There are enough bloggers (including yours truly) who write about personal productivity but what is it really all about? Last week I came across the alternative productivity manifesto at The Growing Life which introduced some very interesting ideas. One of those was how productivity is an industrial era economics term. How come then, are we applying it to ourselves? What can we really learn from our ratio of output per hour?

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When I did a critique of GTD a few weeks back and asked my readers to contribute their thoughts, many of you complained about the complexity of the system itself and/or the difficulties in implementing it into their workflow. There are a number of examples out there of how GTD has been simplified (Zen To Done being a prime one). However do such approaches really simplify the system or do they actually just strip chunks out of it? Are there parts of the GTD workflow that can be pruned or is it already lean and trim? Please share your thoughts! I look forward to incorporating them into a future post where I will take a deep look into simplifying GTD and whether it really can be done without losing the fundamental building blocks that make it so effective. Over to you!

Should personal development be taught in schools? To me on a basic level, it seems like a smart move. It could arguably give children valuable life tools like habit building, productivity and how to gain a better understanding of their expectations in life. In this day and age, with increasing complexity and pressures, it’s surely more valuable than ever for children to have such knowledge. However, in my case at least, I’d finished school long ago and had even gone through university before I started to give a crap about my self improvement. I suspect a lot of kids would have the same outlook. Can children be taught to think about their personal development, or does it take life experience and age before it starts to actually mean something? I look forward to reading your thoughts!

We all know that GTD is a very popular system for those wanting to get a grip of their workflow and productivity levels. However, like most things it has its negative qualities; features and aspects that don’t work as intended or simply aren’t practical for the average person to use. It’s got me thinking about what I don’t like about GTD, what doesn’t work for me and what I just simply disagree on. I’m going to dedicate an entire post detailing my thoughts on this in the near future. In the meantime, I want to throw this issue out to you all. I’d love to hear what your GTD complaints are. I’m really looking forward to reading your comments on this as it’s potential goldmine of information, so whether you regularly comment or are a first time visitor…. share your thoughts!

Recently two of my favorite blogs have taken big steps forward. This has had a motivational affect on me and my aspirations for Organize IT (more on all this in a future post) and it got me thinking about influences. Over the years, particularly as a child, I’ve had a few weird/funny ones, some of which are listed below. What weird influences have you had?

• Friends (the TV sitcom)
  In my naive pre-teen optimism I thought it was perfectly normal to have such a close group of friends who knew each other from college and were conveniently neighbors too. I also thought Chandler (Mathew Perry) was super cool, which probably explains where I get my sarcasm from…
• The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾
  Oddly perhaps, this book was one of the first influences that put the idea of being a writer into my head. Looking back over ten years later, I can’t remember why that was, but that might just be me blocking out my memories of teenage angst.
• House M.D.
  It’s one of my favorite shows and Gregory House is a brilliantly written (and performed) character. I’m not sure how it’s influenced me on any deep level, but I’m a walking stick away from being able to pull of a half-decent impression of him at a fancy dress party so that must mean something.