The Team – Gerrit Cloete

A friend once remarked “all work and no play makes Gerrit a dull boy”. Since then, I enjoyed taking few 3-day weekends while ensuring a clean break away for a full week every 4 months or so. I must admit though, that often during the breakaway, I continue to do work that I enjoy!

I read a few books recently that made me think differently about the one and only chance I get at life. One of these books was In Praise of Slow by Carl Honoré. It has given me a fresh perspective on why certain things just do not deliver the promised or expected results, and the main reason for this is simply because they are done too quickly. Most of us are so stuck in “Fast Forward” that it is healthy to step out of it and press “Pause” more often.

His book has inspired me to author a book themed “Slow Productivity” based on my own training and productivity experience, and although the title is bound to change… that’s the idea… not to do everything at a snail’s pace but to do things at the most appropriate pace so as to enjoy the process while getting things done properly.

Ever notice how:
Speed yoga doesn’t work. Speed meditation doesn’t work. Speed planning doesn’t work…. We have to slow down to speed up so watch this space for the announcement when the book is released!

Other books and people (and I’ve met with all these authors personally) that have influenced my life and career are:

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R Covey.
• Paradoxical Thinking – How to profit from your contradictions by Jerry L Fletcher.
• Patterns of High Performance – How people to their best work by Jerry L Fletcher.
• Getting Things Done – The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen.
• Taming the Paper Tiger at Work and Home by Barbara Hemphill.

These books have led me to:

• Become a South African licensee to practice the work of Dr. Stephen R. Covey. I facilitated the 7 Habits workshop as well as all the other “Covey” workshops for six years;
• Enjoy a great working relationship with Jerry Fletcher, improving the performance of individuals and teams. Jerry’s work is based on letting the individual’s personal and preferred ways of working drive performance and productivity improvement;
• Meet with David Allen and enjoy three weeks of training and coaching with him and his team in and around his hometown of Ojai, California focusing specifically on the area of workflow coaching;
• Enjoy an ongoing working relationship as a “Productive Environment Consultant” with Barbara Hemphill after a week’s training in San Diego.

My experiences up to this point in time have led me to develop the products and services that you can read about and act on within this website.