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!

I’m happy to announce that we’ve just released the first issue of the Productive Magazine!

33 Pages, 17 articles, 3 MB FREE PDF download that looks like this:

Before you download…. watch the video of me introducing you to the magazine (only 6 minutes):

To download, just click here!

What’s in the magazine:

• Interview with the David Allen himself - the best-selling author of the Getting Things Done book
• 17 great articles by the most active productivity bloggers in the blogoshpere, make sure to check these out!

Thanks to all the contributors and to everyone who helped me make this happen!

After you’ve downloaded the magazine, please do come back to this web site and post your comments to let me know what you think! Thanks!

- Michael Sliwinski (Editor)

P.S. Productive Magazine is sponsored by Nozbe - Simply Get Things Done tool that keeps you productive when you’re by the computer or with the mobile phone or the iPhone.

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.

We’ve finished the first version of the Productive Magazine cover. Due to some issues we had to re-schedule the first edition of the magazine for September, but we’re right now finishing it and it should be out very soon.

As promised, we have an exclusive 4-page interview with David Allen and lot’s of great articles:

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.

There are people who are just good. You meet them and you become instant friends. You know you can turn to them if you need anything and they will be there for you. You can chat with them for hours and feel like you’ve known them forever. They support you and motivate you to be a better person… and even if you’ve met them only once, you know you’ll never ever forget them.

Marc Orchant (1957-2007) was like this and I still miss him, so I decided to dedicate the Productive!Magazine to him. If he hadn’t died, he would have co-founded this project with me.

Productive!Magazine is dedicated to the memory of Marc Orchant.

I’d come to know Marc by reading one of his blogs. We shared the same passions: gadgetry and computers (both had Toshiba M200 TabletPCs) and Getting Things Done methodology.

When I launched Nozbe in February 2007 he wrote a great review of my new web app on his ZDnet blog “Office Evolution” and supported me as one of the first users (ID #101).

We kept in touch and when in Summer 2007 I was invited by Ismael Ghalmi to be a panelist/speaker at the Office2.0 Conference he encouraged me to go and we met there.

We had a great time and on the last day of the conference Marc and his wife Sue, along with their friend Oliver Starr invited me and my wife for a dinner at their favorite San Francisco restaurant: “House of Nanking”.

This is a photo I took of Marc and his wife Sue when we were all waiting in line for the restaurant:

We promised to stay in touch and see each other again but he suddenly died of heart attack on 9th December the same year. Read Oliver Starr’s “In Memorium”

Marc was a great blogger, he wrote for:

• Platform Agnostic (his personal blog)
• Office Zealot - Marc’s Outlook on Productivity
• On the Run with TabletPC podcast with James Kendrick
• The TabletPC Web blog
• Office Evolution at ZDnet
• Blognation USA

You can still check out his Twitter channel

He left his lovely wife Sue and his two children: Rebecca and Jason. If you knew Marc, please consider donating to help his family (Oliver Starr handles the donations)