dazs-ipline

Haagen Dazs-ipline

Towards the end of nearly every seminar I lead, someone says a version of the following: “Okay, this all makes sense. I can see that this is the way that I should be working. But I’ll need a lot of discipline to keep it up”. I think there are two opinions expressed in...
Burnout Prevention – That Lasts!

Burnout Prevention – That Lasts!

Carola Lanzendoerfer has been practicing GTD® for over a decade now, and has used it to dodge burnout, lead a team inside a large corporate, and organize a rich and fulfilling post-corporate life. Apart from her work with the long-term unemployed, she is an avid...
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...
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...
You’re So Money

You’re So Money

Complete this sentence: “You’re so money… a. “supermarket.” b. “you just don’t know it.” If you’re here in the UK you probably chose (a) because it’s the tagline of a major ad campaign for a price comparison website in recent years. If you’re also a movie buff,...
Tips For A Productive Summer

Tips For A Productive Summer

Todd Brown provides some useful tips about how to make the most of summer by using the time to get more productive. It’s an opportunity for you to review your organisational system, your lists, your tools, and your processes for work.  ...
Apples, Bananas, Milk And Why Am I On Earth?

Apples, Bananas, Milk And Why Am I On Earth?

Don’t you find it odd, that although nearly everyone has grasped the fact that using a calendar is a useful way to organise their time-based commitments and they use one regularly, including sending invites, syncing them between their computers and phones, checking...
Working On The Weekend??

Working On The Weekend??

Question: What do the following have in common; Buying a bible Selling fish and chips Shooting Welshmen in Hereford Answer: They are all things that used to be illegal if you did them on a Sunday (although it was legal to shoot Welshmen in the 1400s as long as you did...
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...
Blurred Lines

Blurred Lines

Hands up if you’re looking forward to the resumption of your commute…? Despite the fact that it’s April Fools’ day as this blog goes to press, it’s not a trick question. The commute gets a bad rap in popular culture, its imagery that of monstrous tailbacks on the M25...