Stress-free productivity does exist

Daniel Pink ensures in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us that the traditional motivation based on rewards and punishments is practically useless in the age of knowledge workers. Money may work at first, but once the needs you think are important are already met, it is not a source of motivation anymore. From there, the one that works is the intrinsic motivation that exists within the individual.

Some time ago I heard a very interesting podcast in which Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, was interviewed by David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, in an attempt to delve deeper into the intersection between the management of habits and personal productivity.

Updated and expanded in May 2024.

The first time I wrote a blog post I was not pretty sure how to reach potential readers. I remember I posted a couple of tweets about it, hoping someone would notice. With the second post, I thought that posting it on Facebook would also help. As I was writing more articles, I added references in LinkedIn, Google Plus, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Tumblr. Then I thought that if the article had a picture, it also could be posted on Pinterest. Also, since I write all my articles in English and Spanish, and my audience is divided between Europe and America, it made sense to use different schedules so most people would notice.

Processing is the stage of the GTD workflow in which you make decisions. You get all the stuff you have collected and, one by one, decide what are you going to do with them.