Who wouldn’t want a new high resolution display with thirty inches or more of real-estate upon which to spread your work?  Imagine the joy of having your entire spreadsheet visible at a glance and not having to futz around with freezing part of the pane.  Think of the pleasure of having two full pages displayed side by side, at a reasonable resolution no less, while editing your latest feature article.  Personally I find myself salivating at the idea of looking at the HD imagery from the Apollo missions and from the current ESA and NASA craft orbiting distant worlds.

Not that my intended use will help sell anyone’s boss, but if you’d like to turn the wistful daydream above into a practical reality for yourself, a recent report by Pfeiffer Consulting may actually have the ammunition you need to get that Apple Cinema Display you’ve been craving.

While most people would probably agree that one of those sexy big displays exudes uber-geek success and is the province of Avid and Final Cut Pro maestros everywhere, what is less well known is that these larger displays can boost general productivity using many more mundane applications.

Pfeiffer Consulting’s report called “The 30-ince Apple Cinema Display Productivity Benchmark” was intended to measure the real world productivity impact of using a larger size display.   The key underlying question they asked was:

Does this added comfort translate into higher productivity? To provide clear, activity-based data to answer this question was the aim of  his research project. 

In essence they wanted to do a clear comparison using more typical applications and see if the use of larger monitors yielded sufficient improvements in productivity that over time these increases generated a significant return on the investment (ROI).

The specifics can be found in the report which is in PDF form and can be downloaded for your reading pleasure.  For those of you that have better things to do that read a half a dozen pages of highly specific benchmarking detail, I suggest you print the report out for your boss and incorporate these quick summary findings into the email that briefs him on the wisdom behind your request for the glorious new display:

From the Report:

•  High-resplution displays such as the 30-inchApple Cinema HD Display can result in measurable productivity and efficiency gains.
• Productivity gains were present in not only professional design and publishing, digital imaging, and digital video, but also in general productivity and office applications  such as word processors and spreadsheets.
• Cumulative productivity gains linked to a large, high -resolution display can lead to a return on  investment (ROI) of several thousand dollars per year.

I swear I did not make a word of this up.  Scout’s Honor.

Should you find success with this approach and become the proud and oh-so-productive new owner of a sexy HD display,  don’t forget who shared this little tidbit of useful information with you and come and leave us a comment.  Better yet, when your friends come and jealously eye your new desk accessory, tell them how you got it and where you got the info…

3 Comments »

Michael Sliwinski from Nozbe has another one of his quick, two-minute productivity videos up for us to enjoy.  Michael has kindly notified us first so GTDTimes is once again the first site to be airing this video.  Are you ready to learn about In-boxes?

2 Comments »

Thanks to the DidIGetThingsDone Blog I just discovered FreeLine Reports and their most recent video which does an amazing job of describing several helpful and free GTD applications.  You may have heard of some of these, you may have even used them, but the refresher is quick and I can almost guarantee that at least one of the applications they mention is new to almost everyone.  Check it out.  Hat-tip to DigIGetThingsDone for the discovery…

1 Comment »

Doing the wash is just a few minutes has started some discussion with friends. Most of all the question: how do you do it?I am simply inspired by others.In the video here (explained in the classic GTD 2 minutes) you will see how a t-shirt can be folded in 2 seconds.

Now this is something you can try at home with the kids! We had fun learning this 2 second trick

6 Comments »

Michael Sliwinski of Nozbe has started producing two-minute videos featuring different tips, techniques and GTD-related concepts.  He’s been kind enough to provide GTDtimes with the initial exclusive on this fun and helpful information.  Enjoy the video, it is two-minutes well spent.

Incidentally, if you need a good two minute timer to help you determine what you can accomplish in just two minutes, there are a number of resources available to you online. There are so many countdown widgets for so many platforms that instead of naming one or two, here’s the Google search result so you can simply choose the one you like yourself.

5 Comments »

Well, it’s already Sunday again so here are three more videos for you to ponder.  There is a common theme here but you might have to think a bit to figure it out.

For those that missed it, last weeks correct answer was “In the Zone”.  There were no correct answers but everyone that guessed will be entered into the drawing I’ll have at the end of the month.

For next Sunday I’d like to try something a little different.  Instead of coming up with the videos and the theme myself it would be great if a reader would provide a good theme for us to identify.  To encourage folks to send in their videos in addition to the first person to correctly guess the theme each week, I’ll also send a gift to whomever sends in the videos and theme that I end up using.

These three videos are quite different from last week.  I hope you enjoy them.  Let the guessing begin!

No Comments »

Happy Sunday. I thought that it might be fun to try something new at GTDtimes starting with this Sunday’s Videos.

Here’s the deal: assuming that this rates positively with readers, starting today the videos selected for the Sunday video posts will share a common theme. This theme may be obvious, it may not. It may be related to GTD or perhaps only obliquely related to GTD. It is up to you, the readers, to figure out what the theme is.

The first person each weekend to correctly identify the theme and make a comment that not only identifies the theme correctly but also rationalizes why this is the correct answer will win a gift from GTDtimes.

Each month, we’ll take the winners from each weekly contest, as well as everyone who guessed incorrectly prior to the winner’s comment and we will draw one name from this group. This lucky person will not only win something from GTDtimes, but in addition he or she will be given the opportunity to either author an original post, select a previously published post that they’ve authored, or identify some other post that they wish to promote (assuming that we aren’t precluded from publishing such a post for copyright reasons) and we will publish this post on GTDtimes.

Each monthly winner will also have the option of selecting the theme and the videos for the week following their win should they want to participate. Hopefully this will add another dimension of enjoyment to the videos and will make for some interesting viewing.

Here are this Sunday’s videos:

And because he’s so incredible some more Laird Footage for your viewing pleasure:

An extra hint since this one is proving difficult:

Lance Armstrong is “the man”. I had the privilege of racing with Lance for a number of years on the US National Team and competing against him as a professional- his intensity and desire to prevail are hard to put into words.

Imagine having 23 consecutive perfect days… Now imagine having those 23 perfect days at the same time each year for seven years in a row. This is beyond astonishing. It is probably beyond comprehension. The significance of this achievement cannot be reasonably compared to any other athletic accomplishment. Every other record simply pales in comparison. Think about what it takes to achieve this level of perfection and you’ll have solved my riddle for this week.

19 Comments »

Kathryn Allen forwarded both of these videos to me and I thought they were wonderful. Thanks for sharing Kathryn!

Here’s a short clip from a brilliant little film called “Yellow Sticky Notes”:

If you want to see the entire short, please visit this site.

No Comments »

Hi folks. Since today is a Holiday - and I desperately needed a day off - I figured that our usual Sunday videos could be pushed off a day. The first video is one that I think you’ll find interesting - Jay from InternetBusinessMastery.com does a nice job sharing how he and his associate Sterling use MindMeister - a mind mapping application for their collaborative GTD worksystem.

This is a pretty cool and novel approach although I’d love to know how they deal with integration with a calendar application for reminders and critical dates.

The second video today is one that represents another milestone in our exploration of our solar system. NASA has successfully landed the Phoenix Lander at Mars northern pole. This lander, which is stationary - unlike the successful rovers that preceded it - will be using a robotic arm to probe the soil in its immediate vicinity looking for signs of life in the supposedly frozen soil. Congratulations to NASA’s Polar Lander Team for a job well done!

No Comments »

Since we missed our normal Sunday videos this past week, I thought I’d share with you this quick video about GlueyNotes; a list management application that has been built primarily for your iPhone. You can set up your lists - which include projects, next actions, and even nested next actions (tasks and sub tasks, and even sub, sub tasks), as well as notes, links and contexts.

GlueyNotes is lightweight, fast and formatted specifically for your iPhone. It also appears to me like it would lend itself to individual creativity and customization.

Here’s the video:

1 Comment »