If you’re new to my writing, these posts are a good place to begin. They capture how I think about productivity – practical, human, and rooted in real experience.
- A new chapter: opening my productivity and agile coaching programme
I can help you find clarity and calmness in your life and work. - An overview of my planning and productivity system in 2021
A walkthrough of how I manage my own tasks and priorities. - How I start my weekly review
The small ritual that keeps my system grounded. - Book review: Slow Productivity by Cal Newport
What I learned from Newport’s call to do fewer things better.
Writing on personal productivity
🛠️ Tools and apps
Reviews, tweaks, and scripts to help you get more from everyday tools like Todoist, Trello, OneNote, and Gmail.
- Why I’m reviewing my software stack
- Trying OnlyOffice after years with Microsoft
- The quiet power of analogue tools
- Keeping your PC apps up-to-date with Winget and WingetUI
- Trello classic label colours v2.0.0
- Fix for Scrum for Trello (for Chrome)
- Hurrah! Vertical tabs are coming to Microsoft OneNote
- Espanso text expander
- Microsoft To Do review
- Organising tabs by groups in Google Chrome
- Groupy—grouped tabs for any application in Windows
- Todoist sections are a game-changer in how I organise myself
- Kiwi for Gmail—initial impressions
- Trello coloured lists for Tampermonkey updated to v4.x
- Team meeting via Google Hangouts
- Viewing Trello label titles on cards
- Todoist vs Trello vs Wunderlist for managing small tasks
- Using eM Client with Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Contacts
- Moving from Outlook (Exchange) to eM Client (Google)
📚 Books, methods, and reviews
Reviews and reflections on productivity approaches from GTD to Deep Work, and what they mean in practice.
- Book review: Slow Productivity by Cal Newport
- Book review: Ultralearning by Scott H Young
- Eisenhower matrix in personal projects—what does urgent but not important mean?
- Book review: Make Time
- Book reviews: The 12 Week Year and Deep Work
- Pomodoro technique for productivity
- Review of GTD Agenda
- How I took back my life
🗂️ Systems and workflows
A look at my own planning systems and how I run weekly reviews, go paperless, and focus on what matters.
- Why a little apparent inefficiency can make you more adaptable
- Beyond consistency: why sustainable productivity needs rhythm
- Lean 5S for personal productivity
- Protecting one energy window
- Why time-based planning fails
- GTD and Cynefin – a personal productivity angle
- A humane approach to weekly review
- Weekly reviews restore narrative continuity
- GTD fails without the identity shift
- Clarifying one stuck task without pressure
- Why vague commitments exhaust us
- A gentle, one-minute capture practice
- Capture works because it externalises anxiety, not information
- What does ASAP mean?
- Designing life around what your mind can hold
- GTD is not a productivity system – it is cognitive load management
- Capture isn’t about organisation
- One thing, not everything
- Clarity creates movement.
- A small thought about clarity from today
- My Sunday weekly review
- One small system that kept me steady this week
- Why capturing everything changed my life
- An overview of my planning and productivity system in 2021
- How I start my weekly review
- An overview of my planning and productivity system in 2019
- My paperless(-ish) office with OneNote and NAPS2
- Focus on one thing, not everything
- What I wish I’d been taught about money management
✉️ Communication and habits
Small, practical ideas for better email, writing, and daily routines.
- One act of self trust
- Why trust matters more than optimisation
- Recovery is part of the rhythm: how to rest without guilt
- One boundary-setting inbox habit
- Your inbox is a psychological boundary
- A compassionate productivity practice – when pressure stops helping
- Productivity is not a measure of your worth
- Overwhelm as a signal, not a failure
- Clarity through subtraction
- Use a password safe to store your medication info
- The importance of a good email subject line
- First drafts exist only to teach you what you really want to accomplish
- The sentences approach to email