Seen as no one has left you a comment, I thought I would. I used to lead a department (~30 people), won't go into details but it was pretty busy. Every person that joined would get a welcoming chat from me; if they were senior enough I gave them a copy of GTD. I loved that book. I think it is one of the best attempts ever to manage how we live productively in today's information society. I explained why I liked it, and that it was up to them what they did with it, but I recommended it. It was the kind of organisation where people moved around internally a lot, so I gave out quite a few copies (I bought them myself - just because I wanted to be a good manager, and really I don't think any of our other training covered what the book did). A couple of years later I was doing an inspection on one of my sub-departments and opened a cupboard to find a stack of about four of them, in what looked like an unread state. I exclaimed my surprise to the worker that was doing the inspection with me - 'Oh yes, those are from all the previous heads." For some reason it still makes me smile now - my hubris contrasted with the busy lives of my seniors who clearly took some delight in not following my advice - I mean the fact they stacked them up rather than just binning them, I don't know, just funny. Good luck with Getting Things GNOME, I definitely will give it a whirl when it is released.
Thank you for sharing that story, it's both hilarious and humbling in a way. And it reminds me that prescribed solutions also rarely stick unless proposed in a bottom-up "socratic" way (where people come to the conclusion mostly by themselves)!
A worthy motivation and attitude, which I ( and many others, I believe) appreciate very much. Thank you Jeff and co. cb
Seen as no one has left you a comment, I thought I would. I used to lead a department (~30 people), won't go into details but it was pretty busy. Every person that joined would get a welcoming chat from me; if they were senior enough I gave them a copy of GTD. I loved that book. I think it is one of the best attempts ever to manage how we live productively in today's information society. I explained why I liked it, and that it was up to them what they did with it, but I recommended it. It was the kind of organisation where people moved around internally a lot, so I gave out quite a few copies (I bought them myself - just because I wanted to be a good manager, and really I don't think any of our other training covered what the book did). A couple of years later I was doing an inspection on one of my sub-departments and opened a cupboard to find a stack of about four of them, in what looked like an unread state. I exclaimed my surprise to the worker that was doing the inspection with me - 'Oh yes, those are from all the previous heads." For some reason it still makes me smile now - my hubris contrasted with the busy lives of my seniors who clearly took some delight in not following my advice - I mean the fact they stacked them up rather than just binning them, I don't know, just funny. Good luck with Getting Things GNOME, I definitely will give it a whirl when it is released.
Thank you for sharing that story, it's both hilarious and humbling in a way. And it reminds me that prescribed solutions also rarely stick unless proposed in a bottom-up "socratic" way (where people come to the conclusion mostly by themselves)!
brilliant
what's the name of the music in the background?
Are you working on an open-source project?
Yes, it has existed for quite some time, check out "Getting Things GNOME". I also contribute to other Linux & GNOME-related software in various ways.