Stress-free productivity does exist

Hello everyone!

It’s seven o’clock in the evening. You haven’t moved a single box, you haven’t run, and you haven’t carried anything heavier than a cell phone. And yet, you feel that heavy, almost physical exhaustion that you normally associate with a day of house moving or a long workout. You sit down on the couch and don’t even have the energy to decide what to have for dinner. Why are you so tired?

In 1982, General Motors closed its plant in Fremont, California. It was GM’s worst factory: absenteeism routinely exceeded 20%, there were more than 800 pending union complaints, and wildcat strikes were almost routine. The cars coming out of that plant were of the lowest quality in the system. Toyota reopened it two years later as NUMMI, rehiring almost all of the same workers, including the former strike leaders. It used the same machinery. It manufactured similar cars. And in less than a year, the plant went on to have the best quality in GM. Absenteeism dropped to 2%.

Hello everyone!

Within the Getting Things Done workflow, the Someday/Maybe list occupies a unique place. It’s not an action list, even though it includes “potential” actions. It’s something similar to what would be called a reserve warehouse in logistics: a space where you store things that have potential future value, but which, for the time being, don’t require any commitment on your part. In some places, it’s called the incubator.