Graham’s transition from charity chief executive to freelance consultant was what inspired ‘Think Productive’. For the first 2 years as a freelancer, he was suddenly working without a personal assistant and a great team of ‘do-ers’, and having to rely on himself to be organised, productive and motivated.

Graham’s ‘lightbulb moment’ was after reading David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” (GTD), which led on to discovering a whole range of productivity books, blogs and resources – whilst at the same time as a consultant seeing the waste that goes on in organisations – not through negligence, but from the stress of information overload.

Our experience working in a range of charity, government and business settings is that people are struggling with the growing sense of information overload, and struggling with the ambiguity, uncertainty and stress that this causes. Our experience is also that conventional ‘time management’ training is useless: 20 years behind the times, with out-dated models that assume that time is actually the thing that needs to be managed.

Our approach is more fundamental. We work practically to develop better habits and behaviours, and focus on helping people to manage their attention. We give people tools, but we also follow through with our ‘at-desk coaching’, by sitting at people's desks and helping them figure out the best ways of working for them.

Our workshops, with organisations like the Cabinet Office, eBay, Barclays, the National Trust, the National Council of Voluntary Organisations, University College London and British Airways are now a big success, and people in these organisations are reporting tangible increases in productivity simply from spending a few hours with our workshops and coaching. Our focus is on improving performance. We are genuinely passionate about productivity, and we love helping organisations to shake off stress and uncertainty and develop playful, productive momentum.