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Script | 353

Hello, and welcome to episode 353 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

We recently asked what’s the biggest thing that ruins your productivity on my YouTube community page. 58% of participants said procrastination.

In a way, that doesn’t surprise me. When you see the statistics on how many people spend time planning their days and weeks, I am actually surprised that the number isn’t higher. I’ll explain shortly.

Now, procrastination has been around for a very long time. Leonardo Da Vinci only managed to finish a small number of paintings. Of the twenty paintings attributed to him, around five were finished.

Leonardo was a serial procrastinator. Yet, it was that procrastination that led to many of his inventions. If he had not procrastinated as much as he did, we would have many more of his paintings but very few of his notebooks full of drawings and diagrams.

The good news is, there are a few practices you can do that will reduce procrastination and enable you to be more internal about your days.

To get us started, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Carlos. Carlos asks, Hi Carl, what advice do you have for overcoming procrastination?

Hi Carlos, thank you for your question.

As I alluded to, procrastination and daily and weekly planning are linked. When you are clear about what needs to be accomplished you will procrastinate less.

The problem when you have no plan is you waste a lot of time trying to decide what needs to be done. And then, it’s likely you will pick the easiest thing to do in the hope it will get you started.

It’s true, you will get started, but you will be doing low value tasks leaving behind the higher value ones. The ones you don’t know what needs to be done or what the first action is because you don’t have a plan.

And that leaves you at the end of the day looking at a list of important, high value things you didn’t do.

One way to overcome this is to be very clear about what the next action is. In my next YouTube video, coming out on Thursday, I explain why “think about” tasks are not really tasks and will be the ones you will sacrifice the moment your day becomes busy.

The reason why these get put off is because it’s not clear what the real action is. For example, if I had a task like “think about what to buy mum for her birthday”, I would procrastinate. It’s too much effort and is not the real task.

The real task might be to talk to my brother and sister about what they re getting my mum. Or I could talk to my father and ask him what he thinks she would like.

Which task would you most likely do:

Think about what to buy mum for her birthday, or, call my brother and ask him what he’s getting mum for her birthday?

One is actionable the other is wishy washy. The wishy washy task is the one you will procrastinate on.

You will procrastinate because it’s not clear what needs to be done.

This is where planning comes in. When you have a plan for the day and are clear about what needs to be done, you will be less likely to procrastinate because your brain is subconsciously planning ahead for you. You’re doing one task and your brain is thinking, subconsciously, about what you will do next and how to complete the task.

This prevents your brain from going offline and procrastinating.

However, when you don’t have a plan for the day, none of that happens. Instead, you procrastinate. You are always on the lookout for something interesting to do, and anything that does not fit the mood you’re in will be skipped for something more interesting.

So, the first practice to develop is to plan your day.

This does not take a long time. It can be done in five minutes. And the ideal time for maximum procrastination protection is to do it before you finish the day.

There’s something more intentional about starting your day knowing exactly what it is you want to get accomplished.

Now, there is a caveat here. If you are an early riser, you can do your planning for the day as part of your morning routine. After all, it’s only five minutes.

So how do you effectively plan your day?

Step one. Look at your appointments for the day. How much time do you have left after your meetings and meal breaks?

Step two is to look at your task list and choose actionable tasks that you can do in the time you have available.

Step three is to prioritise those tasks. Which ones are your non-negotiables? The ones that must be done today?

And that’s it.

To give you an example, Today, I have six hours of meetings. I also need to take Louis to his groomers for his haircut. In total, I have around seven and a half hours of commitments today.

That leaves me with around two hours for everything else. This means, the only task I can confidently complete today is this podcast script. So that’s what I have on my list of tasks.

There’s no point in me having twenty tasks on my to-do list. It would be impossible to do them all in two hours.

Now if I began the day with twenty tasks and seven and half hours of commitments, I would waste so much time trying to decide what to do—ie procrastinate. No! The only thing that matters is getting this script completed.

So, that’s my plan for the day.

Now there are other factors involved in procrastination. If you are sleep deprived, for example, you’re not going to be focused and you will procrastinate. All those shiny objects, social media feeds and click bait news will be attractive. Your brain’s tired and it won’t want to be doing anything that requires thought or creativity.

Similarly, if you eat a high carbohydrate lunch, you’re going to find staying on task in the afternoon challenging. The insulin spike that results in you feeling groggy and tired will cause you to procrastinate.

I would also add that if you are not moving enough you will catch yourself procrastinating. A good tip here is to get up after each session of work or meeting and go for a walk around your workplace for ten minutes.

While you’re walking, think about your next task and how you will do it. You will find when you settle down to get back to work, you are more focused and ready to go.

None of these reasons mean you are a serial procrastinator. It just means you’re tired. Fix that issue first. Get enough sleep, be careful what you eat at lunch time and make sure you move for ten minutes between sessions of work.

Do those four things: plan you day, get enough sleep, avoid carbs for lunch and move and you will see a significant reduction in the procrastination.

Now when talking about procrastination, we do have to be careful. Sometimes procrastination can be a good thing.

I mentioned Leonardo Da Vinci earlier. His procrastination is what led him to invent things hundreds of years before anyone else thought about them.

You see procrastination is really all about exploring ideas. The trouble today is there are far too many things we can procrastinate on.

You’re thinking about your summer holidays and remember you need to buy a new suitcase. So, you head online and search luggage. Yet, it’s eight months before you go on your holiday. You don’t need to buy or research new luggage now. Yet, that’s more interesting than whatever else you should be doing.

And because it’s so easy to do a Google search, you do that.

Now, had you added a task to research new luggage and added it to your long-term and on hold folder, it’s unlikely you would be thinking about luggage today. It collected, processed and in your system.

There’s a time for procrastination—the exploration of ideas, but it needs to be controlled.

A tip here is to keep a part of your day as free as you can. For instance, you could try to keep your afternoons as free as possible so if you do slip into procrastination, you’ve got your most important work done in the morning and your procrastination can be made useful.

This means when you plan your day, you make sure your most important work gets done in the morning.

Which comes back to ensuring you have a plan for your day.

So you don’t want to be eliminating procrastination completely. It’s your creative brain wanting to explore. It’s more a case of controlling it.

Which means it’s a good idea to monitor when you procrastinate. When I’ve done this, I find I procrastinate most in the early afternoons. Knowing this, I have designed my schedule to allow me time to take Louis for his walk. I know my brain wants to explore ideas at that time. What better way to do it than to be walking in nature and thinking about all these distractions and ideas?

What it comes down to is having a realistic plan for the day. If you find yourself staring at an impossible day, you will inevitably procrastinate. Then you will get annoyed with yourself. Yet, you can fix it. Be very clear about what your non-negotiable tasks for the day are.

Your brain will then take over and give you that sense of urgency to get the non-negotiable tasks done.

I’ve never been a fan of website blockers or forcing yourself to turn off your devices. I find those become a distraction in themselves because you are now worried about what you are missing.

What I’ve found works for my clients is to have that plan, be aware of how tired you are and if you are tired, take a nap, if you can, or get up and go for a walk. That way you softly remove the temptation to procrastinate and once back you can get on with your high-value work.

I hope that has helped, Carlos. Thank you for your question. And thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.

Sunday Jan 12, 2025

The Lessons I Learned From My Minimalist Project

Sunday Jan 12, 2025

What happened to my 2020/21 minimalist project, and where am I today? That’s the question I am answering today.

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Script | 352

Hello, and welcome to episode 352 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Towards the end of 2019, I decided that in 2020, I would go all in on a minimalist project. I had played around with it for a number of years, but it wasn’t until 2020 that I formally turned it into a project and began the process of clearing out a lot of stuff I had collected that was no longer benefiting me.

And yes, four or five years ago, minimalism was a thing. Everyone was talking about it, and there were thousands of videos of people showcasing how bare and minimal their workspaces were.

It was a trend, and while that trend appears to be forgotten, I learned many things that I still practice today.

So, it was a nice surprise to find a question about it in my inbox a few weeks ago. I realised it was a good time to tell you about what I learned and what I am still practising today.

So, without further ado, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question… Which I realise I’ve already told you.

This week’s question comes from Milos. Milos asks, hi Carl, I remember a few years ago, you mentioned that you were about to start a minimalist project. How did it go, and are you still a minimalist?

Hi Milos, thank you for your wonderful question.

Like most projects, or goals, designed to change how you do things, once you complete them, it’s easy to forget you ever did them. My minimalist project was such a project.

I changed a lot of things that I do automatically today, so your question caused me to reminisce on how things used to be.

I should point out that I wasn’t into extreme consumerism. I would replace my phone, iPads and computers when they stopped functioning in a way I needed them to do.

For example, my old Intel computer became very slow over a year when Apple switched from Intel chips to their M series. So much so that it took up to an hour to render a fifteen-minute YouTube video. When I changed my computer to an M series one, that time came down to around six minutes.

However, I think I am a bit of a hoarder, and I had boxes of old papers from my teaching days I no longer needed. I was always reluctant to throw away old clothes, believing one day I might regain the weight I had lost and would require those bigger sizes again.

My wardrobe, drawers and other cupboards were full of stuff I no longer needed and would never need again.

So that was where the project began. Clearing out old clothes and papers I no longer needed.

As with all endeavours like this, I did go a little extreme. My desk, for instance, was stripped of its soul—well, it felt like it. All I had on there was my computer, keyboard and trackpad. I found it became an uninspiring place to work.

So, gradually, I added some things back. An analogue clock—a tool I use to prevent time blindness when I get into a focused zone and a few little mementoes to bring some character back.

The biggest part of the project was clearing out drawers, cupboards and my wardrobe. That was liberating and I was surprised how much space I had once everything was cleared and either thrown away or taken to the recycling.

I moved house at the end of 2021, and that was an opportunity to complete the project—well, the clearing out of the old part of the project.

However, the biggest change was in the way I approached purchasing.

I stopped buying electronic gadgets. I am in the Apple ecosystem and Apple’s products, on the whole, last a long time. For example, I have an iPad mini for reading ebooks, magazines and the newspaper. I’ve had the same iPad mini for the last five years. And I have no intention of replacing it any time soon.

Another change was to apply some rules to my purchasing. This was inspired from how the British gentry in the early 1900s approached buying clothes and personal consumption items.

In the 1920s (and 30s), aristocrats bought clothes and necessities once. For instance, a young aristocrat would purchase a set of luggage that would last a lifetime.

If something broke or the leather tore, they would fix it. A new suitcase was not necessary.

These repairs added character and gave these items a unique look.

It was also a much more environmentally friendly way to treat possessions than we do today—throwing away items once they are either out of date or have a minor problem and buying new ones.

It’s easy to tell ourselves that life was much simpler in those days. It wasn’t. People had just as many problems as we do today. They did not have the conveniences we have: no food delivery services, no Google or ChatGTP to find something out instantly, and no technology to make doing our work better and faster.

The clothing rule I applied was built around the principle of less is better. This translated into buying better quality and less of it. It also allowed me to apply a rule of only buying natural fibres. So that meant mainly cotton and wool.

I do have some un-natural fibre clothing. My exercise gear and a heavy winter coat, for example—it gets very cold in Korea. But apart from that, I stick to natural fibres.

Much of what I do today is inspired by the pre-consumerism days. Only buy what you need and buy the best quality you can afford.

I also learned something from Winston Churchill. Choose your suppliers. What this means is you use the same stores to buy your clothes and anything else you may need.

Winston Churchill, for instance bought all his suits from H W Poole—a London tailor in Savile Row. His shirts were bought at Turnbull and Asser, and his iconic cigars came from James Fox.

If you think about that for a moment, if you use the same suppliers for all your clothing and other things, you know your sizes and precisely what you want, which means you don’t need to research or waste a lot of time trying to find what you want. You reduce the paradox of choice and get back to living life.

Now, I cannot afford to buy suits from H W Poole or shirts from Turnbull and Asser, but I do have my own favourite suppliers.

I buy socks from Peper Harow, my sweaters from N Peal and Cordings of Piccadilly and coats from Barbour. Yes, they are expensive, but the clothing last a very long time and are all made from either cotton or wool.

Another lesson I learned from my minimalist project was the importance of rules and routines.

If you’ve read Around The World In Eighty Days or the books by P G Wodehouse and his characters Jeeves and Wooster, you may have noticed the main characters had strict rules and routines. Wake up times and when they expected their morning cup of tea. Dinner time was a social occasion with pre-dinner drinks and formal clothing.

Perhaps part of the reason for the increase in mental health issues today is because we no longer have these important daily rituals. It’s all go go go. No time to stop and appreciate sitting around a table with family and friends or going out for a daily walk, or even doing what in Around The World in Eighty days is called your “toilet”—which means washing and bathing.

These were deliberate activities, not rushed or forced. It was just what you naturally did each day.

There was a time for everything.

Another area of this period that has fascinated me was the way people approached writing and replying to letters. This was considered a joy and most people spent time each day doing it.

And there was a mix of personal and business letters that needed to be done and the volume was comparable to what we receive in emails and messages today.

The biggest difference was rather feeling they had to reply to everything each day, they focused on the amount of time they had available to write. I have adopted this approach myself. I don’t look at how many emails I need to reply to, I look at how much time I have and once that time is up, I stop.

If you do that every day, you will remain on top of your communications reasonably consistently.

I often hear about people doing a digital detox. One change I made, was to again take inspiration from the 1920s and 30s. In those days people bought their favourite newspaper and read the whole paper.

Now, many successful people still do this today. Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase Bank and Warren Buffett for instance. They subscribe to their favourite newspapers and allocate time each day to read them.

This stops you from getting caught up in clip bait headlines and being “triggered” by low quality reporting.

So now I read the same newspaper every day and only look through my social media later in the evening when I have finished my day.

So the lessons I learned was to buy less stuff but better quality. That’s ensured my wardrobe is clean and not over-stuffed with clothes I won’t wear.

I have also structured my days better. There’s a time for doing my communications, eating with family and friends, and my favourite of all, going out for what we call our family walk. That’s with my wife and little Louis. He loves it, and my wife and I get some quality time most days.

All of this was inspired from reading history books and biographies and realising that minimalism isn’t about stripping everything out of your life so all you are left with is a soulless screen. It’s about removing things that no longer serve you, and leaving the things that mean something to you and living life by a set of rules you set yourself.

I hope that has answered your question, Milos. Thank you for asking it and thank you for listening. It just remains for me to wish you all very very productive week.

Sunday Jan 05, 2025

The Only Time Management Strategy That Works

Sunday Jan 05, 2025

What one thing could you do this month that would transform your productivity? That’s what I’m answering this week.

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Script | 351

Hello, and welcome to episode 351 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

It’s one of the strange quirks of human nature to overcomplicate things. This is particularly so when things start to go wrong.

In my favourite sport, rugby league—as in most team-based ball sports—the basics of winning a game are possession of the ball and territory. If you can consistently complete your sets in your opponent’s half of the field, you will likely win the game.

Drop the ball or give away silly penalties by overcomplicating moves, and you’ll make it very difficult to win the game.

Teams that lack confidence are particularly guilty of these mistakes. Watch any winning team, and you will see they stick to the basics and never panic when they go a try or goal behind.

You can see this in any workplace, too. Those people who rarely appear stressed or overwhelmed stick to the basics. They have processes for getting their core work done—the work they are employed to do.

Top salespeople dedicate time daily to prospecting and following up with their customers. CEOs ensure they have time for meeting with their leadership team weekly so they are aware of what’s going on and know where the potential issues are.

So, what can you do to ensure you stick to the basics each day to avoid those pernicious backlogs?

Well, before I answer that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from George. George asks, hi Carl, are there any strategies you know of that guarantees someone will always be on top of their work?

Hi George, thank you for your question.

I’ve always found it fascinating to look at occupations where mistakes can lead to a loss of life—airline pilots and surgeons, for example.

Before any flight, a pilot goes through a checklist to ensure the plane is in working order. They check the weather and the weight of the cargo—both of which can affect how the aircraft will fly.

They calculate the speed they need to reach before taking off and plot their flight path to avoid storms or dangerous weather fronts.

No pilot would ever consider not doing these checks. Indeed, not doing them would be an act of gross negligence and could potentially be career-ending.

Similarly, surgeons follow a checklist. They check the patient’s name, the type of surgery being carried out, and, if necessary, which side they will be operating on. They also check the patient’s blood pressure and other measurements.

Again, failure to do so would be considered gross negligence, and a doctor could be fired for not doing them.

Now, perhaps lives do not depend on you doing your job correctly, but approaching your work in the same way a pilot or surgeon does can ensure that your work gets done without missing essential tasks.

The first step is to identify your core work. The work you are employed to do at a micro-level. For example, if you manage a team of people, what do you need to do at a task level to manage your team?

That could be to prepare for and hold a weekly team meeting. It may involve setting aside time each month for a thirty-minute one-to-one session with each team member. That would translate into weekly tasks for preparing for the team meeting and scheduling appointments with your team.

A journalist’s core work may be to research a story and then write the story before the deadline. Imagine their deadline is 1 pm on Thursday; then the journalist could ensure sufficient time is protected before Thursday to get the story written and submitted before the deadline.

What are your core work tasks?

Next comes the all important communications and admin tasks. We all have them. The problem with these tasks is we cannot accurately estimate how much will come in.

Each morning, when I start my day, I have no idea how many emails I will have. Some days, it’s 80; other days, it can be as high as 150. Yet, one thing I can guarantee is that I will have email to deal with.

So, I protect an hour a day for dealing with communications. This way, I know that no backlogs will ever build, and nobody is waiting longer than 24 hours for my response.

Somedays, I need the whole hour; I may only need thirty minutes on other days. Yet I still protect an hour.

It’s no good “hoping” you will find the time to respond to your communications. You won’t find the time, and if you do not have a consistent amount of time to do it, backlogs will soon build.

You mentioned strategies, George, and the strategy is ensuring you have enough time protected for the key work you need to do.

This may mean you need to cap your meetings each week. Now, I know whenever I mention this, people recoil in fear. Yet, if you work an average of forty hours a week and spend thirty hours in meetings, how will you ever get your work done? How will you prevent backlogs?

Let me give you an example how being strategic with your time.

I limit my coaching hours to twenty each week. Think of my coaching sessions as meetings. Following each session, I write feedback, which takes an average of twenty minutes to write.

I know I can dedicate an hour each day to writing feedback, so my limit is three feedbacks per day. That works out at twenty-one per week.

If I allow more than twenty hours for coaching sessions in a week, I will either have to reduce my other work or work longer hours. It would not be sustainable. While the money would be good, my health and effectiveness would suffer. So, it would only be a short-term benefit.

I’ve learned over the years that the only thing you control is what you do in the time you have each day. You cannot control time itself. That is fixed. When you realise that you see that you can only build strategies around what you do, that means getting comfortable saying no.

You cannot say no to your boss and your customers, right? Well, yes and no.

You see, it comes back to that time issue. Twenty-four hours. That’s it. Now, if you are happy using all twenty-four hours running around for your boss and customers, that’s fine. But if you accept that, I would suggest you gain some self-respect.

I know that might be a bit harsh. But you are a valuable person. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, has the right to demand all twenty-four hours of your time.

Sometimes, you do need to say no. You cannot do everything because everything takes time. The question then becomes how much time are you willing to to give to your boss and customers?

Let me give you an example. I protect two hours each day doing my focused work. Work that ultimately benefits my clients and customers. I also protect an hour for communications and thirty minutes for admin. In total, I protect three-and-a-half hours a day for meaningful work.

If I were working a typical eight-hour day, that means I still have four-and-a-half hours available for my boss, customers and clients.

Would four and a half hours be enough for you?

The “guarantee” that puts you on top of your work is consistency with your strategy.

Over the last few days, I’ve travelled back to Korea from Ireland. Door to door, it’s a thirty-hour trip. We set off at 2:00 am on Sunday from the west coast of Ireland and arrived back at our home around 30 hours later.

Between checking in, waiting for flights and flying, I stayed on top of my email and admin. The last thing I wanted when I got back home was a backlog of stuff to do.

Then, after some sleep, I went into my office and spent around three hours catching up with everything else.

Had I ignored my messages and admin, I could have lost a whole day trying to catch up. No, thank you. I’ll take advantage of the downtime when travelling to stay consistent.

By the way, a quick tip David Allen (author of Getting Things Done) gave me a few years ago is to block the whole of your first day back to catch up. If it’s a short trip, you can get away with half a day, but a whole day is always better.

Whatever work you do, there will always be tasks that are core to what you do. Those tasks need to be embedded into your days and weeks as must-do tasks. Must-do tasks are non-negotiable. Because they are non-negotiable, you allow no one—not your boss or customers—to steal that time from you.

Offer alternative times and days, but never negotiate on your core work times.

That’s the only strategy that’s ever worked and will be the only one that will work in the future.

Whatever industry you look at, the top performers know this and stick to it. It’s not just industries either. Top athletes, elite soldiers, and entertainers remain at the top of their field by being consistent with the basics—their core work.

So, spend a little time establishing your core work—the micro-level tasks you need to perform to stay on top of your work. Then, protect time for doing that work. Fix it in your calendar, and never ever let anyone steal that time away from you.

I hope that helps, George. Thank you for your question, and thank you for listening.

It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive New Year.

Sunday Dec 22, 2024

Getting Ready for 2025

Sunday Dec 22, 2024

This week, I've delved into my archive to bring you an episode first published on the 1st of January this year. This will help you prepare yourself for an outstanding 2025.

Sunday Dec 15, 2024

How To Work With Your Strengths.

Sunday Dec 15, 2024

This week, why it’s important to know what kind of person you are.

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Script | 350

Hello, and welcome to episode 350 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

WOW! 350 episodes. I never thought this podcast would still be going strong after six years. Thank you to all of you for following me and this podcast and to everyone who has sent in questions. Please keep them coming in—they are the fuel of this podcast.

So, back to this episode.

One way to destroy your efforts to become better organised and more productive is to fight against yourself. This can manifest itself when you are a deadline-driven person trying to be a carefully planned out person.

Let me give you an example: if you struggle to find the motivation to begin a project because the deadline is six months away, yet you pressure yourself to start now. You’ll likely find yourself losing interest and giving up after a few weeks.

Then you beat yourself up.

But, perhaps you’re not doing anything wrong; you’re just trying to do something you are not wired to do.

That’s why it’s important to know what kind of person you are and to figure and what works and what doesn’t.

Okay, before we go further, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Matthew. Matthew asks, Hi Carl, What do you recommend to someone who finds it difficult to get motivated unless there the deadline is right on top of them?

Ho Matthew. Thank you for your question.

I’ve witnessed something like this very close to home.

My wife struggles to start work on a project or a task until the deadline is right in front of her. She then pulls out all the stops pulling all nighters if necessary. Yet, she always meets her deadlines.

In the twenty + years I’ve known her, I cannot recall a time she missed a deadline. Ever.

My mother, on the other-hand is the complete opposite. She will begin getting her holiday items together sever months before she travels. I know, when we travel to visit my family over the Christmas holidays, he will be wanting to plan her next trip to Korea with me. Six months before she’s likely to travel. She even gets her suitcase ready.

It would be fruitless to encourage my wife to be more like my mother or vice versa.

My mother hates stress—it gives her a headache. My wife doesn’t see the point in over preparing.

Yet, we shouldn’t be looking at the methods, instead look at the results. Neither my wife nor my mother miss deadlines. They have different approaches, but still achieve the same results.

Some of my coaching clients wake up very early 4:30 - 5:30 am and like to plan their day before they finish their morning routines end. Others find it more beneficial to plan the day the evening before. Yet, as long as you begin your day with a clear idea of what needs to be accomplished that day, does it really matter when you do your daily planning?

I recommend if you are an early bird, do your planning in the morning. If you are more of a night owl, do it the evening before. What matters is you plan the day. The benefits of having a clear idea of what you want to get accomplished that day, far outweighs the timing of your planning.

I have clients who see Ali Abdaal’s productivity recommendations and wonder how he gets any work done with so many tools being used to organise something as simple as what to do and when. Yet, I have other clients who love using the tools Ali recommends.

There’s no right or wrong way to do this as long as you are getting the results you want.

In your case, Matthew, the productivity tool that you should master is your calendar. If you are motivated by deadlines, you will need to be very clear about when you deadlines are. Having your deadlines on your calendar in the all-day section and in a colour you cannot fail to see will ensure you know when your deadlines are.

All my project deadlines are in my calendar in red. These are hard deadlines and when I am planning my week, all I need to do is look ahead two or three weeks to see what’s coming up.

You may also find it helpful to have a Master Projects list in your notes app so when you are planning the week you have a central place where all the information you need is. On your Master Projects list you can have the deadlines, and what needs to happen next. That way you can judge how much work is still required to meet your deadline.

That’s something I’ve learned from my wife. While on the surface she looks a disorganised mess, underneath that disguise is someone who’s looking at the calendar on her phone every evening to see what’s coming up over the next few days.

Last Monday, while we were sitting on the sofa, my wife reminded me that Louis had a grooming appointment on Thursday and she wanted to check I was sill okay to take him.

And there I was thinking she was scrolling social media, yet, she was looking at her calendar for the week to see if she needed to to do something.

Did she need to know about that last week? No.

I did, though. My system’s different from hers. Yet both our systems produced the same result. Louis arrived for his grooming appointment on time.

However despite having very different methods for getting our work done, there are some principles that will never change. Writing your commitments down somewhere you trust is critical.

While my wife does not use any kind of task manager, she does use, and trusts, her calendar. And I’ve seen this with many other people who don’t use a task manager—they still use something they trust.

A former boss of mine, would have his secretary print out his Outlook calendar for the week each Monday morning. He would then fold that calendar up into his pocket diary.

Throughout the week, he would add to-dos and appointments to that printed calendar as required and on Friday afternoon update his Outlook calendar so the up-to-date version would be ready for him the following Monday morning.

Again, he never forgot anything as far as I could tell. It was an unorthodox system, but it worked.

This is why it can be dangerous to copy other people’s systems. They are not you.

Earlier, I published my latest Todoist setup on YouTube. I do this twice a year, and I suspect I do it more for me than for anyone else. I have been doing this since around 2019, so now I have five years of set-ups I can refer back to and see my evolution.

The biggest change came in May 2020 when I launched the Time Sector System. That was a result of struggling to make Getting Things Done work for me in the digital age. I remember walking to the gym one day and being hit be a sudden realisation that really the only thing that mattered was “when” I would do a task, not what I needed to do.

It doesn’t matter how much you have to do if you don’t have time to do it. What matters is what you do when you do have time.

This realisation solved so many struggles for me. It caused me to limit the number of meetings I was available for each week, and if I could not restrict my meetings, then I had to restrict the number of tasks I was trying to do.

Perhaps I am more aware of the limits time imposes on us than others, or others knew all this before I became aware of it. Either way, it helped me to begin working to my strengths rather than fighting against them.

This also applies to when you are at your most focused. Most people will find they are at their most focused in the mornings but not everyone is.

Some people will find they are at their best in the evenings. This is one reason why flexible working times work for some and not for others.

If you are more a night owl, working for a company that allows you to work to your own schedule will help you thrive. Working for a company that keeps strict 9 till 5 hours will create all sorts of difficulties for you.

Doist, the parent company of Todoist, works flexible hours. Because they are a 100% remote company, their team is spread throughout the world. They have people on the west coast of America, and people here in Korea. That’s a seventeen hour time difference. Insisting everyone worked a 9 till 5 day would not work.

Doist has an unenviable staff turnover level. I believe over the last ten years only four or five people have left the company. That’s incredible for a company that employs over one hundred people.

I’ve discovered more on this with my pen and paper experiment this year—well, it began as an experiment. It’s hard to call it an experiment now.

Returning to pen and paper has helped me to rediscover the art of thinking and the importance of slowing down from time to time.

Digital tools are great, they make storing and finding documents easy. They all help manage quick notes and ideas. Paper, though is different, there’s no batteries and if you grab an A4 pad of paper, and a Bic ball pen, and disappear to a cafe, you could spend all day there and never have to worry about recharging your device. That bit ball pen will draw a 3 kilometre (about 2 miles) line before it runs out. And of course, there’s no notifications or beeps and buzzes.

Yet, pen and paper doesn’t work for everyone. There’s a lot of people who do love them, there’s also a lot of people who hate them. And that’s fine.

So, Matthew, look at how you prefer to work. If you need deadlines to motivate you, the only thing that matters is you meet your deadlines. If that causes you to have to work later than you want to, perhaps you could create a false deadline. You could say this piece of work must be finished tomorrow by 5PM so I can hand it in the next day.

False deadlines are great. I generally have most of my projects finish at the end of the month, so my “fake” end of the month is the 25th. This gives me around a week before the real deadline hits and ensures I am not scrambling to finish things late into the night.

I hope that has helped. Thank you for your question, Matthew. And thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.

Sunday Dec 08, 2024

How To Plan The Week in 45 Minutes or Less

Sunday Dec 08, 2024

This week, the question is on how to reduce the time it takes to complete a solid weekly planning session.

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Script | 349

Hello, and welcome to episode 349 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

One issue that frequently comes up in my YouTube video comments and email messages is the subject of weekly planning and it taking too long.

It’s taken me a while to see how this might be happening, but a recent coaching call pointed me in the right direction.

The issue is the difference between what David Allen calls the Weekly Review and planning a week.

The Getting Things Done Weekly Review is, about looking backwards. You spend a lot of time looking at what you have done on individual projects.

Given that in GTD, anything requiring two or more steps is a project and that by following that definition, you are going to have between, and I quote from the Getting Things Done book, thirty and hundred and fifty projects at any one time, is it any wonder weekly reviews take so long.

This is why I do not call my planning session a weekly review. Instead, I am planning the week, not reviewing my work. The word “review”, at least to me, suggests looking at something that happened in the past.

Yet, planning is about looking ahead. What’s happened has happened. What matters is what you do in the following seven days, and that will be contingent on appointments and commitments you have in those seven days.

So, without further ado, let me turn you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Greg. Greg asks, hi Carl, I’m struggling with doing my weekly plan. I’ve taken your advice to do it on a Saturday morning, but it still takes me almost two hours. Are there any secrets to getting it down to less than an hour?

Hi Greg, thank you for your question.

The question I would start with is, “Are you planning the week or looking back at the week just gone?

If you are following the Time Sector System, one routine task I recommend is to give yourself ten minutes before you close out the day to process your task manager’s inbox.

Processing your inbox is about asking three questions:

What is it?

What do I need to do?

When will I do it?

The second question, What do I need to do? May give you the answer, nothing. In that case, you can delete the task altogether.

When you do a task, will depend on its urgency. It may be something that doesn’t need to be done this week, in which case you can move it directly to your next week, this month or next month folder.

If it does need to be done this week, when will you do it this week? You then add the date.

Doing this routine task everyday, means when you sit down to do your weekly planning on Saturday morning, you only need look at your next week and this month folders and move anything to your This Week folder if you must or want to do it in the next seven days.

In my experience, that only takes ten minutes.

Now what about all those projects?

Well, if you are still trying to manage you projects in a task manager, good luck. Weekly planning is going to take a long time. You will have to go through each project and make sure nothing has been missed. That’s going to take a long time if you have between thirty and 150 projects.

However, if you manage your projects in your notes app, then these won’t need reviewing. Every time you touch a project you update the project note. You can, if you wish, move the next task to your task manager, although if you create tasks that tell you to work on a given project, you should not need to do that.

I don’t define a project in the same way as David Allen does. A project for me is something that will take at least three months to complete and will have a lot of tasks to complete.

In the Getting Things Done world. My upcoming trip to Europe is a project. Yet, for me, it’s a single task. Book flights. Once that task has been done, I will know exactly what needs to happen next. Do I need to book a hotel? This year, no, but I will need to book bus tickets once I arrive in Dublin. So the next action is to book the bus tickets.

The thing is, I didn’t know if I needed to book a hotel or a bus ticket because that depended on what time we arrived at Dublin airport. And I didn’t know that until I had booked the flights.

I do have a note in my notes app called “Ireland 2024” and in there, I have my packing list and a list of things I want to purchase while there. I also save my flight tickets and anything else I may need.

Another way to look at it is if you were a HR manager, and a colleague asked you to hire a new team member, that would not necessarily be a project. As a HR manager, hiring people is a part of what you do. It’s probable you will be hiring many different team members, and managing the process of hiring is just a part of your core work.

Yet if you were tasked to overhaul the payroll system or to organise the seamless move of all employees to a new location, given that you wouldn’t ordinarily do that kind of work, they would be projects.

When would you review those projects? Perhaps when you know you have a management meeting coming up, or you have a one to one with your boss.

But, reviewing is not planning. Reviewing is a task by itself.

Planning is about deciding what you will do. A weekly plan is about setting yourself objectives for the week. Daily planning is setting objectives for the day.

Last night, as I planned today, I made writing this script an objective. Once I knew that I would be writing this script, I checked my calendar for my committed events for today, and mentally decided when I would write it.

It did not mean I had to go through all my previous scripts or review the list of questions I keep. That was a task I set on for Saturday afternoon—decide what topics I will create content around next week.

When I was writing Your Time, Your Way, it was obvious what needed to be done each week—set aside one or two hours a day to write the book. How much reviewing was needed for that? Zilch, nada, zero. To complete that project required me to sit down and write the book five days a week.

Every two weeks I had a meeting with my publisher. These were usually Friday evenings for me. This meant I had a task on Friday to review what I had written over the previous two weeks and to add any questions I had for the publisher.

Often my publisher would ask me to do something. Perhaps he wanted me to send him a profile picture, approve the cover designs, or update the chapter list. During the meeting I added those tasks to the meeting note and afterwards, transferred the tasks to my task list.

This meant, when I did my weekly planning, I did not need to go and review the whole project. What needed to be done was already in my Next Week list. All I needed to do was to decide when I would get the information requested together and send it.

The reason planning the week takes so long is likely because you are not planning, you’re reviewing and cleaning up.

Cleaning up your task list, your notes or anything else is not planning. It’s cleaning up. That’s a completely different category of task.

If you’re spending five or ten minutes at the end of the day clearing your task manager’s inbox, deciding what something is, what you need to do, and when you will do it, you won’t have very much cleaning up to do at the end of the week.

When the special forces plan a mission, they start with the objective—take that hill—they then set about working out how they will get to the top of the hill. They don’t waste time looking at what they did or didn’t do this week or how they got to where they are.

They focus their attention on getting from where they are now to where they need to be.

And that’s the approach you want to take when planning your week. You have seven days to accomplish a set number of objectives. The question is what do you need to do to get there?

And just like the special forces, your plan will break—it always does. It’s at that point you pause, look at where you are, and figure out what needs to happen for you to reach your target.

And for us, that’s what we do when we do the daily planning.

I should have written half of that report by now, but I haven’t started yet. What do I need to do in the remaining 48 hours to complete the report by the deadline. Perhaps I need to cancel two meetings tomorrow, so I can use that time to write and get myself back on track?

It’s not going through the project again, and finding excuses for not accomplishing your task. You’re behind, what do you need to do to get back on track? That’s planning.

If you are putting deadlines on your calendar in the all-day section, when you are planning the week, you can quickly see what deadlines you have coming up over the next two or three weeks and that can guide you towards what you should be working on.

If you use task start and due dates in your task manager, then, of course your weekly planning is going to take you longer. You will need to review all your tasks to ensure you haven’t missed anything. Good luck with that approach.

So, when do you review you projects? Personally, I review my projects when I work on them. I have a master projects list table on my notes app that shows me all my projects, their deadlines and what needs to happen next.

Every time I finish working on a project, I update that table with what I did and what I need to do next.

Going back to writing Your Time, Your Way, there was very little updating required. I had five two-hour writing blocks in my calendar each week for writing the book. The next action was easy—continue writing my book.

Now, if a project becomes a complete mess and you don’t know where you are or what needs to happen next, the task is to review the project. That will then help you to get it back on track. But that’s not part of the weekly planning. That’s just a task you need to do, and you may add it as a task to do next week.

Another question, I get asked is what about follow-ups and waiting for’s?

Again, that’s not part of your weekly planning. That’s a separate task. Personally, I check my follow-ups folders once a week or when I am working on a project and I can see I am waiting for something. It’s certainly not part of my weekly planning.

So, if when you sit down to set out your weekly plan, you are also reviewing all your tasks and projects, yes, it’s going to take you a long time. But you are not planning. You’re reviewing.

If you’ve read Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People or any time management book prior to 2001, none of them had you reviewing “open loops” and “projects”. That’s regressive and means you waste a lot of time focused on the past.

These books—books that helped millions of people—focused planning on what you will do next week, this month, quarter or year. They were forward thinking. That’s what planning the day and week is all about.

What will you accomplish next week? What needs to be done? And when will you do it? That’s it.

And if you are consistent with this, you will find weekly planning will take you between thirty and forty minutes.

I hope that helps, Greg. Thank you for your question.

And thank you to too for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.

Sunday Dec 01, 2024

Yes, You Can Design A Perfect Week.

Sunday Dec 01, 2024

This week, I’m going to show you how to design your “perfect” day.

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Script | 348

Hello, and welcome to episode 348 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

What would a perfect day look like for you? I’m not talking about drinking sangria in a park, feeding animals in the zoo, and later, a movie.

I’m talking about how a typical day would go.

What time would you like to wake up?
What would you enjoy doing for the first hour of your day?
What would you like to do in the evenings?
And what time would you like to go to bed?

These questions are all part of what I call designing your perfect week. It’s an exercise that helps you to bring some structure into your day. Once implemented, this reduces the number of decisions you need to make each day and makes planning less demanding and a lot faster.

Not taking control of your calendar means others will take control of it. If not your boss or customers, it’ll be your family and friends. This leaves you being pushed and pulled all over the place.

When you wake up in the morning, you have no idea what will happen or where you will end up. More dangerously, you will have no idea whether you can get your work done, and inevitably, you’ll find yourself with huge backlogs and a lot of accumulated stress.

Not a great place to be if you want to be better organised and more productive.

So, let me show you how you can regain control of your calendar and start putting what you want first.

This means it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Megan. Megan asks, hi Carl, I’ve tried designing a “perfect” week but found I don’t have enough time to do everything I need to do. Do you have any tips to fit everything in?

Hi Megan, thank you for your question.

That you have discovered you don’t have enough time for everything you want to do is part of why I recommend people do the Perfect Week calendar exercise. The purpose is to help you see what you do and don’t have time for.

But first, how do you set up the Perfect Week calendar?

First, open up your calendar—it doesn’t matter whether it’s a Google, Outlook or Apple Calendar. What you are going to do is create a new calendar and call it “Perfect Week”.

I recommend you do this on a larger screen. It is possible to do it on a phone, but you won’t see the bigger picture of the week. A laptop or tablet works better when you do this.

Now, begin with your personal life. How much sleep do you want? What time will you go to bed? Block those times in first. For instance, if, in your perfect world, you go to bed at 11:00 pm and want seven hours of sleep, then you would block 11:00 pm to 6:30 am. (Allow yourself thirty minutes to fall asleep).

Now, how long do you want for your morning routine? Perhaps you want the first hour of your day dedicated to you. To exercise, read, plan, meditate and/or write a journal. All you need to do in your perfect week calendar is block the time you want for these activities on your calendar. Call it your Morning routine time. (The details of what you do in that time can be added as a checklist in your notes later.)

Next look at the evening. What would you like to do?

Be careful here; you may wish to block time out for family and friends. When you do this, you are involving other people, and they will have a different agenda to you.

You could, for instance, protect 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm for family time, but be flexible. Your teenage daughter will unlikely want to spend much time with you. Your partner, on the other hand, may wish you to sit with them and talk or watch their favourite TV show.

Consider “family time” as being flexible. If no one wants to spend time with you, be available. Perhaps you could read in the same room as your family or do some chores around the house.

Next, what would you like to do later in the evening before you go to bed? Put that on your calendar.

Many of my clients enjoy playing a musical instrument, others use that time for self-study and some go out for an evening walk. Whatever you want to do, put it on your calendar.

Now, your work.

A couple of questions you can ask here are: how much time do you need to do focused work? Work that if you are consistent with will prevent backlogs and ensure you meet your deadlines.

And how much time will you allow per week for meetings?

Limiting your available meeting time is a great way to control time.

Imagine you work a forty-hour week and you want three hours a day for focused work; that would leave you with twenty-five hours each week for everything else.

If you were to limit the time you were available for meetings to fifteen hours a week, that would leave you with ten hours for all the unexpected demands that inevitably pop up. Would that be sufficient time?

Play around with these numbers and see if you can find a happy balance.

With the meeting limit once you have filled the limit for that week, you only offer meeting times for the following week.

As this is your perfect week, you can fix times when you are available and when you are not.

Once you have completed your perfect week, does that look like a week you would be happy living?

One adjustment I made to mine was on a Monday. My calls begin early—well, early for me—meaning I need to wake up at 6:15. That’s much earlier than usual. I discovered I was not able to work effectively after around 11:00 am. So, I added a ninety-minute nap window from 11:00 am. That worked perfectly for me.

Now, once you have created your perfect week, turn on your other calendars. Where do things align? You will probably find some activities already aligned, but some will be wildly out

Your mission now—should you choose to accept it—is to align your real calendar with your perfect week one.

This mission will not happen instantly; aligning things may take several months, but it gives you a purpose and goal.

What happens if, after doing this exercise, you discover there are not enough hours in the week to do everything you want to do?

Most people find this after completing this exercise.

It is worth remembering you do not have to do everything all at once.

You could take a course on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and go to your Pilates class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings. Perhaps you could do your weekly planning on a Saturday morning instead of a Sunday evening.

This is about completing a puzzle. How do you fit everything into your 168 hours a week?

You can also consider making things seasonal. In the winter months, you do one activity, and in the summer, you do another type of activity. After all, the weather is generally nicer in the summer, and the days are longer.

You may even wish to use the Spring as the cleaning-up season. I do.

Designing the perfect week calendar is not about locking you into a strict structure every week. Its purpose is to help you become realistic about what you can and cannot do each day. It’s from here that you can design the kind of life you want to live.

Over the five or six years since I first did the Perfect Week exercise, I have modified it many times. For example, when I did it the first time, I had this rather ambitious idea: I would go to bed at 11:00 pm and wake up at 6:00.

That didn’t last very long. Many of my coaching calls happen late at night, and I often don’t finish until after midnight. Now, I go to bed at 1:30 am and wake up at 8:30 am (except for Mondays). That has worked for me for over a year now.

I’ve also learned that while I’ve always believed that I am a night owl, I am more focused and creative in the mornings. This led to me protecting 9:30 to 11:30 am five days a week for my focused work.

One thing you don’t want to do, Megan, is to try and squeeze everything in. That will leave you feeling exhausted. Always remember you are a living, breathing human being, not a machine.

You need breaks, you do need to stop and enjoy nature and the environment you live in. It gives your mind a rest, and it elevates your creativity and fulfilment by giving you something different to look at other than a screen.

While I am very structured, I like it that way—I still keep my afternoons free for activities I want to do in the moment. Taking my dog, Louis for his walk, doing the grocery shopping and reading, for example. Whatever needs my attention, the afternoons are when I can do it.

Learning those things was a result of doing the Perfect Week exercise.

David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, often says, “You can do anything, but you cannot do everything”, and I’ve found that’s true. That means the question becomes, what will you do?

I would also say that the end of the year is a perfect time to do this exercise. The start of a new year gives you a motivation to try things and develop the kind of week you want to live.

Thank you, Megan, for your question and thank you to you, too, for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.

Sunday Nov 24, 2024

Don't Copy. Find Your Own Style.

Sunday Nov 24, 2024

This week, why you should not be copying other people’s systems.

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Script | 347

Hello, and welcome to episode 347 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

There is a lot of advice on managing your to-dos, organising your notes and controlling your calendar. And it can be tempting to copy whatever you have seen, believing if it worked for someone else, it must work for you.

Well, not so fast.

One thing I’ve learned from coaching hundreds of people is that no individual is the same. We think differently, have different jobs, and have different family lives and interests.

One example is Tiago Forte’s PARA method. It’s a great way to organise your notes, and many people swear by it. However, it never worked for me. I’m a goal-orientated person. Goals motivate me. I also define Areas of Focus differently from how Tiago defines an area.

This is why I settled on GAPRA (Goals, Areas of Focus, Projects, Resources and Archive.)

This does not mean that PARA does not work. It works, for some people. Similarly, I have coaching clients who find GAPRA works better. It all depends on how you think, like to organise things and do your work.

So, what can you do with so much conflicting advice? How can you find the methods for you? Well, before I get to that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Frank. Frank asks, hi Carl. I’ve been a life-long follower of productivity systems and have struggled to find a system that works for me. How would you advise someone to find a way that works for them?

Hi Frank, thank you for your question.

Around 20 years ago, I began my career as an English teacher in Korea.

I had come from working a typical 9 til 5 office job and suddenly I was on the other side of the world, working from 6:30 am to 12:00 pm and 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm. It was tough.

I’m not a natural morning person—never have been—so waking up at 5:00 am was a shock to my system.

It wasn’t long before I began taking naps. I would get home at 12:30, and go straight back to bed for two hours.

For the next ten years, that’s what I continued to do.

I had learned about the power of taking naps from none other than Winston Churchill. He believed that if you took a solid 90 minute nap every afternoon you would be able to get at least a day and half’s worth of work done in a day.

He wasn’t wrong. By taking an afternoon nap I found I was full of energy when teaching in the evening and was able to spend an hour preparing for my next day’s classes when I got home in the evening.

Yet, I knew Churchill took his naps between 3:30 pm and 5:00 pm. That didn’t work for me. So I adapted it to work better for me.

Likewise, back in 2016 or so, I read Robin Sharma’s brilliant 5 AM Club book. I was sold. I thought, okay, let’s give this a try.

For those of you not familiar with the 5 AM Club, this is where you wake up at 5:00 AM and do twenty minutes of exercise, then 20 minutes planning and finally 20 minutes of learning. It’s solid way to begin your day.

Yet, I had a problem. I’ve never been comfortable exercising in the morning. So, I adapted it. I did twenty minutes journal writing, then ten minutes planning the day and finally studied Korean for thirty minutes.

And it worked. I was consistent for around eighteen months and I loved it.

But then I hit a problem. My coaching business began taking off and I was doing coaching calls late at night—sometimes not finishing until midnight. This meant I was trying to survive on four or five hours of sleep. Not a good thing if you want to be productive.

It then occurred to me, the “secret” to the 5 am club is not waking up at 5 am. It’s what you do immediately on waking up that matters.

Today, I wake up around 8:00 am, and start my day with a solid set of morning routines that include journal writing, some stretches and learning my email inbox. It works perfect for me. It sets me up for mostly productive days.

And that’s the key point. Whatever you learn about productivity, time management and living life doesn’t have to be followed exactly as described. We all live different lives and it can be modified to better work for you.

However, there are a few caveats here.

The first is you will not be able to break basic principles.

For instance, if you want a solid way to manage your life, you will need to collect stuff into a trusted place and not rely on your head to remember things. You will then need to spend a little time organising what you collected and finally, you need to do the work.

Yet, how you collect things and where you collect them is entirely up to you. You could use a pencil and notebook, or a sophisticated task management system. Both work.

Another principle I see people trying to break is scheduling far more than the number of hours in the day will allow.

You get 24 hours a day. That’s not going to change. The only variable you have is what you do in the time you have.

This is not as simple as you may think. Sure, it’s easy to schedule seven hours of sleep, an hour for a gym session, four hours for deep work, another three hours for spending with your family and an hour for dealing with your communications and further hour for learning.

All that looks great on a calendar. But what if you didn’t sleep well, you woke up with the start of a heavy cold and had a fight with your teenage daughter?

Yep, that’s real life hitting you in the face.

Now, hopefully that’s not going to happen to you every day, but events will always get in the way of your perfectly planned day.

It’s rare to see any kind of time management or productivity system building in buffer time. Yet, buffer time—time you keep free for the unexpected—is critical if you are to avoid becoming overwhelmed.

One way you can approach the day is to treat it as a puzzle:

Here are the twenty-four hours you have. That’s your constraint. Here’s a list of things you need to do or attend in those twenty-fours hours, now how are you going to fit everything in?

Now, it could be that I am weird, but I love solving this puzzle every day. I love it so much I do it the day before.

First, I look at my confirmed appointments—these are the fixed stakes in the ground. They help to give my day a little structure.

Then, I look at my tasks for that day. Where can I fit these in?

It’s important to know your own natural biorhythms here. When are most likely to be focused? Perhaps you find focusing on deep work in the morning easier than trying to do in the afternoon. If that’s the case, then try to protect two hours in the morning for dedicated focused work.

I should say at this point, every productive person I’ve come across does this. They protect time each day for their most important work. Authors, CEOs, top salespeople, the most successful lawyers and Olympic athletes.

The difference is no matter where they are in the command chain, they are ruthless about protecting time each day for their critical work.

Unproductive, stressed out and exhausted people don’t do this. They don’t protect time. Instead, they have a false belief that they have to be available all the time for their customers and bosses. Well, good luck with that approach. It doesn’t work, never has, and never will.

I remember a sales training session I was on, and the trainer was a former top salesperson—I believe he was formerly the number one car salesperson in the country.

He told us, we could call him at any time if we needed help. But, not before 11 am. He would not answer his phone before 11 am.

When asked why, he explained he needed those two hours in the morning to do his follow ups, and contact his customers who were due to change their car in the next three months and make sure he had appointments scheduled for the rest of the day.

I suspect this was why he was the number one salesperson. He understood how to solve the daily puzzle.

Another area that can disrupt you overall productivity is the tools you use.

There are a lot of fantastic time management and productivity tools available to us today. Many promise the impossible, but ultimately, it will always come down to how you solve the daily puzzle. In that respect, no tool will help you beyond a calendar and a list of tasks that need to be done.

I get questions every day from people asking me if it’s possible to do this or that thing. What they are really asking me is “how do I complicate things?”

Let’s be clear, all you need to know each day is what appointments you have and when and what your critical must do tasks for the day are.

Once you know this and you know you have sufficient time to complete everything, you’re good to go.

The more organising you do, the more lists you create and the more tools you use, the less time you have to get on and do the work.

I mentioned Tiago Forte’s PARA method earlier, and I remember the popularity of this when Tiago launched his book on the subject. There was a frenzy and YouTube lit u with people doing videos on how to set up this notes app or that one with the PARA method.

I could see immediately why it was so popular. It was another way to reorganise things. It gave people something to play with. In other words it gave people an excuse not to do their work.

PARA is great, but it’s not going to make you more productive or better at managing time. I use Evernote and it’s a complete mess. When I need something, I use Evernote’s powerful search.

Whether I’m looking for a client note, a reference to an idea I had several years ago or my book notes from a book I’ve read on Kindle, all I need do is type a keyword, a date range or person’s name and in less than a second I have the information in front of me.

I could spend hours each week keeping my notes up to date, summarised and organised, or I can rely on search and give me those hours to get my work done. I know what I choose.

Over the last three or four months, Todoist has introduced a calendar and start and due dates. I use neither. They don’t help me get my work done and both of those features just add more complexity to what should be a simple list.

You don’t need to use all the features an app has. Use the ones that help you to focus on your work and leave alone the ones that add more organising work.

I hope that has helped, Frank. Thank you for your question.

And thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me to wish you all a very very productive week.

Sunday Nov 17, 2024

Deep Dive With Dr Kourosh Dini

Sunday Nov 17, 2024

This week, I have a special episode for you.

A second interview with Dr Kourosh Dini.

In this episode, we talk about rationalisation and how to change our approach to many of the false beliefs that come from it.

We also discussed pens and paper and a little more about managing ADHD.

Here's how you can learn more about Dr Dini's work.

Newsletter:
https://wavesoffocus.com/Your-First-Step-to-Breaking-Free-from-Force-Based%20Work/

Waves of Focus
https://wavesoffocus.com/

on SMART goals
https://www.kouroshdini.com/lay-off-the-goals-a-bit-would-you/

Sunday Nov 10, 2024

How To Find Time.

Sunday Nov 10, 2024

Is it possible to expand time? Literally, no. But there is a way to find more time if you’re willing to use these techniques.

You can subscribe to this podcast on:

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