Online School of Productivity

..and for many small- and mid-size companies.

As you can see, people and companies if all sizes and industries rely on our system to increase the productivity of their people.  This is because our work is based on timeless and universal productivity principles.  

We stay up to date with developments but do not get distracted by the latest  flavour-of-the-month shiny object. 

The productivity principles we use as foundation for our courses are like gravity: they work for everyone, everywhere, forever - whether we like them or not. One can only choose to align one's thinking and doing with these principles or ignore them at one's own peril. 

On this page we share details about our flagship course Outlook Productivity that has morphed from its traditional face-to-face classroom workshops to a full-blown hybrid online course combining self-study and facilitator-led online workshops.

We can work together to design a custom coourse for your company.

You can also do the course on your own in self-study mode, or join a public online group to work through the material in a structured manner with facilitator-led workshops and support.  

Whatever your preferred modality, the principles and the content remain the same.  

Ever since the sub-title of David Allen’s book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity   caught my attention, I wanted to experience stress-free productivity.

After visiting David and his team for 3 weeks in the USA I started to implement productivity principles in my MS Outlook.  After a while, I decided to create a course to help other people achieve the same.  I called it Outlook Productivity.

The rest is history.

More than 15 000 people from more than 320 companies in South Africa (including 76 of the Top 500 Best Managed Companies in South Africa), Namibia, Kenya, Tanzania, Ireland, Saudi Arabia and the UAE (Dubai) rely on the Outlook Productivity system to increase their productivity and keep it the improved level.

Up to March 2020 we visited corporate clients onsite and facilitated in-person workshops.

Our content has been available online as a self-study course since 2019.

We have now very successfully transformed our facilitation to a highly effective hybrid-format Outlook Productivity Advanced online course.  This simply means that people on the course get access to the online course material, do self-study AND are supported with a series of scheduled live online implementation workshops and interaction with their facilitator and co-students.  This increases the chances of successful completion of the course. We do this for in-house groups in your company, team or group.

You can choose from these Outlook Productivity modalities

• Essentials (Self-study):  This is the "do-it-yourself" mode. People you nominate for the course work 100% independently and follow their own schedule.  
  

• Advanced (Hybrid):  Independent study plus live online implementation workshops. Real-time online interaction with facilitator and co-students. Includes an online community.
  

• Face-to-face workshop at your premises. For company teams/groups only, when feasible.  To discuss face-to-face possibilities, please email me.

Why hybrid and not just self-study?

It has been reported that only 5-15% of people finish an online course if they do it all by themselves.  That means up to 95% of the investment in that course goes to waste.

Apparently, most students still need:

• the structure of a scheduled class
• an instructor speaking directly to them
• an instructor answering their questions directly
• other students to interact with about each class
• or some combination of those options or others.

 
Our hybrid online learning programme exactly meets these needs.

Another consideration for the staggered group sessions:   Overcoming “the forgetting curve”

It has been established that, without repetition, people retain about 20% of newly acquired knowledge (Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve).  

 That is why we offer fortnightly (free) refresher webinars on topics covered in Outlook Productivity for people who have done the course.  

 Spaced repetition is a further benefit of the group sessions delivered over five sessions.  Each session is an opportunity to review, refresh, and embed the knowledge and skills learned in the course.

NOTE:  This course is exclusively of users of MS Outlook (later than 2010) in the PC/Windows environment.

Dr Henriëtte van den Berg
Senior Management. University of the Free State

"The combination of individual learning activities (reading and watching videos with step-by-step guidelines) reinforced by group interaction worked really well for the group. 

The participants discovered how they can use the software they already had in a more productive way.

We want to thank you for the valuable and pleasant learning experience.”

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Ms. Kgadi Senyatsi
Head: Business Development
SAPPO

“... we enrolled 12 of the Business Development team members working from home, on the online Outlook Productivity programme so that they can exit the lockdown period with improved skills.

 The team is very excited and appreciative of the skills acquired from the training received. They enjoy the self-study supported by online group conversations”.

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Prof Hesta Friedrich-Nel,
Associate Professor and Assistant dean Teaching and Learning,
Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences.
Central University of Technology

Once again thank you for exposing my group and I to an interesting and engaging learning journey on Outlook. 

I enjoyed the ‘hybrid’ programme as it allowed flexible time for self-study and practice. 

The discussion sessions added structure and helped me to pace my learning and exploring. The discussion sessions were great to confirm my own learning, explore additional methods that the facilitators shared and also to address my areas of uncertainty. 

One can say this is self-directed and collaborative learning in action. 

I also enjoyed and appreciate that the facilitators kept us smiling and motivated with words of wisdom during every discussion session!

I am looking forward to continue my learning during the two-weekly refresher webinars. 

Thank you again for going the extra mile for each one of us. 

Hesta

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Casper Steenkamp
Director: Culminit - Solutions Not Software

After I completed the survey and was going through some of the bonus content, I spotted the recommended reading list.  I have read most of those and it then struck me what the best thing about this course is:  This course bridges the gap between the theory and putting it into practice!

I remember when I was younger, I would be really frustrated after reading the self-help books because they rarely provided you with the tools to put the theory in practice.  When I originally attended the live workshop (10-15 years ago), I remember thinking that this is the best course BY FAR that I ever attended.  It is still true today!

I always felt that this course provided me with the foundation to achieve anything else.

Thanks again for guiding my team and me through this course.

Regards.

Casper