Our “Productive!” family keeps on growing. As we’re preparing the launch of the all-new issue of the Productive Magazine (I’ll announce the launch date this week!) I decided to compile my series of “2-minute productivity” shows into a separate blog called “Productive Show”.

My goal is to publish a new 2-minute video about productivity every week. At this moment I just put all the archive videos I had on the topic and we’ll go from there.

We’ll see how it goes, but I’ll definitely give it a try. In the meantime I encourage you to check out our sister-site and let me know how you like the 2-minute videos with some really cool Productivity Tips and Tricks.

How to manage flood of email messages? How to quickly read magazines? How to process inbox? It’s all in there, have a look and let me know in the comments:

My very good friend Frank Meeuwsen of “What’s the Next Action Blog” fame and now one of the chief editors of Lifehacking.nl blog (the biggest community of “Lifehackers” in the Netherlands, aka Holland) did a great interview with David Allen before the GTD Summit in San Francisco. Enjoy:

The intro by Frank is in Dutch, but the rest is in English, so no worries.

I would like you to join me in San Francisco between March 11-13 (in a week!) for the GTDsummit organized by David Allen, the “father” of Getting Things Done.

Meet me and Nozbe during the first GTD Summit

There have been very few times when the improved productivity of organizations and the people within them has been so critical, or when own personal focus and control been so challenged as today. As we have to think about “doing more with less” and working “smarter not harder,” the use of productivity methods that really work has never been so crucial.

This coming March 11-13, I will be joining best selling author and executive coach David Allen at the GTD Summit in San Francisco. David is the author of “Getting Things Done”, often referred to as “GTD”, which has sold more than one million copies in a hundred countries.

The GTD methodology is in high demand. It is being replicated in more than a hundred software applications, buzzed about in hundreds of blogs, and incorporated into the professional development curricula of dozens of global corporations. I am inviting you to learn and apply what David Allen, other business leaders and I have to say about “Getting Things Done” in challenging times.

I think you’ll find something at the Summit that will inspire, motivate, and advance your ability to stay focused and clear in a potentially overwhelming and uncertain world. You’ll be able to network, explore more options, and get “out of the weeds” with some elevated perspectives.

35% discount admission fee for Productive Magazine readers!

As part of my network of friends I’ve been authorized to extend to you a special discount of 35% (more than $800) off the Summit fee.

To register just contact us and we’ll send you the discount code

I will be joining David as a panelist during the summit and also Nozbe will be joining the David Allen Company as a Sponsor and Exhibitor – make sure to stop by our booth!

Nozbe Booth – meet me in person, watch a presentation of Nozbe 2.0 beta and receive a gift from Nozbe!

I hope that you will join us and I’ll see you there!

Michael Sliwinski

Editor, Productive! Magazine
Founder, Nozbe – Simply Get Things Done!

P.S. One more thing – as a panelist and speaker, David let me invite three friends at a very very hefty discount – if you want one – contact me – only the first three people will be given this opportunity.

You have read “Getting Things Done - The Art of Stress-Free Productivity“, right?

If you have, you’d want to get the newest book by David Allen… and if you haven’t grab both from Amazon now:

The new book is called: “Making it All Work - Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life“:

About the book (from the book’s web site):

David Allen’s Getting Things Done hit a nerve and ignited a movement with businesses, students, soccer moms, and techies all the way from Silicon Valley to Europe and Asia. Now, David Allen leads the world on a new path to achieve focus, control, and perspective. Throw out everything you know about productivity– Making It All Work will make life and work a game you can win. For those who have already experienced the clarity of mind from reading Getting Things Done, Making It All Work will take the process to the next level.

David Allen shows us how to excel in dealing with our daily commitments, the unexpected, and the information overload that threatens to drown us. Making It All Work provides an instantly usable, success-building tool kit for staying ahead of the game.

Making It All Work addresses: how to figure out where you are in life and what you need; how to be your own consultant and a CEO of your life; moving from hope to trust in decision-making; when not to set goals; harnessing intuition, spontaneity, and serendipity; and why life is like business and business is like life.

This eagerly awaited follow-up to Getting Things Done is guaranteed to find an audience in today’s competitive business environment and among David Allen’s many fans.

The book will be available on sale today - I’m getting my copy today!

It hasn’t been a week yet since we’ve launched the first issue of the Productive! Magazine and the results have surprised me so much that I actually don’t know how to express my excitement! Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I’ll be happy to thank everyone who participated in this project and downloaded the magazine.

I’ve received lots of great feedback and high praise on this first issue! Thanks!

Most of it was very, very positive. You - the readers have made me blush on numerous occasions and you’ve made me really happy this passing week. There was also some constructive critisism, especially regarding editing (some typos and grammar mistakes… and we’ve corrected a few already) - we’ll do better with the next issue (got some volunteer-proofreaders, the more eyeballs, the less mistakes!).

I was trying to track most of the blogs that wrote about the magazine and read the comments of the readers over there and several times some people (trolls?) wrote very harshly that our magazine is yet another “productivity p0rn” and that we should be productive and not read about productivity…

So why do we need the Productive! Magazine? (and the whole productivity blogroll?)

Because we need to rediscover the obvious every now and then.

We do. I’ve read the book by David Allen (see inteview in the magazine), “Getting Things Done” like 4 times already… and every time I’m learning something new, something I haven’t noticed before (or haven’t paid enough attention to).

The same applies to reading blogs by the productivity bloggers included in the Productive! Magazine. These are real-life examples of real-life people who are struggling to be better and more productive just like we are… and if we can relate to even a smallest part of their life… we can relate to our life and our problems and try to improve ourselves.

And very often we do need to rediscover the obvious…. and to learn again something we thought we knew, but lost it or forgot somewhere down our road.

When compiling the magazine and reading the submitted articles, I’ve had several “a-ha” moments and learned many “new” things that I actually knew about in the past! This is the power of rediscovering the obvious aspects of life that can help you in your path of personal development.

I remember the argument when I told a friend of mine that I developed Nozbe to help myself and others get things done, and he laughed in my face saying: “why do we need another to-do application?”… and I smiled and responded: “a to-do application (or pen and paper for that matter) doesn’t work for me. I tried. I need something more structured, I need to easily access my next actions and contexts… and my to-do list would be just too long without them… and totally useless”.

Every one of us is different. Our lives are different. Our goals are not the same… and our ways of getting things done can be totally diverse… and because of that the mission of the Productive! Magazine is to try to find the best productivity-related articles that approach our lives from different angles and that everyone can find something for themselves.

And learn something new. And rediscover the obvious.

And why do you think we need the Productive! Magazine? Please do let me know in the comments!

We’ve compiled the first issue of the magazine and now I’m going through the review phase.

Weekly Review

Speaking of reviews, anyone familiar to GTD (Getting Things Done) knows that the key to success in personal productivity is the weekly review.

It’s Sunday today and I’m at the moment conducting my weekly review. I need to be ready for this week, as this week we’re launching the first edition of the Productive Magazine (more on this tomorrow).

To emphasize the importance of a good and thorough weekly review, I’ve asked Maciek, our technical director to add one last (17th) article to the Productive Magazine, a great article by John Kendrick:

The Five W’s of a Weekly GTD Review

Since our magazine is in digital print, we can add an article at last minute and it won’t influence all that much our scheduling… so we did just that.

Good luck with your weekly reviews and wait for this week’s announcement of the Productive Magazine.

While reading the book by David Allen “Getting Things Done - the Art of Stress-free Productivity“, I couldn’t escape many “a-ha” moments when I realized what David is saying is just pure common sense and most of it I already knew but never cared to put into practice.

One of these “obvious discoveries” I’ve made is the “2-minute rule” which says:

“If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it is defined.” (David Allen)

When I realized how powerful this rule is, I started searching for 2-minute actions during my busy day and found out that there are really many of them! When you know something takes less than two minutes - you just don’t have any excuse for not doing it.

While reading many articles by the productivity bloggers, I jotted down my favorite tips and “hacks” to keep them in mind for the future and maybe later share them with my Nozbe community. Then I realized these small pieces of advice can be presented in a form of a video series.

This is how the idea of the “2-minute Productivity Show” came to life.

I just thought - if I can squeeze some great tips and tricks into a short video that would last only two minutes - my users will watch it. After all, it’s just two minutes!

To date I’ve recorded one introductory video and 5 episodes of the series. Let me briefly introduce them to you:

1 - The Famous 2-minute Rule

In this episode we’re discussing the two-minute rule by David Allen. I’m also showing you how a small two-minute timer can help you determine your two-minute actions.

2 - The INBOX and my inboxes

Here I’m sharing with viewers how many inboxes I have set up and how I’m using them to make sure I capture all the ideas and information worth processing.

3 - How to EMPTY your INBOX

Setting up the inboxes is nice, but in order for them to really work for you, they need to be emptied on a regular basis. In this video I’m showing some basic do’s and don’ts when emptying inboxes.

4 - A life outside of Email

Is Email ruling your life? Are you depending on Email and feel it’s overwhelming you with so many emails coming in? Here are my tips showing you how you can get a life outside of email.

5 - Processing to Zero

Not all the messages need to be responded to, however all the messages need to be processed. What’s the difference? Learn in this video.

Since the interest in the videos is growing, I decided to publish new video every Wednesday on the Nozbe blog. Hope you like them - I’d be happy to receive your comments and feedback.

Today we’re starting the Productive Magazine project - a project I’ve been preparing with my co-editor since the beginning of this year.

Our Mission:

Productive Magazine is a platform where the top productivity bloggers will share their best productivity principles and tips’n'tricks. Let’s help everyone get more done and be more productive!

The idea is simple:

Productive Magazine (PM) will be regular magazine (monthly or bi-monthly - not sure yet) featuring the best articles (blog posts) from best productivity bloggers on the Internet. Downloadable in a PDF format for free for anyone from this web site.

We have two goals to accomplish:

1. Bring best productivity principles and tips ‘n’ tricks to the busy professionals who want to get more done and want to get most out of the tools they use
2. Spread “productivity blogosphere” awareness and promote not only big blogs but also smaller, but quality blogs and their content.

The idea behind the Productive Magazine comes from two friends who love gtd and blogs… and that’s why they’ve prepared set rules that will be equal to all bloggers who contribute to the Productive Magazine.

You’re welcome to participate!