When I think of the term black belt, I think of being the best. A master at what I do with skills at the highest level. Images of champions in sport and business come to mind. And it makes me ask the question, what does it really take to be the best? I think the [...] Read more »

In today’s world, it’s easy to be connected to your work. While both a problem and an advantage, it does create problems trying to figure out what context to put your GTD next actions in. If you are just starting out, I strongly suggest that you go with the contexts for your next actions that [...] Read more »

There’s a saying that time is money. Actually time is more valuable than money because time expires and you can always earn more money. Because of this, I think it’s critical that you start recording the time it takes to do the things in your GTD system. Start recording how long it takes you to [...] Read more »

Part of my goal with this site is to lay it out in a similar fashion to a GTD system. As part of that, every GTD system has a project list. So what I have done here is set up a page that will be my GTD project list. My vision here is that I [...] Read more »

In today’s post, I wanted to talk about what you have to do when you start to lose motivation. This tends to happen once you have started to make some progress and the little voice inside your head starts telling you that for whatever reason it doesn’t want to take action today. I experienced this [...] Read more »

Tonight I wanted to talk about what taking action can do for your life by telling you a story about a guy that is in one of the groups I belong too. About four years ago, he started a website that probably cost him roughly a few hundred dollars. Four years later, he sold that [...] Read more »

Tonight I wanted to spend some talking about how to improve your focus. It’s been my experience that when I focus on one thing, I tend to a better job at it. In this world of multi-tasking, it’s extremely hard to focus on the task at hand. Because of that, we have a tough time [...] Read more »

As part of changing your life, one of things that you will probably need to learn how to do is how to break bad habits. Bad habits sometimes set in when we are not happy with things in our lives. They can also be rooted in routines we had when we were younger. One of [...] Read more »

When you are trying to change your life, it can be an exciting time for you. And it’s only natural to share those goals with other people you know. I have read and heard many gurus say that when you set a goal for yourself, you should hold yourself accountable by telling everybody your goal. [...] Read more »

One of the great things about GTD is how it focuses you on the next action. Come up with a project and ask yourself, what is the very next step I can take to move this project forward. Then, once you have taken that next action, you repeat the same question. What is the next [...] Read more »

I remember when I first started working I made a mistake that my manager called me out on. I don’t really remember what it was now but it did kind of get me down a bit. Later, I was talking to a guy I worked with about it and he said, you know what, if [...] Read more »

When I was growing up, school was pretty easy to me. I aced a lot of the homework. I made good grades. By the time I got to college, I was to the point that for some courses, I could skip class and still get a solid A grade. Many times, people equate being smart [...] Read more »

Yesterday I wrote about how mastery begins with finding a master. Today I wanted to talk about the next step in the process and that is actually applying what the master teaches. This is how you learn to master anything. Find a teacher, do exactly what the master says and have success. With all the [...] Read more »

The journey to being black belt at GTD or anything else begins with identifying who the elite teacher is in what it is that you want to master. While you can muddle your way through and master many things on your own, there is great benefit in learning from those who have blazed the trail [...] Read more »

I was talking to a friend of mine tonight and we got to talking about how everyone has a job that is so different than everyone else’s. Because of this, it is hard to provide advice to people with a one size fits all approach. This as you know has been my biggest beef with [...] Read more »

I thought tonight I would focus on what to do when your GTD weekly review takes too long. I think the general impression that David Allen gives when he explains the weekly review is that it should take about an hour to complete. Many people, myself originally included, found our reviews taking much longer than [...] Read more »

As I have mentioned in the past, I work for myself. I do have help for certain things and I appreciate that very much. But as a business owner, I think about my work 24 hours a day seven days a week. Because of that, I have looked for ways to not think about what [...] Read more »

Once I got my GTD system set up and my inboxes to zero, I was faced with a new challenge that all GTD’ers face and that was how to “do” everything that was now organized in my system. From what I can tell, I am not the only one who faces a wall of getting [...] Read more »

Today, I wanted to talk about something I struggle with from time to time and that is how to improve my self discipline. I basically work for myself in my “real” job. Because of that, on a daily basis, I have to find the motivation to get things done in order to be successful. I [...] Read more »

I’ve never been a really negative person. I’m a skeptic for sure. Ask me about my own abilities though, and I’ll tell you that I think I can do anything I set out to do. But I do know that there are people out there who have a negative outlook on things. They don’t think [...] Read more »