Friday, November 13, 2009 at 11:51AM Earlier this week I had the pleasure of speaking with Tara Rodden Robison (Twitter: TaraRodden), a long-time fellow GTDer and productivity coach based in Corvallis, Oregon. Here is the result of that conversation, after Tara edited it to make me sound smarter and more handsome :-)
Go here to have a listen.
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Friday, November 6, 2009 at 6:37AM I am excited to announce a new project for helping us all achieve more and learn faster.
By reframing failures as something we want to deliberately pursue as a means to improving more rapidly, we remove tension and fear from the picture. That means less friction and more creative courage.
We want you to Pursue Productive Failures. And, we are telling people that Perfectionism is for SISSIES! Challenging enough for you? Have I gone crazy?
To learn more, see http://www.pursuefailures.com
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Sunday, November 1, 2009 at 6:09PM The video from the world's first GTD tweetup in Oslo on September 21, 2009, is now available here as well as on our new YouTube channel.
I would like to thank Frode Nordahl (@fnordahl on Twitter) for doing a great job with the editing and making us all look smarter and more handsome :-) This is a pretty long recording, divided into ten shorter segments.
In brief, here's the back story. I tweeted about my desire to do this all-volunteer Tweetup on my vacation in Oslo, Norway on August 18. Morten Rovik (@mortenrovik) responded and became the overarching event coordinator. He put together an amazing team of volunteers which aside from Frode Nordahl as AV coordinator, included Even Sandvold Roland (@evensr), Eirik Helland Urke (@urke), Jorgen Bjerke, and Arnstein Larsen (@ArnsteinLarsen).
This project was a great way to try out my philosophy of failure-friendly living and working (see the previous blog post, with a global project team. We basically told each other two things: (1) Shoot for the stars; and (2) Anything that works is a miracle. Of course, we used GTD to organize the project and keep track of everything.
We ended up getting a ballroom full of people, live video streaming, a live webinar, a remote speaker from London, and...a famous surprise guest (watch the video). This project was full of productive failures (I learned a LOT myself), and we also managed to generate value for the audience for everyone concerned. I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to post your comments below!
Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 3:05AM 
Make a big mistake? Could be the best thing that happened to you this week!Most of us have suffered from varying degrees of perfectionism. Some live in an almost perpetual state of anxiety and guilt about not doing as well as they "should". Even for those with a mild degree of perfectionism, progress towards goals can be severely hampered. Many of us procrastinate starting a new project until "the time is right" (that includes my blog postings!) or we treat ourselves harshly for making mistakes we feel we “must” avoid. Albert Ellis, arguably the grandfather of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, famously referred to this phenomenon as musterbation.
But what would life look like if we were less fearful of failures?
Here are eight strategies you can try to help you embrace and exploit failures. They are intended to help you achieve more and learn faster with less anxiety and guilt. I find that they work fairly well for me, and would welcome your thoughts.
GTD, failures, smarter living Saturday, October 10, 2009 at 1:57PM 
This painting (from nobelprize.org) of Alfed Nobel in his lab was made 22 years after his death. Nobel was a modest fellow who generally avoided publicity.They did what?
As many others around the world, I was more than a little puzzled when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to US President Barack Obama yesterday. This is not just because I disagree with his politics, but because my immediate thought was, "But he just started!"
Although I left Norway for America almost 20 years ago and have spent my whole adult life here, I learned about the history and purpose of the Nobel Prize as a young lad. Norwegians are (or at least were back then) generally proud of having been given the task of handing out the Peace Prize; understandable if you know something about Norwegian and Swedish history in the last 150 years.