“Raise the scarlet standard high Beneath its folds we’ll live and die Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer We’ll keep the red flag flying here.” ~ The Red Flag If Karl Marx had celebrated his recent 200th birthday with a trip back here to Manchester,...
Lamb jalfrezi, chicken korma, mutton biryani… while the rest of the world was going vegan last month (a.k.a. ‘Veganuary’), there was a defiant outbreak of meat-based curry-making taking place chez moi. The spark for these culinary adventures was the lovely new...
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...
Yum. Sea Bass or T-Bone? Delightful options for sure, but as I pondered the choice, I felt uneasy. I was sitting in my living room browsing the online menu for a meal that was still six weeks away and, along with everyone else in our party, I’d been emailed the link...
No part of me is more English than my need for a regular cup of tea. So, with the end of the webinar that I’d been delivering close at hand, my attention was turning to a hard-earned cuppa. For this reason, perhaps, I was caught slightly off-guard by the excellent...
In a couple of days I’ll wave goodbye to my daughter. As my eldest child, she’s the first to head off to university and after that we’ll be separated by a long day of driving to East Anglia, much of it staring at the featureless flatlands of Lincolnshire or stuck...
Christina Wallace found love on the internet quicker than most by recognising that online dating was good at expanding her dating pool, but not good for spotting chemistry, intelligence, charm, politics, marital status, creditworthiness, hygiene and anger issues. She...
Start with WHY. If you’ve kept current with leadership content on the web in the last decade then you might know that this is Simon Sinek’s thing, making him famous after a 2009 TED talk that went viral The talk itself looks slightly retro if you watch it again now –...
Ever heard of desire paths? Although the name might conjure an image of the trail of underclothes between the sofa and the bed in a Hollywood love scene, the reality is slightly more prosaic (not to mention less fun). According to Wikipedia, desire paths are...
When you sit down at your computer after a morning of back-to-back meetings and you’re greeted by 87 new emails, you’d be forgiven for cursing technology under your breath. Today, however, is the United Nations World Communications and Information Society Awareness...
The email intrigued me somewhat. Not its content but its timing, as it had been sent at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning. The message, in reply to a speculative sales email I’d sent, said: “Thanks, but we don’t need GTD® here.” “Au contraire”, I thought,...
Are you lazy? If you’re reading this, probably not. As my colleague Todd Brown explains over on our YouTube channel, GTD® tends to attract people who are already motivated and successful. To paraphrase Steve Jobs, GTDers are usually folks who are looking to put a dent...
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, as a more accomplished writer once put it. I was about to set off for The Caribbean, to an island I’d wanted to visit my whole life, yet I was stressed out of my mind. For the last few days, ‘the...
Had one of our world leaders stood up at the Davos World Economic Forum in 2016 and predicted that they’d be joined this year by a controversial property tycoon and reality TV star who’d become the President of the United States, it would have been put down to either...
In the lull between the Christmas and New Year celebrations, one of the pleasures I usually find myself drawn to, other than leftover mince pies, is looking ahead at next year’s holiday possibilities in my calendar. It seems I’m not alone, either, since it’s a peak...
Since it’s been a year in which our public discourse has been dominated by preparations for Brexit, I’m expecting that ‘TRANSITION’ is going to be one of the words of the year next month when such things are announced. The psychologist Daniel Levinson reflected on...
Last month my colleague Todd Brown blogged about Aristotle and GTD, and the topic must have jiggled loose some errant neural connections in my brain because later that day I found myself remembering a classic Monty Python sketch called the ‘International Philosophy...
The occasional thud you may have been hearing in the neighbourhood lately isn’t the sound of huge falling conkers but the sound of credit card statements hitting people’s mats. Yes – all that holiday fun coming home to roost. The flights, the hotel and that...
“They’re good for you.” <Sound of silence.> “You won’t get any dessert.” <Look of daggers.> “JUST EAT THEM!” It’s a familiar mealtime scenario. Children and parents in a stand-off over vegetables. Eventually, though, point-blank refusal turns to grudging...
In his own words he looks like an accountant or a dentist, so how did an English gent from the Cotswolds become the undisputed world champion of the Reggae soundclash, a gladiatorial arena where DJs compete track-by-track to win the crowd, and only the brave survive?...
Fifteen minutes into the meeting my former colleague’s eyelids had become heavy. Soon after, they drooped, fluttered, then gently closed. Yet despite the circle of smirking faces around the conference room table, nobody said a word. The elephant in the room could have...
I’m a rambler from Manchester way I get all me pleasure the hard moorland way I may be a wage slave on Monday But I am a free man on Sunday ~ Ewan MacColl (from ‘The Manchester Rambler’) On a glorious spring morning last Friday, under a radiance of blue skies, a...
“Have you heard a word that I’ve said? It’s like your body is here, but you’re not.” Mike had been caught bang to rights with his mind elsewhere on date night at his favourite restaurant. Fortunately, the lady eyeballing him over the bread rolls was his wife so,...
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...
