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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...

Gerry McGovern is the next keynote at the Copywriting and Content Marketing conference . His talk is about 'Getting the most from your website'. Gerry started out by looking at several presidential campaign websites. What are they about? Their core tasks are clear: to get names from people. The biggest challenge for companies and their website is to cut content, to understand what we don't do, to simplify. Gerry explains his top-task management approach and shows how certain tasks show up and are important for organizations. A great website has things to do on the homepage. Customer success should be your number one priority (also on your website).

Top-task management is a method championed by Gerry McGovern to improve and optimize websites. I’ve been thinking about this method for some time now. I was planning to start by sharing my understanding and experience with the method. But then I bumped into a post about the limitations of the top-task management approach  by Philippe Parker. Bottom-line of the post is that top-task management doesn’t work for sites with which you want to achieve engagement. Top-tasks vs. engagement I’m sure the top-task approach can work in some cases, but I see too many consultants always applying this method. Top-task management tries to make something simple when it can be simple. But I see it applied to websites when the need is complex as well.  A task is clean and can usually be clearly described. But real work like searching, learning, listening, processing is messy. Parker says: tasks are not the only thing people come to the site for. He goes on to say ‘engagement’ is the...