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I am a small business Conversation Consultant and public speaker that uses the power of the internet to leverage your success. Productivity in Context is a web magazine focused on Productivity and tools for organizing. Make this your headquarters for improving your life and work through increased mindfulness, education, and workflow practices.

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I have found an interesting post at Behance Magazine that I’d like to share with you today: Tip: 10 Realizations For Productivity & Making Ideas Happen from Behance Magazine

Our years of research have caused us to question the status quo of everyday project management:

* What if compulsive filing yields little benefit?
* What if priority matters more than context?
* What if the success of every project (and life) ultimately comes down to organizing actions you must take?
* What if the design of the method we use for productivity influences our psychology for getting stuff done?

These are some very important questions, with nuggets of wisdom that I have been considering myself for a while now. As I started a new full-time job in July I have been working very hard to make all of my projects successes but I have had to consider priority over context on several occasions - such as working on day-job tasks and planning at home rather than blogging or working on the new website projects.

I have talked about the design of the productivity system influencing your psychological state many times and I know that I have helped a few of you “personalize” your GTD and other systems.

It looks like Behance is working on a new service for managing productivity online, one that takes into account such realizations as:

Questions such as these have led our team to some very important realizations:

1. Actions should be kept separate from email.
Email can kill productivity, because the actions you must take are buried in regular communication. An inbox full of email - even well-filed emails - still forces you to dig through every communication to find the hidden task. Tasks to be completed, or “Action Steps,” should have a management system of their own.

2. People should NOT share whole projects, just relevant items within projects.
Until now, all project management systems were made up of projects that were shared among different people. However, the way people really THINK about their work is more personal: we define our projects in our own terms - and it is rare that 100% of any project is relevant to all involved. Rather than share entire projects, we now have the technology to share just the relevant components of projects - action steps, reference items, discussions, milestones - and the recipient can then organize these components in a way that makes sense for his/her system.

Read the whole post [Tip: 10 Realizations For Productivity & Making Ideas Happen from Behance Magazine] for more background on these insights. (Not an affiliate link, I have not heard anything else about the new product)

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/64wz7b. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

Today’s post is from Mike St. Pierre of The Daily Saint

Open loops drive me crazy.  There, I said it.

It often goes like this:  I’m in a meeting and someone, not writing anything down, will say something like, “we should really think about doing that” or “I’ll take care of that”.  MyGTD radar kicks in and I start placing mental bets on whether Person X will really do what he said.  Or, I wonder why we don’t just decide then and there what the absolute next action is on the project in question.  Ah, the frustrated life of a GTD practitioner…

As a refresher, an open loop is some aspect of a project that is left undecided, un-taken-care-of or just neglected. Sadly, these open loops can wreak havoc on productivity.  They are the reason why the office building down the street is not quite finished.  Open loops are the cause of the ABD (all but dissertation) professor.  An open loop is a fancy expression for “unfinished business”.  We put up with them all the time, but why?

I suspect that our too-often habit of not looking for next actions may have something to do with it.  Or, it might be due to the frenetic pace of work.  A third option might be due to a lack of a weekly review to see what details were missed in the course of a week.  Whatever the cause, the open loops hang around and like a boomerang, come back again and again. 

Here are some simple steps towards banishing these little buggers so that your productivity can soar:

1. Keep a capture tool with you at all times. A PDA, small notebook (my favorite- a $.99 notebook from Staples!) or pad of paper will do the trick.  If you need to remember it, write it down.  Don’t trust your memory- write it down.
2. When around those who have a habit of putting up with open loops, move them towards next action steps.  Ask, “What’s the next action on that?”  You could also ask, “What can we do today to keep that project moving forward?”
3. Set a good example. You don’t have to be perfect but consistency is a must.  Practice your weekly review.  Get things out of your head and be a person of action.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/68qdwp. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

Sorry for lack of posting, I have been been very busy with offline work. I had a little time this morning and wanted to share with you an interesting post by Jared at Technotheory.com - Should “productivity” play a role in your friendships and relationships?

When it comes to friendships and relationships, is it fair to apply principles of productivity…or is it not only a waste of time but perhaps even harsh and potentially damaging?

I say if you’ve got a system that works for you, then by all means apply it to the people in your life, too. It’ll not only help your sanity but your relationships.

Read it and leave a comment.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5rncpz. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

Today’s post is from Mike St. Pierre of The Daily Saint

Remember bands like Phish and Guster?  With cultlike following, these musicians travelled each summer to the delight of thousands of fans.  Their appeal was almost mystical and while devotees couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment of attraction, they would travel far and wide to see them in concert. 

Then, quietly, something happened.  They went mainstream.

So too with David Allen and Getting Things Done.  Don’t misread me- I’m not lamenting this.  Only putting words to the obvious- GTD is going mainstream.  Consider the following as noted in a recent article in Business Week:

• The David Allen Company is now an $8 million enterprise
• Allen’s third book will come out in December of ‘08 and is sure to be a smashing success
• Big box stores like Staples will soon be selling DAC co-branded products
• The GTD Global Summit will most likely become huge success in March of ‘09, much like the TED conferences have become for creative and design folks

None of this is a bad thing.  In fact, it’s probably a natural progression from the early days of GTD. It does however mean that GTD will no longer be a fringe band like Phish and Guster.  As the start-up “feel” of GTD evaporates, practitioners will have to maintain its raw and timeless spirit- get it out of your head, tools matter but not so much as habits, what’s the next action, etc. 

Time will tell as to how GTD shakes out over the next few years.  The 7 Habits of Stephen Covey morphed into a line of products and moderately successful stores but now seems so mid ’90’s.  Will GTD stand the test of going mainstream?  As they say, time alone will tell.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/55g7h4. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen