Few would argue that Merlin Mann is the Godfather of GTD/productivity blogging. About a month ago he posted Four Years and followed it up with Time, Attention, and Creative Work. If you haven’t read these, please do so now… It’s good stuff.

What do you think?

I look at both of these posts in a positive light. They are sobering reminders of how our personal productivity systems are nothing more than a means to an end. Why we produce boils down to reasons that live deep inside of us. I focus on being productive because my personal goals and commitments require me to get a lot of things done in a short period of time. I am passionate about productivity systems because they allow my over-achieving, over-estimating self to get closer to achieving my goals faster and with minimal affects on my health and overall well-being.

(more…)

If you were to ask me for the true marks of a really productive person (which I’m not, incidentally, so take this with a grain of salt), I wouldn’t say anything about their work area, notebook collection, or pocket contents. I wouldn’t even necessarily cite their ability to consistently meet deadlines (because that just means [...]

As we process our stuff and determine next actions, as good GTD practitioners we do any action we’ve just defined that will take less than two minutes to complete. After doing the action, how do you handle the piece of stuff and the action that was just processed & done? Some things I’m thinking about [...]

So you’ve read through GTD for the ump-teenth time and it looks like you used it to beat back a pack of wild boar. You’ve got your all of your inputs handled and your edges are so clean you could eat off of them. I hate to pee in anybody’s punch, but that was the [...]

The recent financial turmoil has created a situation where unemployment could be a problem for quite some time. The good news for the unemployed is that there are tangible things that you can do to increase your chances of getting noticed for the jobs that are available. Sure, jobs are going away, but jobs are [...]

A guest poster over at Get Rich Slowly recently shared an incredible tip for how to use a recording device to get control of your TV watching habits so you can redirect your attention to far more productive endeavors. Erica Douglass writes: 750 hours a year is 14.42 hours a week, or just over two hours a [...]

Hello, My name is Andy and I’m the new guy here at The Cranking Widgets Blog. While I hope to share far more valuable information in the months and years to come, I’d like to kick things off by getting some answers to the obligatory “who the heck is this guy?” out of the way. [...]

photo by shareski Of all of the the things you’d typically find in a man’s pocket (or a woman’s purse, I suppose), the wallet is probably the most pervasively adopted piece of hardware in Western civilization. Every Tom, Dick and Harry walking around almost certainly has a wallet in his back pocket. And the wallets [...]

This post was written by business coach Dave Crenshaw, author of the great new book The Myth of Multitasking I’d like to share a valuable principle with you. It’s something I’ve taught to many business owners and executives I’ve worked with. This principle may go against the grain of some of your beliefs about time [...]

One of my favorite things to do with my kids while my wife is at work is to take walks around the neighborhood. We usually have a destination, but if the weather is especially nice and we’re having a good time, I won’t exactly rush home. Recently, we were on just such a walk on [...]