‘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...
“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...
Do you have a set of useful reminders to help you focus on the right things, in the right place, and at the right time? This week I talk about how GTD’s ‘orienting maps’ can help you reach your desired outcomes with greater...
“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...
“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...
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 –...
“All that is very well,” answered Candide, “but let us cultivate our garden.” -Voltaire I was fuming. I could feel the blood surging up to my head, fuelling a litany of judgmental thoughts. Brexit. Trump. That maniac on the M1. Something had...
Regular readers will know that in my blogs I usually focus on ways to be more effective and efficient, to realise the benefits of stress-free productivity. It occurred to me earlier this week though that I’ve been neglecting an audience that could use some help. What...
In their newfound enthusiasm for discovering the freedom and relief of getting everything out of their head, journeymen GTD® practitioners can fall into the trap of believing that small lists are inherently bad. Indeed, David Allen, creator of the Getting Things Done®...
Rebecca Stevens is a Manchester-based psychologist. She is registered as a Practitioner Occupational Psychologist with the Health Professions Council and an Associate Fellow & Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society Division of Occupational...
If you’ve been to one of our seminars or had a bit of our coaching, you’ve no doubt heard us talk about ways of working that allow you to deal with email backlog. If you’ve attended one of our two-day seminars and implemented the new ways of working in your email, you...
In ‘The Land of the Rising Sun’ during the 1990s, the madogiwazoku – which is Japanese for ‘the window tribe’ – were ageing employees who were no longer seen as useful to the organisation. However, since there was a reluctance in Japan’s corporate culture...
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...
It’s a sun-filled summer afternoon and you’re strolling happily down the street when a flash of light catches your eye from pavement ahead. You instinctively tell yourself it’s probably just shiny litter but your eyes linger, widen and then sparkle with delight. Yes,...
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...
“The happiness of most people we know is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.” -Ernest Diminet It is getting harder to focus in the information age. By “focus” we tend...
Scalability is the holy grail of good business practice–both for big companies looking to get bigger, and one-person bands just starting out. The Getting Things Done (GTD®) method is an extremely powerful approach to “scale” an individual’s...
Recently, I touched on how Areas of Focus can help you to keep areas that matter to you on track and in balance individually. This particular horizon of focus is also incredibly useful to teams. In the spirit of the current World Cup football matches, I’d like to...
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?” ― Rabbi Hillel Organisations have systems–from organograms to annual reviews–designed to ensure that the right people focus on the right...
