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Life & Time Mastery Workshop, Scunthorpe 28 December 2019

The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Create Your Own Apple Productivity System Course

Script

Episode 108

Hello and welcome to episode 108 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

This week’s episode is a little different in that there's no question and instead I want to talk to you about why you should be planning 2020 now.

Now before I get to that, I’d like to invite all of you to join me and Kev Blackburn in a webinar later this week. It’s on Saturday 16th November and we are going to show you how to balance a full-time job with a side project. That could be a business or a hobby you want to develop

All the details for the webinar are in the show notes and if you are following me on Facebook or Twitter I will be sharing the details there.

Okay, why should you be planning 2020 now?

Well, one of the many reasons why so many people fail to accomplish their yearly plans and goals is because often they get to the end of the year, that break between Christmas and the new year and start to think they should be doing something about plans for next year. This neither gives you the time to really think about what you want nor does it allow your subconscious mind to develop creative ways of making them happen.

Okay, before we go further, I have an annual planning sheet you can download for free from my website that can help you with this process. Just go to carlpullein.com and click on downloads from the menu at the top of the page. Everything on the downloads page is free.

So, how do you go about planning for the new year? First brainstorm ideas. Now, this does not mean you sit down for an hour or two and think about what you want to do, what it means is creating a note in your notes app or a piece of paper and adding to it over the next week or two. Anything that comes to your mind—write it down. When you allow your subconscious mind to do the work for you you will find you come up with things you haven't thought about for years. Trust your subconscious. It rarely lets you down.

So what areas of your life should you be thinking about? Well, first think about what you would like to change about yourself? Are you a “yes” person. Do you tend to say “yes” to new things a little too quickly? Are you a little lazy? Are you terrible at seeing plans through to the end?

When we dig deep it can be surprising what we find that could do with changing. This is why giving yourself plenty of time to let these things bubble up to the top is important.

Next up is lifestyle. What would you like to change about your lifestyle? Are you happy with the way you live? Would you like to move house? Change the way you travel to and from work? Change your daily routines? There’s a lot in the lifestyle section you could look at changing. Eating habits, social life, where you take your vacations. Put everything up for review. After all, the way you live your life is often the driver for your long-term success. If you spend all your free time vegetating on the sofa watching mind-numbing dramas, your health will suffer in the long-term and no matter what your plans are in the future you will never get chance to do them.

How would you like to change the way you work? This is quite a general question but the idea is to get you to question the way you work today. Are you happy? Do you enjoy the work you do? Are you starting and finishing your work at reasonable times? Do you want to change that? There’s a lot here you can think about.

The goal with the questions you ask about your work is to push you to do work that makes you proud. Work that leaves you feeling satisfied when you come home at the end of the day. The saddest thing for anyone is to be doing work that leaves you feeling empty and unfulfilled. Often it is not about changing your work or job—that can be very difficult—often it is about changing the way you look at your work.

I always found doing the daily admin boring and tedious. It was something I just did not enjoy doing. But, it is an essential part of the work I do. Student attendance records, feedback to the people who need feedback from coaching sessions. I always used to look at that part of my work as something not to look forward to.

It was when I realised that the admin and paperwork was an essential way for me to grow my company. To be able to measure my performance as well as the performance of my students and coaching clients that I understood that this was another way I could help my students and clients even more and the admin allowed me to analyse where I could make improvements and grow my business.

Now, this part of my work is something I look forward to doing. Writing the feedback is another way for me to help people and, for me, it is when I help people with their performance in life that I feel satisfied and happy with the work I do.

So, switching the way you look at your work could be all you need to change the way you feel about your work. Alternatively, it could be you want to change the type of work you do. If that’s the case, a question to ask is what do you have to do to do the career you want to pursue? Do you need to return to college? What extra training do you need?

Next up comes the challenge section. What can you do next year that will push you and challenge you? What have you been putting off that you know you should do but for some reason—fear or just not knowing exactly what you should do—you have not done anything about? This year I chose to get my hernia fixed. My fear of surgery had prevented me from doing anything about it, but it was preventing me from exercising in a way I wanted to exercise. It was a very hard decision to make, and in the end, I was forced into it. But I went through with it. Not only have I now fixed my hernia, I have also learned that there is very little I need to be fearful of.

Have you been putting off asking your partner to marry you? Have you always wanted to run a marathon but for one reason or another never committed yourself to do it? Challenging yourself is one way you can push yourself to grow. It also toughens you up mentally because once you realise you can do these things you have put off, you begin to realise you are capable of much more than you think you are.

Then you should think about the goals you want to achieve next year. Goals are the driving force of your energy every day. Often once you have completed the other parts, your goals will reveal themselves. When you look over your list you will see obvious goals. Running that marathon, or getting the extra qualifications so you can pursue the career you have dreamed of can all be turned in to goals for next year. This is why the goals section of this process comes towards the end.

One of my goals for next year is a fun goal which is to take a photo every day for a year and post it to Instagram. I have a new iPhone 11 Pro and that comes with an incredible camera. This means I can resume my hobby of photography. So, I have have been researching creative iphoneography techniques and I have relearned how Adobe Lightroom works. It’s a goal I am really looking forward to because not only will I have a record of my whole year, I will also be doing something to grow my creativity.

Finally, there is your bucket list. We all have a bucket list of some sort. Either it is written down in a journal or in an app like your Notes app or just in your head. Either way, choosing something from this list turns it from a wishful list to a reality list. My bucket list item for next year is to go to Australia. So when my wife finishes her master's degree in August, we will head off to Australia to do Tony Robbins’ Unleash The Power Within together and then spend a few days exploring Sydney. That’s going to be a trip of a lifetime!

So there you have it, the six areas you can spend some time over the next few weeks thinking about. Developing ideas and from around the middle of December turning them into actionable steps you can take from day one… That is 1st January.

That’s how you turn a year into a successful year. By giving yourself enough time to think about what you would like to accomplish before the first day and developing those ideas into something concrete and actionable. It’s not hard, in fact, it’s a lot of fun.

I hope you found this special episode useful. Remember it’s about collecting ideas, thinking about them and deciding what you will pursue next year. You don’t have to do everything you add to your list next year, there’s always 2021 and beyond. After all, most people overestimate what they can achieve in one year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years. Play the long game and you are much more likely to accomplish the things you want to accomplish.

Thank you for listening to this episode. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.

Monday Nov 04, 2019

How To Choose The Right Productivity Apps . The Definitive Answer.

Monday Nov 04, 2019

Do you find you are still searching for that ‘perfect’ productivity app? Then this week’s episode is definitely one for you.

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Life & Time Mastery Workshop, Scunthorpe 28 December 2019

The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Create Your Own Apple Productivity System Course

Script

Episode 107

Hello and welcome to episode 107 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

This week we return to that polarising question of what app is right for you and how do you choose the right app or apps.

But before we get to this week’s question, in case you missed it, my Create Your Own Apple Productivity course has now been updated for 2019. That means there’s a whole new section on the new Reminders app as well as updates for Notes and Calendar.

If you are already enrolled in the course, this is a free update for you and if you are not, and you are quick, you can pick up this course for just $39.99 on the early-bird programme. But you will need to be quick as this discount will end very soon.

If you don’t want to invest in expensive productivity apps and want to just use the built-in apps that come with your iPhone, iPad and Mac, then this course is perfect for you as it will give you the know-how to build your own system using just the Apple productivity apps including Calendar, Notes, Reminders and iCloud. It’s all there in this course.

There’s a link to the full details of this course in the show notes to this podcast.

Ok, 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 Tim. Tim asks: Hi Carl, I've been looking for a really good to-do list manager for years and just cannot find the right one. Do you have any advice on finally finding the right app?

Hi Tim, thank you for your question. My answer would be “no I don’t” and there’s a very good reason why.

that's because the tools you use—whether that is a to-do list manager or notes app or calendar—really doesn't matter. What matters is your system or framework.

You see no app will ever do the work for you. All a productivity app will do is show you what you need to see when you need to see it. Of course, you can add dates, times and tags, labels or contexts to narrow down the lists, but essentially all these tools will ever do is show you what you have to do. Doing the work is completely in your hands and that is not going to change anytime soon.

So what it all comes down to is how you organise your lists. All you are going to get with different apps are just different ways to list things. You may get some different colours, some may show you your projects and tasks in a Kanban board style, others may show you your lists in a traditional list format but they are all essentially doing the same thing, they are showing you the tasks you inputted into the app. That’s because they are just lists.

When you base your whole system on an app, if the app updates or, as in the recent case with Todoist, changes some of the features. If that happens, you can find your whole productivity system no longer works and then you are going to have problems.

This is why I preach building a system around COD—this is a stripped-down absolute basic System anyone can adopt—All you need to do is collect everything that has your attention into a trusted place. That could be a piece of paper you carry around with you in your pocket or it could be your phone’s built-in notes app. It really doesn't matter where you are collecting. All that matters is you are collecting and you trust you will look at what you collected every twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Having too many places to collect stuff can be overwhelming as you will have multiple places to look.

This is why in the GTD world we seek the UCT—the Ubiquitous Collection Tool—that’s a tool you can carry with you everywhere you go. David Allen has his notetaker wallet, Richard Branson and Warren Buffett have their little pocket notebooks. It really doesn’t matter what you use. The only thing that matters is you collect everything into it and you process and organise what you collected every twenty-four to forty-eight hours.

Organising what you collected does require something a little more structured. You want to be able to find what you collected when you need it quickly. It also needs to be accessible from all your devices these days. Travel itineraries, for example, are best when they are accessible on all your devices. Here again, though, you do not need anything too complex.

When you organise everything you collected, complexity will be your enemy. Complexity will slow you down. Finding what you want, when you want it and as quickly as possible, that's the key. So a little thought about how you file stuff is important.

Do you remember things by topic? By the people or team involved? Maybe you would prefer to see things organised by project or areas of focus. What’s vitally important here is that you organise your stuff by the way you naturally think. Not because someone else organises things that way.

When you organise things by the way someone else does—because it looks cool or efficient—you are going to find yourself with difficulties. What works for one person is not necessarily going to work for you. This is why how you organise your stuff needs a lot of careful thought.

A few years ago many in the Evernote world jumped on the Michael Hyatt’s way of tagging notes with symbols to indicate: what, when, who, reference and miscellaneous. You could see the beauty of this system very easily, but if you stepped back and thought about it you could also see the complexity involved and the issues you would have if you got a note that was not quite a “what” but also not quite a “who”.

This system soon received a lot of criticism and eventually disappeared as the latest way to structure your notes. The thing is, this system worked for Michael. It would not necessarily work for anyone else and it didn’t.

Files are another thing too. I organise my files by date and tags. Apple has system-wide tagging which allows me to view my documents by tag. So, I categorise my work by the different businesses I run and my personal stuff. I have three main tags that represent these three areas of my life. It makes it much easier for me to find what I am looking for as well as file my work. But, I know this way of organising my files would not work for everyone else.

You see there are so many factors involved. The type of work you do, how your brain organises things and what tools you have available. Your company’s security systems may not allow you to have work files on cloud-based servers accessible outside company property.

Now, I think a lot of this comes down to an individual’s expectations. We see a super cool video on YouTube (and I might be guilty of causing this) and see how another person organises their projects, notes and tasks and think WOW! If I set up my system like that I will get a ton of work done.

This is never going to be true. You see it doesn’t matter how super cool and organised your stuff is. If you are spending too much time inside your productivity apps reorganising, filing and fiddling with the settings you are not doing work. You’re not being productive at all. You are procrastinating and it’s the worst kind of procrastination because you are convincing yourself you are doing work when you are not doing work at all. You’re fiddling and that is pure procrastination.

So, Tim, if you want to find the ‘perfect’ app, create the ‘perfect’ system first. The system comes first then the apps. In fact, if you create a great system, that system would work with any app.

A great way to test your system is to test it out on paper first. If you can create a system and workflow that you can use using a simple notebook and pen, then you have a system that could work with almost any app.

Fundamentally, you need to make sure you collect everything into a place you trust. This place should be something you have with you at all times. Today, that is usually a mobile phone or wallet. You need to give yourself time each day to process and organise what you collected in a way you can find quickly when you need it and you should be spending at least 90% of your time doing the work.

When you get those basics right, then you have a system that will reduce your stress, massively increase your productivity and give you a lot more time to do the things you want to do with the people you want to do them with. It will do that because you will not have to spend much time in your apps playing around with settings, colours or anything else your apps allow you to do.

I hope that has helped, Tim. Remember, get your system right and the apps will take care of themselves.

Thank you for the question and thank you to all of you for listening. Don’t forget if you are in the Apple ecosystem, check out my Apple Productivity course. It might just be the ‘perfect’ system for you.

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

Monday Oct 28, 2019

How To Do A Complete Reset To Get Back In Control Of Your Time.

Monday Oct 28, 2019

Do you need to reset? That’s the question being answered on this week’s podcast.

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Life & Time Mastery Workshop, Scunthorpe 28 December 2019

The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

The Ultimate Goal Planning Course

Script

Episode 106

Hello and welcome to episode 106 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, 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 stepping back and regaining control over your time and what you are working on. It’s very easy to find ourselves being caught up in day to day work that has no real impact on our overall goals or plans. To have a built-up backlog that is causing us to feel stressed out and overwhelmed. And to feel we cannot take any time out to regain control and perspective. In this week’s podcast, I share a few strategies that can help you to take that time out and to regain some control and perspective.

Now before we do that, I just want to give you a heads up that my October special offers are about to come to an end.

As we are now just about eight weeks away from the end of the year, we do not have a lot of time left to plan out what we would like to accomplish in 2020. To help you with that process I have a very special offer on my Ultimate Goal Planning course. This is a course that will focus you on what is important to you. It will help you formulate your ideas and then create a clear, easy to follow strategy to make those ideas, goals and plans come to life.

Normally this course is $59.99, but for now, until the end of this month (31st October) you can pick up this course for just $49.99. That’s an incredible investment in yourself. $50 for creating a plan that could give you many thousands of dollars in return.

And for those of you who feel you need a little extra help, my three-month coaching programme is now just $295.00. That’s a saving of 15% on the usual price. My coaching programmes give you a plan and guidance, unlimited calls, written feedback after each call with clear action steps and someone to hold you accountable to your goals, plans and intentions. $295 is incredible value for a life plan that can elevate you to areas you have only ever dreamed of going.

So get yourself signed up now before these incredible offers come down.

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 Ethan. Ethan asks: Hi Carl, I hope you can help me. I am feeling completely stressed out and overworked. I just do not feel I can get on top of my work. I have tried everything, read all the books, listened to all the podcasts and while I do get inspired sometimes, I just cannot get in control of my time or my work. Is there anything I can do that will help me to get in control and start over without taking time off work?

Thank you for your question, Ethan.

So let’s define exactly what we mean by a reset. A reset is where you stop doing what you are currently doing, step back, look at the larger landscape of what is going on in your life. Reassess your priorities and start over. It means no adding anything else to your to-do list. It means saying no to any new commitments and renegotiating existing ones.

It’s quite dramatic and is a way to interrupt a soul-destroying pattern of stress, overwhelm and a feeling you cannot keep up with the demands being thrown at you.

Because of the severity of what you are doing in a reset, a lot of people fear doing it. There’s a sense that you will be letting everyone down—your coworkers, friends and family. Of course, this is part of the problem. You’ve stopped putting yourself first and the demands of others have taken over your life. That’s one of the reasons you feel you need to stop and reset now.

It’s a horrible cycle to be stuck in and one you really do need to interrupt.

So how do you interrupt this pattern? You interrupt it by stopping. You need to get away from the daily cycle you are in and step back. You need to take a few days off and you need to get away from your daily routines.

Now, for most, this is the hardest part of a reset. They believe they cannot stop and step back. They, rather selfishly, think that the world, the company they work for, their friends and family cannot exist without them. This is utter utter nonsense.

The world, your company, family and friends can survive without you and quite possibly right now they would be better off without you.

You are not going to be making your best decisions at the moment anyway. Your brain is overloaded. Stepping back and taking a few days to reevaluate your priorities, objectives and systems would be a much more effective thing to do.

You see, when you are stressed out and overwhelmed, your decision-making skills reduce. When you are not making your best decisions, you become a burden on your team. That’s not helping your team.

Stepping back, regaining control of your work, your priorities and your system is helping your team because it means when you do step back in, you step back with a clear mind, a fresh perspective and a lot more energy.

So how do you do a reset?

First stop. Stop everything and take some time away. That means you talk to your boss, colleagues, customers and clients and step away. You have to move away from the cause of the overwhelm and that means you have to step away from your work.

This is where it is often best to go find yourself a quiet coffee shop or cafe and sit down with a piece of paper. And yes, I said a piece of paper. Technology is likely to be the cause of some of the stress and overwhelm and you want to remove all these sources. It also means you have no excuse for having your messages and emails and other electronic communication means open. For now, you have a block on new inputs. So turn off all those electronic devices and just sit down with a pen and piece of paper and begin writing down everything on your mind.

Do not worry about categorising anything at this stage. You just need to get everything off your mind. Project work, commitments that are bothering you, problems and issues. Anything. Just write them all down as they come to mind.

This process can take a couple of hours, it often takes longer. Just keep going until you feel you have squeezed out everything that has been bothering you for the last few months or weeks.

Once you have done that. Fold the paper away and go for a walk in nature. Get a bus or drive to a park or the countryside and just go out and enjoy nature. Get away from concrete, screens, commuter noise and just get into nature. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, we have the amazing beauty of autumn and those incredible colours. Enjoy them. For those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, you have fantastic spring and the warming temperatures. Just get outside and enjoy your surroundings.

Take in some deep breathes and enjoy the freedom.

Take as long as you want. One or two days is a good length of time for this.

When you feel ready, when you feel relaxed then you can open up the piece of paper again and start to go through it deciding what is important and what is not.

What you will find is a lot of the stuff on that list is not really all that important. Most of it can be delegated to other people, some of it would only require a two to three-minute phone call and others could be dropped completely.

The remaining stuff on your list then needs to be categorised into what needs dealing with first and so on. You cannot do it all at once—trying to do that is what put you into a stressed out, overwhelmed situation in the first place. Use your calendar to assign days to the work you want to do (keyword there… “want’ to do) and make sure you build in enough flexibility to handle new stuff coming in.

Now for the biggest challenge. Email. If you follow this advice, you will have accumulated quite an email backlog. The best advice I can give you here is do a soft email bankruptcy. That means you select all the email in your inbox and move it to a new folder called “Old Inbox”. You want to start back with a clear inbox and no backlog.

Now the thing with doing a soft email bankruptcy is that 95% of the email in your inbox will not be all that important. If it is important, the sender will send it again or will chase you for a response. So, stop worrying. There will be a trigger.

The final part of this exercise is to consider why you found yourself in this situation in the first place. What was the cause? Now, I know it is easy to say that it was the amount of work being thrown at you. You have to understand that many people have a lot of work to do but manage to stay on top of things. Usually, we find ourselves stressed out because we don’t prioritise well or we say yes too easily. These are the underlying problems. Not the amount of work we have to do. Look for the underlying problems and take action to eliminate them.

Okay, I know it is hard to take some time out and stop. It’s particularly hard if you are a business owner, a leader, a parent or responsible for sales. But you also have to understand if you are not performing well within your role or roles then you may as well not be there at all. You have become part of the problem and not helping things. Step back, reassess, and come back refreshed and energised. Deal with the backlog and return to a clean slate. That is when you will start making better decisions and your performance in all areas will improve.

I hope that has helped, Ethan and good luck. Take some time out my friend.

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

Monday Oct 21, 2019

What You Need to Successfully Complete a Project

Monday Oct 21, 2019

This week's episode is a little different as I have been away. However, all will return to normal next week, so please enjoy this episode on the three (four?) stages of project success taken from my Productivity Mastery Series over on YouTube.

Links:

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Life & Time Mastery Workshop, Scunthorpe 28 December 2019

The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

How to use Evernote for your 2020 Planning

The Annual Planning sheet Download

Monday Oct 14, 2019

Can You Get Your Colleagues To be More Productive?

Monday Oct 14, 2019

Podcast 104

Do you ever wish you could convince your co-workers to be better organised and more productive? Well, this week that’s what I am digging in to.

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Life & Time Mastery Workshop, Scunthorpe 28 December 2019

The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

How to use Evernote for your 2020 Planning

The Annual Planning sheet Download

Script

Episode 104

Hello and welcome to episode 104 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

Have you ever wished you could convince your teammates and the people you work with to be a little more organised and productive? Well, that’s the topic I am tackling this week.

Now, before we get into this week’s question, I’d like to point out to all you wonderful listeners that we have just entered the last three months of the year. Yes, 2019 has entered its final few months and that means it’s the best time to begin thinking about what you want to achieve next year.

Now, this is just the thinking stage. You do not have to plan anything yet. When you begin the process in October you give yourself plenty of time to think of, ponder, wonder and reject ideas for next year. It also means that you have time to really go deep and consider all things in your life.

To help you, I have an annual planning template that you can download for free from my website—carlpullein.com— All you have to do is go to the downloads page and there, near the top, is the PDF file waiting for you to download it and start filling in.

If you are an Evernote user, you can also add the Evernote template to your Evernote by clicking on the link in the show notes. I did a video last week on how to complete the planning sheet, so if you want to learn more head over to my YouTube channel and watch the Evernote video from last week.

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 Kelly. Kelly asks: Hi Carl, I have always been an organised person but I work in a team of people who never write anything down and are always forgetting deadlines or not replying to messages and emails in a timely manner. Is there anything I can do to get my team more organised?

Ooh, great question, Kelly, and one with a simple answer—no.

You see the difficulty here is to become better organised and more productive is a choice. It’s not as if there is a switch you can pull and everyone in your office will start following GTD or COD.

However, while I was thinking about how I would answer your question, Kelly, I remembered a time when I worked in a car dealership and the general manager, whose name was Andrew Donovan, was one of the most organised people I have ever met.

Andrew wrote everything down and when he asked you to do something, you knew he would not forget to follow up with you.

Now, this was before smartphones and computers on every desk—it was the early nineties—and Andrew’s system was simple, yet brilliant.

Whenever Andrew had a meeting he would write everything down on to a sheet in a reporters notebook. Everyone in the meeting saw him do this. So you knew if he asked you to do something, it was written down. Once the meeting was over, Andrew would then add the action and follow up items to his leather A4 diary which went everywhere he went.

What I noticed was that Andrew’s system was soon adopted by many of the departmental managers and that trickled down to other team members.

Now, I don't know your position in your company, Kelly, but whatever your role, that is perhaps one way you could change things within your team. Set an example. If your colleagues and partners see how effective you are at getting your work done, how you always respond to emails quickly and effectively and hit your milestones and deadlines consistently, then they will want to know how you do it.

Your question got me thinking about how I would go about influencing colleagues and partners who have never been particularly organised or even interested in being organised before, I realised if I were teaching someone who has never been very organised or is not in the habit of writing things down I would not start with technology.

Technology might be something we are interested in, most people are not. Learning how to use an app like Trello or Todoist can be difficult for someone not used to using anything more sophisticated than their email or messaging app.

Most people still have pieces of paper and pens on their desks though. So the trick is to get them into the habit of writing things down. In the past, I have introduced people to apps and failed miserably. Not everyone is into technology, so pushing colleagues and partners to use apps like Todoist, Trello or Asana is often a waste of time. The learning curve is too steep. Let them discover apps for themselves.

Instead, encourage them to keep a list on their desk.

Andrew got his management team to change by being open. In meetings, everyone saw him write down actionable items. Every time anyone met Andrew in his office his diary was open on his desk in full view of anyone visiting so you could see very clearly how he organised his work. His system was simple and if you asked him about it, he would explain it in simple terms. That’s what you need to do. Whenever anyone asks you about how you stay organised, keep it simple. Don’t go off into the wonders of technology—that might excite us, but it does not excite everyone.

Now that said, I have a few clients who use Todoist and have found they can share a team project with their staff and within a short period of time their staff are using Todoist to manage their own projects. How you do this is create the project in Todoist and then share it with your team. (in this case, or other apps that you can share projects such as Trello and Asana would work too) This works well with simple projects and you will have to manage the project closely until your staff and colleagues are using it regularly. It will require a lot of patience from you, but if you can get your team and colleagues onboard, you will have begun the process of building a highly organised team.

If you want to do this, I have a free downloadable PDF file showing how to set up Todoist and I also have a FREE online course for beginners too. These are all designed to help you or anyone else for that matter get started with Todoist. It might help get your team involved if you are a Todoist user of course.

Another way to help your colleagues become better organised is to encourage better use of calendars. The simple calendar is one of the most powerful productivity tools out there and almost everyone knows how to use their calendar.

Show your colleagues how to block time and explain why they should be doing it. Show them how to add simple to-dos —Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar and Apple’s calendar all allow you to add to-dos in one form or another. You can create to-dos as all-day events and they will then show up at the top of your calendar--this is really how Andrew was organising things in his diary.

The reporters' notebook was his collection tool, and he would then organise when he would do the work or follow-up the work in his diary. You can easily teach this to your colleagues. It’s essentially about having a place to collect the things you have to do and are committed to doing and then spread the tasks out over the week in your calendar. It’s simple, does not involve a lot of technology or learning curves and you can see how you are doing as you go through the week.

The reality is, though, if your colleagues cannot see a benefit for themselves being better organised and more productive no amount of persuasion by you will change anything. The best approach is to lead by example. Show your colleagues how much more relaxed you are, how you are able to go home on time and enjoy a great social life.

Be willing to explain the way you do things in a broken down, non-tekkie way and be patient. People do come round if you can show them how much more in control and stress-free you are. But never boast or criticise the way other people do (or not do) things. If you criticise and find fault all you will do is turn them against you. Be positive, encourage and stay humble. Nobody wants to follow a big head.

Thank you, Kelly, for your excellent question and thank you to all of you for listening. If you would like your question answering on this show, then please send me a quick email - carl@carlpullein.com or DM me on Facebook or Twitter. All the links and freebies are in the show notes.

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

Monday Oct 07, 2019

How To Stay on The Productivity Wagon Once You Have a System in Place.

Monday Oct 07, 2019

Do you find you are great a creating a system and then soon find yourself not using it, or falling off the wagon as we say? It happens to us all from time t time and that’s the topic of this week’s question.

Links:

Get 2 FREE months of Skillshare Premium using this link

Life & Time Mastery Workshop, Scunthorpe 28 December 2019

The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Carl’s YouTube Channel

Carl’s Blog

Script

Episode 103

Hello and welcome to episode 103 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

This week I show you how to maintain your productivity system once you have it up and running and give you a few tips on how not to fall off the productivity wagon once you are on it.

Now, before we get into this week’s question, for those of you who don’t know, I also have a YouTube channel and a blog where I post a lot of productivity and time management content each week. Over on YouTube, I focus a lot on Todoist, Drafts and Evernote as well as some useful tips and tricks. And my weekly blog dives deep into some of the issues that come up from time to time and how to overcome them.

Details on all these additional resources for you can be found in the show notes.

And… If you haven’t already taken my FREE beginners guide to productivity, then that is a great place to start with your own system. It will give you the ideas and know-how to creating a system for you built around some very strong principles. Again, you can find all the details for that in the show notes.

Okay, 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 Isaac. Isaac asks: Hi Carl, I am really struggling to find any consistency in using my system. I like my system and it basically works well, but after using it for a week or two I find myself not using it and I start missing things. Is there anything I can do to stop falling off the wagon?

Great question, Isaac. I find a lot of people struggle with this one. They spend a lot of time creating a fantastic system and then after a few days or weeks stop collecting and organising and then quickly everything stops working.

Now, there are a few reasons why this might be happening. The most common one is creating an overly complex system.

You see there’s a lot of fun to be had in developing your own system. For many of us solving problems is fun and building your very own productivity system, choosing the apps to use, setting up the project folders, the collection methods and deciding how we will organise our project support materials is all part of the fun.

The problems start happening once we have built the system and start to use it in our day to day world. That's when we come up against reality and discover that what we originally thought would work well doesn't work so well and involves a lot of processing time. Now it’s no longer a lot of fun. Now it seems as though all we are doing is fixing problems and cracks which means we are still not as productive to better at using our time as we want to be.

Another part of becoming better organised and more productive is moving from our old habits and installing new ones. If you are not accustomed to collecting everything —writing everything down or collecting it into a digital to-do list manager and then processing it — it can be hard to get into the habit of spending the necessary ten to fifteen minutes at the end of the day to do that.

Likewise, if you are not planning your day before you finish, you are not instilling the right kind of habits you need to maintain your system.

It’s the installation of these habits that will ensure your system continues to work.

How long does that take? Well, that depends but a study by the University of London found that to install a new habit takes 66 days. So it is going to take you around two months of consistent practice and self-discipline to take your new system and have it running smoothly and consistently.

This is where you need to apply your most effort. Developing the right habits to make sure you are maintaining your system. Once the maintenance becomes a habit, then you will find everything works much better and you are much less likely to stop using your system.

Getting into the habit of collecting and organising every day is the best way to start. If you are not collecting everything, that’s where the first cracks in your system will open.

One of the best things you can do to begin with is to find the quickest way to collect something. Set up your phone so you can collect a task or an event or note in as few button presses as possible. If you use an iPhone set up Siri to collect for you too. The least resistance you have to collect something means you will collect everything. That’s the goal. When you process you can decide if you want to keep it or delete it.

Now that process will take longer if you keep changing your system or apps. As soon as you change an element in your collection, processing or organisation structure you will have a new habit to develop. If you are changing your apps, you will have another app to learn.

This is why I always recommend you focus on developing your system and not play around with too many apps. Learning to habitually follow a system is much easier than learning to use a new app.

When it comes to processing this is where you need your calendar’s help. For me, I schedule 9:30 to 10:00 pm to process every Monday to Thursday. I don’t need to process on a Sunday because I do my weekly review on a Sunday afternoon and on Friday’s and Saturday’s I don’t have too much coming in. I will often do a quick scan of my inboxes to see if there is anything I need to be aware of before my big weekly review on a Sunday, but generally, anything collected on a Friday and Saturday can wait until Sunday.

I do plan the day on a Friday and Saturday. Planning only takes a few minutes because all it involves in checking my calendar and reviewing my dated tasks for the day. I can do this in less than five minutes and as this is a habit for me it would feel very strange if I went to bed not knowing what I wanted to accomplish tomorrow.

Give yourself thirty minutes the end of the day to process and plan. Now you can either do this after you get home in the evening or you can do it before you leave your workplace. Both work very well. The advantage of doing it before you leave your workplace is you can leave work behind when you walk out the door at the end of the day. There’s something about finishing your work day by processing your inboxes, planning what you will work on tomorrow when you arrive and then closing down and leaving the office. It clears your mind and allows you to enjoy the evenings without having to worry about anything at work.

The key to making this work is you schedule it on your calendar. If you are doing it before you finish work, block the last thirty minutes of your day on your calendar. If you are delayed and find yourself stuck in a meeting at the end of the day, don’t use that as an excuse to not do your processing and planning. Just add an extra thirty minutes to your day. You will thank yourself for it later. If you choose to do your processing and planning when you get home in the evening, make sure you set it at a time you will not be disturbed. If you have young kids, for example, wait until they go to bed so you get yourself twenty to thirty minutes of peace and quiet to do it.

Your processing and planning time needs to become a part of who you are. It is something you just do. When you reach that stage, then you are never likely to fall off the wagon again. It is just something you do like brushing your teeth or taking a shower every day.

Now if you have just developed a new system, then there are going to be a few issues. Things you thought would work in theory don’t work in practice, or you find collecting or processing is taking too long—which can happen when you are just starting out—then you should re-evaluate your system. The truth is there are always some things that don’t work exactly how you want them to. When you find that, review and adjust. It does not mean you need to start all over again. Often you just need to make a few little adjustments.

If you find collecting ideas and commitments while working at your computer is cumbersome, then see if you can set up some keyboard shortcuts. Another one you could do is have a Chrome set up where your calendar, notes and to-dos are all conveniently open in tabs. This is a great way to get your information quickly and conveniently.

If you find yourself forgetting to do something—like planning or processing—set up a repeating to-do task to remind you to do it. Make sure you get the notifications to come up on your phone or computer.

There are a lot of different ways you can adjust things to make it all work seamlessly and this will be something you will need to do. But it never means you have to tear everything up and start over. All it means is you adjust and move.

So, there you go, Isaac. I hope that has given you some food for thought and will help you develop the right habits. Remember, it’s going to take a while to develop the habits and you will need to make some adjustments. That said, I can promise you if you stick with it and make the necessary little adjustments it will be worth it in the end.

Thank you for your question and thank you to all of you for listening. Remember, if you have a question you would like answering all you need to do is email me - carl@carlpullein.com or DM on Twitter or Facebook. All the links are in the show notes.

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

Monday Sep 30, 2019

How To Shift To A Proactive State, Anytime.

Monday Sep 30, 2019

What state do you find yourself in most days? Reactive or proactive? That’s the topic of this week’s question on the Working With Podcast.

Links:

Get 2 FREE months of Skillshare Premium using this link

Life & Time Mastery Workshop, Scunthorpe 28 December 2019

The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Script

Episode 102

Hello and welcome to episode 102 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

This week we are talking about your state and the state you find yourself working in most days. This is not something I find a lot of people think about much. Instead, most people try to get through the day as best they can hoping to survive without having too many issues erupt. Yet, it does not really have to be like that and this week I will explain why.

But before we get to that…

Don’t forget, if you want to gain access to some of my shorter courses, you can on the Skillshare platform.

If you are not familiar with Skillshare, Skillshare is a subscription-based learning centre where you pay a monthly subscription and have access to thousands of shortish courses. I learnt Adobe Indesign and iPhoneography on Skillshare a couple of years ago. It’s a fantastic place to learn about so many amazing things from coding, productivity, creativity and photography. It’s well worth a subscription.

And, if you use the link in the show notes you can get yourself 2 months of FREE access to Skillshare’s classes. You could learn a lot in 2 months and by signing up using the link here, you help me too. Now that sounds like an awesome deal.

So whatever it is you want to learn, Skillshare will have courses for you. Take a look and if you see something you like use the link in the show notes to get yourself two months of premium courses for free.

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 Rachael. Rachael asks, Hi Carl, I’m one of those people who reads everything they can about being more organised and efficient. The problem I have is I always feel I am behind and never on top of all my work and commitments. Is this normal or is there something I am not doing quite right?

Hi Rachael, thank you for your question.

I don’t think you are doing anything wrong at all. What is likely to be happening is you are finding out that no matter what you do, the work, commitments, decisions and interruptions never stop. That’s just the world we live in today. There’s always something else. I say “the world we live in today”, but in reality, all these commitments, decisions and interruptions have always been there. The difference today is it is difficult to compartmentalise them.

What I mean by that is before we were connected to the always-on world via our smartphones, tablets and laptops, work email could only be dealt with when we were at the office, so when we left the office for the day, that was it. Work was over and we could turn our attention to our personal lives. That does not happen today. Instead, today we are exposed to a constant stream of notifications, interruptions, news and requests and unless you set yourself some barriers, you will feel stressed out, over-worked and out of control.

If you do feel you are always behind, that is often a symptom of not being fully aware of the big picture of what’s going on in your world. One of the biggest benefits of taking some time each week to step back and really look at what you have going on in your life is you get to see where you are on the journey. How you are doing with the projects you are committed to at work and in your own personal life and how you are doing with your goals and objectives. This is what most people are not doing but if you are not doing that, how are you measuring your progress? How do you know where you are? Who’s controlling the timeline of your life? You or the many people you connect with personally and professionally?

Without that knowledge—knowing where you are with your projects and goals—then you will not be making the right decisions about what to work on next. You will be working on the things that are the loudest and most urgent, and all that does is create more loud and urgent tasks coming your way every day because you are reacting to the work rather than making intelligent decisions about the work you do each day in a proactive way.

Let me give you an example of this:

A reactive person waits for urgent email before taking action. The belief here is if it’s out of mind it’s out of sight. Now that may well be true, but while it is out of sight it is growing into a monster of a problem to deal with. Instead of a regular check-in on a project to make sure it is moving in the right direction and the right work is getting done, which would take five to ten minutes, you wait for the loud, urgent email screaming at you about how the customer is very unhappy because they are still waiting for their order to arrive. Now not only do you have to expedite the order—often costing a lot more money than had you processed the order in the normal way—you also have to deal with an angry customer, (and when you call them to explain, they can talk for a very long time) get everybody on your team working on this one crisis and your stress levels increase massively.

In all, what could have taken a few minutes two or three times a week, has caused you and the entirety of your team to lose a whole morning, rushing around dealing with a crisis that could have been averted and creating more little monsters because you did not have time to check those. It becomes a vicious circle. You deal with one crisis and another appears and on it goes.

Instead, if you shift to a more proactive state, you make sure you are aware of what is going on within all your open projects. Problem projects are carefully monitored and potential crises anticipated and steps are taken to minimise their impact on your work. This shift in state does not take a lot of work or time, and when it is done consistently, it will save you a huge amount of time because you will have a lot fewer crises to deal with.

So how do you make this shift in state? How do you go from being in a reactive state to a proactive state?

Well, the first step is to get yourself organised. You need to know where everything is so you can access whatever you need when you need it quickly. If you are using multiple filing systems you are creating monsters. You won’t remember where everything is. Ideally, have one single storage system. Where possible use a cloud storage service such as Google Drive, Apple iCloud or Microsoft OneDrive. If your company insists you use their storage system that’s okay. All your work-related files, documents and or digital stuff goes there. You can then have a personal storage system for your personal stuff.

Next up, start using your calendar properly. Make sure the calendar view you have contains all your commitments professional and personal. It is not very smart to try and run two entirely different calendars in the hope of creating a fictional separation of your work and personal life. You need to see your commitments and events for the whole day in one place. That way you will know if you will have the energy to perform all your commitments all day. If you see on your calendar that you are doing a workshop all day and you are the trainer, in the evening you plan to do two hours of cross-fit, you may find that you are asking a little too much of your body for one day. Instead, you could decide to drop the two-hour cross-fit session and do a one hour walk with your partner instead. The two-hour cross-fit session can be done on a different day in the week. Being in a proactive state allows you to see this kind of conflicts before they happen so you can take steps to reduce their impact on your mental and physical wellbeing.

Finally, do a process and review session before you close down the day. Process all the things you have collected that day, get them put into their rightful place and then review what you have scheduled and planned for tomorrow. Once you have done that, step back, relax and breathe. You know what you have to perform tomorrow, you know you have the time and you have the built-in flexibility to manage the unknown that will inevitably come up.

How much time does it take to keep yourself in a proactive state? About thirty minutes each day. That’s all it takes.

Those thirty minutes allow you enough time to review the important things, prevent little issues growing into uncontrollable monsters and helps you to stay focused on the important things—the things that will move you forward on your projects and your goals. Those thirty minutes allow you to stay in control of your time.

It’s not difficult. But just having the knowledge is not enough. You have to commit yourself to make this a daily habit. It is like when on a diet, you know eating the bowel of carrots will help you to lose weight, but you eat the chocolate cake instead. You will never lose weight that way. You know that, but people still eat the chocolate cake. Knowing is not enough. You have to use that knowledge to make better decisions and take action.

I hope that has helped, Rachael. Thank you so much for your question.

And thank you to you too for listening. This podcast is for you and I hope you are getting a lot from it. Don’t forget, if you have a question you would like answering, then just get in touch either by email, carl@carlpullein.com or by DMing 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 Sep 23, 2019

How To Develop Your Own Productivity System

Monday Sep 23, 2019

Do you have to have a productivity system? Well, that’s this week’s question and finding the right one for you.

Links:

Get 2 FREE months of Skillshare Premium using this link

Life & Time Mastery Workshop, Scunthorpe 28 December 2019

The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Script

Episode 101

Hello and welcome to episode 101 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

I am frequently asked about my own productivity system and how to set things up the way I set them up. The problem here is that what works for me may not work for you.

They way I work, the way I think and the way I organise my files have been created over many years and are a result of all those things above plus the work I do. You will be different. Your work is different the way you think is different and your goals and objectives in life will be different.

In this week’s episode I answer a question about this and why it causes so many people to give up trying to organise their lives around a few simple systems.

Before we get in to this week’s question I want to say that if any of you are in the Skillshare learning programme, then many of my shorter courses are on Skillshare.

If you are not familiar with Skillshare, Skillshare is a subscription based learning centre where you pay a monthly subscription and have access to thousands of shortish courses. I learnt Adobe Indesign on Skillshare a couple of years ago. It’s fantastic place to learn about so many amazing things from coding, productivity, creativity and photography. It’s well worth a subscription.

So, help yourself and help me at the same time and get yourself signed up for Skillshare .

Okay, onto the question, and that means handing you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from James. James asks: Hi Carl, I love this podcast. My question is: all the various productivity experts tell us to follow this system or that system and I find it all confusing. Could you tell me which is the best productivity system to follow so I don’t have to keep experimenting?

Thank you, James, for your question. I completely understand how confusing things can get with so many bits of advice out there. A lot of the advice, and I have been guilty of this myself, pushes people towards a specific way of organising and managing their work. In reality, every one of us are different and what might work for me, and the way I think, is not necessarily going to work for everyone else.

This is one of the reasons why these days I show many different ways to manage Todoist and Evernote on my YouTube channel because there really are a multitude of different ways to manage your time and your work.

That said, there are also some fundamentals that if you skip, no amount of ways you organise your stuff will help. Those fundamentals are:

Collecting everything. If you not collecting your tasks, commitments and appointments into a trusted place then you will rely on your head to remember everything. Which means you won't remember everything. Relying on your head to remember everything is what leads to the feelings of overwhelm and stress. You brain does not know how to manage all those inputs. Are they short-term reminders? Long-term? Your brain does not know how to distinguish between these, so it will remind you to talk to your partner about next years summer holiday while you are on a stage pitching your latest product to four thousand prospective buyers.

Once you have collected everything, how you organise it matters. If you collect everything into just one list, soon that list will become huge and overwhelming to the point where you no longer want to look at it. When that happens the list become meaningless.

If nothing else you need a list for your work stuff and your home stuff. After that, how you organise it is really up to you. You might prefer to organise by your projects, areas of focus or context, tag or label. That’s really up to you.

After that, all you need focus on is doing the work. That’s why COD (Collect, Organise and Do) is just a framework. How you organise things inside that framework is up to you and that is important. The organising part needs to be unique to how you work.

If you are new to getting yourself better organised, experiment for a while. See what works best. From my coaching practice, I have learnt how we organise depends on how our brains are wired for this sort of thing. It’s part of my job, as a coach, to figure out the best way for you. A lot of that can be trial and error.

The good news is it is a lot of fun learning the best way.

I have one client where their to-do list is just a list of tasks and all their planning and task management happens on their calendar. Each day they select a few tasks from their to-do list manager, enter them on their calendar for the next 48 hours and manage everything from there.

Once a task has been allocated a day and time on their calendar, they remove the task from their to-do list manager. It works for them.

And that’s the key point here. “It works for them”.

What works for you?

I like to have my work organised into routines. I work better when I have a fixed schedule. That’s why my blog posts are written every Monday morning, my videos are recorded on a Friday afternoon and I record this podcast on a Sunday afternoon.

If my wife adopted my way of doing my work, she would hate it. My wife is much more impulsive than I am. She prefers to have a list of things to do and will do whatever she is in the mood for on that day. That works for her. That would stress me out.

Another area I find can be different is when we plan our days. Conventional wisdom would suggest planning the next day the evening before, it allows you to go to bed knowing exactly what you will start with the next day. This way you avoid wasting time when your brain is at its freshest trying to decide what to do.

However, for some people that does not work. They understand the concept but try as they might, their discipline and willpower at the end of the day are not there and they skip it. Making the switch to doing it first thing in the morning can fix that, once they switch they have no problem spending ten to twenty minutes planning their day.

This is one of the reasons why when you copy someone else's system you are likely to come up against a lot of problems. The way someone else works, even the type of work they do will always be different from you.

I don't get a lot of interruptions during the day and the work I do each week is reasonably consistent. Others—in the front line of customer service, for example—each day will be different with multiple issues to solve and a lot of interruptions. For someone in that situation using my system would very quickly find everything breaking around them. It just would not work.

In a highly disrupted environment trying to build a consistent schedule for your work would be futile. Instead, you need to develop a system that allows you to quickly access work that needs doing when you have some time available. In this situation, labels, tags or contexts (whatever you want to call them) work much better. So does having access to your files on all your devices. If a file you need is on your computer and not accessible from a tablet or phone, then you are not going to be able to work on that file if you are not at your computer.

Many of my coaching clients find blocking the final hour of their day off for focused, uninterrupted work valuable. What this means is you go and ‘hide’ somewhere where you will not be disturbed and get your focused work done for the day as well as your planning and cleaning up. For some, this means spending an extra hour at work, but the extra time spent on dealing with their backlog means they are much less stressed and don’t take their work home with them. So spending a little more time at work means they have the advantage that when they do get home they are able to spend more quality time with their family.

Alternatively, if you are a morning person, you could go in to work an hour earlier. There will be no customers bothering you at that time so you can catch up with focused work and your backlog. Again, it’s all about managing stress, overwhelm and backlog.

So, the bottom line, James, is you want to create a system that fits your way of working. This is not just for your to-do list manager, but for the way you file your documents and organise your notes. Other people’s way of doing things can give you a few ideas, but it’s you who will have to use your system so you need to be making sure that your system works for your way of thinking and way of working.

Remember the foundations don’t change. You need to be collecting everything that needs collecting and not trusting that your brain will remember. Once collected you should organise what you collected in a way that will show up when you need it to show up in a way that works for you and finally you need to be doing the work that matters when it matters.

I hope that has helped, James and then you for your question.

Thank you to all of you for listening too. Without you and your fantastic questions, this podcast would not exist. Don’t forget, if you want to help me, please sign up for a FREE two-month Skillshare account using the link in the show notes and at the same time help yourself you some amazing learning.

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

Monday Sep 16, 2019

What I Learned At Tony Robbins' Unleash The Power Within Event

Monday Sep 16, 2019

This week’s podcast is the 100th episode. So to celebrate this milestone, I have a rather special episode for you.

Links:

Tony Robbins Blog - Daily Priming

How to do “Ass-ti-tude”

Planning the next decade with Evernote

Life & Time Mastery Workshop, Scunthorpe 28 December 2019

The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Script

Episode 100

Hello and welcome to episode 100 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

This week, I want to tell you all about what I learned from Tony Robbins’ Unleash The Power Within seminar, conference, event. Last week, I was incredibly fortunate to be able to attend this event and I picked up a lot of tips and knowledge around getting maximum performance in every we do.

From a productivity perspective, I want to share some of those tips with you.

Before I get in to that though, we now have less than four months before the end of the year and if you are serious about turning 2020 and beyond in to your most successful year (and decade) then now is the time to begin thinking about what you want to change, what you want to accomplish and who you want to become. I put together an Evernote tutorial on my YouTube channel last week that takes you through six very powerful questions that will guide towards achieving a fantastic result. Even if you are not using Evernote, you will still find the video useful and you will be able to download the question sheet. The questions sheet is also available for free on my website. Links to both these are in the show notes.

And if you are ready to take your productivity, and goals, to the next level of performance, then I have also put my three-month coaching programme on special offer. You can now get three months of coaching for just $295.00 (saving yourself $75.00) With this coaching you will get me guiding you through your goals and helping you to set up the right workflow to make sure when the new year begins you start it with purpose and intention and start achieving your goals right from day one.

All the details for my coaching programmes are again, in the show notes.

The Mystery Podcast voice is having a week off this week as there is no question to answer.

So, what did I learn from Tony Robbins’ Unleash the Power Within?

The first thing I learnt—and this comes up on day one and two—is that motion = emotion. What does that really mean? Well, let me ask you a question. Have you ever been sat down for a few hours without moving? You know, just sat down, either in a car on a long journey or perhaps mindlessly watching TV? How much energy do you have? Very little. You will probably find you are not ‘in the mood’ to do very much. That’s because your body has slowed down. Your mind and body work together and so when your body does not move neither does your mind.

To change that—to change your state—all you have to do is move. Now of course if you have been sat down for a long time that is a lot easier said than done, but if you want to instantly change your mood, give yourself instant energy, then get up and move. If you can, dance—put on some lifting music and just dance for a few minutes. You will find almost immediately your mood changes, it lifts and when you are in a positive mood, you will make better decisions and you will feel a lot more positive.

I know that all sound very simple—it is—but it really does work. This is why your best decisions will always be made when you are moving. I remember nearly eighteen years ago, I made the decision to come to Korea while playing with my dog in the local park. I was moving. Prior to that day, I had spent weeks thinking about it and not really making any decision. That moment of movement was where I made possibly the best decision of my life so far. I know it works.

And if you really want to change your mood, then you need “Ass-ti-tude”. I’ve linked to a video in the show notes that will teach you all about that.

Another thing that really resonated with me was the “Pyramid of Mastery”. This came up on day three and what it means is you have seven areas of your life that need to master in order to have a great life. These are:

Physical - your physical fitness, health and vitality. (There’s that ‘energy’ again)

Emotion and meaning - if you are not controlling your emotions, then your emotions are controlling you. You need to be developing habits that put you in a positive mood every day.

Relationships - if your relationships are not strong, then you are not going to be able to perform at your best. Your broken relationships will weigh on your mind. Fixing your broken relationships needs to be a priority.

Time - You need to be in charge of your time and not allow others to control what you do each day. Mastering your time, learning to say no and giving yourself quality “me-time” each day is a must.

Career and mission - If you are not happy with your career and your mission in life you should be re-evaluating why you are doing what you are doing. What is your purpose? If your career (and life’s mission) are not motivating you, then you either need to reassess why you are doing what you are doing or you need to change careers completely.

Finances - I suppose this is an obvious one. If you are worried about your financial health, finding you have too much month at the end of your salary, then this will put a huge burden on your emotional strength.

And finally, Contribution and spirituality Fulfillment does not come from achieving your goals. Fulfilment comes from who you become in attaining your goals and what you give back to the world. When you are giving, your spirit is placed into a positive state. When you are taking you never quite feel right.

That, for me, was powerful stuff and I have already begun the process of building my goals around these seven areas of mastery for next year. And if you follow me on YouTube, then you will find a number of videos this week where I show you how you can build these seven areas into your daily routines.

There were two other big things I learned and have already implemented into my daily routines. The first is my nutrition. Now, I’ve always been pretty good with nutrition, but I learned the value of eating a more alkaline based diet to help keep my health strong and energy high. And I also learned about priming. Priming is where you give yourself ten to fifteen minutes in the morning to prepare yourself for the day ahead. It’s a form of meditation, where you essentially put yourself in a positive state. On the Tony Robbins blog, you can find a lot more information about this as well as a guided video. I would highly recommend you incorporate this into your daily life. Again, I have linked to that in the show notes.

Would I recommend Unleash The Power Within? Absolutely! I’ve been on a lot of workshops and courses in my time, but nothing comes close to this one. UPW (as we call it) changes lives. It’s highly energetic, at times emotional and the music played will stick with me for life (I’ve already created a playlist!)

And finally… The firewalk. Did I do it? Absolutely! Did I learn anything from it? Definitely. The purpose of doing the firewalk is to show us that when we get control of our mindset, focus and physical self, we can achieve almost anything. To do the firewalk we are shown how to put ourselves in to “state” that place where we are determined, focused, certain and ready to do something we have previously feared. When you take that “state” out into your own world, a lot of things can change for you.

The confidence generated from the firewalk is incredible and it is something that will live on in me for the rest of my life.

Before I finish I would like to say a huge thank you to all of you. This is the 100th episode of this podcast and we recently went past 100 thousand downloads. That’s an incredible achievement for a less than two-year-old podcast. So thank you so much to all of you for making that happen. I do these podcasts for you and I feel so grateful that I get the chance to serve you each and every week.

Thank you also to all of you who have sent in your questions. Your questions are the lifeblood of this podcast and it is what makes it what it is. So, I want you all to reach over your head and pat yourself on the back. You are all incredible and in the words of Joseph McClendon III… “You Freaking Rock!”

Don’t forget, if you have a question you would like answering on this podcast, just send me an email or DM me on Twitter or Facebook. I’d love to answer your questions.

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

Monday Sep 09, 2019

How Long Should You Be Spending On Planning Each Day?

Monday Sep 09, 2019

Podcast 99

Are you spending too much time planning each day and not enough time doing? That’s the question for this week’s podcast.

Links:

Life & Time Mastery Workshop, Scunthorpe 28 December 2019

Time And Life Mastery 3

The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System