“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.”

Pablo Picasso

As the year is coming to a close, maybe you will wish for a better way to tackle work, family and personal projects in the next year. If you have never heard of GTD (aka Getting Things Done) yet, or have but still hesitating about diving in, I am inviting you to listen to two podcasts on Time and Attention from productivity expert (and fellow Canadian) Chris Bailey and co-host Ardyn Nordstrom (an academic like myself). Chris is the author of two wonderful books by the way: The Productivity Project and Hyper Focus.

While I have read the Productivity Project a few years ago and Hyper Focus last summer, I discovered Chris’s podcast only recently and still catching up on the past episodes. So far, I found the majority of them to be of interest and it covered a wide range of topics related to being a better human being (the original title of the podcast) and to get better at using your time and focusing your attention (new title!). I also loved Ardyn’s academic takes on these topics. Particularly appreciated one of the podcast in which Ardyn was arguing for the value of Overleaf, an online collaborative scientific writing tool for LaTex, that is used heavily by many research groups worldwide, including our own.

So two podcasts in particular are worthy of your time and attention within the context stated above: the GTD system and the weekly review.

The first podcast (episode 91) is a rerun of an interview with David Allen, the Yoda(!) of productivity, on the GTD method and how to get started. If listening to this 23 minutes episode resonates with you, have a look at Getting Things Done book afterward…

The second podcast (episode 89) is all about the weekly review: what is it, how it is done, when to do it, … in fact the weekly review is probably one of the key elements of a trusted system to help not only for work productivity but for projects in all spheres of your life. If you do have a task manager or uses task lists and you are not doing the weekly review, you will probably drop the ball at some point. This podcast runs for about 25 minutes. Even if, like me, you do have a recurring weekly review time-slot block in your agenda, it remains an excellent refresher.

The information provided above should get you going, should you want to implement or revised your system as a powerful (liberating might also be invoked) new year resolution. Have fun!