Hi guys,

Before coming up with a plan for 2013, I would be interested to learn more on the positives from 2012, what did work for you? Many a time we focus on the negatives to draft a future plan but i would like to do exactly the opposite; to repeat what worked last year, this year as well.

For those who are open, feel free to share.

I'm 66 years old and my 82 year old mentor for 32 years said last year, "Give the book, 'Leadership & Self-Deception,' some attention." Of course, I did. It was an astounding book! I followed it with the companion books and attended a workshop. I then made its teaching a company mantra, employees read it, I devised three test to make sure that everyone "Got It," and then come the hard work of personal and group integration. Over then next few months, the daily operations became more efficient and profitable. On the personal side I witnessed big changes in everyone and in a few people earth shaking transformations occurred, so big that others could not believe they were real. Time has proved them real and lasting. There's more!

Even though I am an incurable optimist, it always seems easier to think & write about what didn't work than to reflect on positives. I will give this a try however. One thing that brought quantifiable results was rolling up my sleeves and increasing the number of proposals that I develop & pitch. I did almost twice the number of pitches compared with 2011 and its resulted in over 25% real growth in billings for us.

Not really a success but I also tinkered with different personal productivity approaches. I started off using Franklin Covey Approach back in college then I moved to GTD but now I think I might settle for a hybrid Kanban/GTD approach running on trello.com web & mobile.

I did not read enough nor write enough but that's for 2013!

Dear Amukwenha, What has GTD done for you? I assume you are referring to the book. What is your level of exposure to Kanban? Thanks, Mike

Hi Mike. I was referring to the personal productivity system based on David Allen's book. Using that system, I felt I was on top of things for a while but the system did not really suit me. The system had too much focus on completing tasks without distinguishing between high priority & low priority tasks. Furthermore, I could not find a suitable mobile app for GTD though I used Springpad for a while.

My brother introduced me to Kanban over the festive period. I like its simplicity and its visual approach. There is a discussion here about similarities & differences between Kanban & GTD: personalkanban.com

I am working on my own integration of the 2 systems using trello.com and the trello android app.