Interviews with Productivity Monsters: Mark Forster, time Management guru from "Do it tomorrow" fame
October 23rd, 2006 by joseIt’s about time to introduce one of the central features of this blog. We plan to interview what I once called “Productivity Monsters”: people who, one way or another, have an outstanding productivity in their fields.
Originally, the idea was to interview Academics only and to measure their productivity by using some proxy such as impact of their ideas or raw number of papers per year. However, this definition would leave out time management Gurus, and we agree that if they have created such a cult online, they must have very interesting things to say to Academics. As you see, the criteria to define productivity monsters are not clear, but, like any other monsters, you know one when you see it. What do they do differently? Other than working a lot, of course. Are there any kind of techniques that can improve anyone’s output? We will ask them and try to retrieve and filter their knowledge in the form of interviews. The interesting things is that most academics don’t really write about how to improve your academic production… only occasional chats with their grad students around the water cooler revolve around this topic!
On the other hand, time management Gurus do write about productivity!
It’s a pleasure to introduce our first academic productivity interview with Mark Forster.
Mark Forster is a time management and life coach expert whose works are best known in th e United Kingdom, who brings some fresh new concepts to time management.
To give you an idea of his recognition in Great Britain, Mark Forster newest book – Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management – is ranked #214 in sales at Amazon UK. The Observer recognized Forster as one of Britain’s top ten life coaches.
Mark’s interview is pure content. You will find:
- Why people drop off time management systems
- Why having a day with no long blocks of time available (e.g., if you have to teach a class at 12 and another at 2:00) may actually work in your favour
- Why you should write down any task before doing it
etc.
This is stuff that nobody has treated (that I have seen at least)! And that’s saying someting considering the sea of GTD blogs out there.
The interview is 51 minutes long and 58Mb (it’s worth the large download).
November 8th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
Sounds awesome for anyone who masters the English tongue! Thanx!
December 18th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
You may also enjoy my interview with Mark:
A conversation with Mark Forster
http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/2006/11/conversation-with-mark-forster.html
November 6th, 2007 at 11:26 am
TASKS MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
Hi, I am looking for a software or web solution for organising my tasks list. I need for this to have the following things:
- I can define a list of taks, and subtasks for each of them (it can be done by a lot of programs)
- When I am planning every day’s work I can say for instance that I want to do three of four tasks/subtasks and schedule them, for instance, the first one must be done between 09:00 and 12:00 hours, the second one between 13:00 and 15:00 hours and the third one between 15:30 and 17:00 hours (it can be also done by a lot of programs)
- If I delay the first taks and finish it at 13:00 hours instead of 12:00 hours as planned before, I want that all the rest of taks of the day will be shifted acoording to this delay, in this case, one hour (it can be done for some program but not very easily)
- Each time I finish some subtask, the whole progress of the respective task is updated according to some rules defined by me (some very complicated management programs include this feature, but only this and not the rest of the previous things)
- I can also specify that each week I need to do three times a week of task A and 2 times of B and so on, and the program reminds me of the rest of times left
- When I look at my task list, I can order or organise the list according to different criteria; priority, completed, non-due, deadlines, etc. I can order tasks and/or subtasks. For instance perhaps i am only interested of organising sub-tasks. (I don’t know a program that can do this, they usually order taks but no sub-tasks)
- It is possible to implement the ideas of “Getting things done” from David Allen (there are some programs for this, but lack the previous features)
Do you have experience with some software that has all this characteristics or some of them ? Or some suggestions to work in this way ?
Thanks
January 28th, 2008 at 3:21 am
[...] Interviews with Productivity Monsters: Mark Forster, time Management guru from “Do it tomorrow” fame [...]
February 14th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Bah, time management is for my secretary, oh and she manages me too, haha.
T.
March 3rd, 2008 at 9:04 pm
When I am planning every day’s work I can say for instance that I want to do three of four tasks/subtasks and schedule them, for instance, the first one must be done between 09:00 and 12:00 hours, the second one between 13:00 and 15:00 hours and the third one between 15:30 and 17:00 hours (it can be also done by a lot of programs)
I like this comment!
June 26th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
PIM stands for Personal Information Manager, and it allows you to keep all you information in electronic form. All your appointments, tasks, to do lists, notes and contacts are stored in a graphical and easily accessible form.
http://www.essentialpim.com/
It has a lot of rather nice features, give it a go, there is a free version available as well as a network version and a usb stick portable version.
July 22nd, 2008 at 8:21 am
filter guy
Lol! and I agree that secretary is the one manages our time, for some transactions perhaps. But in the same manner we also need to manage time for ourselves to our personal life.
-Jan
August 3rd, 2008 at 3:36 am
Alas, the link to the interview gives a 404.
August 5th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
David:
try now, we forgot to move that file after a WP upgrade.
Sorry.
August 6th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Thanks!