What Do You Mean by “Cranking Widgets”?

I’ve had a handful of people ask me about the name of this site and what it has to do with personal productivity. Well, if you’re wondering the same thing, you’ve come to the right place.

A big influence on the content of this site is a book by the name of Getting Things Done, written by David Allen. If you’re curious about the particulars of the process described in the book, you’ll find more information in the book itself, as well as in this article on Wikipedia.

In the book, David describes the notion of breaking all projects down into bite-sized tasks (aka ‘widgets’). Once you’ve got a list of these small pieces of work, you should be able to perform the necessary action without having to think much about it (aka ‘cranking’). He re-iterates this point in the interview series he did with Merlin Mann entitled ‘Productive Talk’ (which you can listen to below).

Hopefully this clears up the confusion a little bit. If you are still unsure about it, email me at brett at brettkelly followed by a .org.

Thanks for stopping by - and you know, it never hurts to subscribe so that you get the latest/greatest sooner than anybody in your cube farm ;)


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