Your Time, Your Way

The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Episode 252 | Script

Hello and welcome to episode 252 of the Working With 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 for this show.

One of the biggest drains on our productivity is over-thinking things. It’s this overthinking that usually leads to overcomplicating our task managers, notes apps and work in general.

However, there are a few things we can do that will eliminate the need to think too much about things. One of those, I’ve written and spoken about a lot, and that is in the way we write our tasks. If you write tasks in a haphazard way, you will end with tasks such as a website address with no idea what you need to do, or a single name with no indication what you need to do with that name.

Whenever you write a task, you need to have an actionable verb telling you precisely what needs to be done. For instance: “look at this website for design ideas” or “call Jenny about next week’s meeting”. It’s a simple trick that adds, perhaps, a few seconds to writing out the task, but it will save to a lot more than a few seconds when it comes to deciding when you will do the task.

It’s surprising how much time we lose when we need to think about what to do and how to do it. It’s when we do that that we discover multiple different ways to do something, and if we are not motivated enough to get whatever needs doing done, we use the excuse to “think about it” as a way to delay doing the task.

So, before we get into the depth of this, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Leon. Leon asks, Hi Carl, I’ve been following you for a long time now, and I understand how to set up my system. The problem I have is I feel I waste so much time trying to decide what to do and how to do it. I collect everything in my inbox but then never do most of the things I put there. How do you manage all your tasks?

Hi Leon, thank you for your question.

When you say, “I waste so much time trying to decide what do and how to do it” I presume that this will be a symptom of how your write your tasks and not being clear on where your priorities are.

If we leave writing your tasks out for the moment and look at the decision part, this should be almost automatic. When you know where your priorities are, there will always be a natural hierarchy for the tasks that you do.

For instance, if you were a salesperson when at work, your priorities would always be those tasks that risk you gaining a sale. Everything else, no matter how loud the task is—colleagues or bosses screaming at you for an activity report, for example—are not priorities.

I know it’s hard to ignore your boss. But if you needed to call your boss about your activity report or a customer asking for further information, your customer is the priority and there shouldn’t even be a debate about it. Remember, you’re a salesperson. Your job is to sell. So, of the two calls; calling your boss or calling the customer, which one is likely to result in a sale?

A doctor would never leave a seriously ill patient to answer a question from a manager. Doctors are trained to identify where their priorities are. You need to train yourself to know instinctively where your priorities are.

And therein lies the secret to simplifying your work.

When you know what your objective is, all you need work out is the fastest way to get from where you are now to where you want to be.

Now, it would be very rare for you arrive at a project or task you haven’t done before, or done something similar. A manager having to hire or fire someone will have done that before. The difference is the role you are recruiting for or the person you are firing. However, there will already be a process to achieve these results.

Over time you want to be fine-tuning your processes. I understand when you do something for the first time it’s likely to take longer, but as you are doing it you are learning how to do it, and you can fine-tune your process as you go along.

The key is the keep focused on your outcome. What are you trying to achieve?

Imagine you need to hire a new designer for your design team. Your company will likely already have a recruiting process, and if not, someone within your organisation will have hired someone at some time. Find out how they did it. Open your notes app, and write out a checklist of all the steps you anticipate you will need to do. Once you have your checklist, go through it and look for the shortcuts.

When we brainstorm these ideas, we overcompensate. We think of all the little things that likely don’t need doing. Once we have brainstormed what we think needs to be done to achieve our outcome, we should go through the list and eliminate the unnecessary (and obvious tasks).

Now, I’ve covered daily and weekly planning numerous times on this podcast, and it is a vital part of making decisions about what to work on.

What I’ve noticed is those people who get the importance of daily planning and do it consistently, are the ones who are not overwhelmed or struggling to get their work done. It’s this step back at the end of the day to look at what needs to be done and deciding what you must get done the next day that makes all the difference.

It eliminates procrastination at a key part of the day—the start. You know, from the moment you wake up what you will do first.

For instance, last night, as I was doing my planning, I identified my next YouTube video needed to be uploaded and scheduled and this podcast script had to be finished before 11:00am.

If you look at that sentence, two important words: “needed” and “had” to. There’s no debate. Once my morning routines were finished, I completed the YouTube video and uploaded it, and now I am writing this script. The current time is 9:40am. There’s no question in my mind about whether I will get these two tasks complete before 11 AM. They will be done.

This means, right now, my email is off—anything coming in in the next sixty minutes can wait and my phone is on do not disturb. I am focused on the job in hand and anything else can wait until this script is finished.

Now, if you have never allowed yourself to be in an environment where you cannot be disturbed by all the digital noise in our lives, you will find working in this focused way very uncomfortable. But the discomfort is temporary. When you know what’s on your calendar, and you know what needs to be done before your first commitment of the day, you will be relaxed and focused on the job in hand.

The worst thing you can do is to look at your task list first thing in the morning and try to decide what to work on. This will inevitably lead to procrastination and you waste so much time trying to decide, that very little of your important work will get done before you have to attend to your first appointment or the noise coming in from your phone or email.

Now here’s a quick tip for you. Do this planning on a weekend as well. On a weekend we do not need to be as meticulous, but it’s a very powerful way to make sure that the things you want to do in your personal life get done. For example, if you decide on Friday night that tomorrow you will wash the car, there is a greater chance you will do it without hesitation. Equally, you may decide that Sunday morning, you will take your kids out for a bike ride or a walk in the park. Make those decision before you end the day. When you wake up, you will be focused on getting your kids ready and won’t be looking for excuses not to do it.

Finally, how are you writing your tasks, Leon? David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, says: when you write a task in your task manager write it for your dumb self. What he means is, if you write out a task such as: “mum birthday”, that tells you nothing about what you need to do. All it tells you us your mum has a birthday.

Instead, what do you need to do about your mum’s birthday? Do you need to organise a family dinner? Buy her a present? Or something else?

Make sure when you write a task like this you include what you need to do. For instance, “Call my brother and sister to organise a family dinner for mum’s birthday”. Sure, it will take a few extra seconds to write a full task, but doing so will save you so much time later when you come to doing the task. You won’t be wasting time trying to remember what you need to do.

When you next do your weekly planning session, go through your tasks and make sure they are written out in a way that makes immediate sense to you.

If you are like most people there will be a lot of tasks that have been in your task manager for a long time. If they are not written out in a way you would immediate know what to do, either rewrite the task or delete it altogether.

That one trick will turn your task manager from a hodge podge of random tasks into a set of meaningful activities you can do something with without trying to remember what needs doing.

A way to remember this to make sure you have an active verb in your task. If there’s no active verb, it does not belong in your task manager.

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

Monday Oct 31, 2022

How To Manage Your Digital Files

Monday Oct 31, 2022

How best to organise all your files, documents and articles? That’s what we’re looking at this week.

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The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Episode 251 | Script

Hello and welcome to episode 251 of the Working With 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 for this show.

Over the years, we have seen a lot of wonderful ways to organise our stuff. Elaborate notebook and tag structures in Evernote, Complex folders on our computers organising every facet of our lives.

And all that’s great. It’s a fantastic way to get things organised and gives us the motivation to clear out our stuff—which is no bad thing. We do collect too much stuff anyway.

However, are all these wonderful organisation methods the best use of our time? You see, getting all our stuff organised is a great idea, but that’s a one-time task that may take a few days or even weeks, but long-term we have to maintain this new structure and therein lies two problems.

The first is it will take time for you to develop the natural muscle memory to move stuff to their rightful place, and in my experience, most people have enough on their plates as it is. And secondly, the deeper the organisation structure you build the longer it will take to move the stuff you collect in the future—which will mean you won’t do it. After all, you likely don’t have a great deal of free time as it is, so adding a new process that takes time is not going to solve any problems.

So what can we do? Well there are a few things you can do and that is what we will look at this week. However, before we do that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Janine. Janine asks: Hi Carl, I am a professor at a large hospital and I not only have patients to see, I also teach. On top of that, I need to stay up to date with the latest research. This means I have a lot of papers to read, review and study. I really struggle to keep all these things organised and wondered if you have any tips and tricks that might help.

Hi Janine, thank you for your question.

This is the dilemma that has been creeping up on us over the last ten to fifteen years. More and more digital stuff has been replacing what typically would have been paper.

I remember in the late 1990s, I had a filing cabinet in my study that held all the important papers and documents I needed to keep. My car and house insurance, a file folder for gas, electric and water bills as well as bank and credit card statements oh, and a place to keep my running magazines and Law Society Gazette.

And because if I didn’t file these papers away almost immediately, they would be left sitting on the dining table, there was a constant reminder that these papers and documents needed to be filed.

Today, most of these documents are now online or in digital format. I don’t get bank or credit card statements through the post anymore. They are all digital. I no longer have a filing cabinet in my office. I am now largely paperless—save for documents such as my passport, residency permit papers and such like.

I can keep all these important documents in a single drawer in my office.

However, the problem isn’t really just about these important documents. The problem now is we receive so much more digital clutter than we ever received paper. Largely because it is so much cheaper and easier to send out a digital document than a paper one, we get exponentially more digital stuff.

So, how do we manage all this stuff.

First I would recommend you establish some basic rules. Don’t put files and documents in your notes app. Over time, this will slow down your notes app. It’s far better to put receipts, documents—such as your medical and teaching documents—into dedicated folders in the cloud.

Now it doesn’t matter whether you use Google Drive, Microsoft OneNote, Dropbox or iCloud. What matters is how you structure your folders. My structure is based around the work I do. For instance, I have a folder for my Online courses, YouTube, and Company documentation, which includes my receipts. Inside those folders the relevant parts are added as sub-folders.

For example, inside my company folder, I have all the company registration documents, invoices I need to keep for my accountant, salaries and other such administrative documents. These are inside appropriately titled folders.

For you, Janine, you would structure your folders as Medical and Teaching and then inside of those folders you would have the different areas. For instance, you would keep documents related to the different subject matters you teach inside your teaching folder under their relevant topic.

Now one piece of advice I would give you here is to try where possible to use your computer system’s drive. For example, if you are using a Windows computer, use OneDrive or if you are using Apple’s OS, use iCloud.

The reason for this anything on OneDrive will be searchable through your computer. Similarly, anything in iCloud will be searchable through Apple’s Spotlight search tool.

I know that is not always possible, but where it is. Stick with your computer’s system cloud storage system. It will just make your life a little bit easier.

Now, before we go any further, what about all your articles that need to be read (or you want to read). Use a read later service such as Instapaper or Pocket.

One of the downsides to being able to save articles we see on the web is we save articles into our notes apps and then never read them. Often I see people saving these articles into a “read later” folder in their notes and then never go in there to read those articles. Soon they have hundreds of articles saved that never get read and just clutter up your notes app.

Use Instapaper or Pocket to filter out articles you will never read. My system is simple. Any article I want to read, I will send to Instapaper and then, only after reading it, if Want to keep it for future reference, I will then send it to my notes app.

One thing that has happened over the last five years is Microsoft, Apple and Google have realised we are terrible at organising our stuff. For years these companies left it to us to organise our stuff how we want to and we failed. I know some people have created good, clean organisation, but most people haven’t. Just look around your colleagues’ desktops. They are full of documents, PDFs, Presentation files and so on.

Unfortunately, what happens then is we waste time searching for something we need.

So, Apple, Microsoft and Google have started to take that responsibility away from us and have developed excellent search tools. Apple’s Spotlight for instance, will search iCloud for any document I have with a keyword, date range or type of document. It doesn’t mater whether I am on my phone, MacBook or iPad. It will find those documents.

This means, once you get comfortable with how the system search works on your device, the only responsibility you have is to make sure the title of your document is something you will find.

For that I would suggest you create a format you use for all your documents. To give you an example, I use the same file naming convention for all my documents. This is The date to document was created or downloaded, the type of document. That could be invoice, receipt, or company I am creating a presentation for. And then the title.

What this does is helps me to quickly find what I am looking for directly from Spotlight.

For instance, if I need to find a presentation file for a presentation I did for a company last year, All I need do is type the company name into Spotlight and I will see from the list of results what I am looking for. I can see the date, so I know I am choosing the right document and I know it is a presentation.

Another thing that Google, Apple and Microsoft have done in recent years is to keep like documents together. This means if you have an Excel file, you can keep it inside Excel. Now the document itself is kept in OneDrive, but when you open Excel, you will see all your documents in one place. Google does this with its Docs, Sheets and Slides and Apple does this with Pages, Keynote and Numbers.

At first I resisted this sticking to my old-fashioned ways of moving these documents to separate folders. However, over the years I’ve trusted Apple to organise these for me and it’s so much easier. If I am looking for a Keynote file, all I need do is open Keynote and I can quickly find the file from the start menu.

Google is even better at this, if someone shares a Google Doc with me and I open it, it automatically gets stored in my Google Docs folder.

What I’ve learned over the last few years is don’t fight the system. All these companies are making it easier for us to find out stuff. If we stubbornly stick to our old ways we are making it harder for us to do our work productively. If we allow our computers to worry about how we organise things, we are saving ourselves a lot of time.

We don’t need elaborate organisation systems anymore. All you need is a loose folder structure that covers the different areas of our lives. This will help to keep things neat and tidy. Apart from that, let your devices worry about the organisation and start trusting your computer’s system to find what you need.

Incidentally, this also applies to email. In the past I’ve had a lot of complex folder structures. Now, all I have is four folders: An inbox, an Action This Day folder for emails that need some form of action from me, an Archive for stuff I may need later and the trash. That’s it.

Email search is incredibly fast and easy. I can search by person, date range, keyword or title. I have no need at all for elaborate folders that only slow everything down.

I hope that has helped, Janine. My advice is keep things simple, let your computer do all the hard work and focus you attention on getting your work done.

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

Monday Oct 24, 2022

How To Fit Goals Into An Already Busy Schedule

Monday Oct 24, 2022

This week’s podcast answers the question: where do goals fit into a task manager?

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Episode 250 | Script

Hello, and welcome to episode 250 of the Working With 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 for this show.

We are told that setting goals for yourself is important, and, yes, I would agree with that. But the question is, once you have set yourself some goals, where do the activities you need to perform come in? If you are already close to your limit in terms of what you can do each day, how will you find time to add more stuff?

Now I think of goals as milestones on the road of a much longer journey. The destination of that journey is the same for all of us: death. Sorry to be so melodramatic, but that is true. Nobody gets out of life alive. It’s a very predictable end.

The good news here is that we all have a degree of flexibility and freedom to choose what road we take. The difficulty we face is there is so much choice. So many paths we could take and trying to decide which path to follow is scary. Which is why it is all too easy to make no choice and just follow the ebbs and flows that life throws at us—which unless you are extremely lucky is not going to lead to a fulfilled and happy life.

So, this week, I will share with you ways you can build your goals into your daily life so they become less of a task to be completed each day and more of just something you do, because that is who you are and what you do.

So, let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Adrian. Adrian asks; Hi Carl, I recently saw that you opened a new course on goal setting. I would love to have some goals, but I just don’t have the time to fit them in. I’m sure I’m not alone with this dilemma. Do you have any tips on fitting goals into an already busy life?

Hi Adrian, thank you for your question.

You are right to be concerned about adding more stuff you an already busy day, but there is a difference with tasks or activities related to our goals.

Goals are not something you do, and once complete or accomplished; you stop doing. A goal’s purpose is the create change. Once that change has happened, you don’t want to be returning to where you were before you started the goal. That would not be a clever move.

I remember in my twenties, many of my friends (and myself, I have to admit) would hit the gym in the spring and try to lose our ‘winter weight’ ready for the summer holidays so we could strut confidently up and down the beach. Once the summer was over, we’d pile the weight back on.

Looking back now, I can see how ridiculous this form of yoyo dieting and exercise was. Now I am older (and allegedly wiser), getting into shape should not be something you do for a particular time of the year; it should be an ongoing thing. Keeping your weight down and exercising regularly is a necessity if you want to enjoy a robust, healthy life.

So, today, I am careful about what I eat—no refined carbohydrates and plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. I also exercise pretty much every day, whether that is a session in the gym, a run or a gentle walk with my dog.

It no longer feels like a task. Spending an hour on exercise is an investment in my future. It’s built into my daily schedule, and I use it as a break from sitting at my desk all day doing work. I see exercise as something that assists my productivity rather than as something that needs to be done.

The same applies to financial goals. If you’ve read Dave Ramsey’s book; Total Money Makeover, he gives you five strategies to build a safe and healthy financial plan for you and your family. None of those strategies involves a lot of work. For instance, paying down your debts is a single action each month. Once you get paid, you use a percentage of your salary to pay down one of your debts.

Equally, a second strategy is to build an emergency fund that would cover your expenses for a given amount of time if you were to lose your job. For something like this, it’s simply putting a little money aside each month into a savings account. That would be around five minutes a month (or less if you were to automate the payment)

The goal here, for example, maybe to clear all your debts over the next three years. That’s a simple task. You send money to the debt each month until it is clear. You have a timeline (three years), and you have an action (send money somewhere).

However, the bigger goal here is to change your behaviour from one of spending to one of saving. Once that becomes a behaviour, it is not something you ever need to think about again. You just do it as part of who you are.

When you set a goal, whatever that goal may be, there is an initial stage where you need to be consciously taking an action. That stage will usually last around a month or two. Once you have been consistently taking action on your goal for that time, you find it becomes something you automatically do.

For instance, today, I know I will be going to the gym at 2:30pm. This means when I planned today, I knew I had around three hours of focused work plus a couple of meetings before I needed to go to the gym. That gym time has given me structure to my day. I know when my calls are, and I know what focused work needs to be done before I go to the gym. I have a purpose from the moment I wake up.

The way to look at a goal is to treat it as a waypoint. It tells you that you are moving in the right direction. I use fitness goals to make sure I don’t go stale. The habit of exercise is built into who I am. I am a person who exercises every day. However, like most people, I can quite easily become bored with doing the same thing over and over again, so I set fitness goals every three months.

These could be to run a certain distance or to run a half marathon in under two hours. Alternatively, I might decide to focus on strength for three months and set a target weight to bench press or squat. I mix it up depending on the season. I use the goals to give me focus and direction.

If you were to set a goal to complete a master's degree, what would be the behaviour or habit you need to develop? It would be to spend some time each day studying. The habit of working on your own self-development (an area of focus) should already be something you are doing. Whether that is spending thirty to sixty minutes a day learning something new or being more focused and setting yourself some study days each week doesn’t matter. Developing yourself by learning means you are growing mentally. Something important if you want to feel fulfilled and accomplished.

So the goal to complete a master's degree becomes the waypoint—the signpost—to give you something to focus on and to push yourself beyond your comfort zone.

You see, the real reason why we need to set goals is to prevent us from stagnating. Whether we like it or not, the world is constantly changing. It’s changing around us and we either change or we will get left behind.

During my time teaching English, I worked with many middle management people who refused to learn the new technologies that emerged from the smartphone revolution. Within five years, they were trapped in middle management no-mans land. They were passed over for promotion, and rather than staying where they were, their jobs were downgraded or removed altogether. They had become too comfortable with the way things were and resisted the changes that were happening around them.

The onus is on us to make sure we have time to learn new things. To stay ahead and to keep pushing our boundaries, so we continue to grow. The good news is the world changes at a slow pace. We can change at a faster pace, and that’s where goals help us. They pull us towards changing ourselves for the better.

Now one tip I would give you here is to not set too many goals all at once.

The way to use goals is to step back and look at your life as a whole. Where do you feel you need to improve? Are your skills giving you an advantage in the workplace? How is your health? Are you moving towards the vision you have for yourself in the next ten to twenty years? What do you need to change in order to feel more fulfilled in life and work?

To set strong, motivating goals, you need to do quite a lot of self-reflection. You need to find people who are already doing what you want to do and research them—a kind of healthy cyberstalking. Find out what they did to get where they are and see what changes you can make to follow a similar pathway.

We are building a life, and a big part of the pleasure we get is the journey to achieving that life. The goals you set form part of that journey; they ensure you are moving along the right path and tell you when you need to adjust your direction. The old phrase: “if at first, you don’t succeed, try, try again” is very apt when goal setting. There will be a lot of failures. A lot of adjusting, and with that you learn so much more about you.

I remember a few years ago I decided to do Robin Sharma’s 5AM club. I loved the idea of waking up early and having a series of activities that were dedicated to me and no one else. And for eighteen months I was pretty consistent with it.

However, as my coaching practice developed I found myself working alter and later into the evening and it came to a point where waking up at 5AM was no longer practical. For a few weeks I fought on, but in the end I “failed” to maintain the consistency.

I reviewed the goal and realised that what I really wanted was the empowering morning routine. The waking up at 5AM was nice, but it wasn’t the main purpose. The purpose was to have an hour or so for myself every morning. I revised the goal and set it to being consistent with my morning routine no matter what time. Woke up.

That adjustment began three years ago and there has not been one day since that I have not written my journal, done my stretches and drank a glass of lemon juice.

Now, I don’t even think about it. I just do it.

That’s what goals are there for. They change your habits and behaviours so you adopt better living practices that fulfil you and leave you feeling happy, accomplished and focused on what’s important in life.

I hope that has helped, Adrian. 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.

Monday Oct 17, 2022

To Multi-Task or Not To Multi-Task?

Monday Oct 17, 2022

This week, it’s all about multiple projects and tasks—all in one day.

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Episode 249 | Script

Hello and welcome to episode 249 of the Working With 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 for this show.

How do you manage running a new business, or even running your own department with multiple things happening each day and projects that need to be got off the ground, or maintained. It a real challenge and leave you feeling exhausted, and more importantly, stressed out about what you may or may not have done.

This is one of the many reasons why getting yourself organised and being consistent with your daily and weekly planning is so important. It’s this planning that gives you an edge. It elevates you above the fray and keeps you focused on the bigger picture.

Without a plan for the week, you will inevitably get sucked into the daily churn of low and high important tasks. It will feel endless and it doesn’t lead to a great outcome. Sure, you may have a reasonably successful business or department, but you, as an individual, will be exhausted, tired and stressed out and that leads to poor decision making and mistakes.

Now, before we get into the question, I just wanted to give you a heads up that I have just launched my latest mini-course. The Goal Setting course will give you a blueprint to build the life you want to live by developing the vision of what you want, and then using goals to make sure you are moving along the right pathway.

It’s an exciting course that will inspire you to grow, develop and start making the changes you need to make to become the person you want to be.

Full details of this mini-course will be in the show notes.

Now, on with this show and that means it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Cara. Cara asks: Hi Carl, I run a growing start up business and have found managing multiple tasks and projects each day is a real pain point. How would you suggest we manage multi-tasking to keep the business running and developing new projects?

Hi Cara, thank you for your question.

Now, we better first deal with the concept of “multi-tasking”. Straight up, don’t ever do it. Or rather try to do it. It’s impossible, never works and only leads to mistakes which will need correcting later.

Slow down. There is more than enough time each day to work on the important things. You don’t have to do everything in one day. I know our minds are telling us it has to be done today, but really? Does it?

When you step back, take a breath and look at what you have on your list of things to do, you will see that many of those tasks don’t really need to be done today. It might be nice to be able to do them, but it would not be the end of your business if you rescheduled the less important tasks to later in the week.

Now, there’s a good reason for rescheduling less important things to later in the week and that is most of these will not need doing anyway. They are what I call “reactive” tasks. Tasks that seem important right now, but with a little time resolve themselves and can be discarded.

I’m reminded of a story about former Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who would put aside his letters and memos for ten days before reading them. What he found was 90% of the issues resolved themselves and the remaining 10% was where he needed to put his attention.

Now, in today’s world things move a lot faster than they did in the 1980s, but the principle still remains, most of what comes into our inboxes will resolve themselves, there is no need to rush. You can put aside most issues for twenty-four to forty-eight hours without any problems. When you do come to them, it’s likely many of them will have resolved themselves.

I’m always surprised at how many emails I get asking a question, only to find an hour later the same person writes to tell me they’ve resolved the issue. That taught me to slow down and not rush into a response.

Of course, there are some issues that do need dealing with straight away. But most don’t. Learn to slow down. You will thank yourself for that later.

Now, I mentioned in the opening about the importance of planning. Planning is the key to staying on top of everything being thrown at you. You need some time each day and week to step back and evaluate what is important. What needs to get done about all else.

For instance, last week, my priority was to launch my Goal Setting course. I still had my core work to do—content and coaching client feedback—but aside from that work, my priority last week was launching the course.

Now, this was not the first course I have launched, so I have a process for launching courses. However, that process still requires a lot of time. This meant, each day last week, I made sure my core work was done early. For instance, on Monday, when I wrote the blog post, I started my day by getting that written. Once that was written, I blocked out two hours to work on the course.

For those of you who don’t know, your core work is your most important work—the work you are employed to do. If you are a salesperson, your core work is any activity that results in a sale. If you are an analyst, your core work is any activity that involves analysing. Everything else (email replies, meetings and admin work) is secondary to that.

When I finished each day, I gave myself ten minutes to go through my task list to see what I had on for the next day and prioritised two things: my core work and the course. I then looked at my calendar to see where I could fit those tasks in.

This month I have two courses to work on. That’s unusual, not only do I need to launch my Goal Setting mini-course, but I also need to work on the update to my Apple Productivity course. It would be easy to stress myself about the Apple Productivity course, but what’s the point? I can only work on one course at a time, so the only question is which one do I work on tomorrow?

Now that the goals setting course is launched, I can turn my attention to updating my Apple Productivity course. My work is much more manageable and realistic.

If I had tried to do both at the same time, I would be stressed out and inevitably make a lot of mistakes that will need to be resolved later.

The key is to focus on one project at a time. Of course, you may have multiple projects going on at the same time, but given that you cannot work effectively on two or more projects at the same time, you need to decide, at a weekly level, which projects you will focus on that week.

One thing that has worked for me, is to allocate time each week for certain activities. I also know a lot of business founders have also found this method effective. That is to block time out each day of the week for certain activities.

For instance, email and communications. These come in every day and it’s unlikely you will be able to stop them. This means, you need time each day for managing your communications. For me, I need around forty minutes a day to stay on top of my communications. So, I have a one hour block each day between 7 and 8pm for responding to my actionable messages.

Find an appropriate time in the day and block it out on your calendar for managing your email.

Other activities you need to do regularly, for example, prospecting, accounting, admin and your personal life need time allocating to them. You could dedicate Mondays to prospecting, Tuesdays to admin and Fridays to accounting. Wednesday and Thursday could be dedicated to project work.

Knowing you have time allocated to prospecting, admin and accounting leaves you feeling less stressed and it makes it easier to decide when you will do something.

I would add, that it helps to keep one day each week as free as possible for catching up when you have fallen behind with something.This is one of those inevitable things in life that our carefully laid out plans will get disrupted by an emergency. Knowing you have a reasonably free day later in the week for catching up helps to keep ion track with the things we need to do.

Finally, as a start-up business everything will be new and so you won’t have any settled processes in place. It’s important to be looking for the process for doing your work. I have a number of admin tasks to do each day. When I first began collecting the information, it would take me around ninety minutes each day. I focused on building the process and now, three or four years later, I still have the same admin tasks to do, but it takes me around twenty minutes to do.

Because I have settled processes, I know how to start, where to look for the information and can do the work in a lot less time.

If your projects are similar in nature—in my case creating or updating courses—you can develop checklists and processes there too. This makes doing project work a lot easier. You know where to start, have a reasonably good idea how long each part will take and you can build that time into your calendar.

Essentially, it all boils down to giving yourself time each day and each week to look at what needs to be done and planning out when you will do the work. If you are not planning out when the work will get done, your brain will convince you that you don’t have sufficient time—when you do—and that’s where stress and anxiety will come from.

Make sure you are planning the week. Identifying which project, or projects, you will work on each week. On a daily level, give yourself ten to fifteen minutes to plan the next day. What will be your priority the next day and make sure you have the time blocked out in your calendar so you know you have the time to work on it.

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

And thank you to you too for listening.

Don’t forget, if you want to learn more about my brand new Goal Setting course, the links are in the show notes.

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

Monday Oct 10, 2022

You’re Not Going To Complete All Your Tasks, And That’s Okay.

Monday Oct 10, 2022

This week, we’re looking at why you don’t need to worry if you cannot complete your planned tasks each day.

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The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Episode 248 | Script

Hello and welcome to episode 248 of the Working With 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 for this show.

Do you feel you have to complete your daily task list every day? How do you feel if you don’t manage to complete your list of tasks? Most people become disillusioned when they end the day with several tasks left, and that can lead to a rabbit hole of app and system switching—which is never the solution.

Quite often, what will happen is those tasks that didn’t get done today will be automatically pushed off to tomorrow, which, rather than solving the problem, only exasperates it because now you have more tasks to do tomorrow on top of the inevitable disruptions, emergencies and distractions.

So, this week, I will hopefully give you some strategies and tips to eliminate this problem and give you the confidence to accept sometimes you will not be able to complete your tasks, and that’s okay.

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

This week’s question comes from Simon. Simon asks: Hi Carl, for many years, I have used a task list—from using a paper planner in the early 2000s to now being digital. One problem I have always faced is not being able to complete all my tasks. I always end the day with tasks still on my list. Do you have the same problem, and if so, how do you manage it?

Hi Simon, thank you for your question.

Firstly, let me say it’s perfectly normal to end most days with tasks uncompleted. You are not a machine—you are a human being, and we have a tendency to overestimate what we can do in a day. Added to that, there are always going to be disruptions, emergencies and things going wrong that you cannot plan for. When these disruptions and emergencies arise, we just need to deal with them as best we can, and that means some things you had planned for the day will have to be missed.

That’s a normal day for most of us. Disruptions, emergencies and things going wrong. Welcome to the real world. The solution is not to change your system or apps. The solution is coming to terms with these disruptions and emergencies.

Now, if we dig a little deeper, our daily task list will be a mix of three types of tasks:

Tasks that must be done,

Tasks that should be done

and tasks that can be rescheduled if necessary—these are what I would describe as the hope to do tasks.

If you look at your task list for today, you will see this mix.

Now, the strategy is to be very clear about what must be done. These tasks are your top priority for the day, and where possible, you should start your day with these tasks—before disruptions and emergencies occur. I know that is not always possible, and when it is not possible—perhaps you have an early morning meeting or you are travelling somewhere, you need to schedule the time in your calendar, so you know you have the time to do it.

Now when these emergencies and disruptions do occur, you need to accept them—embrace them, if you like—analyse what you have control over, and if you do have some control, make a decision on what you will do.

Often, if you just step back for a minute and analyse the emergency or disruption, you will find there is an easy solution. Panicking will not help you. The only way to deal with these is to stop. Look at the emergency or disruption, and decide what you can do about it. That might be a telephone call, or it could be delegating the problem to someone better suited to sorting the problem out.

Sometimes the emergency is so big you have to drop everything and just deal with that emergency. This happened to me a year ago. I was woken at 7 AM, and the emergency was staring me in the face. In that moment, I realised I had to deal with the emergency in front of me, and that was an easy decision to make.

I had a lot of work planned for that day. My task list was carefully curated, and when I went to bed, I knew exactly how I would start the day. That emergency stopped that. It was an easy decision to make.

Later in the day, when I had a few minutes, I went into my task list and checked my tasks—looking for the must-dos. Fortunately, there were no “must-do” tasks. I cancelled appointments for the following day as I knew I would not be able to make those appointments and completely ignored my email. When you are faced with a genuine emergency, it’s surprising how low-value things like emails become.

Once I had rescheduled my appointments and doubled checked there was nothing urgent on my task list, I didn’t look at the list again that day.

It was only when I got back home the next day, did I open my task list and begin rescheduling my tasks for other days.

Now, most of the emergencies we face are not going to take up the whole day. It’s likely that a quick call to a client or customer, or colleague will resolve the issue or at least remove the urgency. It’s better to deal with that now rather than let it destroy your concentration.

Now of the tenets of the Time Sector System is to learn how many tasks you can comfortably complete each week. Because we are managing our tasks by when we will do them rather than by project, you have a lot more control over just how much you do each week.

For me, I know that a realistic number of tasks each week, including my core work and areas of focus, is between thirty and thirty-five. This does not include my routine tasks; these are the meaningful, project or goal-moving forward tasks.

This means when I do my weekly planning, if I see I have more the thirty-five tasks in my This Week folder, I need to go in and push off some tasks for the following week.

Now, I get asked, but what happens if all those thirty-five-plus tasks have to be done? Well, even if they have to be done, I know I cannot change the time I have available, so whether they have to be done or not is irrelevant. The thing is, my limit is thirty-five tasks. After that, I will run out of time.

It would be very rare for you to be in a position where all your tasks “have to be done” that week. Many can be renegotiated; some dropped altogether.

The thing to remember in the time management equation is the time side of the equation is fixed. You get twenty-four hours a day. The only side of the equation that is variable is the activity side. That’s the only part you have control over. So either you drop tasks or you renegotiate deadlines, so you have the time and flexibility to manage your work.

This is why I stress the importance of establishing what your core work is. The work you are employed to do and are ultimately paid for. Once you know this, you have essentially created your priorities. Your areas of focus and core work will always have priority over your “volunteered” work.

Now, another way to look at this is if you have fifteen tasks to complete today and you only manage to complete ten, is that really a problem? To me, no, it isn’t as long as you managed to do the most important tasks. You made progress. That’s what is important. Having a 66% success rate is better than a 0% success rate.

You are not going to be perfect. There will always be things you don’t get done. On the day I had my big emergency last year, I still managed to complete a couple of tasks. I probably had a 5% success rate; to me, even a 5% success rate is better than zero.

If you have implemented my 2+8 Prioritisation method—where you select your two most important tasks for the day and make them your “must dos” and eight other tasks you should do. You will know that your two must-do tasks should be completed each day, and for the remaining eight, you will do everything you can to complete them, but it would not be the end of the world if you cannot.

Today, my two must-do tasks are to write this script and do my exercise. I have other tasks I want to do today, and I will get most of them done, but the most important thing on my mind when I began my day today was to make sure I wrote this script and get my exercise in.

With the 2+8 Prioritisation Method, there is an implied acceptance that you will not complete everything, but the point of the method is to train you to know what your priorities are. When you do this every day, you develop a keen sense of priorities, and you naturally make the decision when you do your daily planning.

When you accept that you may not be able to complete all your tasks each day, you will sense a huge weight coming off your shoulders. It’s liberating to know that it’s okay not to complete everything.

However, one mistake you want to avoid is automatically rescheduling those incomplete tasks to the next day. You need to look at what you did not do, and based on what commitments you have the next day and your other tasks; you reschedule these tasks to the days you will likely be able to do them.

There are days when I have to write my blog post as a task, yet for various reasons, I either don’t get around to doing or finishing it. Before I reschedule the task, I look at my calendar and look for the next available day. For example, if I fail to finish writing this script today, I know already I will be away tomorrow, not returning home until late in the evening. My next available day, looking at my calendar, is Friday. This means I will reschedule the task for Friday. It’s not perfect, but at least the task gets done.

Just because I don’t manage to clear my task list for the day doesn’t mean my whole system has failed. All it means is I didn’t allow sufficient flexibility for the unknowns. The truth is, over time, you learn how much flexibility you need to leave in your day. You may not be right every day, but the experience will teach you.

And that really the final piece to the puzzle, if you like. You will not be “perfect”, ever. There will always be days when you don’t complete all your tasks, and that’s okay. It means you’re human, you care, and it isn’t the end of the world. Just give yourself a few minutes at the end of the day to look at what you didn’t do, reschedule what needs rescheduling, and if necessary, renegotiate deadlines with the appropriate people.

And most of all, be patient. It takes time to build confidence in your system. You will make a lot of errors, and yes, you will overestimate what you can do in a day. The important thing is you learn. Debrief yourself and instead of criticising yourself, look for ways you can adapt and make the necessary adjustments.

Thank you, Simon, 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.

Monday Sep 26, 2022

The Essentials of Personal Productivity.

Monday Sep 26, 2022

What elements do you need to have productive days consistently? That’s the question I’m exploring this week.

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The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Episode 247 | Script

Hello and welcome to episode 247 of the Working With 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 for this show.

One part of the productivity mix that rarely gets talked about is personal maintenance. By that I don’t mean the organising, structuring, apps or systems, but the deeper maintenance areas that are generally neglected, yet in the end have a bigger impact on your productivity than anything else.

For instance, how effective are you when you don’t get enough sleep? I know from my own personal experience if I get less than six hours sleep, my productivity is terrible. I generally can do an hour or two of focused work in the morning, but after that I find it difficult to focus, I often have to take a nap and my mood and energy levels are low. That’s certainly not a great place to be if have a lot of deadlines to meet.

This week’s question is about the non-obvious productivity essentials that when in balance, helps you to stay organised, focused and calm no matter what is thrown at you.

So, with that said, it’s time for me to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Jenna. Jenna asks, Hi Carl, I’ve read a lot of your blog posts and I understand the importance of using a task manager, a calendar and notes, but I often find myself wondering if there is something deeper or bigger that is also important for being productive. Is there something I am missing?

Hi Jenna, thank you for your question.

Yes, you are right. There is a deeper, more personal part to being more productive than just using task managers and calendars. The task managers and notes apps you choose to use is the sexy part of productivity, yet really when it comes to measuring your effectiveness, the tools you use will have very little effect.

What will have an effect are less sexy, so don’t get talked about enough. Let me begin with sleep as I have already mentioned that.

We know that getting a good night’s sleep leaves you feeling great. You have more energy through the day, you can focus better and your mood is positive. According to Matthew Walker, a renown sleep scientist and author of the book: Why We Sleep, get less than six hours sleep and all sorts of problems will manifest themselves. For instance, a lack of sleep effects your appetite. Your body will tell you you are hungry when in reality you are not. This will lead you to snack, and more likely snack on the wrong kind of foods—donuts, bread, cookies and other sugar rich foods.

Not only does a lack of sleep contribute to weight gain, but because of the types of foods we crave when suffering from a lack of sleep, we get the post meal slump, which leaves us feeling tired and unfocused.

Then in the evening, when you should be spending some quality time with the people you care about, your mood is not great. You’re tired, have a serious lack of energy and will be uncommunicative. Over time, this will put a strain on your relationships which in turn will result in you being focused on the problems that causes instead of the work that needs to be done.

Now, how much sleep you need at a personal level will be different from other people. I know from my own experiments, I need around six and a half to seven hours, other people need closer to eight.

To find out how much sleep you need, you can do a simple experiment. For seven days, sleep with no alarm. Let yourself wake up naturally. This might not be possible when you are working, but it is a great experiment to do when you are on holiday or taking a vacation.

Make a note of how many hours sleep you got, and then average it out once you have seven straight days of data. That will give you your daily sleep requirement.

Once you know your sleep requirement, build that into your daily schedule. For example, I generally need to wake up around 7 AM, and I like to read in bed before going to sleep, so my bedtime is 11:30pm. This way, I can read for thirty to forty minutes before going to sleep.

Your sleep time needs to be protected. It’s huge part of being effective every day, so compromise of what you each day, but never compromise of getting your sleep requirement each day.

Next up is physical exercise. Now, we are not talking about going to a gym every day or running every morning. Of course, if that’s what you like to do, do it. But exercise really means movement.

Human beings are designed to move. We are not designed to sit around all day.

So what does this mean, how much movement do we need each day. Well, this is difficult to measure, but for most people we need to be doing at least thirty minutes walking each day. Those thirty minutes should be strung together.

Now, if you are over thirty-five you need to be doing a little lifting each week too. From around the age of thirty, you will be losing between 3 and 8% of your muscle mass each decade, which increases exponentially after sixty. That might not sound very much, but over time this is going to make you weaker and less effective with your daily activities.

Again, this doesn’t mean you need to be going to a gym. But you can take advantage of cleaning chores. I wash my own car for example, it has me moving my arms, shoulders, squatting and lifting. I also clean my office twice a week. I will move the chairs, sofa and tables to get the vacuum in, all designed, not only to keep my office clean, but to get some movement in.

You were designed to move, so move.

Another area to look at is your diet. We know what you eat has a huge effect on your health and well-being. Eat a diet rich in processed foods and refined carbohydrates, and your health will decline to a point where your future self will not be spending time doing activities you enjoy, but rather spending it in and out of hospital. Is that the vision you have for your later years? I hope not.

What we want is to live an active, healthy life and that involves enough sleep, a little exercise and a good diet.

There’s a lot written on diet and eating well and I’m certainly no expert in this area. However, my wife and I decided to remove refined carbohydrates from our diet earlier this year and it’s been amazing. I no longer feel hungry through the day. My energy levels remain consistent through the day and I feel fantastic. No more headaches, indigestion or fatigue.

If you want to learn more about what to eat and when, I would recommend books by Dr Jason Fung, particularly the Obesity Code and Dr Mark Hyman. These doctors have done a lot of research into what to eat for optimal health and will open you eyes to how a lot of the food we are eating is damaging our health and well-being.

So, there are three foundational areas where, with a little attention, we can build a strong support system to our productive ways.

Ultimately, you will be at your most productive when you are well rested, physically fit and supported by the right kind nutrition.

However, that takes care of your physical well-being, what about your mental well-being. Something that has gain a lot of attention in recent years.

Part of the problem here is society has become a lot more do, do, do, with little time for rest, rest, rest. However, we need time for ourselves, to reset, think and reflect.

This does not mean hours spent watching mindless TV shows and escapism. What it means is pursuing activities that bring us joy. For instance, doing puzzles, spending ten minutes a day meditating and reflecting.

How can we bring these elements into our lives? Well, create a personal morning routine. You only need thirty minutes, but those thirty minutes are packed with setting you up for an amazing day.

To give you an example of a morning routine. I start my day by making coffee, while my coffee is brewing, I do two minutes of stretches. Nothing strenuous, just some light shoulder and core stretching to get my blood flowing.

Once my coffee is brewed, I sit down and write my journal for ten to twenty minutes. This has become my favourite time of the day. I get to reflect on how the day went yesterday, capture my thoughts and brainstorm ideas that may have come to me through the night.

I end my journal writing by listing out my two objectives for the day. Then my day begins.

I would also recommend you have an evening closing down routine. This does not need to be a lot of time. For me, it’s really about deciding what must be done tomorrow and a quick look to see what appointments I have the next day. In all, I would say my closing down routine takes around five to ten minutes.

Finally, give yourself thirty minutes or so with the people you love and care about. One thing my wife and I have done pretty much since we began dating over twenty years ago is to chat for at least thirty minutes each day. We both live busy lives, but no matter where we are in the world, we will alway have our thirty minutes.

We humans are social animals. We need that connection. No matter how busy you are, you will always be able to find thirty minutes or so to connect with the people you love. Make it a part of your day. You will never regret it.

So, there you go, Jenna. Many of the things I’ve mentioned here, I know is common sense, yet so many people neglect these basic areas. It’s why I have written and spoken about designing your “perfect week”. This is where you create a bank calendar in your calendar app, and pollute it with the activities and routines you want to adopt. Doing it this way you will surprise yourself how much time you really have.

I hope this has helped and thank you for your question, Jenna.

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

Monday Sep 19, 2022

How To Develop Your Productivity System For Success.

Monday Sep 19, 2022

So, you’ve created a fantastic system for keeping yourself organised and on top of everything being thrown at you, and you’re happy with the apps you have that support you. Now, how do you stay consistent using your system?

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The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Episode 246 | Script

Hello and welcome to episode 246 of the Working With 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 for this show.

A common issue I come across with becoming better organised and more productive is staying consistent using the system you have developed.

The fun part of becoming more productive and better managing your time is the setting up of a system, choosing the apps you are going to use and getting stuff into that system. The hard part is staying consistent with it over time.

The problem is once the excitement of creating something new is over, you still have to do the work and the work has to be done day after day. That’s the boring part and it’s then that most people’s systems break down.

This week’s question is all about this and I hope my answer will shed some light on another part of a strong, supporting system that often hides in the shadows but needs to be developed so your system disappears into the background and a process of doing your work comes to the foreground.

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

This week’s question comes from Greg. Greg asks, Hi Carl, for years I’ve been searching for a productivity system that I can stick with, but I have never been able to stay with any system. I’ve tried them all from GTD to your Time Sector System. It’s always exciting at first believing this time I have the right one, only to find after two or three months I’m a disorganised mess again. Am I missing something?

Hi Greg, thank you for your question.

I don’t think you are missing anything essential, but you may be missing one element. That element is a process.

Let me explain. Your productivity system is only a system. It’s a place to collect things you need to pay attention to. Things like email and messages that require replies, tasks that come your way and meeting requests that need to be put on your calendar.

However, a productivity system is just that, a system. Once you have that in place you need to develop the processes that allow your system to work and it’s the process that is boring. It’s just something you do day after day.

However, while at first following a process can be boring, over time it disappears into the background and becomes more of a habit you no longer need to think about. A task comes to mind, and you collect it into your task manager. A meeting request drops into your inbox and you check your calendar to make sure you have the time to attend the meeting. These actions are done automatically without thinking.

Unfortunately, to get to that point, you have to go through boredom. It’s boring to look at the same list every day and check off the tasks. It’s boring to sit down for ten minutes at the end of the day and plan the next and it’s boring to review the same projects week after week in a weekly planning session.

Once the excitement of a new system and set of apps disappear, you’re left with having to do the work and that’s not fun.

I’m reminded of a story Simon Jefferies, a former British Special Forces soldier talked about when he was going for selection to the special forces. The first part of that selection process is two weeks in the Welsh mountains in the UK where every day you are given a map reference point, which you have to memorise, a heavy backpack and told to get there within a certain amount of time. The problem is, you don’t know how long you have to get there. Oh, and each day the weight of your backpack is steadily increased.

Simon talked about simply focusing on the process. Waking up at 4:30 AM, preparing his feet, putting his boots on and doing the climb. When he finished, he made sure he ate a meal that would aid recovery, sorted his feet out, washed and dried his socks and got to sleep as quickly as he could.

His goal was to pass selection and he knew if he followed a process every day and focused on getting through the day, he would achieve his goal.

It was boring, but it helped him through the relentless pain, tiredness and boredom of climbing up mountains every day.

Most people quit—to give you an example, around 200 people start selection every year, and by the end of that first two weeks, 60 to 70 per cent have dropped out.

Giving myself ten to twenty minutes at the end of the day to process my inboxes and plan for tomorrow is boring. But I also know the consequences of not doing it. Not knowing what my important tasks are for the day and where my appointments are before I start the day never leads to a good result. Something will inevitably be missed and that always leads to a lot more work as I scramble to get back on top of my work.

My goal is to have an effortless day. To get my most important tasks done and to move projects forward. I know, that those ten to twenty minutes at the end of the day give me an advantage and stack the odds in my favour. Not doing it leaves me vulnerable to the unexpected things I should have known about and missed appointments and tasks.

Following the process is not about the new and shiny apps, it’s about doing the work. New apps, and new organisation systems don’t help you do your work. They destroy your productivity because you are having to learn how to use these new apps, transfer all your old data across and deal with the unfamiliar. The more familiar you are with your apps and system, the more productive you will be.

So how do you build days that feel effortless? Well, start the day the same way each day. I recommend you develop a morning routine that you enjoy—something to look forward to. For me, that’s a cup of coffee and sitting down for ten to twenty minutes with my journal. For others that could be ten minutes of meditation, a walk in nature or some exercise. Choose things you enjoy doing.

The first forty-five minutes of your day needs to be dedicated to you. If you have a young family, adjust your wake-up time so you get your morning routines in before your kids wake up. It’s about making your morning routines a non-negotiable part of your day and not something you will sacrifice at the first opportunity.

Next is to find a period of two to three hours each day for deep, focused work. Now this applies to weekends too. You may not be focusing on your work-related tasks on a weekend, but there are always things that need doing around your home on a weekend. Treating weekends differently to the working week will not serve you. Morning routines are done seven days a week, not just for work days. The same applies to your two to three hours of deep focused work.

Us humans were not designed to sit around all day doing nothing. We’ve evolved to be incredibly smart, flexible organisms and our bodies need movement. Now we are not talking about 180 mile bike rides or 20 mile runs on a weekend, but a gentle walk for thirty to forty minutes, cleaning your home and going out to the supermarket for the weekly shop all things you could build into your weekend routine.

Now, as for when you do your deep focused work, that will depend on the kind of work you do. For me, I have control over my schedule each day so, I fix my focused work for between 9:30 and 11:30 AM. I also have another focused work session between 7 and 9pm. That’s the nature of my work. I create content and coach people. I do my calls generally later in the evening or early in the morning and I protect my afternoons for exercise and errands.

For you it may mean you need to find two to three hours of focused work between 9 am and 5 pm. I would try to do your focused work as early in the day as you can. It’s less likely those unexpected emergencies will arise in the morning—they have a habit of rearing the ugly heads in the mid to late afternoon.

Now, this is where your daily planning and focus time connect. It’s during your daily planning, that you decide what needs to be done in your focus time. Don’t leave it to chance. If you do that, you’ll open up your tasks manager and look for something to do and you will be presented with a long list of tasks. Inevitably you will seek out the easiest tasks. What you do in your focus time needs to plan in advance so that when the time arrives, you get straight into it.

The biggest challenge with all this is it takes time to develop the processes and develop habits. Following this advice for one day is a great start, but it has to be repeated the next and the next until you do it without thinking. I cannot imagine going to bed not knowing what I need to do tomorrow. Equally, it would feel incredibly strange not to wake up in the morning, make coffee and sit down for at least ten minutes to write in my journal. These are habits I’ve worked on for the last five years or so.

Now you might think finding new apps to play with is all part of the fun, and in a way, you would be right. But that approach is never going to improve the thing you want to improve—your time and task management. However, when you focus on your processes for doing your work, you will find not only do you get the joy of creating something yourself, but you also get to tinker and optimise your processes over time.

I’ve been down the road of app switching and while there is an initial buzz in setting up a new app, it will inevitably descend into disappointment when you discover something you used in your old app doesn’t work in your new app. And then the search for another new app starts.

Building your own processes is far more fun. You have ownership of the process, you get to share it with your colleagues and it will grow with you.

I hope that has helped, Greg. Remember, you won’t find what you’re looking for in a new system or app. You will find what you are looking for in your processes. Look at these, build your own and enjoy the process of optimisation and fine-tuning.

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.

Monday Sep 12, 2022

What to Pay Attention To After A Promotion.

Monday Sep 12, 2022

What do you need to pay attention to if you are to build yourself a solid, sustainable productivity system?

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Episode 245 | Script

Hello, and welcome to episode 245 of the Working With 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 for this show.

I am usually asked to help someone when their productivity and or time management has collapsed. This usually happens because, since the day they started their first job, they have been able to breeze through their work, relying on their boss or customers to tell them what to do.

I know when I started my work life, for the best part of the first ten years, there was also someone in the background telling me what I needed to do next and holding me accountable.

Inevitably, there comes a time when you will be given responsibility for your own work. You’re given more freedom to decide what to do with your time and you too now need to guide new members of the company and tell them what needs to happen next.

It’s at this point if you do not have a system to manage your work, projects and responsibilities that things begin to crack and fall apart.

So, this week, I am looking at what you can o to avoid this from happening and to help you transition from where you are today to the next level—whatever that may be—be that promotion to management or starting your own business.

So, with that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Riccardo. Riccardo asks: Hi Carl, I’ve recently been promoted, and I’ve found myself drowning in work. I am having to take a lot of work home and working late into the night and at weekends. Do you have any tips on managing a sudden increase in workload?

Hi Riccardo, thank you for your question and congratulations on your recent promotion.

One of the most important things you can do to be prepared for increasing workloads is to have a ‘how can I do it better mindset’. When I learned the power of this simple question, a lot of positive changes happened for me.

To give you one example, many years ago, not long after I became a teacher, I was assigned what was called a free talking class. This class took a topical news article, which we read out in class, then discussed it. Having one of these classes a week was manageable, but when I had to prepare fief articles for the week, what was originally an hour of preparation turned into six hours.

I had to find a suitable article, highlight difficult words and phrases and create three to five questions to get the students talking.

Spending six hours on a Sunday looking for and preparing articles was not my idea of using my time on a Sunday well. So, I asked the question: how can I do this better?

I soon found I could spend the week collecting articles into a read list as I was reading the news each day—this was something I did every day anyway. If I came across an article that might be suitable for my free talking classes, I could save the article (I had to use my browser’s bookmarks for this back then—no easy-to-use read later services then) and all I needed to do on a Sunday was to prepare the document. I managed to reduce those six hours down to ninety minutes.

It’s a simple yet powerful question we can all use with tasks and jobs that we feel are taking too much time—How can I do it better?

If you are ever feeling overloaded and stretched to your limit, it usually means the processes you have in place are too complex, or you haven’t fine-tuned them, so they work seamlessly.

One of the reasons so few people ever become consistent with daily and weekly planning is because the first few times you do it, it takes a long time. It would not be unusual for your first weekly planning session to take two hours or more. Likewise, your daily planning will likely take thirty-plus minutes when you first begin doing it.

However, those first few are important because as you are doing them, you learn what needs looking at and what doesn’t.

In David Allen’s Getting Things Done Book, he advocates reviewing all your projects each week. Yet, most of your projects don’t need reviewing so frequently. I have about twelve projects left for this year. To follow the GTD standard, I’d be reviewing projects that are not moving forward right now. That’s a waste of time. I know these projects are not moving forward, nothing needs to be done on them for the next two to three months, so I don’t review them.

The only projects I look at are my current, active ones. These are moving forward and all I am looking for is what needs to happen next.

Let me give you an example of a small project I have at the moment.

I am re-doing my profile photos so I can update my website. This small project was complicated a few weeks ago when I had my eyes tested and ordered a new pair of glasses. These glasses took a couple of weeks to arrive, and now they are at the opticians having the new lenses put in.

This is complicated by a big public holiday this weekend, so I don’t expect my new glasses to arrive for around ten days. As I don’t know when they will arrive, I cannot book an appointment at the photographers. So, this project is on hold for now.

This means that when I did my weekly planning on Saturday, that project was skipped. Everything I needed to do is done. I’ve got the new glasses, my eyes have been tested, and I now have to wait for ten days or so for the new glasses to arrive. Nothing will happen next week. So, that project is not reviewed.

Now, I do have the next task in my task manager—book photographer—but it is in my next week folder. Nothing needs to be done this week, so I don’t need it coming up and distracting me. I will see that task when I do my next weekly planning session, and I can decide if I want to bring things forward or not then.

Everything you do can be improved by a process. Once you have a process in place, you can then apply the question: how can I do it better? To the process.

Now, you didn’t mention what your old role was and so I don’t know what changes have occurred with your new role, Riccardo, but let’s say you were previously a salesperson and now you are a sales manager. This is actually quite a big change in a person’s work.

You’ve gone from managing customers and prospects to managing salespeople who do that. So, the first step is to establish what your new core work is.

Is it allocating targets to your team? Developing forecasts for your boss? Hiring new salespeople? Training your sales team?

This is the first step. What is your core work? Once you know what your core work is, what does that look like at a task level?

Let’s take forecasting as an example. We might be told our new responsibility is to present a monthly sales forecast every month at the departmental heads meeting. That’s great. We know what one of our core tasks is. However, what does that look like at a task level?

The danger here is we add a task that says: Prepare this month's sales forecast, yet is that really the task? What does that involve?

It could be you need to collect current sales data, review last year's sales data and calculate your forecast based on market conditions and past sales. That’s not a single task. That’s a minimum of three tasks.

If this were your core work, you might have a task in the second week of the month telling you to collect the data. In the third week, you could add a second task to read up on the current market environment and perhaps add the new figures to your sales forecast file.

Now, what was possibly a four-hour task has been broken down into tasks that take no more than an hour or so.

You set these tasks as recurring tasks in your task manager, so they come up when they are due, so you no longer need to keep them stored in your head.

Now to deal with the current issue of having to take work home with you, what is the work you are taking home? What’s preventing you from dealing with that work while you are at work?

Now, a lot of this extra work is caused by too many meetings throughout the day and interruptions throughout the working day.

The first step here is to gain control of your calendar. This begins by blocking times out in the day when you are not available for meetings. The great thing here is you do not need to block a great deal of time. Most people find if they can get two hours a day for focused work, that is enough to stay on top of the critical work. This leaves six hours each day for meetings and being available for other people.

Ideally, you want to block the same time out each day, but that may not be possible. If not, create the blocks, and when you do the weekly planning and move them around so they fit into your days for the following week.

Next up dealing with interruptions. Here you need to learn to say no. That’s hard, particularly for salespeople, because they come from a place where everything is possible and yes is the default.

Again, this doesn’t need a lot of effort. I remember when I was working in a law office, my boss had a fantastically simple system. If he need time to work on a difficult case, he would close his office door. This meant we all knew if his door was closed, we could not interrupt him. If it was open, we could walk in and ask anything.

My boss closed his door around three or four times a week, and everyone knew the “code”—so to speak.

Don’t be afraid of closing your door. If you explain to your team when your door is closed not to disturb you, your team will respect your request.

I remember, no matter how urgent something was, if my boss’s door was closed, I would have to wait. If I had a screaming client on the end of the phone, I would calmly explain my boss was unavailable at the moment, but as soon as it was available, I would ask him and get back to them. For four years, I never had an issue with that.

So, Riccardo, the first step is to list out your new core work. What does that look like at a task level? Get those tasks set up in your task manager or calendar as recurring tasks or events.

Get comfortable blocking time out on your calendar for focused work. Then when you are in a focused work session, make sure nobody disturbs you.

Finally, make sure you are doing a weekly daily planning session. Remember, not all projects need attention every week. All that really matters is what needs your attention next week. In the daily planning session review your tasks and appointments for the next day and make sure they are realistic. Don’t try and be a hero and convince yourself you can attend six meetings and clear fifty tasks—you can’t, and you won’t. Get real.

I hope these ideas help, Riccardo. 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.

Monday Sep 05, 2022

How To Teach Productivity And Time Management To Your Colleagues.

Monday Sep 05, 2022

Podcast 244

Becoming more productive and being better at managing your time is not about the hustle culture or squeezing every spare minute out of the day. It needs to be more human than that. That is what we’re looking at this week.

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The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Episode 244 | Script

Hello and welcome to episode 244 of the Working With 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 for this show.

Productivity has a bad name. Many believe it’s about maximising your time doing work, so your company can squeeze the most value out of you without having to pay you more.

But becoming more productive and better at managing your time is and should never have been, about companies exploiting their workforce. Personal productivity is about building balance into our lives. A life where we can earn a reasonable income and have time to spend with the people we care about without becoming overwhelmed, stressed or burnt out.

But how can we do that with all the demands on our time? Well, that’s what we will be looking at in this week’s episode.

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

This week’s question comes from Ann. Ann asks, Hi Carl, how do I convince my team that becoming more productive is to help them, not just the company? Every time I try to teach them to be more productive or be better with their time, they don’t want to know.

Hi Ann, thank you for your question.

This is one of the sad things about the work of time management and productivity. For a lot of people, they think it’s all corporate mumbo-jumbo and is designed to “exploit the workers”.

Now, perhaps in the early days of mass manufacturing, that was the case. Hungry, ambitious factory owners wanted to squeeze every last drop of energy from their workers so they could maximise their profits from their endeavours.

However, we’ve come a long way since then. Today, we are much more aware of the need for adequate rest. Indeed many countries have laws protecting workers from exploitative bosses. The European Union countries have what is called the Working Time Directive which sets limits on the number of hours workers can be asked to work in a week.

In recent years, we’ve had the hustle culture trend—where if you want to build your own business you need to be pushing 100 hours+ each week. This has been widely advertised by the likes of Elon Musk and Gary Vaynerchuk as a good thing.

Well, is it? To me that depends.

In the early days of starting my own business, the business was my total focus. I was working up to eighteen hours a day because I was working two jobs. I had my regular teaching work and in my spare time I was developing my online business.

The thing is I never felt exhausted or close to burn out because I was loving every minute. I couldn’t wait to start the day and I never wanted the day to end. Sleep, back then was an inconvenience to me.

But that kind of working is not sustainable in the long-term.

And that’s the key to this. There will be times when you need to pull out all the stops and work long hours. But that should never be the default position.

Very much like when we lived an agrarian life. The years went in seasons. The spring time was for planting, the summer was for nurturing and protecting our crops. The autumn was the harvesting of those crops and winter was for relaxation and maintenance. Spring and autumn were our busiest times. During those periods we were working from daybreak to sunset, likely seven days a week. In the summer and winter, we worked less hours.

Now the way I see productivity and time management is by getting to grip with how we are using our time, we can build balanced and sustainable lives. We have time for our relationships, to take care of our health and to develop our knowledge and skills while working a full-time job.

It’s not just about our work. Work is a part of our lives, but it is only a part of our lives.

When you think about it, the average person works forty-hours a week, yet a week has 168 hours. That’s roughly a quarter of our week. What do we do with the other three quarters?

Becoming better at managing your time and ultimately more productive allows you to complete all your work tasks within those forty hours, so you can enjoy the other 126 hours. That may mean ensuring you get at least seven hours sleep each evening. Taking some time out for exercise to protect your health and for spending quality time with the people that matter to you. That to me is the best reason for getting better at managing time and being more productive.

But it is more than that. Being more aware of time and what we do with the time helps us to focus more on what is really important to us.

It’s true at some point, our career will be high up on our list of priorities. Most people want to advance their careers, perhaps they have a goal to become a leader in their organisation, or ultimately to start their own business. There will be times when eight hours a day will not be enough to achieve what you want to achieve. That’s fine, as long as it’s temporary.

What I find with the most productive people is they make their productive and time management practices a part of who they are. They develop processes that while are flexible to deal with the unexpected, enable them to have the time available for exercise, family and friends.

I remember reading an article about Cheryl Sandberg a few years ago, that described how her mornings were focused on getting her children ready for school. She ensured there was always time for a family breakfast before her kids headed out to school and she headed to the office. Equally, she made sure she was there when her kids returned from school later in the day.

It’s her time management and productivity practices that help her to manage her family life as well as her professional life. Any article you read about Cheryl Sandberg will show you where her priorities lay.

And that’s where your Areas Of Focus step in. It’s these eight areas that inform you where you priorities are. Once you know what your areas of focus are, what they mean to you and what you need to do each week to make sure you are giving sufficient time to them, you can build those activities into your weekly life.

For instance, keeping fit and healthy is a core area of focus for me. So, I have a two hour block each day for exercise. One my favourite times of the day is the hour my wife and I take Louis for his daily walk. He gets on with his thing and we can talk and laugh.

While we don’t schedule these walks on a weekly basis, it’s something we do plan each day.

A couple of questions you can ask your colleagues, Ann, is what is important to them? What would they like to spend more time doing? This moves the narrative away from the word “productivity” to something more interesting.

Now, you may get answers like spending more time sitting on a beach drinking cocktails. That’s fine, because what you want to do is to connect the notion of better time management and productivity with the idea that by being more intentional with their time, they can build habits and practices that will enable them to do more of the things they want to do.

Nobody wants to be sitting on a beach with a cocktail in hand worrying about what’s in their inbox. While you might be at the beach, you’re not mentally there. You’re still at work. That’s not a good place to be.

Having processes and systems in place allows you to completely turn off from work and focus yourself on being present with the things you are doing in the moment. When my wife and I are walking Louis, I’m not thinking about the email I need to respond to or the next YouTube video I will be recording. I am present.

Time management isn’t really about managing time. You cannot do that because time is a fixed resource. What we can manage is the activity we do in the time we have available. So, the only question we need to answer is what are we going to do with the time we have each day?

How much sleep do you want to get each day? How much time would you like to spend exercising, socialising, resting and doing your work? This is where creating a calendar and calling it your perfect week helps.

With your “perfect week” calendar, you start with the things you want to do on a regular basis. For instance, I like to have ninety minutes each day for exercise and an hour a day for walking Louis. I try to get seven hours sleep a night and I like to have an hour at the end of the day for reading and learning.

So, these are scheduled on my perfect week calendar. In total, I like to have ten and a half hour a day for sleep and my own activities. Eating takes up around two hours a day—I like to cook dinner as it gets me away from the computer screen. So in total I get to spend half my twenty four hours on myself and family. The remaining twelve hours can be given over to work.

Now as it’s my own business I run, twelve hours is perfect. For me my work is a way to help people which is my biggest motivator. Helping people regain a better relationship with their time so they are spending it doing the things they want to do is my purpose in life.

That doesn’t mean I do spend twelve hours a day working. Some days I do, others I don’t. For instance, I won’t do any work on a Saturday night. That’s reserved for meeting friends or watching British detective dramas—it’s a hobby of mine to watch these shows trying to work out who did it.

It’s when we can get to decide what we do with our time that we regain control over our time. Remember our work is twenty-five percent of the week. The remaining seventy-five percent is ours to chose what we want to do.

I hope that explanation helps you, Ann. I think the secret is to change the way we see time management and productivity. It isn’t just a bout our work. It’s about our life. If we want more time to do things we want to do, we need to manage the activities we do in the time we have available.

I hope that has helped and thank you for your question.

It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.

Monday Aug 29, 2022

The Secret To Productivity Greatness.

Monday Aug 29, 2022

What’s the easiest way to become more productive and better manage your time? That’s what we are considering this week.

You can subscribe to this podcast on:

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Links:

The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System