Ever seen a pinball machine? Great, then you’ll have a mental image of a metal ball pinging around under glass, side-to-side and up-and-down, flippers flipping and lights flashing for as long as you can stop it from disappearing down the hole. I sometimes use this odd...
It is quiet now, but earlier our living room echoed with the howls of a lonely Siberian night. You see, we recently invited the patter of little dew claws into our life by adopting a rescue dog. After a few weeks of getting-to-know-you and DNA results, we discovered...
“If I’m in meetings all day from 8am until 8pm, when am I ever going to get time to do this Clarifying and Organising thing?” “Well, quite” I reply, “and what about actually working on all the items you have already put on your lists?” Following this common coaching...
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...
Last week, I hosted a regular conference call with our certified trainers and coaches here in the UK. One of the many hats I wear at Next Action Associates is that of Master Trainer, which basically means that I look after developing and certifying our trainers, and...
Robert De Niro asks a very important GTD® question with his famous quote in the movie ‘Taxi Driver’. “Are you talking to me?” You wouldn’t believe how many projects are found on lists that don’t ‘talk’ to their owners. First of all, some project names don’t talk to...
Monika Danner has worked in corporate HR and leadership roles for more than 15 years. She has been a GTD® practitioner since 2014 and is now a certified GTD trainer for Next Action Partners in Germany. “Your projects list is a composite picture of the future you want...
You won’t get the great benefit of seeing your world from a higher perspective in your Weekly Review® without first having a complete Projects list. And… You won’t fully understand why you should keep a complete Projects list until you’re getting the benefit of seeing...
Each Day In Life is Training Training For Myself Though Failure is Possible Living Each Moment Equal to Anything Ready for Everything (Soen Ozeki, Daisen-in Zen Temple, Kyoto) I’m sitting in an Amsterdam coffee shop reflecting on the mind-altering trip that I’ve been...
Boxer, the horse from George Orwell’s classic text Animal Farm, had one answer to adversity: “The solution, as I see it, is to work harder.” It is a poignant allegory for Stalinist exploitation of working-class Russian revolutionaries. But it is also...
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...
This week, I talk about GTD® and discipline. Sure, it takes time to make something a habit, but the benefits of GTD practice are obvious – the ability to become far more productive and less stressed. That’s where to focus.
For the fourth year in a row I’m out walking Il Camino, the pilgrimage in Spain. It is an amazing experience, but the connection to GTD® might not be obvious. Still, apart from the obvious checklist for all the things I want to bring – ranging from walking boots to...
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...
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...
“Honey, I just realised – nothing is going to try to kill me out here.” My wife and I were ambling along one of England’s many public footpaths through gentle countryside. I agree it may sound like an unusual observation. But having come from...
James McBrien is Managing Director of Clearwater Advisers Ltd. Clearwater specialises in showing talented individuals how to be great communicators. We show people how to be natural when under pressure. As well as running individual and group coaching programmes we...
It seemed like it was going to be an ordinary Tuesday. Then the phone rang. Have you ever had one of those moments when the camera seems to pan back on your life suddenly, and everything that seemed so important up to that moment falls away in the clear, cold focus of...
Sam Wigan is an avid student of personal development and self awareness for 20 years, having completed numerous advanced courses in the field and more recently, a Masters Class in personal transformation with an emphasis on coaching. Sam is also a corporate training...
Last night I scattered my father’s ashes on the waters of the Ganges at Varanasi, the holy city to which Hindus come to die and end the cycle of death and rebirth. India had exerted an ancestral pull on my dad his whole life but he’d never managed to...
As he lay dying by the railway tracks the local MP for Liverpool, the Right Honourable William Huskisson, must have thought… “Dash it all… I didn’t see that coming!” On this very day in 1830, a train service was launched connecting Manchester, the greatest...
Like so many of us, I have a love-hate relationship with the alarm clock on my phone. I often hate how early it wakes me up, but of course love that it does so reliably. Like the bookmark, whose simple virtues I extolled in a previous article, the alarm clock is...
Taking on a new goal can be easy when the path to get there is clear, and the steps along the way are fun. However, for those parts of life that are ambiguous or unpleasant, creating and holding to a vision of success is all the more important. I recently lost my...
