There are many ways that we’re told we can reduce our stress: red wine, regular exercise, meditation, voodoo dolls, sex and green tea. Whilst all of them may work, they all tackle symptoms rather than the root cause. Here’s what you can do!
Or if you’re stressed about your work, you could of course come on our ‘How to Get Things Done’ workshop, or book one of our contemporary time management courses for your team.
Think Productive have teamed up with Train to Gain to offer charities a grant to access our “Getting Your Inbox to Zero” in-house workshop for FREE*!
For more information on the grant download the PDF by clicking here
For more information about our “Getting Your Inbox to Zero” workshop click here
*To get 15 delegates onto “Getting Your Inbox to Zero” for Free (Usual price £1000) place three people on the “How to Get Things Done” public workshop for £500 (Usual price £600)
The total package would usually cost £1600 but with the grant you would pay a total of £500 which includes three delegate on the “How to Get Things Done” public workshop and upto 15 delegates on the “Getting Your Inbox to Zero” In-house workshop.
We are taking our popular “How to Get Things Done” workshop on tour, we will be visiting London, Brighton, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Bath with the aim of helping all you wonderful people increase productivity, beat stress, feel more in control of your work and develop playful, productive momentum
Our workshops have developed a strong reputation for being amongst the best in the business on personal productivity – popular with staff at leading organisations like British Airways, Barclays Commercial, University College London and the Cabinet Office, as well as with charity Chief Executives and even Members of Parliament! Our public workshops take us on the road to give you a chance to see what all the fuss is about.
At Think Productive, we love David Allen’s Getting Things Done – it’s one of the major time management systems we use both internally as a team and with our clients as part of our workshops. Here are 10 ways you know you’ve cracked it. Feel free to add your own as a comment too!
1. You think about clearing your email in the same way as you think about checking your voicemail
2. Wherever you go, you’ve always got a way to write things down
3. You know there’s a really important conversation you need to have with your partner so you put it on your agendas list
4. You read stuff you actually want to read when you’re on public transport or the dentists waiting room, rather than the free newspapers provided
5. When you think about where to go on holiday, your next thought is ‘what’s the next action?’
6. You have a favourite time or place to do your weekly review
7. You become the annoying person in a meeting who actually wants to know what the meeting is for in the first place
8. You feel relaxed and in control, despite having more projects on the go than anyone else you know
9. When you’re in the middle of a city centre with an hour or so to kill, you’ve got a list of shopping or culture possibilities to make sure the time is used productively
10. You don’t get overwhelmed about work at the beginning or end of the working week because you know your GTD system includes a thorough weekly review
If you want to find out more about GTD, buy the book here Or ask us about our workshop, How to Get Things Done.
Are you proud of what you do? Do you love your work? Stress-free productivity comes from developing a positive relationship with what you do.
If you want to find out how to get things done and love your work, check out our time management training that does so much more than all the conventional rubbish time management stuff you’re probably used to!
On our time management worshops we often talk about the issue of ‘connectivity vs productivity
’: whilst we should focus on being productive we’re often simply addicted to being connected, in the loop and plugged in. In our Email Etiquette workshop, we also talk about the Blackberry (‘Crackberry’) abuse that goes on in organisations and help people to change these bad habits. If I go away it’s usually for about a month so it’s quite normal for me to take a few bits of work with me and stay relatively in the loop but it’s also good to completely disconnect (with no exceptions!) so that you can stop thinking about work, take time to reflect and experience a change of pace. I’m happy to report that nothing ‘blew up’ during my week away, and if you’re tempted to take the laptop with you or keep your blackberry turned on whilst you’re away on your hols, here’s the view from the other side – I hope it changes your mind!
Also, if you’re worried about coming back to hundreds of emails, fear not! Our ‘Getting Your Inbox to Zero Email workshop will coach you to do exactly that in just 3 hours! Email us for more details.
If you run a business, chances are you hate book-keeping. Getting things done that you don’t necessarily enjoy doing is an important skill and habit to develop, but maybe – just maybe – we can convince you to look at your book-keeping in a whole new way! Here, Lisa from Boogles provides some tips to help you keep on top of the numbers in your business. Lisa is as passionate about transforming how people perceive book-keeping as we are about doing the same for time management training – the world needs more people like Lisa! And if you’re struggling with your own book-keeping, maybe give her a call!
It’s that time of year when the thoughts turn to summer breaks. Here are a few thoughts about how to ensure you work and relax as usefully as possible!
1. Clarify before you go! Leave 2 days free in your calendar immediately before you go away. Get clean and clear: Get your email inbox down to zero, delegate what you can, work out what won’t die if it’s left for a couple of weeks. This wrap up time will allow you to make a great list of priorities for when you return, giving you peace of mind that the world won’t end just because you didn’t turn up at the office for a couple of weeks (bad news for the egotists amongst you, but it really won’t!)
2. Checklist it! Keep a note of what needs doing before you go away (the cat needs someone to feed it, someone needs to push your post through the door, someone needs to deputise on that meeting, your team needs to keep on top of that project). With a lot of these things, it’s the thinking and remembering that takes the mental energy and causes the stress. So keeping this as a checklist means it’ll be so much easier next time you go away. Keep the checklist stored on your calendar a month or so before you next plan to go away and you won’t lose it.
3. Capture and Collect whilst you’re away. If you’re one of those people who spends half the time on holiday still with their mind racing at 100 miles per hour (I’m guilty of this – it takes me several days to truly change gear!) then don’t just let it happen. Take a small pad and pen, and capture all those great ideas that you’ll start to have once you relax. And if you capture the thoughts that might be nagging you AND you trust that you’ll do something with what you’ve captured once you get back, you’ll get that stuff off your mind and enjoy your break.
4. The only mentions of ‘check in’ or ‘desks’ should be at the airport. Don’t try to check in on progress with colleagues whilst you’re there. If you’ve truly allowed yourself 2 days of good, uninterrupted thinking time before you leave, you should have everything delegated. Remember, productivity and connectivity are not the same thing. Resist your addiction to being connected. And in the same vein, turn off email and internet on your phone – it will help you enjoy the view, and you’ll be better rested on your return.
5. Clarity when you arrive back. When you arrive back, full of new ideas, refreshed but with a mountain of email to process, the 2 week-old list, plus new stuff flying at you, the worst place to spend those first seven hours is in meetings. Block out the first few hours on your return to get back in control: process the emails, get back up to date, catch up on what else has been happening and plan ahead. If the day of meetings is completely unavoidable, then for your own sanity, do this on your own time on the Sunday evening – not something we advocate for everyone, of course, but hey, some people have those kind of jobs..!
When the trains all get delayed due to bad weather, we all have a tendency to start cursing and ultimately waste a lot of time on unproductive activities. Here are a few thoughts about how to make sure you avoid that the next time you find yourself stuck!
