Tag Archives: gtd

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 18th January 2009

Another very productive week for me. I have been working on a very long customer report all week and also my latest eBook writing project for Cisco Press.

Deadlines really help you to focus and I am happy to say that I hit another one. Good planning and time allocation are key to working on a writing project with a deadline. I avoid procrastination and start early. There is nothing worse than leaving everything to the last minute, by which time you put yourself under undue pressure!

Here are my collection of links for this week.

My first link for this week is a link to a Flash video from David Allen about Mind Mapping. This is a video created in conjunction with MindJet. The audio quality is not fantastic but it is a good video that shows how you can use Mind Mapping to help with GTD.
My second link is a link to 10 Time Saving Tips to make you more Productive from the Honolulu Advertiser. Nice little list with ten simple tips to make you more productive.
My third link is a link to a Computerworld article titled Three Free Tools to power the Ultimate GTD System. The three free tools are reQall, Re:Snooze, and Evernote.
My fourth link is a link to 5 Links about Making it All Work, the latest book from David Allen. These links are from the Smart productivity Blog.
My fifth and last link for this week is a link to the start of a Book review for Making it All Work from fellow GTD Blogger Kris over at Fresh Focus.

I am just getting ready to set off to Havant near Portsmouth for three nights. This time my hotel advertises Free WiFi Internet so let’s see how good the connection is.

Hope you all have a great week.

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 11th January 2009

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I have been away from home for most of this week in Basingstoke but I am glad to be back and back to a good Internet connection. I have a deadline for the 15th this week for my next Cisco Press eBook so the next few days will be busy but I am ahead of schedule so will be more than fine for time.

Here are my collection of links for this week.

My first link for this week is a link to a great review of the new David Allen Book, Making it All Work from the Simple Dollar. I am reading this book at the minute. I must admit I am not as far in as I would have liked but I have a writing deadline for the 15th Jan so that has been taking a lot of my time. This is a great review of the whole book, the best review I have seen yet.
My second link is a link to the 15-Minute Solution for Getting Organized. This is a new blog that I have discovered and this is a great post on how to use 15 minutes to get organized. It is amazing what you can do with 5, never mind 15 minutes!
My third link is a link to the 25-50-25 rule to Getting Things Done. This is from the Abundance Blog and it correlates the 25-50-25 rule to the GTD methodology. Well worth the time investment.
My fourth link is a link a video interview with Leo Babuta from Zen Habits. I will probably post these videos as a separate post to my blog.
My fifth and last link for this week is a link to an article titled You Can Do Anything but Not Everything from the Indian Dinosaur blog. This is a great, and lengthy post about a persons view on productivity and GTD at general. Great read.

Going to hit the gym now and then settle down. Hopefully get some more Making it All Work read as my reading has suffered over the past few weeks due to my eBook deadline.

The Hit List – New Mac GTD App Goes Public

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I first saw the Hit List via a blog post over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog back in December 08.

Well, the application is now at public beta and you can download it to have a play with it.

Hit List

The Hit List has come from the Potion Factory, the people behind applications such as Voice Candy and Tangerine.

I would compare The Hit List more to Things than OmniFocus. It looks great, is clean and simple with a great polish. OmniFocus has features coming out of its ears and great integration options.

I have downloaded and installed The Hit List. I am also about to embark on a good look at Things 1.0 so I will report back with a review of both the apps.

Competition is always good and OmniFocus and Things do have a real competitor here with The Hit List. An iPhone companion application is a must so watch this space as I would love to be able to see The Hit List on the iPhone as well.

Take a look and I would love to hear any comments.

MacHeist Helps you Get Things Done

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 4th January 2009

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Christmas is all over with, the decorations came down today and here we are at the first weekly post of the New Year. I hope you all had a great time and I hope you are all ready for the year ahead.

I am sat in a hotel in Basingstoke, UK with only a 2G connection as the hotel has no WiFi. One day all hotels in the UK will have WiFi as standard without charging us £15 for a days usage and ripping us off. Anyway, rant over.

Here are my collection of links for this week.

My first link for this week is a link to 7 Reasons Why I Love OmniFocus, a great post from GearFire.net, a new blog for me. I am still loving OmniFocus but I must admit that I am tempted to try out Things this week when it is launched fully if not just to reaffirm why I love OmniFocus.
My second link is a link to a Things, the main rival of OmniFocus and the polished Apple Mac GTD App which finally goes live at MacWorld on the 6th Jan. I am going to install this and give it a real run for its money and follow it up with a subjective review. I cannot see my swapping from OmniFocus but who knows..
My third link is a link to GTD-IQ. This is something that is mentioned in the first chapter of the new David Allen book, Making it All Work. GTD-IQ is a a website with a set of simple questions to test your GTD-IQ. Worth a look at to see where you are with your GTD-IQ
My fourth link is a link an article outlining the 11 qualities of a successful manager. This is a blog post from Ajay Matharu. I am sometimes appalled by the management skills found in some large organizations. If you are a manager, see how many of these qualities you think you portray in your style of management.
My fifth and last link for this week is a link to a GTD Summary from the 20something finance blog. Again, another good read and great to see people getting real benefit out of Getting Things Done. I like how the author has broken the book down into simple sections. I have always been meaning to do something similar and this has sparked an idea so watch this space.

Ordering a sandwich and then calling it a night. You would not believe how slow my Internet connection is, hoping it is better tomorrow. Let’s hope I have enough juice to publish this post…

David Allen Interviewed by Robert Scoble

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Just thought I would share this great interview with David Allen, author of Getting Things Done (GTD) with Robert Scoble on WorkFast.tv.

The interview is 30 minutes long and David Allen goes through the basics of GTD and how David came to create the GTD system.

This is a great video from two great thought leaders of our time, not to be missed!

What is your Best iPhone Productivity App for 2008?

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The 2008 Best App Ever awards started yesterday and run through to the 6th of January.

Starting December 31st, 2008 we’ll take the 5 top nominations in each category and add 5 nominations from our list of iPhone bloggers, developers, and general web-celebrities for each category to come up with 10 nominated apps for each category. In addition, the 10 apps that get the most votes across all categories will compete for the title of Best App Ever. Please come back and vote for your favorite app in each category.

You have the chance to vote for your best ever iPhone apps of 2008. There is a category for the best ever Productivity Enhancer Application for 2008. The choices are:

Things
reQall
eWallet
OmniFocus
Grocery iQ
Evernote
Remember The Milk
Todo
LDA People
Smart Dialler

I have voted already, and those who read this blog will know the iPhone app that I chose, although there was a close second place as well.

Also, check out the category of Best Productivity Killer and see how many of these you have installed on your iPhone 🙂 I have one of these installed, the Facebook app.

What was your favorite iPhone productivity app of 2008?

Did I Get Things Done in 2008?

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Here we are at the end of another year.

This has been a challenging year for me with some great things and some not so great thing been thrown at my by life. Business has been good, and my company is growing and looks forward to an even better 2009.

I feel like my productivity has really come on leaps and bounds in 2008. I am one of those people who have to be productive. Productivity is essential for me to keep my head above water and to give me the quality of life that I demand.

This blog has grown from 1000 readers to around an average of 2600 readers. I want to get this to 3000 in the New Year so please help me by subscribing via RSS if you do not already. I hope you have all enjoyed my blog over the past year and I hope to make 2009 even better.

I will leave you now with the top 5 posts of 2008, based upon readership.

Enjoy New Years Eve and see you all next year!

Merry Christmas to All

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Just a quick note to wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas!

I am looking forward to relaxing over the next few days and being as merry as I can. My copy of Making it All Work by David Allen arrived today, so I will start to read it over Christmas and report all about it here on this blog.

Enjoy the festive season and get ready for the New Year!

Thanks,

Andrew..

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 21st December 2008

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It is the final countdown to Christmas now, 4 days till the 25th and I am sure that everybody reading this blog will be totally organized and prepared for the festive season 🙂

I have just this minute received an email from Amazon stating that the David Allen Book, Making it all Work, has been delayed by the publishers and not due into the UK until the 15th of January 2009. Looks like my Christmas Reading is limited to the Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp as that has just shipped and will be with me before Christmas.

Here are my collection of links for this week.

My first link for this week is a link to a great post from A Wandering Mind that is about Picking a Tool for GTD. Josh from A Wandering Mind is a guy with an interest in Information Security, just like me!
My second link is a link to Spootnik.net. Spootnik is a web based system for synchronizing your OmniFocus tasks with Basecamp from 37Signals. I use both OmniFocus and Basecamp so I am going to try this. Although the system does look like you have to sync all tasks and it does not appear to give you the option of choosing which tasks to sync. I will provide more details
My third link is a link to a post about the OmniFocus Start date From MacSparky. This is anew blog I have just started reading via another blog and the content is very relevant to me.
My fourth link is a link to the Mind Depositor Index Card Templates – Nice little index cards ready for GTD for you to print. I know these have done the rounds on various blogs already but they are pretty neat if you use a paper based GTD system so check them out.
My fifth and last link for this week is a link to an article from the Times Online titled, Tough Times need a Cool Head and Clear Planning. It is a nice little article about surviving in these tough times and how productivity can help.

My next weekly links will be on the 28th of December when all the Christmas celebrations will be over and we will all be focusing on the New Year.

As it is the New Year, I will do a special New Year links section with all links focusing on planning for the New Year.

Hope you all have a very Merry, and of course productive Christmas!

Andrew..