Why the delay…

The delay has been caused mainly by lots of stuff going on in my private life, ie. my responsibilities as a father and our move to a new apartment. Because of these life-changing factors, the time I had left to work has been used to focus on my company, my web app - Nozbeand the new web app that we are going to release this year.

What’s the theme…

Since in my company we don’t have real physical office space (everyone works from home, including yours truly), there’s always a challenge of balance between work and private life. The two boundaries blend and very often it’s hard to draw the lines between the two.

Why home-office…

The main rationale behind working from home is not a way to save money. It is mostly a lifestyle choice and I love it. I have fallen in love with the concept when I was in college writing my final thesis on Teleworking (Telecommuting). This is why the theme of this issue of Productive! Magazine is working from home and we have great experts to help me tell more about the subject.

We’ve got some real experts on board…

First off, we’ve got the ueber-blogger Leo Babauta who writes his most popular blog on the Internet, Zen Habits directly from his home office on the beautiful island of Guam or from San Francisco (OK, not yet, but he is moving there this year!). We also have Stephanie Dickinson, one of the most famous home-office worker on the planet, author of “The 30-second commute”.

And regular contributors…

To cover the theme of productivity of self-employed home-worker, we’ve got Art Carden’s review of the 2-year-long New York Times bestseller “Four hour workweek”, Michael Hyatt, my personal role model, will tell you how to delegate even when you don’t have anyone working for you. Similarly, Mike Vardy, our laughter guru, will tell you how to outsource… in a very humorous way and Steven Aitchison will tell you how to make irrational thoughts go away.

I will also tune in with my contributions. You should sign up for our newsletter and subscribe to our blog here and watch out for Productive Magazine #4 in March!

What to expect in Productive Magazine #4?

First of all, an exclusive interview with Leo Babauta, the guy behind one of the top Internet blogs - Zen Habits (now also Mnmlist and Write to Done)

Some quotes from the interview:

I don’t really plan too far ahead — when I do that, the plans tend to fall apart. I prefer to just focus on what I’m doing right now and see what opportunities come up, going with the flow as it were.

I combined some of the best concepts of GTD with principles from Stephen Covey as well as my own philosophy of simplifying and forming new habits.

So watch out for the interview and the whole Productive Magazine #4 coming to a PDF reader near you in early December

If you haven’t grabbed your issue of this great free PDF packed with fantastic articles by top productivity bloggers on the net, get your copy now and let others know by twitter and email!

Did you like the magazine? What do you think about it? Let me know in the comments below!

Without further ado I’d like to recommend you this summer read of the magazine with a very insightful interview I happened to have a pleasure doing with - Michael Bungay Stanier - Canadian coach of the Year 2006 and one of the most respected coaches worldwide, a “Creative questioner” how David Allen calls him.

Apart from the interview we’ve got great articles by many fantastic bloggers, so I recommend you just dive in and download this magazine right now and send it to your friends:

Free PDF (3.7 MB)

You can also print the magazine yourself or order a printed copy at Magcloud (only $7 bucks a copy!):

Watch the introduction video to the newest issue of the Productive Magazine

Please let me know what you think about the magazine! I’m looking forward to your feedback!

Also I’d appreciate tweeting about the magazine and spreading the word! Thanks!

Here’s the new re-loaded cover of the magazine:

Hope you’ll still be anxiously waiting for the next issue of the magazine - thanks for your support and if you want to know exactly when the magazine launches, either follow me on Twitter or sign up for our Productive! Magazine email list.

We had to postpone the launch of the issue #3 till Saturday, August 8.

I’m really sorry, please accept my deepest apologies, I know you’ve been waiting for this one, but believe me we had to do it to make sure issue #3 gets it right.

Please follow me on Twitter as I’ll be posting my updates about the magazine there.

I was too optimistic about this issue but it’ll be ready by Saturday for sure.

The newest issue of the magazine will be available tomorrow and as always it’ll be a completely free PDF download, so make sure to send this to your friends and colleagues!

We can notify you per email about newest issue, just subscribe to our Productive! Newsletter mailing list and we’ll email you when it’s available.

For this issue I’ve been interviewing Michael Bungay-Stanier (@boxofcrayons), native Australian who lives in Canada and has been awarded there “coach of the year 2006″ and by David Allen is considered one of the best thinkers on productivity. Among the GTD crowd he’s very well known for the “creative questioning” podcast with David Allen.

Here’s the early scoop of the cover design for the issue #3:

Some excerpts from the interview:

You know how there’s some work you do that’s meaningful and important and makes a difference? And then there’s the rest of the stuff you do and that somehow fills up your days? Great Work is the first type. And I want you to do more of that.

Think of your goal not as saying No – but as “saying Yes more slowly.” Part of what trips us up is how our default is set to saying Yes and saying Yes quickly. If you can just slow things down a little - and the best way to do this is to get curious and ask questions about what’s being asked of you - then you’ll end up not committing yourself to so much.

I truly believe that you can’t do Great Work by yourself. If you’re smart, you build up a team - people who can provide technical, intellectual and emotional support.

Metrics are tricky - they can turn into an end in themselves, rather than a means to an end. At least, that’s the excuse I make for me not measuring very much.

Mark your days in the calendar, please tweet about the magazine and follow me on Twitter…

Tuesday, August 4th, Productive Magazine is strikes back again!

My goal is to publish a new 2-minute video about productivity every week. At this moment I just put all the archive videos I had on the topic and we’ll go from there.

We’ll see how it goes, but I’ll definitely give it a try. In the meantime I encourage you to check out our sister-site and let me know how you like the 2-minute videos with some really cool Productivity Tips and Tricks.

How to manage flood of email messages? How to quickly read magazines? How to process inbox? It’s all in there, have a look and let me know in the comments:

• Who will be featured on the cover?
• Whose articles will be published?
• How will the magazine look like?
• When will the magazine #3 be published?

You’ll get answers to all of these questions in the coming days, so make sure to Subscribe to our Newsletter or to our RSS feed, or follow me on Twitter or plain simply bookmark this web site…. or do all of this to be on the safe side and receive info about the Productive Magazine issue #3.

One thing is sure - the magazine will be published this month and will stay as always a free PDF download, so make sure to spread the word about it!

Stay tuned!

- Michael (Editor-in-Chief