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Recently Twitter updated its web and app interface again. Nice and round this time. One thing I was disappointed about is the fact that Twitter did nothing to make Lists more visible and accessible. If you don't know what a List is, you can find more info about them  here . I blogged about how I use them several times as well. Twitter Lists is simply a way to organize all the people you follow into... lists, of course. The way you use a List is up to you. You can put people on a list based on a topic they relate to, their importance, whether you've met them in person, etc. By having Lists you can focus on the people you want to follow, instead of just going through all the updates of all the people you follow. Lists help you follow more people than you can process and focus on the people who you really want to listen to and interact with. When I tell people about Lists I'm surprised how little people know they exist and use them. On the other hand people that bail ou...

How do you get things done? Do you have a method you follow? I’ve written about this before . A lot of times actually. The trigger to write about it again is my continuous surprise how little people have a method to work productively. Actually everybody has a method, at least implicitly, and sometimes it’s pretty OK. But often I see people struggle. Usually this is because they don’t have a productivity approach and/or there are all kinds of loose ends in their method. I follow the ‘Getting things done’ productivity approach by David Allen . I follow it fairly strictly and revisit the books quite regularly to see if I can do better. I read ‘Getting things done’ for the first time when I was about two years into work life. I was struggling. I had a method, but it wasn’t working. I wasn’t in control and often forgot to do tasks. ‘Getting things done’ was a revelation to me. After reading it I thought: This is it, everybody should read this. This should be a mandatory course at univ...

To me ‘Productivity’ is an interesting topic. There was a time that I was desperately looking for ways to be (more) productive. How do I manage my work as a knowledge worker? At the beginning of my working life I found I had a hard time structuring my work, showing progress, etc. I also found I was given little tools during university to help me be productive in my work life. I knew how to make sure I passed exams, but working on an open project with vague goals…? What really helped me was David Allen’s book ‘Getting things done’ . I love this book. His methodology gave me all the tools I need to get things done. I still am a sucker for productivity tips and tools. And I’ll share things I find on productivity regularly. As you know Allen’s advice is to make a task out of everything you need to get done. When you’ve captured your tasks, there’s room for flow. And this is true, it works for me. But I have been wondering for years now: what’s the true productivity gain? Capturing and d...

Is email here to stay or will it die? Will it die because social media is here or will something else replace email? Recently Steve Dale wrote an interesting post about this topic. It's titled 'Email is dead: long live email!' . It was discussed on G+ and the blogpost itself has many interesting comments. I thought I'd share my comments here as well. Please read Steve's post first. I think it's an important post for social business people. Steve lists several reasons to use (and keep on using) email: Email arrives near instantaneously. It can be accessed from almost anywhere. It brings not just text, but pictures, documents, links, and more. Email is great for non-urgent communication. Things that don’t require an immediate response that others can deal with on their schedule. Email can provide a powerful documentation trail. Unlike text messages or phone calls, email provides an authenticated audit trail of past communication. It is hard to deny pas...

You may have never seen this. But my blog contains a list of books I'm reading at the moment. I just finished reading 'Making it all work' by David Allen. I re-read his book 'Getting things done' every year to review the way I'm working and apply new GTD elements to my productivity framework. But I thought I'd read Allen's newest book instead this year. I'll review 'Making it all work' soon and share it with you as a blogpost. I enjoyed reading this book as it goes into the philosophy and mechanisms behind GTD. Currently I'm reading 3 books: As I told you I'm reading 'What Technology Wants' by Kevin Kelly. Not an easy book, but fascinating. I'm almost finished reading it and hope to review it in January. And I just started reading 'The Information' by James Gleick and 'The Living Company' by Arie de Geus. Have you read one of these books? If so, leave a comment and tell me what you think o...

Besides workshops about social media I've also been giving workshops about Productive Knowledge Work. It's a lot of fun. And I'm surprised at how many people are looking for ways to become a productive knowledge worker. One theme that is addressed by the participants in almost every workshop is 'email guidelines'. They say: We should agree not to 'reply all', have clear email subject lines, etc. I shared the slides I use for you. If you have comments or questions, I'd love to hear them. Productive Knowledge Work Workshop View more presentations from Samuel Driessen . Tags van Technorati: gtd , getting things done , productivity , knowledge worker , email

I too use the 'Getting Things Done' system for my work. I posted on it several times before . Just recently I ran into Ton Zijlstra's "Thoughts on GTD System Weaknesses" . It's always interesting to hear how others use GTD and value it. Ton has been using the GTD system for about 9 months. What I clearly recognize in his post is that GTD is not one-size-fits-all. I've been using for about two years now. You have to tweak it to make it fit for your (type of) work. I actually also don't use GTD strictly. For instance, I don't use the filer cabinet in the way David Allen describes in his book. And I do also prioritize my tasks with dates using my Palm, as commentor Oliver Gassner writes. I would disagree with Ton that GTD is all about lists. It is also about lists. But the lists should be kept short and actionable. GTD says we should fill tasks in our agenda if they require a certain amount of time and have to be done before a certain date. So rea...