Category: Other

I’ve found this to be a hard experiment so far.  The idea is that I would spend my daytime relaxing and the hit it hard for four hours – 5pm until 9pm – proving that a good dose of ninja ruthlessness can mean optimum productivity in half a normal working day. It hasn’t quite worked…

How to use your Projects List Use your ‘Projects List’ to keep track of all the projects that you’re currently working on. I would define a project as a collection of actions that is designed to achieve a particular aim. So, a project is any piece of work that requires more than a couple of…

1) Drink some coffee: It’s a cliché because it works. A well placed cup of coffee might just be       enough to get you through the next hour… or eight. We start all our public workshops with fresh coffee because it’s always good to have a little kick start when learning something new. 2) Give…

How do you sucessfully outsource your email? As part of this month, I have outsourced my email inbox to a new personal assistant, Sam.  I have had a few PA’s in the past.  They have generally all managed my diary (which is a massive relief for me since I seem to have a mental blank…

One of the key habits we talk about in our productivity training and in the CORD Productivity Model is Capturing and Collecting: the idea that we should bring together all the bits of paper, ideas, emails and anything else that needs something doing to it, so that we have a pile of things to then…

After last month’s dark and stress-inducing ‘Maynia’ experiment, I need to relax and experiment with something more positive again.  So this month is going to be all about working hours.  And specifically turning the notion of 9-5 on its head. I’m going to be adopting some unusual working hours.  I’m going to clock on at…

I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so relieved that one month is over and another beginning.  Maynia has been by far the hardest month of my 2013 Productivity Experiments. It marked a change of emphasis: up until that point, all of the previous months had played around with extreme scenarios, but each scenario suggested…

I’m nearly at the end of “Maynia” and I’ve gone from inbox zero to direction zero.  No longer the productivity ninja, apologising for embarrassing slip ups, not sleeping well and finding it harder to switch off… I can’t wait for the end of this month’s experiment. I am realising that there’s no longer a fixed line…

It’s 11am on a Thursday morning, during my “maynia” experiment.  I’ve just noticed something very interesting.  With me currently having no access to my Toodledo, no daily checklist routine first thing in the morning, no weekly review process and a burgeoning inbox which I’m deliberately trying to avoid sweeping back to zero… I am directionless. …

Productivity is at it’s most effective when everyone’s singing from the same (clearly typed) hymn sheet. Matthew has been running our impactful boss-PA, one day ‘How to Get Things Done’ coaching sessions and wrote this post outlining how to becomes a super slick boss-PA tag team over at his blog Mox Nox in Rem At…

This month Graham has abandoned all of his usual systems, no Toodledo acount, no inbox zero – he’s acting on instinct. Panic I am spending a lot of time going back to the email inbox and wondering what’s lurking in there.  I’m spending a lot of time writing little notes to myself and adding them…

  At Think Productive UK, one of our values is “we walk our talk”.  It has two benefits: Firstly, it means we talk with authorityand credibility when we’re running workshops and in sales conversations organisations can see the benefits by observing how we work as the role models for all this stuff.  But secondly, since people…