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...
Your Personal Ping-demic

Your Personal Ping-demic

With coronavirus cases recently rising in the UK, every day hundreds of thousands of users of the government’s covid app were pinged and told to self-isolate.  The app mashes up covid test results and location information to determine who has been near an infected...
Should I Stay, or Should I Go?

Should I Stay, or Should I Go?

Monika Danner has worked in corporate HR and leadership roles for more than 15 years. She has been a GTD® practitioner since 2014 and works as a certified GTD trainer for Next Action Partners in Germany. My personal Covid journey is marked by entering the world of...
No News is Good News

No News is Good News

Let’s start today’s blog with some breathing exercises. Place your hands on your belly and breeeeeeeeathe… belly rising, belly sinking… breathe in… 2… 3… breathe out… 2… 3… And rest. I’m kidding, of course. But seriously – the last four years has been a bit of a...
Being There

Being There

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...
How Search is Killing Your Productivity

How Search is Killing Your Productivity

Search is amazing, but it won’t replace your brain. In this short clip, veteran GTD® coach Robert Peake talks about why we need to re-think our dependence on hoping we can find stuff later using search–and how to fix it.
Love Film, Hate Scrolling

Love Film, Hate Scrolling

The other day I was searching my email archives for some old correspondence and a blast from the past appeared in the search results; Lovefilm was a UK DVD rental service, subsequently gobbled up by Amazon, whereby you chose your movie on their website and a couple of...
What is Marie Kondo Missing?

What is Marie Kondo Missing?

There are many benefits to tidying up and decluttering our lives, as Marie Kondo has successfully demonstrated. But what is missing? Marie Kondo focuses on physical clutter, but many of us are struggling more with mental clutter. What if we took the basic idea of...
The Gift of Presence

The Gift of Presence

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...
Surviving Digital Climate Change with GTD

Surviving Digital Climate Change with GTD

‘Seriously? They’re posting business-critical information as a reply to a private Facebook thread?’ I was as incredulous as my client at this lack of basic ‘communication hygiene’ – expecting colleagues to find what they needed to...
Defeated Devices

Defeated Devices

“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...
Sweet Dreams

Sweet Dreams

“Sweet dreams are made of this / who am I to disagree? / I travel the world and the seven seas / everybody’s looking for something.” -Eurythmics Sleep means energy, and energy is precious. Just ask any new parent, shift worker, or long-haul pilot. In...
Aristotle helps you with your iPhone

Aristotle helps you with your iPhone

In the week that the latest iPhones were launched, I’d like to encourage you to take a mental journey back to classical Greece, for some helpful advice about modern life. Those of you who have been reading my blogs for a while will know that I’m a history buff, and in...
How to run a Reggae night

How to run a Reggae night

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?...
From screenspace to headspace

From screenspace to headspace

“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,...
Does your work feel like planing, or ploughing?

Does your work feel like planing, or ploughing?

If you’ve ever been in a speedboat, or seen one on video, you may have experienced that magic moment when, as the boat accelerates, it reaches a “planing” state.  Once up on a plane, the boat skims over the surface of the water rather than ploughing through it....

Only You Can Prevent Brain Abuse

  I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who would argue that their brain was unimportant (and if they did, you would wonder how well it was functioning anyway). Yet on our travels we find that many people misuse their brains. They expect it to perform...