Showing you ways to get control of your time through tested techniques that will give you more time to do the things you want to do.
Episodes
Monday May 25, 2020
Monday May 25, 2020
This week, what is the difference between an area of focus and a routine? It’s a question I am frequently asked, so this week I’m answering that one.
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Script
Episode 134
Hello and welcome to episode 134 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.
This week, I am answering a frequently asked question about areas of focus and routines. What are the differences? It’s a question I am often asked and it is a difficult question to answer because we will all have different priorities and different things that are important to us. If you are just starting out building a new business your areas of focus will be very different from a student managing their PhD thesis or a person just starting out on their career in architecture.
That said, understanding which tasks need to be performed frequently and consistently in order for a goal or project to be successfully completed, that is relatively easy. It’s a skill well worth developing as it will help you to focus on what’s important.
Now, before we get to the question, if you have joined the Time Sector Course, check out the additional lessons I have added. I have added a lesson on managing your actionable email and developing a project in Microsoft OneNote. OneNote is a great app to develop your projects as you have a lot of features that can help. I will add an Evernote one once the promised Evernote update is released and in the coming weeks, I will be adding a Google setup for those of you who have asked for it.
Also, a Time Sector System for teams course is in development that can be rolled out within a company. I’m excited about that as I believe this system in a team will simplify the way projects and work are managed within a team.
Okay, on with the show and that means it’s now time for me to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Carlo. Carlo asks: Hi Carl, thank you for your excellent Time Sector Course. it has changed the way I manage my tasks in such a positive way. Yesterday, my weekly review only took 25 minutes—it used to take me nearly an hour every week. My question is: you talk about “recurring areas of focus” and “routines”. I don’t completely understand the difference between the two. Could you explain a bit more?
Thank you, Carlo, for this question. I am regularly asked it and I know it can be a difficult one because there is a grey area between the two.
The simple answer is routines do not improve your life or take your projects and goals forward. They are just things you have to do. Take the garbage out, wash the car, dog, cat etc. Do your expenses, check your bank accounts or update your time card. It would not be the end of the world if you missed doing a routine for a few days. They are just life’s less important necessities that we all have to do.
Areas of focus are the opposite of routines. Areas of focus do contribute to your goals and projects and do help to improve your life.
Doing your exercise, writing your journal, spending time talking with your partner, your kids and your friends. All these could be part of your areas of focus. Any activity you do that moves a project or goal forward would be classed as an area of focus.
Anything that is important to you and your wellbeing can be classed as an area of focus. This is why it is hard for me to give a precise definition. We all have different goals. Interests and priorities. Only you can decide what these are, nobody else can. I am afraid if I give a list of what can be classed as an area of focus people will copy it and think only things on that list can be an area of focus.
That is not the case. Areas of focus are deeply personal. They are whatever you decide is important, not me.
In a way you can think of an area of focus as any task you want to focus on that enhances your life or moves a goal or project forward.
So why separate them? Well,
One of the difficulties many of us have is we confuse activity with progress. We do a lot of tasks and feel like we have been busy but if we stop and analyse what we have done we have not moved any project or goal forward. We have been like the proverbial hamster running around on a hamster wheel. We are moving, but we are going nowhere.
This was a problem I identified in myself a long time ago. I felt busy all the time, I was doing a lot of stuff, running around and feeling stressed but my projects and goals were hardly moving anywhere. It was only when I stopped and analysed what I was doing each day did I discover that 80% of what I was doing was not important. It would not have been a big issue had I not done those tasks. It certainly would have made no difference whether a project completed on time or not. Yet, I felt these tasks had to be done.
This was something I learned from Tony Robbins’ Time of Your Life course, we micromanage tasks too much. We break things down too small.
There’s a false belief that if you break down tasks to a ‘more manageable’ level it will make the project easier or make it easier to start the project and stop you from procrastinating. It’s complete rubbish of course. If you are going to procrastinate you are going to procrastinate.
Just because you have a task that says “open up PowerPoint” instead of “work on presentation” it’s going to make it easier is rubbish. Being explicit and clear about what you need to do - ‘work on your presentation’ - is still going to get done.
However, one thing is important, you do need to identify the difference between the tasks that are going to give you the biggest return and the ones that give you a false sense of making progress.
This is why being very clear about the tasks that will move you towards your goals and the tasks that won’t move the needle very much is important and why I recommend you make a distinction between tasks that drive goals and projects forward and tasks that won't.
Why recurring areas of focus?
If you want to complete a project or achieve a goal you are going to have to take action consistently over a period of time. You won’t learn Spanish if all you do is study for an hour once a month. If you want to learn Spanish or any other foreign language you will have study the language almost every day consistently.
Learning a foreign language is not hard in terms of the process. The process is very easy. The difficulty is maintaining the consistency. That’s why so many people fail at achieving their goals and why projects are delayed. It’s a lack of consistency. Doing the work, day after day.
Establishing what tasks you need to do frequently and consistently that drive you forward is essential. Not knowing which tasks give you 80% of your results and which ones do not is going to lead you down roads that either take you nowhere or take you on a detour away from the objective.
Once you have established what these tasks are, you can then set them up to recur when you need them to recur. For me, exercise and fitness is an important part of my life. Maintaining my weight at 80 kgs is a part of that. So, I have a recurring area of focus that tells me to schedule my exercise on my calendar every Sunday.
However, taking my weight every Friday is actually set up as a routine. If I skip taking my weight reading once or twice it will not have any serious impact on my overall goal. Doing my exercise does have an impact. For me, if I am not exercising, I gain weight. If I exercise my weight remains reasonably consistent. Not exercising also impacts my energy levels too. So, an 80% impact task is doing exercise. Knowing my current wright is a 20% impact task.
Likewise, with my content. I produce seven pieces of content each week. One blog post, one podcast episode, three YouTube videos and two newsletters. Each one of those requires planning and writing or recording. These are important areas of focus for me and they have to be done every week. They are therefore contained in my recurring areas of focus.
Updating my content scheduler—I use Asana to manage my content—is not essential to the production of my content. It is important, but not essential. So, updating my Asana boards is a routine. I have it come up on a daily basis as part of my daily routines, but it would not have an effect on my content production if I skipped a day or two.
The important work is content creation. Managing the content schedule is not going to help with creating the content.
So there you go, Carlo, hopefully, that has given a clearer picture of the difference between a routine and an area of focus.
The whole point in separating these is so you can differentiate between the tasks that will drive your projects and goals forward and the tasks that do not really contribute towards that goal. Routines can be important but remember they do not make a big impact.
Over time you will get better at this and will instinctively know what tasks need to be performed regularly that will lead to your project or goal’s success and the less important tasks that, while perhaps being important, are not going to move things forward very much.
Thank you for your question and thank you to everyone who has joined the Time Sector Course. The feedback has been tremendous and I am so grateful to have been able to help so many people.
Thank you for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.
Monday May 18, 2020
Monday May 18, 2020
Podcast 132
This week, how do you find time each day to work on your goals?
Links:
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The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System
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Script
Episode 133
Hello and welcome to episode 133 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.
This week, it’s all about fitting in your goals and the things you really want to do when you already have a full schedule.
Now, before we get to the answer, if you have been considering joining the Time Sector Course, now is the right time to do so. The early-bird discount will be ending in the next twenty-four hours. You have until midnight, Tuesday 19th to get yourself into the course at the special introductory offer.
This is a revolutionary new way of managing your tasks and your work. It gives you back your time, by focusing more on doing the work and less on the processing and organising. It’s simple, easily maintained and will give you so much time back.
Full details of the course are in the show notes.
Okay, on with the show and that 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 Stephen. Stephen asks: Hi Carl, I want to begin an MBA but I am too afraid to commit totally to it. It’s expensive and I will have to save money to do it, but I am worried if I do save the money and register for the degree I will not do the classes and fail. It will be a waste of money. Are there any tips that might help?
That’s a great question, Stephen! Thank you.
Now I know it’s easy for people like me to tell you to sit down with a pen and piece of paper and write out your goals. But that is the first step. If you do not have your goals written down they are only wishes, and wishes are not strong enough to motivate you to get up and take the steps you need to take. So whatever you may think of the advice about sitting down and writing out your goals, start there. You do need that list.
Next up, how you structure your goal is important. It needs to be clear and it needs to be measurable. Just saying “I want to study for my MBA” is not good enough. You need to be much more specific than that. The goal needs to be written out as “to register for an MBA programme and to complete it by July 2023”
In that example, there are two parts. The first is to enrol in the programme. Now, I know MBA programmes are expensive so your first objective might be to save up enough money so you can enrol. The second goal will be to do the studying required for you to successfully complete the programme.
In this instance, take step one first. Save the money. While you are doing that you can do any research needed to find the right course for you. The good thing about having to save money first is it will test your resolve. If your “why” is not strong enough you will not progress must further than this initial step.
And that brings me to your “Why”.
Here’s the thing about your “why”. It has to be YOUR way. You have to want to do whatever it is you want to do for you. Not for your parents, your spouse or to impress people. When you do that, the “why” is someone else’s why and that will not sustain you. Your reason for doing something must come from within you.
Losing weight and building muscle so you can impress people at the beach will be short-lived. Losing weight and building muscle so you can live a long, healthy active life will be self-sustaining.
The same applies to studying for your MBA. If your real “why” is to impress people by having “MBA” after your name, your “why” will be weak. When you plan to spend a weekend studying and your friends suggest you go out for a few beers on a Friday night, you’re going to go for the beers (because you can tell everyone how hard you are going to study over the weekend) The problem will be when you wake up Saturday morning and you feel hungover and tired. The quality of your studies will be diminished.
So, if you are really serious about this goal, you are going to hand over your hard-earned cash. When you do that you are not going to want to waste your money so you are much more likely to carry through with your goal. Handing over money, or anything else of value to you, is going to give you a real incentive to put in the effort to study.
Okay, so you are enrolled, how do you make sure you consistently do your studies? Use your calendar.
This is where you are going to have to be completely honest with yourself. It’s easy to add events to a calendar and because it’s easy it’s also easy to ignore what's on your calendar. Never ignore your calendar.
Ignore your to-do list but never ignore your calendar. If you start ignoring what’s on your calendar your whole structure is going to break down. You need something on which to build your discipline. Treat your calendar as sacred territory. You know the saying - “if it’s on your calendar it gets done”
What this means to me is, if I am not sure I am going to be able to do something it does not go on my calendar. It goes on my to-do list. My to-do list is negotiable. My calendar is not.
You see you need something that you hold sacred when it comes to your time and your calendar is the best tool you have for that.
You do not have to micro-manage every minute of the day—you do need the flexibility to manage the unknowns that will inevitably come up in your day—and you need the mindset of what goes on your calendar gets done and only in exceptional situations would you ever consider not doing something on your calendar.
You can do a simple test here. Add a recurring event to your calendar to go for a 40-minute walk every evening for 30 days. Track it in a habit tracker or on a paper calendar (you can create one using Apple’s Numbers or an Excel sheet) and cross off the days. See if you can commit to 40 minutes every evening to walking. If you can do it, you will improve your self-discipline and the way you treat your calendar will improve.
So, decide how much time you want to dedicate to your studies each week. What you are looking for is a baseline… A minimum amount of time you will spend studying each week. Your lectures will be fixed. They go in your calendar first. Then you add the study time. Perhaps you decide you will dedicate two sessions of ninety minutes each week as a minimum. Fix those sessions as repeating events in your calendar each week. They are now non-negotiable. You will do whatever it takes to do those study sessions.
The key is to schedule the same time each week. Let’s say Monday evening between 8 pm and 9:30 pm and Saturday mornings between 10 am and 11:30 am. These are your fixed, non-negotiable core study times. Once you have established them, you tell everyone these times are non-negotiable.
At first, your friends and family will try and persuade you to make exceptions. Never make exceptions. Once people realise you are serious about this, they will stop trying to persuade you to do something else.
Of course, you are likely to increase these sessions once exams and written papers come due. But you still need a minimum requirement each week.
The next part of your planning is to identify the core tasks that will drive you forward with your goal. There is always something. If you listened to last week’s episode where I explained the difference between a core task and an area of focus, you will understand the importance of your core tasks.
Your core tasks are the tasks that move the goal or project forward. It's the time you spend in the gym, it’s the time you spend writing the blog posts or the book, it’s time you spend reviewing your course notes and studying. Your core, critical tasks are the tasks that get the work done.
Okay, so you know what your core tasks are, these need to go on your calendar. If you are using your calendar correctly, then your commitments will already be on your calendar. So what you are looking for are the gaps. If there are no gaps, you're overcommitted. You will need to review your commitments and reassess your priorities.
That can be very hard. Let’s say you always meet up with your friends for a Saturday morning brunch and it’s something you really look forward to. But what happens if Saturday morning is also the best time for you to do some solid studying?
Now you have the classic choice between something you love doing and doing something you know you should do for your future. This is where your “why” for doing something comes in. If you why for doing something is strong enough you will make that sacrifice. If it is not, you will not be prepared to make the sacrifice.
As I have said many times before, “if it’s important enough you’ll find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse” and nothing illustrates this more than when you have a conflict between something you enjoy doing and something you know you should do. This is where the strength of your why will come in.
If your why is strong enough you will instinctively know that the right thing to do is to spend one or two hours on a Saturday morning studying. It could mean you wake up one or two hours earlier on a Saturday, get your studying in and then reward yourself by having brunch with your friends. It doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game.
The important thing is that you get your scheduled study time in. That is your primary objective. Once that’s done you are free to do whatever else you want to do.
The difficulty with managing your time is the responsibility is on you. Nobody else. You cannot delegate the management of what you do with your time to someone else and then complain you don’t have enough time. This is your time. You need to protect it.
It fascinates me when people tell me they cannot manage their time because their boss is always giving them more work to do. Sure, that’s what bosses are supposed to do. But zoom out a little here. When you signed your employment contract you decided to give X amount of time five days a week to a company and in return, they agreed to pay you a certain amount of money. It’s a win for you and it’s a win for your company.
Within those hours each day, you give to your employer you need to manage the work that comes in. You can learn to become more efficient with the way you do your work, you could ask your boss to reduce your workload. There is a multitude of things you could do. Complaining is not an effective way to manage time. Accepting the problem, reviewing your options and then making a decision to do something positive about it is how you become better at your work and better at managing what you do with the time you are given each day.
I hope that has helped, Stephen. Thank you for your question and thank you to all of you for listening.
It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.
Monday May 11, 2020
Monday May 11, 2020
Do you find distinguishing between the important and the trivial difficult? Well, this week, that’s the question I’m answering this week.
Links:
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The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System
Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes
The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page
Script
Episode 132
Hello and welcome to episode 132 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.
There’s a huge difference between trivial and critical tasks and I am pretty sure most of you listening know that. But, while we may think we understand this difference, how many of us actually know the difference between the two? Well. I shall be answering that question this week.
Now, before we get to the question and answer. For those of you who have already joined my Time Sector course, I just want to let you know that I have added two classes based on some of the questions that were asked. The first is how to manage actionable email and the second how to create a master projects list. So, if you have taken the course and have not seen those additional classes, they are there in the course now.
And if you have not joined yet, you can still get the course for $39.99 for a couple more days. The early bird special offer will be ending very soon, so please don’t miss out. This course is revolutionary and will change the way you manage your work and your tasks for the better. Gone will be the overwhelm of an unwieldy projects list, tasks will no longer disappear and die in a bottomless pit of tasks hidden inside old, out of date projects and instead, you will have a very active list of tasks that require a lot less time to manage.
Full details of the course are in the show notes.
Okay, on with the show and that means it’s now time for me to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Sonia. Sonia asks: Thank you, Carl, for the great Time Sector course. It has really simplified the way I manage my work. I have a question about what you describe as “core tasks” could you explain a bit more what you mean by these and how they are different from areas of focus?
Thank you, Sonia, for your question.
I felt adding a section about “core tasks” was important because I have noticed a lot of people get caught up in trivialities, falsely believing these trivialities are important to the success of a goal or a project. They are not and often they cause distraction from the main objective and contribute to the project’s or goal’s failure
Now, to define a “core task” you should ask yourself: what are the tasks I do that directly contributes to my income, career and life success?
Now, this may not be as easy as it first appears. Often the work that directly contributes to your income, career and life success is not obvious. To give you a simple example:
Let’s imagine you want to become a champion body-builder. What would be the “core tasks” that will help you to reach the goal of becoming a champion bodybuilder?
The two core tasks would be lifting weights and diet.
This means that as long as you make sure you do your workouts every day and you eat the right foods, you will have contributed 80% of the work you need to achieve your goal.
However, if you were just starting out with this goal you would also need to find the right gym, get the right personal trainer (at least to start with), the right workout clothes, the right supplements and the right training programmes.
There’s actually quite a lot that needs to be done in order to get close to achieving the goal of becoming a champion body-builder.
Now, in this example, if you are not focused on your core tasks—the weight lifting and diet, it does not matter how many personal trainers you interview, what the gym looks like or the training programme is, you are never going to achieve your goal. Yet, often, people focus on these trivialities and they never move their goal forward.
The same problems occur with weight loss and other lifestyle changes you may want to make. If you have not identified the core tasks that will directly contribute to your goal’s success, then you will be running round in circles making very little progress.
Take for example something that happened last week. A student in my Time Sector course wrote to tell me the editing was off in some of the classes in the course. I went through every video and checking them and discovered that one video should have been trimmed .227 of a second sooner. A cut that 99% of people would not have noticed.
Now, in this situation, the writer was correct, the edit was off. But only .227 of a second off and only in one video. The question I had to ask myself was is this relevant? Does having ‘perfectly’ edited videos contribute to the course’s overall objective? The answer is no. Not at all.
The overall objective of the course is to educate. Now, the videos do contribute to that, but they do not need to have to the second perfect edits to achieve that goal. This means editing is not a core task in this project. Editing is an ‘important’ part, but it is not a critical part of the course’s development and overall success.
My core tasks are to educate people on the subject of time management, productivity and goal planning. That to me is why I am here. I love helping people and I love being in the education field. That is my core and anything that allows me to help people and educate, those will be my core tasks.
Knowing your core tasks also helps you identify the critical tasks inside a project. For example, are a number of people I follow on YouTube. Some of them create fantastically produced videos. Thomas Frank and Matt D’Avella, for example. They tell their story in cinematic glory and have millions of people following them. Now for them, their goal is clearly to produce near-perfect videos. It is something they have identified as being important. I admire them for the work they put into their videos.
For me, my goal is to educate. That is my critical, overall objective. My videos do not come close to the quality of the videos Matt and Thomas produce. I put out three videos per week. Matt and Thomas put out one video every seven to ten days.
The number of videos you put out each week is not important, but it does go towards demonstrating where your objectives are. Matt and Thomas’s goal is to produce beautifully created videos that both entertain and educate. And they achieve that with tremendous success—just look at their subscriber count. My goal is to educate as many people as I can in using Todoist, Evernote, Apple’s productivity apps and time management in general. Doing that with beautifully crafted films is not a priority for me.
So establishing what the core tasks that will drive you towards achieving the goal of your project or goal is an important first step. Without knowing what the core tasks are that will drive you towards achieving completion of a project or the achievement of a goal you will end up making little to no progress.
So how do core tasks differ from areas of focus?
Areas of focus are tasks that support your core tasks. To demonstrate this, let’s go back to the body-building example. The core tasks are lifting weights and eating the right food. To support that you still need a training programme. You still need to list out the foods you will buy from the supermarket and you will still need to schedule your gym time. Al these are areas of focus. On their own, they will not help you achieve your goal of being a champion bodybuilder, yet they are still important because without them it will be difficult to do the right weight training and eat the right food.
Developing a course. While the overall core tasks are related to the educational content, supporting that content is the video editing. If the editing was not done, then the content would be disjointed and distracting from the educational content. So, to create an online course, the core work is developing the slides to explain the points, recording the videos and uploading them to my learning centre. The areas of focus are editing the videos and marketing the course.
To give you a business use case image you have been asked to do a presentation in ten days time. To create a presentation you need a number of tasks. Things like creating the slides, get the information, decide on the theme, decide how you will develop your story, what clothes you will wear etc.
Many of those tasks are not important. The theme, the typeface you will use etc while having an impact if you have no content to put in your slides it does not matter how beautiful the colour scheme is. The core task is to create the slide deck. Without that everything else is irrelevant. Once you have your slide deck with the information you want to share with the audience, then you can focus on the design, the typeface, the colour scheme and the clothes you will wear.
Another area I find people getting lost in trivialities is when developing a business idea, or starting a YouTube channel or writing a book.
In these cases, once you have an idea, you need to begin developing it. So the core tasks would be to sit down and begin writing the book. To record your first video, write the first blog post or create your first product. Without any of those things, you will only ever have an idea.
Yet, I see so many people with these amazing ideas getting caught up with their branding, website design, blog hosting and video recording equipment. None of these is important at all. The problem is while you are researching and deciding on brand image, messaging and website design, none of the core work is getting done. No product is being built, no blog posts are being written and no videos are being produced. Those are your core tasks. Those tasks need to be your priority.
At some point in the future branding and messaging will become important, but not until you have some content or at the very least a prototype of your product. Then these areas may come important but are very unlikely to ever become a core task. The core task will always be your content.
Hopefully, this answer will go some way to explaining the difference between areas of focus and your core tasks. Core tasks are critical must-do tasks that produce your work. Keep you in employment and drives everything forward. Areas of focus are the surrounding tasks that, while important, do not necessarily produce the work that ultimately pays your bills and puts food on your table.
I hope this explainer answers your question, Sonya. Thank you for sending it in and thank you for allowing me to use it in this podcast.
Thank you also to you for listening. I really appreciate your support and I hope I am helping you to become better organised and more productive.
It just remains for me now, to wish you all a very very productive week.
Monday May 04, 2020
Monday May 04, 2020
This week, I have a fascinating question about the choices we have in life and what to do if you feel you made a poor decision and now what to reverse that decision.
Links:
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***NEW*** The Time Sector Course
The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System
Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes
The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page
Script
Episode 131
Hello and welcome to episode 131 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.
Have you ever felt a decision you made about your career or life many years ago is the cause of your stress and unhappiness today and you feel trapped? Well, that’s the topic of this week’s question. What to do if you feel you are travelling down the wrong path.
Now, before we get to the answer, last week, I launched a brand new course called The Time Sector course. This course is designed for the twenty-first century. Created to help you manage all the inputs that come your way every day and allow you to focus on when you will do the task.
Many people have discovered that managing and organising your tasks by project does not work for them. In today’s world, with all the inputs coming your way and the many things you have are multi-step tasks, you end up with hundreds of projects to manage that leaves you spending a disproportionate amount of time just trying to stay on top of everything.
And many of the tasks you collect get processed into one of those hundreds of projects only to die a slow death never to see the light of day again. A really bad way to manage your work.
The Time Sector System eliminates projects from your to-do list altogether and instead organises your work by when you need or want to do it. A much more logical way to manage your tasks.
If you think about it, the only thing that matters is when you will do a task. The only factor that will tell you whether you can do a task or not is available time. It does not matter how much intention, motivation or inspiration you have to complete a task if you don’t have the time to complete it you will not complete it.
The Time Sector System gives you a much simpler way to manage your tasks. It puts the planning and managing of projects where it belongs—in your notes app—and helps you to manage your available time more effectively.
A link to more details about the Time Sector System is in the show notes. I hope you take some time to have a look as this system could be the difference between continuing to struggle to manage your tasks and your time and finding an effective way to balance your work and the things you love doing.
Okay, on with the show, so that 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 Bill. Bill asks: Hi Carl, several years ago I decided I wanted to work in sales, but over the last year I have felt increasingly unhappy with that decision. I took your Time and Life Mastery course and I realised my long-term vision is not what I am doing today.
I want to change my career and my direction, but I have a family and a mortgage and I just don’t feel I have a choice. Do you have any recommendations that might help?
Thank you, Bill, for the question. Now, let me start by talking about one of my favourite actors: Jason Statham. Like most action-adventure actors these days, Jason Statham plays pretty much the same character in all his movies: a tough, non-compromising, generally good guy.
But if you watch a little closer you will notice his characters also all appear to live the same simple life. If you have seen his Mechanic movies, for example, you’ll notice his home, while luxurious, appears to have very few things his character cares about. His record collection and his watch seem to be it.
Even in real life, Jason Statham lives a simple life—well simple by Hollywood standards. He follows a simple diet and a consistent exercise routine. You will also probably notice he does very few interviews or promotions outside of his movies.
If you look at the lives of the most successful people, the people who maintain their success over a long period of time, they all appear to have something in common. No matter how successful they become, they generally stick to the same routines and habits that enabled them to be successful every day. There's no compromise. Most of the people who achieve immense success and then disappear without a trace, also follow a similar pattern. They stop doing what made them successful in the first place.
Every day, when you wake up you get to choose whether to stay in bed or go and do some exercise. Nobody’s telling you to do anything. You are no longer a child. You get to choose. It’s the same with your diet. You get to choose whether to eat that cake or not. Nobody’s forcing you to eat it.
When you accept you have a lot more control over your life than you think it can be incredibly liberating.
Many years ago, after studying and training to be a lawyer, I discovered I hated working in an office. Prior to working in an office, I had worked in hotel management, car sales and other non-office based jobs. I thought working in an office would be fantastic. I was wrong. It felt I was a day release prisoner but in reverse. I had to be in a fixed location Monday to Friday, five days a week and was allowed home in the evenings. It was a horrible experience for me.
The problem was I felt I had no choice. After studying and training for six years I believed had to live with my choices. Then one weekend I sat down to think about where my future life was going and it did not look good. I was heading towards a career in an industry that did not inspire me, it was only a matter of time before I settled down got married, got a mortgage and had kids. And once that happened I knew it would be incredibly difficult to give up my legal career.
It was a weekend in November 2001, that I decided I did not have to do any of those things if I chose not to. I always had a choice about what I did each day and I also had a choice about what I wanted to do with my career.
All I had to do was exercise that choice and I could do that at any time.
And that is how I found myself in South Korea in June 2002. I exercised my choice and it was the best decision I have ever made.
For whatever reason, we often feel trapped by decisions we made earlier in life. The thing is you are rarely ever trapped. You always have options and you can always accept you made a poor choice and decide to try something new.
In many ways, the hardest battle we have is accepting we made a bad decision. But let’s get real here, nobody makes the right decisions every time. We all make poor decisions from time to time. Some of those decisions have small consequences, others have very big consequences, like marrying the wrong person or investing all our life savings into a sure thing that turned out not to be a sure thing.
But whether the consequences are big or small, we almost always have a choice about whether we continue down the same path or take an exit and begin something new.
So what do you do if you feel your current path will not take you towards your vision for the future?
Well, first research what will put you on the right path towards achieving your vision for the future. This can take quite a bit of time as it depends on what your vision is. You may be lucky and already have a clear idea of what you want to be doing with your life. Other times it may take a few weeks or months to figure it out.
For example, you could be a manager in a company now but want to become a church minister and share your faith with other people. In this instance, you only need to become more involved in your church, volunteer to run bible study groups, talk to your church minister about what he or she would recommend you do to fulfil your desire to become a leader of a church. You could investigate taking a theology course, or if there are any seminaries that allow you to attend part-time. There’s a lot of things you can do before you need make any kind of decision.
The key is to understand you do not have to make any kind of decision right away. Often the process of investigating and researching will give you a lot of inspiration and that will create momentum to keep moving forward. Remember, "most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade."
The fact you make a decision to do something about what you really want to do will change the way you look at things. You will start to see opportunities open up and you can then choose to take those opportunities or not when the time comes.
I often have people take a piece of paper and write out what they envision they will be doing in ten years time if they carry on doing what they are doing today. Where will they be in ten years time if they don’t change anything about the way they live today?
What if you don’t change your current career path or lifestyle choices? What if you are in an uninspiring career, eat and drink too much and do no exercise? What physical and mental condition will you be in in ten years time? Will you be happy? Will you be healthy?
Once you have done that exercise, turn over the piece of paper and envision where you will be if you make some changes to your career path and lifestyle choices? Will you be in a better place?
Often when you realise that to get where you want to be in the condition you want to be in in ten years time will not take a lot of changes. It may involve enrolling in an online university course and making some minor changes to your diet. Nothing too dramatic.
After that exercise, all you need do is make a decision about when you will begin. And the best time to begin is now. As the old Chines proverb says: “the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now”.
The next piece of advice I would give is; do not overthink things. All plans change over time. I’ve seen far too many people decide they want to start their own business, for example, and they spend months—and sometimes years—thinking about their branding and target audience. The truth is the chances are you will not get your branding or target audience right the first time anyway—at least not until you start doing something that attracts an audience. Then you will see who your real audience is and be in a better position to create a brand that work for them (remember it is always about your audience it is never about you)
I had a vision and a plan when I began my YouTube channel four years ago that within three months had completely changed. I also had a branding message, that was turned upside down once I was able to see the analytics from the content I was producing. The people watching my videos and reading my blog posts were not the people I thought would be watching. From that data, I modified my message and branding to better suit the people who were engaging with my content.
If you do a Google search for Apple’s first logo, you will see the idea of a simple, minimalistic company was not what Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak first envisioned. Apple’s branding and image and products evolved over time once the company saw how they could differentiate themselves based on who was buying their products.
So Bill, take a step back. Do some thinking and figure out how you will use the next ten years to put yourself on course for the career and lifestyle you want to achieve for yourself and your family. You do not have to do anything as dramatic as quitting your job right away. Often all you need is to retrain yourself, change a few habits and make choices about your future life.
I hope that has helped and thank you for your wonderful question, Bill.
Thank you also to all of you for listening. Don’t forget if you have a question then you can email me at carl@carlpullein.com or you can DM me on Facebook or Twitter. All the links are in the show notes.
It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.
Monday Apr 27, 2020
Monday Apr 27, 2020
This week it’s all about your goals and staying focused so you actually get round to completing them
Links:
Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website
The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System
Productivity Masterclass | Create Your Own Custom Workflow
Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes
The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page
Script
Episode 130
Hello and welcome to episode 130 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 hope you are faring well during these difficult and unprecedented times. Disruptions to our lives like this do not come around very often, fortunately, yet with anything bad, I always like to see the silver lining and in this instance the opportunity to step back a little, review what we want to accomplish and how we want to accomplish it is an opportunity not to be missing.
I’ve written and spoken in the past about the need to stress test any kind of system you build for yourself, and now is a great chance to test your system. How does it cope when you are thrown out of your normal, day to day routines? How does it manage when you are surrounded by interruptions and demands from family members? Does it still work?
These questions can really help you to find that balance and find the best way for your system to be set up.
Now this week, I have a goals related question. We haven’t answered one of these for a while. This week it’s about staying focused on a goal and how to avoid being distracted and or lose interest in it once you have started taking the necessary action to make it happen.
Now before that, I would like to remind you that if you have not done so already I have a FREE online course that will teach you the concepts of COD - That’s collect, Organise and Do.
Collecting your tasks, commitments, ideas and events into a place you trust, spending a little time each day organising what you collected and the rest of the time doing the work you have identified needs to be done. It’s simple, it’s powerful and it works.
Details of the course are in the show notes.
Okay, it’s now time for me to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Toby. Toby asks: Hi Carl, I had a number of goals and projects that I was so excited to start this year and yet after a few weeks I lost interest and stopped working on them. I think I have a problem with motivation as this has always happened to me. Is there anything I can do to stay focused on them?
Hi Toby, thank you for your question and I can reassure you you are not alone. Struggling to stay focused on your goals and projects is hard. To achieve goals you are going to have to leave your comfort zone and that requires some big changes to your way of life.
Completing projects can also be hard if you don't have a boss or colleagues keeping you accountable. It’s much easier to slip back into our normal way of doing things and find excuses about why we cannot achieve a goal or complete a project when we do not have someone keeping us accountable.
And that’s something you need to be very alert to. The excuses your brain will come up with that prevents you from making the necessary changes you need to make to achieve your goal or complete a project.
And boy our brains are fantastic at coming up with excuses about why you are so different from everyone else. Why you cannot write a blog post, why you can’t apply for that promotion or why you cannot run a 10km road race.
What I’ve found is whenever a person says “I can’t” the vast majority of the time it’s got nothing to do with a lack of ability or qualifications or money. It’s got everything to do with a reluctance to make the necessary changes one needs to make to achieve that goal or to complete that project.
The “ah but they are different” excuse. The thing is we are all different. But that does not mean you cannot achieve your goals or complete your projects.
I recently heard a podcast talking about how Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson became the highest-paid Hollywood actor. It certainly wasn't luck. It’s because The Rock does the work nobody else is willing to do.
Despite all the success he has had in recent years, the amount of money he has earned, he still wakes up at 4 am and goes for a run or spends 45 minutes or so on the running machine. The Rock understands this. He knows the secret to his success is in the gym, not on the sofa or lying in bed. It must be so easy for him to sit back and say I’ve made it. I don’t have to go to the gym today” Yet he still goes. Why? Because he knows why he is successful. He knows what it takes to be successful and he’s made the decision to make those sacrifices.
You know, if you want to the physique of Dwayne Johnson you have to do the work Dwayne Johnson does.
And if you are not prepared to do that that’s okay. Accept that as your reason for not having the physique of Dwayne Johnson. But don't delude yourself by saying The Rock is a special case, or he was lucky. No, he wasn't. He puts the work in day after day after day. There’s nothing lucky about that.
That is commitment. Not luck.
And this is the same for your projects and goals. It takes commitment and consistency. I suppose a good question to ask before you decide to start any project or goal is:
What am I prepared to sacrifice in order to complete this?
That’s because to commit to completing a project or goal will require you to make time for doing it. That means you are going to have to sacrifice something. What will you sacrifice?
It could be you enjoy sitting down at the end of a long day to watch TV. Or you love going out for a few drinks with your friends on a weekend, or your favourite place is your nice warm bed.
If you really want to achieve your goal, complete your project what are you going to sacrifice?
You see, if you’re not prepared to sacrifice anything to achieve your goal or complete your project your motivation is not strong enough to carry you through.
A classic one is as the summer approaches many people feel the urge to lose some weight. So they embark on a crash diet. They go from eating three meals a day plus snacks to eating only one or two and no snacks. After a few hours on their new diet, they feel hungry. Then very hungry, then unbelievably hungry and after a few hours or a day or two they give up depending on the strength of their willpower.
The sacrifice—the discomfort of feeling hungry—is more powerful than the urge to look good on their summer holiday.
I often hear people talk of the desire to write a book or to start an online business as a side project. And these are great ways to develop skills and push your potential. Yet, once again there is a sacrifice to be made. There’s the risk of failure and the perceived embarrassment that will come from that—seriously if you fail that’s far better than never actually trying. There’s the time sacrifice—you are going to have to commit time to do these activities and that means you are going to have to stop doing something you already do.
All of these sacrifices will test your resolve and test your motivation.
So how do you develop motivation that is strong enough to overcome the discomfort of moving away from your comfort zone?
Now that’s a very difficult one to answer because it depends on where you are in life. By that I mean if you are in your early twenties, you feel you have plenty of time to write the book, start your own business or start an exercise programme.
I was a smoker when I was in my twenties—I didn’t care about lung cancer or other smoking-related diseases—they didn’t happen to people in their twenties. But as I got older that little voice in my head was telling me to give up—my long-term health would suffer and I would die young. And sure enough, the point came where my motivation to stay alive and live a healthy long-life became stronger than the nicotine hit I got from a cigarette. I quit.
If you are in your early thirties you are thinking about settling down, developing your career and building a family life for yourself, By the time you get to your mid to late forties, you motivation to preserve your health will be becoming stronger.
So a lot of our motivation comes from where we are in life. If you’ve just experienced the birth of your first child, your motivation to protect and preserve the financial well-being of your new family will be incredibly motivating. (Probably less so once that child becomes an adolescent teenager) As you approach retirement your motivation to build a sustainable retirement fund for yourself will be strong.
So, if you are looking for motivation you need to be asking questions about why a goal or a project is important.
And the final step to all of this you need to figure out what you need to do consistently every day to make whatever it is you want to accomplish happen.
The truth is, motivation will not last. The discomfort of your sacrifice will always trump your motivation later in the day. What you need to be doing is developing habits and routines that take you towards completing your project or your goal.
Writing that book? Write something every day. Set a minimum target say 500 words per day. Want to lose weight? Change your eating habits. Find the foods that you currently eat that directly contribute to your weight gain and replace them with healthier alternatives. Want to get that promotion at work? Find out what you have to do in order to get it. What training courses can you take, what skills need developing and make doing the work a habit or a routine? Something you just do.
Look for the action steps that will directly result in you completing your project or achieving your goal.
The Rock wakes up at 4 am because to him going to the gym and working out directly contributes to his success. Warren Buffett reads for 5 hours a day because he knows that the knowledge he picks up reading those financial reports directly contribute to his bottom line.
What can you do that will directly contribute to you achieving success with your projects and goals?
There you go, Toby. I hope that has helped and given you some concrete steps you can take to achieve your projects and goals. Thank you for your question.
And thank you to all of you for listening. Don’t forget, if you have a question, then you can email me—carl@carlpullein.com or you can DM me on Facebook or Twitter.
It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.
Monday Apr 20, 2020
Monday Apr 20, 2020
This week it’s all about calming down an out of control productivity system.
Links:
Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website
The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System
Productivity Masterclass | Create Your Own Custom Workflow
Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes
The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page
Script
Episode 129
Hello and welcome to episode 129 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 do hope you are all doing well and staying safe. It is in times of difficulty when the best of us comes out. Now is the time to stand up and be a leader and set an example for everyone around us.
Now this week, I’ve received a few emails and I’ve had a number of people ask this question on this subject—or a similar question— and that is one where the productivity system itself has become overwhelming and is now the problem and not the work being thrown at us.
Now, before I do go into this week’s question, I should point out that if you also find your productivity system has become bloated and overwhelming now would be a very good time to take or retake, my FREE COD productivity course. COD (Collect, Organise and Do) was created with simplicity at its heart. It was born out of my own experiences creating a monster of a productivity system that In itself became the problem that demanded more and more of my time every day.
The COD course will take you through the basic set up of a simple system, explain what you need (and by omission what you do not need) and show you, in outline, how to manage your work so you spend more time doing and less time organising and processing.
So if you haven’t done so already, get yourself signed up. It’s completely free and don’t worry, it is not a sales pitch designed to get you to sign up for ever more expensive courses. It is a course designed to help, not sell. And most important of all, it will show you the essential components of building a productivity system that works for you.
Okay, it’s now time for me to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Helen, Helen asks: Hi Carl, I’ve been following your work for some time and wonder if you can help sort out the mess I am in. I am using Evernote and Notion for my notes, I also have to use Microsoft OneNote for my work and I also use Todoist for my personal tasks and Microsoft’s new To-do for my work tasks. It all just feels so overwhelming. Is there anything I can do that will help me to feel more in control?
Firstly, thank you, Helen, for sending in this question.
Now, where do we start? The best place to start is recognising there is a problem and in this case Helen, you have done that. You have recognised you have a problem.
A good place to start is to calculate how much time you are spending organising and processing each day. Under normal circumstances, you really should only be spending twenty to thirty minutes, maximum, processing and organising your work. The rest of the time you should be doing the work.
A lot of overwhelm is self-inflicted. We spend more time adding than taking away. What we should be doing is looking at subtracting instead of adding.
Asking questions such as ‘do I really need this app?’ And ‘Is this adding to or reducing the amount of work I do each day?’ Are helpful in determining whether or not your system is the cause of the problem.
Also, look at the tasks themselves—do those tasks really need doing or can you combine them with other tasks—picking up your prescription at the same time as doing your weekly shopping. Replying to your actionable email while waiting to pick up your kids from school, for example.
Problems are also caused by us wanting to see a lot more than we need to see. And there is a difference between what we would like to see and what we need to see.
What you need to see is a simple list of tasks you have prioritised to do today. Nothing else. What we like to see often can be a list of tasks labeled to be done at the office and at the computer. What we have planned for the week, progress of a specific project and a whole bunch of other stuff. The problem there, of course, is seeing all that stuff doesn’t move anything forward and just causes anxiety, overwhelm, distraction and a feeling of being busy. Not exactly a good mental state to be in.
The time to be looking at future work is when you do your weekly planning session and to a less extent when you do your daily planning. 95% of the time on a day to day basis, you should only be seeing what you have prioritised to do today. That’s all that matters right now.
Tomorrow’s tasks are irrelevant at 9 am today. Tomorrow’s tasks only become relevant tomorrow. Stop looking. Focus on today’s tasks today and tomorrow’s tasks tomorrow.
You see, you are dressing up procrastination and calling it “planning”. Looking at next week’s tasks on a Tuesday afternoon when you still have Tuesday tasks to do is not planning. It’s procrastinating. There is a time for planning when a project or an idea needs developing and the associated tasks can be pulled out and put into your to-do list. But if you are constantly looking at what's coming up tomorrow, later in the week or next month and you still have tasks today’s tasks to do, you are procrastinating. Stop doing that. Do the tasks you have assigned yourself to do today and only go looking for more when you have completed those tasks.
Now many people have become so conditioned to checking and rechecking that there is a feeling of comfort in this action. A kind of delusion has set in—being convinced that all this checking and reviewing is somehow making them more productive. It’s not. You need to snap out of that thinking. Planning, reviewing and checking have their place, but that should never be at the expense of doing the work.
It’s similar to the same situation I find people who want to start a blog or YouTube channel. An awful lot of time is spent thinking, planning and thinking again and doing more research and more planning. You see all that planning, research and thinking is not doing. Nothing is being written or recorded. So nothing is happening.
Again, planning, researching, and thinking have their place and they are important. But none of that should ever get in the way of actually doing. For me, if I find myself planning and thinking beyond a few hours I see that as a trigger to analyse why I am not doing. I’ve learned from experience that having an idea, spending a little time thinking and planning it out and then doing it often leads to something special. My blog, this podcast and my YouTube channel all had a few hours of research and planning, but they only ever got off the ground and started when I sat down and started writing or recording. It was those first few attempts that gave me far more momentum and information than whatever I read, watched or planned.
So be very careful not to use ‘I just need to do a bit more research’ as an excuse not to start doing the work that matters. You’re going to learn a lot more from doing than you ever will from researching.
Now for the one that creeps upon us and we are not aware it is happening. Too many apps.
This one has become a much bigger problem for many people over the last two or three years because we are so lucky to be living in an age where I feel human ingenuity and creativity are at a peak.
There are so many amazing apps to choose from out there. From Notion to Bear Notes, from Things 3 to Microsoft’s ToDo. All of these apps have sprung up in the last two or three years and promise so much. It is so tempting to add one of these tools to our system.
And of course, we convince ourselves that we absolutely must have this new app because it is going to plug a gap we think we have in our system. Notion to me is the biggest culprit here because it promises to be all things to all people. It’s a task manager, a personal wiki, a note-taking app, a research tool and a place to play around with building creative lists.
The problem here is because Notion is all things it is not one thing. So we add it to our toolbox and do not eliminate any of our existing tools. So now, not only do you have a to-do list and a notes app to keep up with and maintain, you now have Notion to keep up with and maintain too. You’ve just added more processing and organising time and done nothing that optimises the time you spend doing.
When you have tools that duplicate each other you put a lot of drag on your overall system. When you collect something where does it go? Which to-do list? Which notes app? Which calendar app? That’s a lot of decisions to make. And if you are in a rush and you collect something, how do you remember where you collected it?
This is why I preach you need one to-do list, one notes app and one calendar app. You do not need multiple apps that do the same thing.
If your company requires you to use Outlook and Outlook calendar, then make Outlook calendar your calendar app. Likewise, if your company collaborates using OneNote, use OneNote as you notes app. Don’t use OneNote for Work and Evernote for personal. You are just overloading your cognitive load and you just do not need all that complexity.
If you are serious about becoming better organised and more productive, then drop your excess apps. Pick one. One to-do list, one notes app and one calendar app. That’s all you need. You may have a lot of work to do, but you are not a multinational conglomerate responsible for over 100,000 employees and millions of customers. You are an individual with a number of tasks to perform each day and a limited number of hours in which to do those tasks. You do not need all these distractions and complexity.
Focus on the work you have decided needs doing today, keep the apps you use to a minimum and reduce the amount of distractions and interruptions you get as best you can. Doing that will reduce your overwhelm and busy-ness and improve the quality of your work faster than another app will do. It leaves you feeling much more relaxed fulfilled and ultimately a lot happier.
I hope that has helped, Helen. Keep things simple and you will be fine.
Thank you for the question and thank you to all of you for listening. Don’t forget to have a look at my FREE COD course—details of which are in the show notes— and please stay safe. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.
Monday Apr 13, 2020
Monday Apr 13, 2020
This week, it’s all about what you can do to fine-tune your productivity systems so when we do come out of this pandemic you hit the track running.
Links:
Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website
Productivity Masterclass | Create Your Own Custom Workflow
The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System
Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes
The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page
Script
Episode 128
Hello and welcome to episode 128 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.
This week I have a question about what you can do with that little bit of extra time each week because you no longer have to spend hours commuting or stuck in traffic jams.
Speaking of having a little extra time, whether you have taken the free COD course or not, now would be a very good time to do the course again (or do it for the first time)
It’s completely free and it will give you everything you need to begin building your own productivity system.
Remember, you are a unique person with your own way of thinking and doing things. This is why developing your own system around three core areas—collecting, organising and doing—is the best place to start.
Details on how to join the course are in the show notes and I hope you get as much value from it as the thousands of other people who have taken the course already have.
Okay on with the show and that 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 Mike. Mike asks, hi Carl, like most people I am stuck at home and find I have a lot of extra time on my hands. I don't want to waste this chance. Are there any things I can do that will help to make me more productive?
Thank you, Mike, for your question. It’s something I have been doing. Looking at the way I do my work, seeing if I can find more effective and efficient ways of doing it and of course clearing up old folders, wardrobes and drawers around my home.
So what can you do to make your system more efficient and effective?
One area you may want to start with is to clean up your notes app. This is an app that can quickly fill up with a lot of old notes and stuff we collected and no longer need and just get forgotten about.
Now if you are anything like me, you may have a few thousand notes, so the question is where do you begin? For me, I start with the oldest notes. These are the ones most likely to be deleted.
Most notes apps will allow you to flip the way they are organised. You want to change your order from last in to first in—or oldest first. This just makes it a little easier as you will be organising from the top down—the natural way—rather than the bottom up—the unnatural way.
When I last did this, I had around 6,000 notes in my notes app. Clearing up 6,000 notes is quite daunting, so I decided to do 3 months at a time. I had three years of notes, that’s 36 months and so I divided that by 3 and that gave me the number of days I needed to clear up my notes app. - 12 days.
Doing it that way reduced any pressure and it turned into a fun experience. For the record, I got those 6,000 notes down to around 4,000 notes in just 12 days. Although I am sure it wasn't real, my notes app did feel a lot faster after that cleanup.
Another area you can cleanup is your to-do list. I find a lot of people have projects in there that are dormant. Projects that if you were being completely honest with yourself were not projects but wishes. If you know deep down that you will never get round to doing the project (or task) then clear it out.
For the more sensitive of you, you could create a master list of these projects and tasks in your notes app. At least then you won’t feel too upset having deleted a lot of old stuff that has been hanging around for a while.
Although, I find deleting them completely means if they are important, they will come back up in the future and then I just re-add them as a new project. The truth is most of these deleted projects and tasks never come back—they were just a lot of wishful tasks and projects.
It’s a very hard thing to do, but it can be very refreshing and similarly to when you clean up your notes app, you get re-energised with your to-do list and having less in there speeds up your whole decision-making process.
A lot of problems with our to-do lists comes from not being able to let go of projects and tasks that have been hanging around for a while and we have somehow convinced ourselves they are important. If you have not touched them for two or three months (or more) they’re not important and you should let them go.
For example, if you haven’t started writing the book you intended to start writing in January, you are not going to do it anytime soon either. Let it go.
By all means, keep your notes in your notes app, but if you are not actively writing your book, let it go. It’s taking up cognitive space in your mind every time you see the project and you really do not want to be wasting precious mental energy on something you clearly are not motivated to do (if you were motivated, you would be writing it!) Let it go.
In the past, I’ve had a number of projects like this just sitting around in my projects list and every time I do a review I am reminded I am not doing anything about it. It does not make me feel good about myself. I know if it was important enough I would always find time to do it. I also know if something is not really important enough, I just find excuses for not doing it. And I can often feel as if I am a genius when comes to excuses. Just let them go.
Now for the elephant in the room, so to speak. The files on your computer. I know, this is likely to be the scary place. How are your files and documents filed? Are they organised? Do you know where everything is? If you’re like most people, probably not. While you have a little extra time, now would be a great time to get these cleaned up and organised.
Now when it comes to organising your files there is not going to be a lot of help out there for you because we are all different. The way I organise my files is likely to be very different from the way someone else organises their files. I use the tagging function on my Mac to organise my files by the different areas I work in. My productivity business, my communications business and my personal life. I also use iCloud as my main cloud storage system (with a little help from Google Drive for collaborating) When I’ve tried helping other people to set this system up, we usually fail spectacularly. That’s because we all think differently and we would naturally search for something in a different way.
I began my working life just as computers were beginning take over the office (the early nineties) and so we were still heavily reliant on the trusty old filing cabinet. So, my first exposure to filing documents was with an alpha-numeric system and a metal filing cabinet. So for me, organising my files by area and alphanumerically just makes sense.
I’ve come across software engineers who have what appears to be incredibly complex coding systems for organising, but for them, they can find anything they want faster than I can with my system.
But no matter how you organise your files and documents there will always be files and documents that need cleaning up, deleting and archiving. Now’s a great time to do that. You may never get this opportunity again for a very long time.
Another area you can take a look at is how you structure your day. For this use your calendar. Go back to before the pandemic came along and see where you were spending your time during the week. Look at the meetings you attended and decide if that was a good use of your time. I have found that many of the meetings I used to attend were not all that useful and were surprisingly easy to be excused from.
Something I’ve been playing around with over the last week or two is developing my “perfect day”. What I’ve done is created a new calendar and called it “my perfect day” and added the things I would like to spend my days doing. It’s been a very interesting exercise as I discovered I want to begin my days writing. It could be a blog post, a podcast script or a book I am working on. Later in the week, I want to spend time doing my video and podcast recording.
And, I would like to be able to exercise twice a day. Running in the morning and weights in the afternoon. That was something that came up while I was playing around with what my ‘perfect’ week would look like.
I would begin the day at 7 AM and write for two hours. Then go out for a run for forty to fifty minutes. Come back, shower, have breakfast and then do some planning and communication work until lunch. After lunch, a little more writing and around 4 pm go to the gym for an hour.
What I discovered was teaching my English classes didn’t feature very much at all. This has given me some food for thought about how I want my days to go in the future and I can now begin the process of building that ‘perfect’ week and turning it into reality.
Not only is this a fun exercise, but it’s also eye-opening. You often find that what you are doing now—or before the pandemic—is not what you want to be doing. It may just be the stimulus to get you to make some significant changes that could lead you to find that dream work and turning every day into an amazing day.
Finally, one more area you can take a look at is your home working environment. This may be the first time you have worked from home and you have discovered that you do not have a good environment from which to work. Asking the question “What would I have to do to turn my working environment at home into the perfect workspace?”
I did this exercise a couple of years ago and it led me to ditch my desktop computer, buying a more powerful laptop and an external monitor and it transformed the way I worked. It’s wonderful now to be able to move around and work from my sofa from time to time or just unplugging my laptop and heading out to the local coffee shop to work on some writing or video editing.
Sometimes the little things can make a huge difference in the way you get your work done.
So there you go, Mike. Quite a lot of things you can take a look at and clean up. Doing this, what I call, backend work can give you a huge boost in your productivity because your apps will feel faster, you will have renewed enthusiasm for your system and your files will all be current and meaningful to you.
I hope that’s been helpful. Thank you, Mike, for your question and thank you to all of you for listening. If you feel this episode or any of my other episodes could help someone you know, then please share this podcast with them. And, don’t forget to retake or take my FREE COD course. It might just help you to finally have a system in place that will help you to Bec less stress, anxious and overwhelmed.
Stay safe and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.
Monday Apr 06, 2020
Monday Apr 06, 2020
In the Working With Podcast this week, I answer a question about staying motivated when our daily life gets interrupted.
Links:
Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website
Life Hack article | 15 Home Office Organization Tips to Save Time and Get More Done
The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System
Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes
The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page
Script
Episode 127
Hello and welcome to episode 127 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 hope you are all staying safe and haven’t gone completely mad from having to stay at home and not be able to get outside. We are living in difficult times at the moment, but as in most things in life it won’t last and we will soon be able to start moving again. Stay strong and stay focused on the long-term.
This week, it’s all about maintaining motivation and routines when everything gets thrown out of sync. With many of you having to learn how to work from home and how to deal with a sudden drop in activity and movement it can be easy to lose your motivation to focus on what is important, your health and fitness and even keep up with the demands of your work when there are so many new distractions all around us—distractions we have not had to deal with before.
Now a quick tip before we get into the question: if you have taken my COD course, now would be a good time to review the course. Many of you will have had your working routines change over the last few weeks and that means many of the ways you collect and organise your work and commitments will have changed. Reviewing the course will help you quickly develop a new way of collecting and organising that reflects the way you are working today.
If you are new to this podcast and have not taken the COD course—that’s Collect, Organise and Do—the course is free and it will give you the basics of setting up your own system that will see you through these difficult times. Full details on how to get into the course are in the show notes or you can find it on my website—carlpullein.com
Okay, on with this the show and that means it’s time for me now 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 am really struggling to keep up with my productivity system. I have to work from home at the moment because of the Corona virus and I had just finally got a system in place. Not it feels like everything is falling apart. Is there anything I can do to keep up with a system?
Hi Jenna, thank you for your question. I think a lot of people are struggling with motivation at the moment. When we are suddenly taken out of our normal routines it feels disorientating and that often leads us to feeling disrupted and to losing sight of what we have identified as being important to us. The key here is to be absolutely clear about what exactly is important to us.
What I mean by this is let’s say maintaining a healthy lifestyle is something you identified as being important to you. Part of that lifestyle is you exercise five to six times per week and you follow a healthy diet.
Now, during your normal routines, you would eat a healthy breakfast at home, and then buy a salad or something at a specific place near your workplace for lunch and then go to the gym or go for a run when you return from work. Now, because you are working from home and your gym is closed you will feel trapped and unable to maintain your healthy routines. It is very easy to just give up and tell yourself you can take a break.
Okay, that’s probably fine for a few days. But there will come a point where you start to feel uncomfortable. Your energy levels will drop significantly and you will find yourself losing motivation to do anything. The temptation to become a sofa surfer will be overwhelming. The problem is that will just make you feel worse and you will begin to feel guilty.
Instead what you can do is identify what is important to you. I spoke about the importance of maintaining a structure to your day in last week’s episode—just because you no longer need to go to your workplace, you still need to have some structure to your day—you need a start and finish time for your work, and in the example above you will still need to do some form of exercise five to six times per week.
Now you may not be able to do your regular exercise—perhaps you do not have any exercise equipment at home, or if you run three to five miles a day you may not be allowed out of your home because of a lockdown in place, but you can get creative and do some body-weight exercises or use your stairs for some cardio.
Now I know it can be hard to motivate yourself to do this, so a trick I have used in the past is to fool my brain. If I feel unmotivated to exercise I give myself permission to just do a ten-minute session. I set the time—usually 2 pm and say from 2 pm to 2:10 pm, I will do some push-ups and squats. Nine times out of ten, I will end up doing a thirty-minute session. Had I told myself I had to do a thirty-minute session I know my brain would convince me I don’t need to exercise, that these are exceptional times and I can always get back into my exercise routines once this pandemic is over.
Now you can do this with your work too. If you have a report to do and you keep putting it off, just schedule a fifteen to twenty-minute session on it. Tell yourself you only need to spend ten minutes or so on it and get started. What you will find happens is you will do far more than ten minutes. Once you get started you will not want to stop so you just keep going. Before long you discover you have spent an hour or so on it and may even want to continue.
And, by the way, if you do this in the mornings you will find it much easier. When our brains are fresh and our willpower is at it’s strongest, that’s the time to do these more challenging tasks.
Another way to keep motivated is to have a plan for the day. This does not mean you create a plan to do ten to twenty tasks per day, that can actually be demotivating. What I mean by this is you create a list of no more than three things to accomplish that day. Write these down on a post-it note or a piece of paper and leave it on your desk when you close down the day.
Then when you begin the next day you see your three things and that is where you start. Start with the first task, once that is done, cross it off and move on the next and so on. Now don’t get greedy. What you want to do is create a list that you will accomplish, not a list that ends up with ten to twenty tasks uncompleted. This is the MIT method—your ‘most important tasks’.
The reason this is motivating is that at the end of the day you have three crossed off tasks and that builds momentum and momentum is your best friend in these difficult times because it generates motivation and it creates forward motion. When you feel and see that forward motion your motivation grows.
Now in your specific case, Jenna, maintaining a productivity system is a case where your method of doing work needs to become a part of who you are. Let’s take the COD system for example. How you collect your tasks, events and notes is what you do. It is just who you are. I remember a few years ago having lunch with David Allen in Seoul and as we were talking, he had his notetaker wallet on the table. Now for those of you not familiar with David Allen’s notetaker wallet, it is a wallet with a small notepad on one side. David uses that as his ubiquitous collect tool (UCT)
The theory goes that wherever David Allen goes, so does his wallet. This means he always has a method for collecting stuff. For me, my UCT is my phone. My phone is always with me so I have made sure that is set up for quick collection. People I regularly work with know if they ask me to do something I will pull out my phone and add it to my to-do list. If I don’t they think something’s weird (often ask if I heard them!)
Likewise for the way you organise your stuff. For me, spending ten minutes clearing things up, filing and organising everything collected at the end of the day is just something I do. I don’t need to think about it. I would feel I had missed something if I didn’t do it. Organising my stuff no longer needs motivation because I just do it. It has become a part of who I am.
And finally, always begin the day with a routine and a plan. Your morning routines are so important. The way you begin the day sets you up for the day. If your alarm goes off and you hit snooze two or three times, then you finally crawl out of bed, make coffee and not know how or what to start with, you are never going to feel particularly motivated. Instead, if you begin the day the same way, perhaps do some meditation or a little exercise, for example, you will find yourself much more motivated.
Likewise, when you have a plan for the day and you start knowing exactly what you want to accomplish, that drives momentum and motivation and once you have completed your tasks you feel ready to do it all over again the next day.
Motivation and routines go hand in hand. Making small improvements and a little progress every day creates a cycle of motivation. It’s when you have no plan and no routines that’s when you a cycle of demotivation.
As many of us are experiencing a change to our daily lives and we are thrown out of our usual routines it can be demotivating. But by making a few changes and adjustments it can be quite easy to get back on track and stay motivated in these unprecedented times. We may not be able to perform at our best, but if we can keep moving forward, even a few tiny steps at a time, our motivation will stay strong and that will make it easier to transition back to our normal lives once this pandemic comes to an end.
Thank you, Jenna, for your question and thank you to all of you for listening. Stay safe and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.
Monday Mar 30, 2020
Monday Mar 30, 2020
This week I answer a question I’ve had on my questions list for quite some time and has now become a question many people are asking. How to be productive while working from home.
Links:
Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website
Life Hack article | 15 Home Office Organization Tips to Save Time and Get More Done
Productivity Masterclass | Create Your Own Custom Workflow
The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System
Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes
The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page
Script
Episode 126
Hello and welcome to episode 126 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.
Well, we are living in strange times and experiencing a lot of disruption to our regular working lives. For many of us, we are now having to find ways of doing our work that is alien to us… Working from home!
For me, it has been very interesting seeing companies that previously said the work they do meant it was impossible for them to allow their staff to work from home suddenly find ways for their staff to work from home.
So what can you do to create a working environment that assists to you to get on with your work and minimise the distractions that inevitably come from having to work without supervision and with kids, spouses, partners and roommates hanging around?
Now, before I get into answering the question, just a quick heads up to let you know my incredible special offer of 4 courses for $40.00 will be ending on Tuesday at midnight PST (That’s Pacific Standard Time or the time in LA) This is your chance to pick up courses like my Supercharge Your Email Productivity, The Complete Guide To Creating A Successful Life and How To Create and Achieve Your Goals for just $40.00 for all of them or for as little as $10.00 each.
This is a one time offer as these courses will no longer be on sale from 1st April. This is a fantastic opportunity for you pick up some of my best selling courses and download them and keep them so you have a resource you can go back to whenever you need a refresh or need to get back to base after falling off the wagon (let’s be honest we all fall off the wagon fro time to time.
Details for this wonderful offer is in the show notes.
Okay, it’s now time for me to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Andrew. Andrew asks: Hi Carl, I’ve just started a new job that allows me to work from home three days a week and I was wondering if you have any tips and tricks for being productive when working from home. I am finding it very difficult to concentrate and it is so distracting. Any tips would be a huge help.
Thank you, Andrew. Great question and a question I am sure a lot of people have at the moment in these uncharted times.
The first thing you are going to need to do is set your working times. Now you are working from home, you no longer need to commute to work. That is likely to save you quite a lot of time. In theory, all you need to do is roll out of bed, put the kettle on, make coffee, turn on your computer and you’re at work. Ten minutes max.
The key is to set yourself a routine. You had a routine when you had to go to your office, now, even though you don’t need to go to your office, you still need to treat your working day as if you had to be somewhere at a specific time. The thing is you do. You need to be at your chosen work station. So pick a start time and make that your working time.
Likewise, you should also set aside time for your lunch break and finish time. You need that structure or you will soon find yourself doing email late at night and home shopping at 3 pm in the afternoon. You might not be at your office, but you are still working. You need to treat your working time as just that. Working time. Do your home shopping, news reading and YouTube watching when you finish work! Don’t slip into the temptation to mix what you would normally do at home with what you would normally work on at work. You need to set up barriers between your home life and your work life.
A trick I use is I have a keyboard shortcut for quick entry to my To-do list manager’s inbox. If I am suddenly tempted to look up some useful bodyweight exercises I can do at home (now my gym is closed) I can just quickly add it to my inbox and do it when I finish work. I really do not need to research that now when I am supposed to be doing my work.
Next up is to create yourself a work station. The worst place is to stay in bed and work from there and your sofa is the next worst place. You need to create a physical space to do your work. A place that is free from distractions, a place that is clean, cool and well lit. If you have a dining table that’s often the best place and failing that your kitchen table. Just make sure you put a lock on your refrigerator! (That’s just from personal experience!) Try to set yourself up by a window. Natural daylight helps with your circadian rhythms and prevents you from feeling sleepy and being tempted to take a nap your sofa.
Now once you have set your working times and your work station you need to make sure you’re taking breaks. This was a mistake I made in my early days when I was working from home. I felt because I was at home I did not need to take as many breaks. That turned out not to be true. I needed the breaks. So I worked out my best working times. I found out I could work well for around ninety minutes before needing a break in the mornings and for around an hour in the afternoons. This helped me to break up my days.
So, when I started working from home, I began my day at 7:30 AM and worked until 9:00 AM and then made some breakfast. I would step away from my work station and made sure I ate my breakfast in the kitchen—away from where I was working. I also made sure I moved. Fortunately, I have a little dog at home so I got outside quite frequently walking the dog. I also used my breaks to do my shopping as my local supermarket is only a five-minute walk from my home.
I would return to my desk at 9:30 AM and do another ninety-minute session which took me to 11 AM. For me, 11:20 AM to 12:00 PM was communication time. That was the time I would clear my action today folder in email and make any calls I needed to make. It was a nice break from writing or creating a presentation file.
Once again, make sure you take a proper lunch break - step away from your desk and computer and get some air. I found the most difficult thing about working from home was the feeling I was stuck in a single place 24/7. That’s why if you can step outside into a garden or a driveway and just get some air it will give you a mental boost. I know we have to be careful in the current situation, but you can still keep your distance from other people and get some air. Just make sure you are following your country’s government’s guidelines.
Now the thing I would advise you to do is to make sure you are moving. One of the biggest changes that will take place when you have to work from home is you suddenly stop moving. Your desk is a few metres away from your bed. This is seriously not good. If you are unable to leave your house now would be a good time to do some housework. Cleaning a room, scrubbing a bathroom wall or doing the vacuuming are all good sources of exercise. I know I said don’t mix your home life with your work life, but in this case, you need to make an exception. If you are not moving, you gaining weight, your focus, mental and physical energy will drop. Make sure you are moving. The stairs in your home can also be a great place for some exercise.
Now for finishing your work for the day you need to set a stop time. The biggest danger with working from home is there are no barriers between your workplace and you home. This makes it difficult to stop and it can often lead to your work creeping into your private time. I was terrible at this—I still am—but you do need to make sure you have a stop time and stick to that time. Close down your computer and step away from your work station. Again, get outside, if you can, and move.
Now, before you do close down, though, plan the next day. I find this is more important than when you work in an office. Certainly have a plan for the first task you will attack when you start your day. The biggest fight you are going to have is with procrastination. The best way to defeat procrastination is to have a plan. We procrastinate because we are not sure what needs to be done next—there are other reasons for procrastination but not having a plan is the most common—so give yourself fifteen minutes before you close down the day for planning what you will do the next day.
This is where your calendar will be useful. You may not have your regular meetings right now, so you may feel you don’t need your calendar, you will find your calendar is going to be your best productivity tool. Before you close down the day, schedule out your work on your calendar. Don’t be too specific unless you are working on something specific. Use phrases such as “writing time”, “design time” or “communication time” keep it general. This gives you some degree of flexibility. And make sure you block out your break times too.
A few extra tips for you.
Create a music playlist for doing your work. Both Apple Music and Spotify have dedicated playlists for working and they can help to keep you focused on your work. And make sure you keep your workspace clear of your personal things when you are working and keep work away when you are not. Remember there is no physical barrier between your work and home life now, you need to create these barriers.
If possible, use a different computer for your work and your personal life. I know that might not always be possible, but if you are provided with a computer for work use that only for your work. Sounds obvious, but it is so easy to do your personal browsing on your work computer because it is just there. Don’t do this. You need to create those barriers.
Well, there you go, Andrew, I hope these tips help you to get on with your work while you are on lockdown. Remember these times are unprecedented and not likely to last. Hopefully, we will return to our normal lives very soon.
In the meantime please stay safe, listen to your government’s advice—now is not the time to be political activists—and avoid sharing scare stories and fake news. That makes you part of the problem and not part of the solution.
It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.
Monday Mar 23, 2020
Monday Mar 23, 2020
On this week’s podcast, why do we delude ourselves about what we can do each day?
Links:
Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website
David Sparks' Article on the time delusion
Productivity Masterclass | Create Your Own Custom Workflow
The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System
Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes
The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page
Script
Episode 125
Hello and welcome to episode 125 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.
So how many tasks on average are you rescheduling each day? If you find yourself rescheduling tasks you are likely deluding yourself about how much you can do each day and it’s a problem I find in many people’s productivity systems and often causes people to falsely believe to-do lists and time management is not for them. The good news is once you accept reality, it is a problem you can fix very easily and that is what I will be talking about today.
Now, before we get into this week’s answer, I just want to give you a gentle reminder that many of my courses are on a very special offer this month and you have a chance to pick up four of my all-time best courses for just $40.00 (or for as little as $10.00 each) Time is running out as this very special offer will be ending soon so head over to my learning centre and get your bundle today. You will not be disappointed. All the details are in the show notes.
Okay, it’s now time for me to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Frederic. Frederic asks: Hi Carl, I have trouble completing all my tasks most days. I find I am having to reschedule sometimes half of the tasks I set for myself. Is this normal or am I doing something wrong?
WOW! Thank you, Frederic. I’ve been reading quite a few articles recently on this problem myself and it seems you are not alone. One article, in particular, caught my attention which I will link to in the show notes. David Sparks of the MacSparky podcast wrote about the delusion we have about how much we think we can do and the reality of what we actually can do each day. High expectations and hope rarely lead to a good outcome. What we need is to reduce those expectations and remove hope from the equation when we plan our day. The question is, how do we do that?
Firstly, understand you have a limited amount of time each day and with that time limit you also have limited resources of focus and concentration. What this means is as the day goes by your ability to focus and concentrate diminishes too. Your brain has a limited capacity to stay focused. And so while it might be easy to keep adding tasks to your daily to-do list, it becomes much harder to stay focused on completing those tasks as the day goes by. That’s why most people hit a mid-afternoon slump.
However, there are more complications here too. Another factor is when are you at your most focused? Here we are all very different. Some people are at their most focused first thing in the morning—the early birds. Others find they can focus better in the evening—the night owls. And there are a rare few who find they focus most in the afternoons. Those people are so rare, though, we don’t have a name for them.
So, one of the first things to do is to find out which type of person you are. Are you an early bird or a night owl? This is important because once you know your type you can start scheduling the work that needs your most focus at your best time.
Now this can be more difficult than you think. When I was in my twenties, I always felt I was a night owl. I hated mornings and really only came alive as the sun set. As I have matured I find I now focus best in the mornings - between 7 AM and 9 AM. Yet, I also find I can be very creative in the evenings between 11 PM and 1 AM. I experience a mental slump in the afternoons, so I schedule my exercise for 2 PM. Now I know many of you cannot do that as 2 PM is in the middle of your working day. That said, though, monitoring your days and learning when you feel at your most focused and when not is an essential first step to becoming more productive.
One of the least productive things you can do is to push through on a task that requires high levels of focus and concentration when you are in a mental slump. It would be far better to stop doing the task and spend some time working on your email replies and phone calls. Generally, your communications require less focus than pouring over a spreadsheet doing due diligence on a company’s financial status.
According to Daniel Pink in his book, When, most people are at their most focused first thing in the morning. So for most of you the best time to schedule work that requires the most concentration is when you arrive at work. This is why you should not start your day with email. Email requires low levels of concentration so you would be better off working on your email replies towards the end of the morning—say 11:30 AM. This is one of the best times to hit reply too because as most people are heading off to lunch around that time you are less likely to get replies coming in as you reply. (That’s a secret bonus tip for you—please keep it to yourself!)
Okay, so now you have established your best times for focus and concentration, how do you manage the number of tasks you have for the day? Good question.
Firstly, stop creating your daily to-do list based on hope and wishful thinking. Yes, we are all busy, yes we all have more stuff to do than available time in the day. But, we cannot change that. Instead, we need to get smart about how to manage our mental energy. If you focus better in the morning block time off to do your more difficult tasks in the morning. If you are in a leadership role, don’t schedule meetings first thing in the morning—remember most people are at their best first thing in the morning—schedule meetings for late morning or better still early afternoon.
Next, reduce down the number of tasks you try to do each day. Now here’s a trick I use. Rather look at a what I want to accomplish on a daily basis, I find looking at the week as a whole works better. Ask yourself what do you want to get accomplished this week? Now this focuses you more on outcomes than individual tasks and helps to reduce the number of tasks you have to do each week.
Let’s say your goal for the week is to complete a proposal and get a commitment from a potential customer to purchase your service or product. Now, most companies follow SOPs (standards of procedure) and often these just add unnecessary tasks. Instead ask the question “what do I have to do this week to get this potential customer’s business by close of business on Friday?” Asking this question may lead you to make a couple of calls and sending an email for two. This is far better than following some antiquated box-ticking system that was written five years ago that the potential customer or client does not care about.
For me, I could ask the question “what do I have to do to get this online course update finished by Sunday evening?” When I ask that question I may decide I need to cancel my teaching assignments on Thursday so I can spend all day in my studio recording the classes. Sometimes that’s the only way you are going to get something done. As the saying goes: “if it’s important enough you’ll find way. If it’s not, you’ll find an excuse”. If I had a task such as “complete course update” I know that task is going to get rescheduled and I would likely miss completing the update. A task this big needs a lot of focussed time. It’s far better to block a day off to get it done than to keep discovering I don’t have time to do it today.
Now, I’ve heard the excuses about not being able to block a whole day off to complete a project or a task. And I’ve worked in enough industries to know this is partially true. That said, I also know that if a project needs to be completed by the end of the week or month the successful are willing to pull out all the stops and do whatever it takes to get that project completed. Like I said if it’s important enough you will find a way. If it’s not you will find an excuse. This one is your call. Talk to your boss, talk to your customers explain the situation. Do whatever it takes to carve out the time to complete the project.
You need to get intentional about what you want to accomplish each day. Sure, you’re going to get a lot of stuff thrown at you, that’s called life. As a productive person you need to learn to manage that stuff, prioritise the important and discard the not so important. It’s hard, it takes practice, but it’s worth it because of the productivity benefits you will get from it.
Finally, are you practising the 2+8 Prioritisation method? This works. It works because it focuses you on deciding what is important. You have to decide what ten tasks you are going to complete today (excluding your routines). Now, this is not a rough number. It’s an intentionally precise number. You are only allowed a maximum of ten meaningful project or goal-orientated tasks per day.
I’ve seen people try to do more than ten tasks only to end up rescheduling many of those tasks. Remember, the purpose here is to not have to reschedule. To have enough meaningful tasks to comfortably complete them all and not have to reschedule. To have flexibility built into your day so you can deal with the inevitable unknowns that will come your way every day.
Think of it this way. If you have to reschedule a task - you failed. No excuse. You tried to do too much and you screwed up. Stop, review and ask why and then adjust accordingly. A lot of becoming better at managing your time and becoming more productive is really about making tiny adjustments until you discover your own sweet spot. The place where the number of tasks and type of work you do is manageable and has enough flexibility built in so you can deal with minor emergencies, interruptions and distractions as they come up. Most people never reach that sweet spot because they don’t stop and figure out where their sweet spot is. Instead, I find most people are better at coming up with excuses about why they are different and why something that works for billions of other people couldn’t work for them.
If you’re having to reschedule tasks every day, then whatever you are trying to do is not working. If you find you need to reschedule once or twice a week, that’s not really a problem. Sometimes the unknowns in the day will derail you. But, for the most part, you should be organising your day so you are not rescheduling much and that takes a lot of honesty and analysis. But that honesty and analysis will free you up to make better choices about how you manage your work each day.
Hopefully, that has helped you, Frederic. Thank you for your question and thank you to all of you for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.