From the Editor - Welcome to the Social Productivity Wisdom

This is the introduction to the first issue of the Productive!Magazine. It’s subject to change and final edit before it’s published in the magazine. However as I’m live-blogging about the magazine, I decided to publish it here:

If you’re reading this first, inaugural issue of the Productive!Magazine, chances are you’re just like me - a busy professional who just wants to have a happy, productive and meaningful life.

Being overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I had to do and the streams of information I was receiving on a daily basis, I needed a system to take control of all this. More than a system, I needed a set of practical tips that would help me take control of my life and get more done.

Most of this has been delivered by the book I read - “Getting Things Done and the Art of Stress-free Productivity” by David Allen. The book was still not enough.

I needed a tool and some practical tricks and “cheats” that would really make me stay productive every single day. As I didn’t find the right tool on the market, I built one using my company’s resources and called it Nozbe - Simply Get Things Done.

When my application quickly became popular among productivity bloggers, I discovered the wealth of information provided by the GTD (Getting Things Done) blog community. I read and bookmarked many great articles with very useful tips and tricks to help me “hack” my life. This is when I found out that even though my Nozbe tool was doing a great job at helping people stay productive and focused, my users needed more than just this tool. I began with preparing a “10-step Simply Get Things Done course” which started as a series of articles and ended up as a series of videos viewed totally more than 20,000 times on YouTube.

I continued the video path with the “2-minute Productivity Show” video series and people loved it. You’ll find out more about this series at the end of this magazine. When the idea of a downloadable PDF magazine came up, I realized this would be something many of us busy professionals have been asking for.

Although I had written several articles for the GTDtimes blog to date, this time I decided to simply turn to the “social productivity wisdom” and invite the best productivity experts to contribute to the magazine and let them talk to you through their best articles and blog posts.

Based on my long history of blog readership I decided to personally invite the people I’ve come to know and respect in the blogosphere and I’m really happy they accepted my invitation.

Thanks to their great contributions, in this first issue of the Productive!Magazine you’ll find 15 great articles about different approaches to getting things done (i.e. “zen to done”), happiness, tips on fighting procrastination, de-cluttering your life and other useful “cheats” and “hacks” that will definitely help you live a productive and meaningful life.

All the included articles are real gems, but one of them deserves an extra introduction. This first issue of the Productive Magazine will feature an exclusive interview with the author of the “productivity bible” - David Allen himself - the best-selling author of the “Getting Things Done” book will talk to Oliver Starr, the editor of the GTDtimes blog (official David Allen Company blog) about the whole phenomenon of the GTD method and his new book, “Making it all work” due to be released this December.

I met David personally on one of his seminars (see photo) and we had a great chat so I’m really happy he decided to contribute to our magazine. Without further ado, I encourage you to read the interview with David Allen and all the 15 great articles by their respective contributors. Under each article there is a short biography of each blogger and a link to their blog as well as a the online version of the article so you can add your comments and join the live discussion on their blogs.

Dedicated to Marc Orchant

Lastly, I’d like to dedicate this entire magazine to the living memory of Marc Orchant - a great blogger, my personal GTD guru and a close friend. At age of 50, Marc passed away after suffering a massive heart attack on 9th December 2007. I wouldn’t have achieved so much in the GTD community without his help. Thanks Marc - our prayers are with you!