Being busy with Nozbe (we're about to release our own, completely redesigned iPad and iPhone apps) kept me from finishing the Productive! Magazine but finally it's ready and you'll enjoy it in a couple of days. This issue is pretty special to me as I had a pleasure of interviewing one of good friends of mine and a person who's dedicated to productivity more than anyone - Augusto Pinaud. He just published his best-selling book "25 Tips for Productivity" and it's a great read.

This year two of the most important contributors to productivity and personal development died. First it was Stephen Covey (the author of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People") who passed away in July. Last week it was Zig Ziglar - a legendary motivational speaker and a person that influenced so many people with his character, integrity, values, advice and charisma. While I got to know the work of Stephen more than 10 years ago when I read his books, Zig appeared on my radar thanks to a comment one of my friends left on this blog. I'm so glad he did.

I didn't like Zig's Texan accent at first

When I started listening to Zig's podcast Inspiring words of encouragement I was immediately put off by Zig's strong Texan accent. I'm not English native so his accent was kind of strange and hard to listen to at first. Listening to what Zig is really saying convinced me to keep on getting new episodes and I really liked Zig's approach to selling, productivity, life and values... and God. After listening for a few months to Zig I decided to buy his book: Better Than Good - which I reviewed on this blog. Loved it and was ready for more Zig content so I bought his ultimate book about selling: The Secrets of Closing the Sale and I loved it, too. In the world of selling it's great to listen to someone teach you how to close a sale with integrity and ethics and not in a way to deceive anyone.

We are all in the business of selling

Zig's career begins with him being a salesman and only later in his career he moved on to pursue a speaker career in selling and personal development. What drove him there, he says, is that we are all in business of selling. We sell every day whether we realize this or not. We sell ideas to our spouses, we sell concepts to our children, we sell ourselves every single day. That's why his principles, based so much in selling, work in every day life.

Zig practiced what he preached

Zig was a loving family man. He was married to the same "red head" woman (as he'd call his wife) and just before his death they celebrated 66th wedding anniversary. His son Tom runs his company and his other children also help out. He wasn't just saying it's good to have a loving family. He was living it every single day.

Zig influenced many great people

Laura Stack who is a regular contributor to our Productive! Magazine and was on the cover of issue #9 said she decided to become a public speaker when she saw Zig on stage at the age of 14 (!). Seth Godin wrote a great thank you post last week (and this is how I first found out about Zig's passing). Many "online friends" of mine confessed their lives were greatly influenced by Zig.

Zig was an exception and he didn't like exceptions!

Zig's career was getting stronger with the years passing by. He was 60, 70 and 80 years old and his influence got stronger and he himself admitted "he was just getting started!". It's just amazing to see a person being so active in the years where "normal people" want to retire. After all, I "met" him (virtually) when he was 80 something and he influenced me a lot. He was an exception to the rule.

One of the things I remember he said was that we should stay out of making "exceptions" because they may start small as rare exceptions and turn to rules. He referred to situations like we "cross the street at red light this one time" - and then we start crossing the street more often at red. We shouldn't make exceptions and I try not to... but I fail many times I must admit.

Thank you Zig Ziglar!

I'm glad I got to learn from Zig and I keep on coming back to his books and courses. My friend Ivan compiled a list of great Zig's quotes and the one I keep coming to is this one:

"You can get anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want."

Rest in peace Zig, hope you'll enjoy the peace you deserve and thanks so much for your inspiration and encouragement.

Did you hear about Zig Ziglar before? If so, how did he influence you? Which of his quote do you remember most?

Back in 2008 when Nozbe was gaining traction I decided to prepare a 10 step productivity course which I delivered as a speech to a great group of Aula Polska in Warsaw. My friend, Maciek "Mediafun" recorded it (thank you!) and I recorded a series of screencasts and mixed it together for people to learn productivity principles and comprehend how to use Nozbe to help them get things done. This course has been viewed more than 100K times on YouTube to this date.

Preparing to launch The all-new course version 2012

Fast forward to today, I'm close to 6 years of running Nozbe with amazing success (thanks to my fantastic customers!), I've published 13 issues of the Productive! Magazine and close to 50 episodes of my Productive! Show and I'm more passionate about productivity than ever. And I've learned seriously a lot in these last years... and I decided it was time to update the course and release it again in a new format, with some great information and a lot more tips and tricks. The course will be released in November in a written format, as well as with an audio and video version. Each video of each step will be of ~ 6 minutes delivered in a pecha-kucha style by yours truly.

To give you a sneak peek, here's a short introduction to the course:

10 Steps to Ultimate Productivity - Introduction:

Welcome to my "10 Steps to Ultimate Productivity" course. Over the course of next 10 lessons I'll try to teach you everything I've learned so far that helps me stay productive, get a lot done and have a happy life.

My name is Michael Sliwinski, I'm the founder of Nozbe.com - one of the leading productivity applications on the Internet. Every day, thousands upon thousands of busy professionals and teams are getting things done using Nozbe's web application as well as our native apps for the Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad and Android.

I'm also the editor of the Productive! Magazine - a completely free PDF and iPad magazine where I get a chance to interview some real overachievers and where many people wiser than me post fantastic articles. Be sure to check it out and read past issues. You'll be inspired.

I'm also running a video show where I try out new productivity techniques and record them so you can see what's new, what's helping me now and, equally important, what's not working for me at all. Each show is short and to the point.

As you can see, I'm passionate about personal and business productivity. I've been involved with this over the last decade and have been running Nozbe for around 6 years now. That's why I decided to build this course - to help you get inspired, get organized, get productive and get going!

Having said that, this course is not only about Nozbe - it's about developing your very own productivity system. I will be giving examples from Nozbe (as this is the tool I use and my productivity principles are deeply integrated there) but you can still participate and use other productivity apps as well.

Again, if you decide to use Nozbe, that's great, if you use a different tool, good for you - the most important thing is that you use something and get your productivity system in place. I might mention some other apps and systems throughout the course.

The course is laid out to 10 simple steps. Each step is not only written for you to read at your convenience but also recorded on video and audio and lasts a little over 6 minutes - so it's really short and to the point.

Step 1 in the course is about "Clearing your mind" and putting everything into your trusted system. We'll talk about Inboxes (and we all have a few of these!), and how to use them to make sure your mind is focused and nothing gets forgotten.

Step 2 is about organizing your tasks into projects. About dividing the big tasks into small, actionable steps to ensure you always get them done. You'll become a project management ninja after this lesson.

Step 3 is about defining your "next actions" - your priority tasks that need to be done next to keep your projects moving forward. You'll learn that sometimes it takes getting just one small task done to move the avalanche of a project forward and begin accomplishing your goals.

Step 4 is about being productive anywhere. Using your smartphone, tablet or even pen and paper (I know, it sounds old-school) just to move things forward. Today's era of technology enables us to get tasks done anywhere and have more free time later!

Step 5 is about collaborating. We live in a connected world and your colleagues as well as your close friends can help you get a lot more done. You'll learn how to share projects, delegate tasks and communicate through them effectively.

Step 6 is about working in contexts - it's a second, and very helpful layer of productivity where you divide tasks not only into projects, but into places these can be done in, tools these can be done with, and so on. Example: pull out all the phone calls you have to make and get them done!

Step 7 is about managing your reference material and documents. Store your notes and digitize as much content as you can to make sure to have it at hand when you're getting your tasks done. Lots of tricks and apps can help you with that.

Step 8 is about reviewing your recently set up productivity system. At least once a week you need to have a meeting with yourself and review your tasks, projects, lists and goals. Learn to start your next week fresh!

Step 9 is about Email and how to handle it. How to process it to zero (instead of checking it regularly), how to handle others' expectations when it comes to email, how to make sure you don't drown in the flood of email messages coming in.

Step 10 is where I help you how to start with everything you've learned so far. Where I add several tips and tricks that work for me and point you toward additional materials for inspiration and action.

Here they are - 10 steps to building powerful productivity habits that will help you achieve your goals, get more done, enjoy more free time with your family and friends and have a great life!

If you're ready, I encourage you to go to step one right away. You can get back to each lesson whenever you like. My goal is to inspire you and help you achieve your potential by sharing everything that's worked for me over the years. Let's get it all done!

That's the sneak peek :-) Want to be notified about this course? Subscribe to my blog or sign up for a Nozbe account or just follow me on Twitter - it's coming soon. Is there anything you think I should cover more in the course?

Last week we had a "Nozbe Team Meeting" in one of the most beautiful Poland's cities: Crocow (Kraków). We are a team of 12 now and we all work remotely. Some of us haven't seen each other ever before. We spent three intensive days mostly socializing and not working. We focused on talking about how we work and what we do and how we see the future of our product - Nozbe. Our strategy. Our values. And Getting Things Done with all that:

What it means to: "Simply Get It All Done"

Nozbe's tagline hasn't changed a lot since I launched it in 2007. It was "Simply Get Things Done", later "Simply Get It Done" and now "Simply Get Everything Done" or even "Simply Get It All Done". Anyway, it's been about "getting tasks done".

Why does it matter? How is it important? Well, this is critical. Nozbe is very often categorized as a "task manager" application that belongs to the "task mangers" or "project managers" category.

I embraced this categorization but I never liked it. I always insisted that Nozbe is not about "managing tasks" but about "getting tasks done" (and "simply" at that), meaning we are in business od "doing" and not "managing". And making it "simple".

A heated discussion about "most requested features"

Folks who use Nozbe know my firm stand (a strong no-no) on "sub-projects", "sub-tasks", or "prioritization". They know that I'm all for flat hierarchy (the flatter the better) and prioritizing by dragging and dropping stuff to the top or bottom of the list (instead of popular 1-3 priority system). I believe that simple solutions work even in complex situations.

We do support some sort of hierarchy (you can use "labels" to group projects together, you can use "contexts" to set up priorities and in new version of Nozbe you'll be able to add "checklists" to tasks if you really want a kind of sub-task experience) but we don't encourage it. And that's the difference. We want to be able to give our "advanced users" many advanced features but on the other hand we want to make sure we don't encourage too much fiddling with tasks for the rest of us.

Delfina, our Customer Happiness Officer (yes, that's her official title) together with the rest of our support gals, prepared a list of "most requested features" for us to talk about. It was a very heated discussion with developers saying what they think can and can't be done and support gals saying what (from the customers' standpoint) must and must not be done. It was a tough discussion but a very fruitful one. Because between the can-dos and no-can-dos and must-dos we realized we have to take our mission into consideration.

It was a great chance of reiterating our values about "doing stuff" vs "managing stuff". We were forced to think "out of the box" about what customers really needed and about what they said they wanted. From my standpoint (as CEO and founder) it was great to see the team embracing our values and analyzing each feature with these values in mind.

Suffice to say, it's not like we won't implement what customers are asking us to. We will, but not everything, and very often in a way they don't expect us to. Next month with new Nozbe Desktop and "rich comments" you'll see what I have in mind. We've analyzed features for at least 6 months ahead and we will roll them out, but we'll never compromise our values of "getting tasks done". Nozbe is not a "task manager" but rather a "task doer".

By designing our app we teach people productivity

It sounds like cliche, but it's true - the way we design the app is the way we "teach" our customers how to get things done. If we design it around lots of options and switches from the very beginning - they'll learn it like this. And it'll be hard for them to go back to "good habits" and "simple things that work".

As feature requests come in, we must never stop teaching our users getting back to their habits of "getting tasks done" and not that of "over-managing tasks". It's our responsibility. This is what Nozbe stands for and this is the source of our success. And it's our promise to our users and we have to make sure we never break that promise.

Seeing the team "feel" our mission is great!

It was just so cool to see my team embrace our values and take them as their own. As the founder, I always felt it was my responsibility to guard our values with my own chest. Now I see I don't have to. My responsibility is to lead my team and they'll guard our values as their own. Seeing this happen made me proud. Very proud indeed.

Do you see a difference in "getting tasks done" or just "managing tasks"? :-)

As you know, I'm the proud editor of the world's most popular magazine on productivity :-)  Productive! Magazine issue #13 is coming next week and here's my interview with this issue's star, the author of a great book on becoming a productivity ninja, it's only 15min, enjoy:

I've written time and time again on my blog about how I love the Pomodoro Technique (do something for 25 minutes and take a 5-minute break) and recently, after reading "The Now Habit" I love the concept of an Unschedule calendar. In this post I'll show you how they work together beautifully to help me improve and get things done.

The basic concepts of "Unschedule" calendar

The idea is this:

• You divide your calendar into 30-minute-slots and leave them blank.
• You put "meetings" and all the calendar-like events that have to happen at certain time (I use "red" color for this)
• You put cool things you want to do (like training, watching youtube... small rewards you want to have - the cool stuff - I use "red" or "orange" for this)
• You leave everything else blank and fill it out once you've done with your next half-an-hour slot and you "check in" what you've done in the last half an hour.

So the concept is really cool - you only schedule the "cool stuff" and the "must-happen" stuff. And you fill out the blanks as they go.

This way you know how much "blanks" you have until next "must-be" thing happens and you can "schedule rewards" for yourself, like watching some cool youtube videos for 30 minutes or reading. Or gym.

Good rule of thumb: Schedule 2 hours of work and 30 minutes of "reward" - meaning - put a "reward" or "meeting" every 2 hours and leave the rest blank. Your work-day won't be boring and you'll get a lot more done in the 2-hour blocks you have.

The Pomodoro Techinque fits nicely with it

This fits perfectly as this technique means 25 minutes of "focused" work and 5 minutes of resting. I normally use a traditional "kitchen timer" as I like the "old-school" touch it brings to my home office. Although on my Mac I use a great new app called Tadam by a talented Polish developer. There are also "pomodoro" apps for the iPhone and iPad. Again, I prefer to use the old-school timer or the Mac app.

Together these techniques make me more productive... and fit!

Finally I manage to schedule "gym time" which was very hard for me before (I'm busy all of the time)... I just know I get to work 2 more hours and then I need to go to the gym, or run. Finally I'm actually doing workouts every single day. Same goes to reading. Apart from audio-reading (while running) I'm also catching up with blogs and old-school books as I schedule my reading time.

My work is more focused

I actually print an Unschedule calendar every week and put it on the wall and use a ballpoint pen in different colors to fill it up. This way I can see the blanks, I can see when I slack off... and when I had a great and productive day... and how much time I really have ahead of me each day.

Once half an hour is gone and I worked on something I put it in one or two words in BLUE color. If I slacked off, I use the BLACK color and write honestly what I've been doing... or not doing.

Feel free to download my Unschedule in PDF and print it!

When you fall... you dust off every 30 minutes

The cool thing of the Unschedule is that even if I have a "slower slot" of time and I put "nothing" in black, I can dust off and try again in the next half-an-hour slot. I just don't have hours of a slow day anymore, because one view of my Unschedule calendar motivates me to shake things up and start getting things done.

Give it a try, you'll love it. Pomodoro and Unschedule work great together!

Have you ever tried either of these techniques? Do you like them? Did they work / or not / for you?