Work at Home Productivity Tips –

When I wrote Nick Cernis, who wrote the ever popular Toodoodlist, to see if it was ok with him to print his poem, Stop All The Beeps, below, he wrote back saying that he'd be thrilled if I featured it. 

Well, I am thrilled to feature it!

It's the kind of thing that I wish I had written myself.

It sums up perfectly the way that I have been feeling the past few years – finding that less is more and that it is easy these days to find that you have sped right by the best things in life in trying to do more.

Sometimes you have to do.

Sometimes you have to be (minus the beeps).

STOP ALL THE BEEPS – by Nick Cernis (with credit to W.H Auden)

Stop all the beeps, turn off your mobile phone,
Prevent the PDAs chirping with a message from home,
Close up your Moleskine and rest a tired thumb
Turn a new page no more; your to-do list is done.

Let Twitterers twitter from under their beds
Typing out the message Productivity is Dead.
Close all open windows with the icons above,
The hour has now come to find your real love.

Spend more time with your family, music or art.
Your working week needn't play a big part.
Those 'productivity secrets' were here all along;
Thought GTD was the answer? Perhaps you're wrong.

Those apps are not needed: uninstall every one;
Pack up your computer, rediscover the sun;
Silence your iPod, take a walk in green woods.
For wasting a life never came to any good.

Thanks Nick. I would suggest that everyone print this poem and put it where you can see it regularly, and have a look at it when you feel that life is passing you by in a hurry.