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 Feb 12, 2018
Monday Feb 12, 2018
LINKS:
Getting Things Done, By David Allen 2015
Setting up GTD in Todoist Series
CONTACT ME:
Email:carl@carlpullein.com
SCRIPT
In this week’s episode of The Working With Podcast, I answer a question about managing a pure Getting Things Done system.
Hello and welcome to episode 13 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.
In this week’s episode, I answer a question about managing a pure GTD system (that’s Getting Things Done by David Allen) when you don’t use dates as reminders to do your tasks.
Now, I should tell you the truth, when I first began using the GTD system, this was one of the hardest things for me to get my head around. I, like most people, had grown up using due dates to remind me to do things. The GTD methodology takes that away and focuses on contexts to tell you what work to get done.
Anyway, before I answer the question, let me hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from YouTube user Gilco. Gilco asks:
Without any scheduled dates how can one get things really done and don't lose the overview of all the things that have to be done? In the end, I have a great bunch of lists with many many points to go through and schedule.
How can I then be reassured that I will not forget any point that has a specific due date...?
Okay, let's start with the basic idea behind GTD. GTD works on the idea that in order for you to complete a task, you are going to need a tool—a phone, a computer or a machine, a place— your office your home or the local hardware store, or a person—your boss, partner or a friend etc. No matter how urgent or how much you must complete that task today, if you do not have the right tool, are in the right place or with the right person you cannot do the task.
A good example is if you need to reply to an email today, but you are on a 14-hour flight to Asia, and there is no internet available on the plane, no matter how urgent your reply is, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. You could, of course, write the email and save it in your outbox ready for when you next have an internet connection, but the bottom line is for the next 14 hours, there is nothing you can do about sending the mail. You are not in the right place (a place with internet access)
With GTD, when you sit down to do some work, you open the lists that you can complete tasks from. For example, I have a list in Todoist I call my “office list” that shows all the things I need to do on my computer or phone. That is because when I am in my home office I have my phone and my computer right in front of me. Those are the tasks I can do right now, so that is the only list that matters. My list of things I need to talk to my wife about is not relevant. She is not there, so I cannot talk to her.
Of course, if my wife comes home, I can quickly check that list to see if there is anything I need to talk to her about that needs talking about today.
the same way if I take a call from my colleague. I can bring up the list for my colleague and check to see if there is anything I need to talk to her about. Once I have talked to her about everything that needs talking about I can check those tasks off.
Now imagine if I go out in the car and I pass the hardware store. I can pull over and check to see what is on my hardware store list. If there is anything I need, I can go into the store and purchase it. While I am sat in my office doing work, there is no point in looking at my hardware store list because I am not there. If I know I will be going past the store later that day, then, of course, I can take a look to see if I need to call in when I pass.
Okay, so hopefully that explains the basic idea behind GTD.
Now, what about things that absolutely must be done today. These would be put on your calendar. Your calendar is your radar that tells you what needs to happen on specific days. Most of us are already using our calendar for date specific appointments, well for GTD users, also included on our calendars are all the tasks that must be done on a specific day. For example, if you need to send that email today, and you are flying out to Asia in the afternoon, you would put “send email to Sarah before flying to Asia” on your calendar. You do not necessarily have to allocate it a time, but as it MUST go today before you fly, then it would be on your calendar.
If you need to finish a poster design for approval by Friday afternoon, then you would use your calendar to allocate a day when you would finish the design. Again, the choice is yours whether you allocate a time to do this or not. The important thing is that it is on your calendar on the day you need to do it.
For example, I need to write my weekly blog post on Monday morning. This allows me time to write, and edit the post before it gets published on Wednesday. I actually allocate Monday morning 8:30am to 10:30am to write the post. If I am on fire and get the draft written by 9:30am, then I would open my calendar and see what else needs doing that day. If there is nothing else allocated, I would then open my @office list and begin working my way down that list until I have to leave to teach my class at lunchtime.
So the morning workflow would be - open calendar check what needs doing today, once those tasks are completed, I then move over to my @office list and begin working my way down that list.
If my context changes, from @office to @coffee shop, for example, which it sometimes does in the afternoons, then I open my @mobile list and continue working my way down that list. My @mobile list includes all the tasks I can complete using my phone or iPad.
Over the years my workflow has changed a little. I find I prepare better if I check my calendar the night before. This way I am ready to get started on whatever work needs doing the moment I have my coffee made. When you check your calendar doesn’t really matter. Just go with whatever way works best for you.
As I mentioned at the beginning, when you move from being date orientated to being context orientated productivity it can be difficult at first. But the beauty of the GTD system is in its simplicity and it’s logical workflow.
Now, what about knowing what needs to be done and when. Well, this where the weekly review pulls it all together. When you do the weekly review you go through all your current projects task by task and make sure they are still relevant. Anything that needs to be done on a specific day, is moved on to your calendar and the rest stays on your to-do list— making sure you have the right context assigned to it.
During particularly busy periods, you may find you have to do a weekly review more often, I have done mini-weekly reviews two or three times in a week in the past because I knew I had a lot of deadlines coming up all at once.
When you go all in with GTD you soon find that the weekly review is essential if you want your system to work seamlessly.
Is GTD all that it is cracked up to be? I would say an emphatic YES! After switching and enduring the growing pains related to moving from being date orientated to context orientated my productivity sky-rocketed. I very rarely miss any deadlines and often find I have completed a project well within the time frame given to me. My stress levels reduced dramatically because I was always getting the important things done first and then making a dent on all the other work that needed doing. I never had to think about what to do next, because just looking at the right list told me. Those decisions were made when I did my weekly review.
The feeling of control and freedom GTD gave me, meant I could take more time off to sit back simply enjoy life again. Something I found difficult to do when I was date orientated.
As I got better at GTD I did modify the system a little. I like to separate out my routine tasks from my project tasks. to me, routines just have to be done and do not take my life any further forward. It is project tasks that improve my life and improve me as a person. So I want to be more focused on these. That little modification really got me focused on the important things in my life and boosted my productivity even further.
So there you have it. That’s how GTD works and how it can really transform your productivity. If you haven’t already, I strongly recommend you read the book. The book will give you everything you need to set up your own GTD system. I will put a link to the English version in the show notes for this episode.
For you Todoist users, I also have a mini-series of videos showing you how to set up a GTD system in Todoist and I also have a video showing an alternative way to set up GTD that I recently discovered when the Getting Things Done company released a setup guide for Todoist. All the links to these are in the show notes.
Thank you very much for listening to this podcast. Don’t forget, if you have a question you would like me to answer, you can email me—carl@carlpullein.com, DM me on Twitter or Facebook and I will be happy to add your question to the list.
It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.
Monday Feb 05, 2018
Monday Feb 05, 2018
This week's episode answer a question from many people about what exactly do I put into my Evernote.
LINKS
My Drafts Review Video
Don't forget, if you have a question you would like me to answer about productivity, goal planning or creating a successful life, then email me carl@carlpullein.com or DM me on:
https://www.facebook.com/CarlPulleinProductivity/
Subscribe to my newsletter to get all my content conveniently in your inbox every Friday:
SCRIPT:
In this week’s episode of The Working With Podcast, I answer a question about Evernote I am frequently asked.
Hello and welcome to episode 12 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.
Since starting this podcast last November the one question I am asked most often is how and what I use Evernote for. This question is easy to understand, because Evernote can be used for so many things. It can be used for collecting your ideas, your memories, your kids’ drawings and paintings as well as more businessy stuff such as expense receipts, meeting notes and performance tracking.
So, in this week’s episode I decided to go through the kind of stuff I keep in Evernote and hopefully it will give you some ideas of what you too can use Evernote for.
So, without further ado, let me hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question…
This week’s question comes from many people: Jill, David, Penny and Tony to name a few. The question is: Hi Carl, what do you put into your Evernote?
Okay, before we get in to the details of this question, I should say I have been using Evernote since September 2009. So I am nearing my 9th year anniversary.
Quite simply Evernote changed everything for me. Before Evernote, i had notes and files all over the place. Now, because I am a naturally organised person, these notes and files did have a place, usually kept in folders in my bookshelf next to my desk. Notes, were often kept in notebooks and all my important paper documents were kept in their appropriate files. It was organised, but it still took time to find what I was looking for when I needed it.
Then along came Evernote. Even back then it was easy to take a picture of something and send it to Evernote. And this is what I started doing. First in was important receipts that I needed to keep for the guarantee. Then it was my utility bills and soon pretty much all important paper documents I needed to keep were scanned into my Evernote. In the early days I needed to scan many of these documents in using my computer’s printer/scanner, but as time went by and technology in our digital devices improved, I was able to scan documents simply by using my iPhone.
My organised mind, created a number of Notebooks and tags for these documents and very soon it just became natural to scan in documents to Evernote. I think, if I am being honest, I never actually made the decision to go paperless, it just evolved over a few years.
I’ve always used Evernote to capture my ideas and notes. That was what I used Evernote for when I first started using it. Scanning documents came later.
Over the years, what I keep in Evernote has grown, and as the stuff I keep there has grown, so my organisation of Evernote has evolved. Now, for example, I use less notebooks and more tags. That was a big change in the way I use Evernote a couple of years ago. (thank you, Enrico Nahler)
The one thing that has always kept me with Evernote by the way is Evernote’s search function. I have tried other note taking apps over the years, but the one thing Evernote does better than all its rivals is in it’s search. It is fast (very important) and you can search for almost anything within a note. Just hitting COMMAND J on a Mac (sorry I don’t know what the function is on Windows) will search for notebooks, tags or keywords. It takes no time at all and it is so easy to find exactly what you are looking for. If, for example, I am planning a trip to Singapore and will have a few days free, I can go in to Evernote, type “Singapore” in the box and I will get all my notes related to Singapore and I can choose the places I want to visit.
So there you have one use of Evernote I use. I keep a note for each city or country I would like visit and list out all the places I would like to see while I am there. I also keep important information such as visa requirements and other such information.
I also keep all my utility bills in there now. As soon as a bill arrives I will use my phone and scan the bill in and send it to my inbox. Then when I process my inbox I will tag it appropriately and send it off the the right notebook.
I also have a special tag I call Incubator. My incubator is used for ideas I am developing. I get ideas at all times of the day. It is so easy to open up Evernote using 3D Touch on my phone and capture the idea. Then as I develop the idea over time, I store it in my Incubator tag which is kept in my favourites bar. This way it is really easy to get the note back and add other ideas I have to the note as they come up.
My journal is now in Evernote. The reason I switched over to Evernote was simply because Evernote is with me everywhere I go. If I have a few minutes while in a taxi, on a bus or train and I want to write in my journal I can do so. Then, at the end of the year, I print out that year’s journal entries and create a book from it and I store those in a storage box. In the future it will fantastic to be able to go in and read what I wrote in years gone by.
One area of interest I have is with classic British clothing. I love the history and culture behind items of clothing. For example, the business suit we all know and sometimes wear today has military origins going back centuries. Overcoats and pea coats also originated from military clothing. It’s a fascinating story where the different styles we all love to wear come from. I have a tag for articles related to clothing I like and can reference these when I am deciding if I want to buy a new coat or suit.
Likewise I have a tag for clothing and shoe suppliers. I have my favourite brands, I think we all do, and as I live in South Korea some suppliers can’t or won’t ship to Korea. Over the years I have found suppliers who do ship here, so I keep their details in Evernote and if I decide I want to buy a new sweater, I can go in to Evernote search for “sweaters” and up comes my favourite sweater manufacturer, N Peal in London (they do ship to Korea by the way) Same for my shoes. My favourite show maker is a company called Crockett and Jones. Now some department stores do sell Crockett and Jones here in Korea, but they are prohibitively expensive here. It is actually cheaper to buy direct from the UK. I know my sizes at Crockett and Jones so I can simply pull up my Crockett and Jones note and I have the order details right there.
I also keep details on my favourite fashion icons. I have tags for people like Cary Grant and Steve MacQueen and in there I keep pictures of them and details of the clothes they wore. Steve MacQueen’s sunglasses in the movie Thomas Crown Affair were made by Percel. I have a pair which came from an article I found while surfing around the internet one day years ago, found this article on the sunglasses worn in the movie, clipped the note and a few months later I ordered a pair.
Other more businessy things I keep in Evernote are things like my student lists. I keep a note for each student and client I teach whether that is my communication students or my productivity mentoring students. These notes contain all the things we are working on and what we have worked on. That way, when I am with the student I have a list of all the things we have worked on and I can see what needs working on without me having to carry that information around in my head. Again, I tag each note with the student’s name. That way it is very easy to call up the note when I need it.
I have a tag called “content” in that tag, I keep notes for each of my YouTube series, such as Todoist, Evernote and work. I can then add ideas to the list for future episode when they come to me. I also use a fantastic app called Drafts which allows me to add ideas for these directly to the note without having to open Evernote. I did a YouTube video on Drafts a few months ago, and I’ll put a link to that in the show notes for those of you interested in it.
My weekly social media content is also planned out in Evernote. I keep a template for this and copy the template every Sunday when I plan out next week’s social media content. During the week, when I am busy doing my usual weekly work stuff, it makes life so easy to just open up that note and do that day’s social media work.
And of course, meeting notes. Depending on the situation, I either type notes directly into Evernote, or use my paper notebook and after the meeting just scan the notes in. Once again, this makes finding meeting notes months later, so easy. It’s almost unfair on anyone not using Evernote. It really does work as my external brain.
And there you go, pretty anything I want to keep gets put into Evernote. All my interests and hobbies like, my unhealthy fascination on all things related to James Bond and my love of Photoshop. I keep a tag for these. Tutorials for Photoshop, interesting facts about Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond and my writing hero. Anything like that gets sent to Evernote. As you can imagine, over the last 9 years I have collected an incredible source of information that is tailor-made for my interests and needs.
And that’s something I should stress. Make Evernote yours. Keep whatever you like in there. Create a notebook and tagging system that works for the way you think and just sit back and enjoy everything you keep there. As time goes by you’ll love going in to your Evernote for all the memories it serves up for you.
Thank you for listening to this episode. I do hope you enjoyed it as much as I did making it. Don’t forget if you have a question you would like me to answer, all you have to do is email me - carl@carlpullein.com, DM my on Facebook or Twitter or fill out the question sheet on my website carlpullein.com.
It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.
Monday Jan 29, 2018
Monday Jan 29, 2018
Don't forget, My Time And Life Mastery January Sale offer ends Midnight Jan 31st. Get yourself enrolled today and get 50% off the course, PLUS... A free copy of my latest book, Your Digital Life 2.0 AND... The 2018 Time And Life Mastery Workbook.
In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about deciding what goes where and when.
Hello and welcome to episode 11 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.
One of the most frequent questions I get is about managing apps used to maintain a great productivity system. I recommend you have a calendar, a to-do list manager, a notes app and a cloud storage drive. I’ve been recommending this set up for years and I do so because I know it works. But once you have those apps, managing what goes in them can cause problems, particularly if you have never had a system in place before.
This week’s question is related to this whole area and I think my answer and recommendations can help you if you also suffer with this problem. So, enough of me talking. Let me now hand you over to the recently recovered mystery podcast voice, for this week’s question.
For this week’s question, Nicola writes from France:
How do you distinguish between what you put in Evernote and what you put in Todoist? I have a really hard time with this and find I have tasks and notes all over the place. Thanks, Nicola
Thank YOU Nicola for an excellent question.
This is a problem I find many people have. Because of the way some of these apps are trying to be a one stop solution for all our needs it can become quite confusing where we should be putting things. Evernote, for example, has the ability to create checklists and reminders and become a to-do list manager. Todoist, my other app of choice, has the ability to store notes and files. Because of this it is very easy to start dumping notes in Todoist and to-dos in Evernote.
The problem I have found when an app tries to be all things is that in order to achieve this, the app has to make compromises. Usually, the interface becomes messy and difficult to read, or in order to get things to work properly, you need to have a doctorate in astro physics, something, most of do not have. I personally, have an allergy to complexity. My brain usually just switches off when faced with anything complex—I lose interest.
Evernote, for example, puts your reminders at the top of your notes list. Now, on a desktop that works okay, not great, but okay. Evernote on a mobile device becomes much more difficult and finding your to-do list for the day, becomes an exercise that is just way to complex, for me.
Todoist again, does not work great with notes. Sure you can add notes to individual tasks, and you can add notes to the project itself. But once you have checked off the task, the notes disappear with it. This means if you want to retrieve your notes at a later date you have to go hunting round in the archive. Not the best use of your time, I can assure you.
This is why I have always maintained what I call hard edges between my apps. My to-do list manager contains the tasks I need or want to do “the whats”. My note taking app contains all the support materials, the “hows” if you like. And my cloud drive, contains the files I am working to make the project happen. This makes it so much easier for me when I come to processing stuff I have collected. If it is something that is telling me what to do, ie. “Call Jennifer about next week’s workshop”, then that goes into my to-do list manager. If I receive an itinerary for the workshop from Jennifer, then that would go into my note taking app. And if I have to prepare a presentation for the workshop, then the Keynote file would be stored in my cloud drive.
Of course, a lot of things can be going on in the background in this scenario. When I talk to Jennifer, she may say: “I’ll email you the itinerary later today”. Okay, now I am waiting for something. I would create a task in Todoist telling me I am waiting for a file from Jennifer and put that under my waiting for label. If I am to prepare a presentation for the workshop, I would have a note in my notes app with my ideas and sketches for slide design and layout. But the thing is, each item has it’s place and each item is labeled or tagged appropriately so I can find what I need, when I need it instantly.
And that’s the goal really. “Everything in its place and a place for everything”.
What I have found is when someone is starting out on the road to greater productivity and organisation, they have to spend time thinking about where something should go. On a Monday morning, after a good night’s sleep making these decisions is easy. But late on a Thursday evening, after a day of back to back meetings and you are exhausted from your efforts, these decisions are not so easy. And that is when things begin to slip.
Your To-do list manager’s inbox is full of tasks and notes. Your cloud drive has files you are working on all over the place and you haven’t touched your note taking app. This is where taking fifteen to twenty minutes out to tidy things up can be a huge help. Maybe you can come back from your lunch a little earlier and get things organised, Or you could come in to work a few minutes early and get the stuff into the right places. Either way, those fifteen to twenty minutes should be considered an investment. Because later in the day they can save you hours of searching and thinking.
I’ve been following this philosophy for years now and the processing takes me very little time. In fact, when I look at my inbox, I just naturally start processing. This is something you will get better and faster at doing over time. But it is a habit you need to develop. At first it will take you more time than you anticipate, that’s normal. You are after all, changing the way you think. But if you stick at it, you will get faster and faster at it.
Another tip here is to have tools for specific purposes. If I am attending a meeting, I always take my notebook with me. I prefer writing meeting notes by hand as it just feels more natural to me. After the meeting, I pull out my todos and enter those into Todoist, cross them off once they are in Todoist and then use Evernote’s scanning app and scan the notes directly into my Evernote inbox. Because the to-dos have been crossed off and entered into my to-do list, I know that what’s left is a note related to the meeting.
Now of course, I do not always have time to pull out the to-dos immediately after the meeting, but I know the note’s not been scanned, so at the next available opportunity I can quickly scan the note for to-dos, enter them in to Todoist and cross them off from the note. This process takes around two minutes to do and I usually find I do this while I am waiting for the next meeting to start anyway.
Part of achieving greater personal productivity is really in having the right system set up and those systems naturally fit in with your personality. This is why I know that there is no perfect system. The way my brain works and processes things is likely to be very different from the way your brain works and processes things. I like things to be in their place and if they are not I feel uncomfortable. My wife on the other hand is the complete opposite and feels very comfortable with things all over the place. Much to my frustration.
But no matter how your brain works, having a system in place that allows you to find what you need with the least effort and time, when you need it should always be your goal. Mixing up your to-dos with you notes and files is a recipe for an unsuccessful attempt at getting yourself better organised. You will spend far too much time looking for stuff and not enough time working on stuff. But if you have a system in place that you know where everything is, you will quickly get so much better at making these decisions with little to no effort at all. It’s just something you need to stick at.
My advice, is don’t be tempted by apps that try to sell you on their ability to be all things for all situations. Those apps, in my experience are far too compromised to work effectively and they don’t have the hard edges between the various roles they are trying to be. Choose separate apps for each part of your productivity system. Make sure those apps can be link to each other and keep your to-dos in your to-do list manager, you events on your calendar, your notes and reference materials in your notes and the files you’re working on in your cloud drive. Doing things this way will give you a much cleaner, more efficient system.
Thank you for listening and if you have a question you would like answering on this show, please get in touch either by email: carl@carpullein.com or you can DM me on Twitter or Facebook. Lists for all these places are in the show notes.
It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.
Contact Me:
Monday Jan 22, 2018
Monday Jan 22, 2018
LINKS
For more information on my Mentoring Programmes and how I can help you to become better organised and more productive, click here
In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about coping with a huge list of active projects.
Hello and welcome to episode 10 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.
I hope you are all having a great start to the new year. My year hasn’t started too well. The first week I had a stomach bug, and the second week I came down with a cold. So, I decided the third week of this month was the start of the new year and so far, touch wood, my year is now going fantastically!
Anyway, on to this week’s show. This week’s question throws up a very common difficulty for many people in personal productivity and in particular when using GTD. (that’s Getting Things Done by David Allen) This is the one where you end up with a huge list of active projects which in turn leaves you with an overwhelming list of projects that just depresses you every time you open your to-do list manager. In this week’s episode, I want to offer you some guidance on how to avoid this happening to you.
Okay, it’s now time for me to hand you over the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Ben. Thank you, Ben.
Ben asks: You park your projects in someday maybe folder. I’ve got over 60 running parallel projects in my work folder. I am running a tombstone business. How can i handle this for a better overview, thank you. Ben
Another fantastic question. Thank you, Ben
To really answer this question we need to step back a little and look at the big picture and what we are capable of actually doing each day.
We humans only get 24 hours each day. In that time we need to sleep, eat, shower and communicate with our friends and families. So, while in theory, we have 24 hours, we really only have a fraction of that time to do work. Even the most workaholic types among us, are not capable of doing work consistently over a period of 24 hours. If we tried, we’d be burnt out within a few days. So, let’s get realistic about what we can achieve on a daily basis. Sixty parallel running projects is not going to happen. Either you are going to miss deadlines, or the quality expected for each project is not going to be what is expected.
From my own experience, I know that to create an online course takes around 10 to 15 hours of planning and 15 to 20 hours to record and edit. There are another 5 to 10 hours required after that for study sheet writing and uploading the videos. So in total to create an online course requires 30 to 40 hours. In theory, that means an online course could be created in one week, given the average working time is between 35 and 40 hour per week. But, what that does not take into consideration is all the additional admin, communications and meetings that are also part of an average week. Even trying to allow two weeks to do this project would be unrealistic, as I always have other projects on at any one time. So, I have learnt that to create an online course (a project) actually takes 1 month to do.
By allowing 1 month to complete an online course project, I also allow myself time to work on other projects. But, that still means I need 10 hours a week to work on the project. If I multiply those ten hours to say fifty hours for the week, that means theoretically, I can only work on 5 projects at any one time. But, again, that does not take into consideration additional admin, communications and meetings, so realistically, you are only going to be able to work on 3 to 4 projects at any one time.
Of course, if you own your own business, you can hire people to work on some of your projects and multiply the number of active projects accordingly, but you will always find you are limited by the one resource you cannot change, time.
This is where the Someday | Maybe folder comes in to play. At any one time, there will be projects that are time sensitive. Projects that have a deadline sometime in the next 3 to 6 months. These projects should be your active projects. These are the ones that have deadlines coming up in the near future and so these should be in your active projects folders whether they are work or personal. All other projects, where the deadlines are over 6 months away can be placed in your someday | maybe folder and for now, left idle. I usually have a reminder task inside these projects to remind me to have a quick look at the project in case there is something I need to do, but for the most part these projects are idle until one of my other, active projects has been completed, Then the next time sensitive project gets moved up into the active project folder.
However, another area I find people struggle with when they have all their projects lined up in their active projects folders is they date everything. So, each day they end up with over 50 tasks to do and not-surprisingly end up not completing their daily tasks. This then often leads to people quitting using a to-do list manager, complaining that it takes too much time to manage, or to-do lists don’t work for them. The truth is, they are not working their to-do list managers properly, and yes, of course, they become endless lists of work that never gets done.
I go back to my point at the beginning of this podcast. You have to be realistic about what you can achieve in a day, a week and a month. Biting off more than you can chew is never going to be a good strategy for anyone.
So if you are suffering from an overwhelming active projects list, then here’s what you can do:
Often one of the first things I notice when I am mentoring people through my mentoring programme (details in the description if anyone is interested… Oops I’m plugging there) is that some people are confusing their day to day activities or areas of focus with projects. For example, marketing activities. Unless the you are creating a new marketing campaign, then any marketing activity will be part of your day to day job. This is an area of focus, not a project. For my productivity business, I promote many of my products on Twitter. These need scheduling every day. This is not a project. This is an area of focus that just needs doing every day. However, creating a launch campaign for my latest book, that’s a project. It is a one off event that lasts around two months. Once the launch window is over, any further marketing activities will become part of my everyday marketing area of focus.
Likewise, creating my YouTube videos, could in theory be considered a project, but in reality, I do these every week and the only thing that changes is the topic. The number of videos I create each week remain pretty consistent. That makes these videos an area of focus, not a project. I have scheduled time to do the recording and editing each week.
So, how do you define a project and an area of focus. Well, this is really up to you and your preferred way of working, for me an area of focus is anything that has to be done, but has no end date. It’s just part of my work, but does take my life further forward. A routine is different in that a routine is anything I have to do that does not take my life further forward. For example, taking the garbage out or updating my admin sheets each day. How you define taking your life further forward is another one of those things that only you can decide.
The thing is when you are clear about what your real projects are, and what your areas of focus are, you can make sure your areas of focus become just part of your daily work and you can then focus on allocating sufficient time to your real projects. Things that have a deadline.
For those of you working with clients, I would create each job I do for a client as a project. In my mentoring programme, each mentee, I think that what you call them, have their own project. Each programme has a set curriculum if you like and I can make sure that each part of the programme is completed when it needs to be completed. I keep the number of active mentees limited to ten at any one time so that I am not overwhelmed. (Incidentally, I do have a couple of places available at the moment... oops another plug...sorry)
So there you have it. If you do find you have a large, overwhelming list of active projects, first go through them to see if any of them require nothing for six months. If so, move them to your someday | maybe folder with a task set to remind you to look at it at some point in the near future. Once you have done that, go through your active projects and see if any of those projects are really areas of focus (don’t have an end date) and move them to your Areas Of Focus folder.
I know these tips will not actually reduce the work. The work still needs to be done anyway, but these tactics will help you to reduce a long list of projects that have become overwhelming and that is really the goal.
Good luck and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.
Monday Jan 15, 2018
Monday Jan 15, 2018
In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about managing multiple projects as well as multiple personal projects.
Hello and welcome to episode 9 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.
In this week’s show, I answer a question many people have about managing multiple personal and work-related projects. With so many people today having side-projects in their lives, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and lost. So, without any further ado, let me hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Neil. Thank you, Neil for your question.
In the past, I know you've said to limit the number of active projects one has to avoid overload and overwhelm. However, due to the nature of my day job, I have about 5 concurrent work projects plus a couple personal projects. I am hitting a bit of a wall with being able to make steady progress because of being pulled in the different directions of so many simultaneous projects needing attention.
Any ideas on how to proceed/prioritise them to make it more manageable?
There are a couple of things you can do. The first is a pure Getting Things Done solution. Based on the book by David Allen.
All work can be categorised into contexts. What this means that any given task, to be completed, needs at least one of three things. A tool, a place or a person. In Getting Things Done speak this is called “a context” So, for example, if you needed to create a presentation, then you would need a computer to do the work. So, “@computer” would be the context. If you needed to talk with your spouse about your son’s next cricket match, then the context would be your spouse. By following what I call a pure GTD approach, you would work from your content lists. So, if you are in front of your computer, the only list you can work from is your @computer list. If you are at the supermarket, the only list you can work from is your @supermarket list etc.
If you work from your contexts, ie. Only work on the tasks that you either have the right tools for, are in the right place or are with the right person you will be able to get on with the tasks that you can only work on at that particular moment. All the other tasks, tasks you either do not have the right tools for or are in the right place or with the right person can be forgotten about for now. You cannot do anything about them.
This is the logical way to manage this kind of situation, and when you trust it, it does work. If you are using a to-do list manager such as Todoist, then it is easy to open it up with the right label or filter (depending on how you want to work it) Sooner or later you will find your projects are completing. Remember, you can only work on one thing at a time, and by organising your work by context, you are not wasting time trying to figure out what to do next, because your situation will determine that for you.
In the past, whenever I have ever felt overwhelmed by the amount of work I have on, it has always been because I have been trying to work on projects and not contexts. Once I have readjusted things and focused on contexts, I very quickly find I am no longer overwhelmed.
Just as an aside, I should point out to anyone new to using contexts don’t go looking for other people’s contexts. They won’t work. I’ve done that in the past and I soon realised everyone is unique and have different tools, places and people they need to talk to. For someone based in an office, having a context of “office” makes sense. For someone like me who does not work out of an office and does a lot of writing work in coffee shops, a label @Coffee shop makes more sense. You need to figure out your own contexts. The Getting Things Done basic contexts are a good place to start, but you should modify them to fit better with your own personal circumstances.
The second way would be to theme your days. You could say Monday is for project 1, Tuesday is for project 2, Wednesday for project 3 etc. This means that each project gets an equal amount of attention each week. Of course, this depends on the time sensitivity of each project. You may find you have a deadline for one project on Friday next week, and a second one three weeks later. In that situation, you may want to spend more time each week on the more time-sensitive project.
One thing I find very helpful is to allow about an hour or two a day to do the random stuff that gets thrown at me. Preparing for this podcast takes me around two hours and I schedule two hours to do it on my calendar. At the same time, I have videos to prepare, classes to teach and student questions to answer. However, I make sure there is at least one hour a day free to deal with the random stuff that gets thrown up. Students trying to reschedule classes, issues related to my websites or online courses etc. That way I manage to keep everything in order and my responses to clients and students done in a timely manner.
There are other things you can do such as identifying which tasks would have the biggest impact on each project’s completion. Doing this as part of your weekly review means you can find time on your calendar to schedule a time to block off to really focus on those tasks. This is akin to Cal Newport’s Deep Work system. You do need to be in control of your work time to be able to do this, but I have found most bosses and clients are sympathetic when you ask to be left alone for a few hours in a quiet place to get on with some deep work. The problem, of course, is most people are too afraid to ask or assume they won’t be allowed and again, don’t ask and so never get left alone to do some deep work. However, doing things this way you know on a weekly basis that the big tasks are getting done. If you have five projects, then finding one task from each project and making sure you get those tasks done by the end of the day on Wednesday means that Thursday and Friday can be focused on tiding the little tasks up.
Another thing you could do is spend ten to fifteen minutes at the end of the day to identify which tasks you must complete the next day and make sure these are done before lunch-time the next day. Make sure you don’t have more than three tasks to do. By the way, this gamification of your most important tasks can add a little fun and a challenge to your workday. This then frees up the afternoons to catch up with all the other things pulling at you. The great thing about doing things this way is you have a wonderful feeling of accomplishment at the end of each day because you managed to get your MITs done before lunch.
Again, I should emphasise that you can only do one thing at a time. No matter how many tasks, projects and things to do you have, you can only do one at a time. In my experience, a lot of time is wasted figuring out what to do next because the next action has not been properly identified. Being very clear about what the next action is will help you a lot. (I find most people are not) It also means you are spending less time on figuring out what you need to do next and more time on actually doing the necessary steps to take the projects to completion.
I understand having a huge workload is difficult. But as I say, you can only work on one thing at a time and setting up your system so that you are able to get straight to work on the important things when you sit down to do you work is one step you can take to help you be more efficient and effective with the work you are doing. This way, David Allen and the whole GTD community stress the importance of the Weekly Review. I would go one step further and suggest the daily mini-review is just as important today because since the first edition of GDT was published in 2001, our work has grown exponentially with more distractions and inputs. It now more important than ever to be fully aware of what the next action is on any given project so you can get straight on to it when you start your work.
To sum up then. If you find yourself overwhelmed with the amount of work you have to do, try focusing more on your contexts, rather than your projects. Make sure you are doing at least a weekly review so you are fully aware of the status of each project and build in a daily mini-review to identify what the next actions are on each project you are working on. This won’t reduce the work of course, but it will give you peace of mind knowing you are working on the important things and that each project you are working on is getting done.
I hope you found this episode useful. Don’t forget it you have any questions about productivity, self-development or goal planning then email me, DM me on Facebook or Twitter or ask your question in the comments field on this podcast and I will be very happy to add your question to the list.
Thank you very much for listening and it just remains for me to wish you all a very very productive week.
Monday Jan 08, 2018
Monday Jan 08, 2018
This first episode of 2018 is the audio from last week's Working With Work video. Because getting yourself motivated and set up for the best year you have ever had is so important, I felt it would help all you guys who prefer listening to podcasts.
Don't forget, if you have any questions you would like me to answer, just drop me a line at carl@carlpullein.com and I will be very happy to add your question to the list.
If you would like to see the video of this episode, just click here
Monday Dec 18, 2017
Monday Dec 18, 2017
In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about motivating yourself to work on side-projects.
Hello and welcome to episode 7 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.
Before we get into this week’s show, I would like to thank all of you who have bought Your Digital Life 2.0. The response has been tremendous and I am honoured to have such wonderful people supporting me. Thank you all. Also, for those not wishing to buy Your Digital Life 2.0, don’t worry, I have two videos on my YouTube channel that show you how to set up Todoist and Evernote in the way I recommend in the book.
Oh, and one more thing… If you have a question you would like answering on this show, please let me know either via email carl@carlpullein.com or DM me on Twitter or Facebook etc. All the links are in the show notes.
Okay, let me now hand you over the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question is from Sophie and she asks…
How do you motivate yourself to work on side projects in the evenings and on weekends.
Thank you for your question, Sophie
Another great question! Thank you, Sophie.
Before we can talk about motivation, we need something to be motivated about. I am sure there are many of you listening who have things you would like to do but for some reason or other are not doing it. This could be anything like reading more books, starting a blog or a podcast or learning to ride a horse. There are so many things, and for many of you, I am sure you feel there is no time.
One thing I have learned over the years is if something is important enough, if something is burning inside me, I will find the time. We humans always do. Usually, when I find I attach the excuse “I don’t have time” to something, it is a sure fire indicator that something is not important enough for me and I will re-evaluate that thing. This is a great test to evaluate something’s importance. If you’re finding excuses, then I can guarantee it is not important enough to you. Recording and editing my YouTube videos each week takes about six hours. Most people I know would never try and find six hours to do something every week, week after week because it isn’t important enough to them. But my YouTube videos are very important to me. So I always find those six hours every Saturday to do the recording and editing.
So, what do you do if something is really burning inside you. You can’t stop thinking about it and you can’t wait to start?
the best way to start this is to take a look at your calendar and find an evening when you are not usually busy. It’s no good saying you will spend 1 hour every evening learning Spanish when you do Yoga on Tuesday and Thursday nights and go to the Super League game every Friday with your friends. There are three identifiable nights where either you are going to be too tired or too late to sit down for an hour to study Spanish. You have to be realistic.
But we can go back to do what I mentioned earlier, if something is not important enough to you, you will always find an excuse. Is this thing you really want to do more important than your Yoga or Super League game?
Learning a language, for example, needs patience, action, consistency and time (there’s that good old PACT again) If you are not willing to study three nights a week because of something else, you probably need to go back and question your motivation for doing something in the first place.
A huge reason people fail to achieve success at anything is that they spread themselves too thin. If you want to win an Olympic gold medal for the marathon at the next summer Olympics, you are going to need to run every day. You will have to spend hours and hours pounding the pavement. There will not be any time for friends, socialising, Yoga or rugby. It would take your complete focus and dedication to win that gold medal. But if that was important enough to you, you would find a way to make the time to do the training.
However, imagine you want to start your own side business as a contributing writer for a major magazine. You can’t just send an email to the editor and ask if you can become a contributor. They wouldn’t even reply to you. You would need to create your own blog, you would need to be writing blog posts week after week and be able to demonstrate you are consistent. That would mean you would need to set aside some time each week to sit down and write. In my own experience, it takes around two to three hours to write a blog post and another two to three hours to edit. That’s up to six hours to produce one blog post. That would mean you spending two hours on a Monday writing the first draft, two hours on Wednesday doing the first edit and two hours on Friday to do the final edit and publish. Would you be willing to sacrifice that much time week after week for four to five years?
If it’s important enough to you, you would.
But let's say you just want to start a side project to see if you could turn an idea into a viable business. Perhaps in this instance you are not sure whether you will have the passion for the project or not. You just want to try something out.
In this case, I would set aside one or two nights a week to try these things out. Again, use you calendar and set aside one or two hours to play.
The thing about using your calendar to schedule these sessions is that you are much more likely to do it. If you do not schedule it, you will always find an excuse when you come home after a horrible day at work. Those nights, the TV becomes a temptation that cannot be resisted and before you know it you are in the middle of Elementary desperate to learn how Sherlock and Watson solve the mystery.
One way I have found that works is if you schedule Monday nights as “side project” night. There’s usually nothing exciting on TV on a Monday night so you could schedule 8pm to 10pm as your side project night. If you treat your calendar as a sacred place, you are going to be much more likely to do what your calendar tells you to do. If Monday’s are buy for you, then by all means find another night when you are regularly free. This is your side project play night. I use late Friday night as my catch up on YouTube videos night. Throughout the week, there’s always a few YouTube videos I want to watch, but don’t usually have much time during the week. So I set aside an hour on a Friday night, around 11pm to catch up on these. It quiet, there’s nothing else for me to do and I really enjoy that time.
The truth is though, if you are not excited about doing something, then the motivation will not last. I remember back around 2005 I got in to a video podcast called Photoshop TV. I love photography and I have always enjoyed taking photos, and I had a very old version of Photoshop in my computer. I found this podcast and began watching it right from episode one. The format of the podcast was fantastic. Three presenters each doing a quick tutorial showing you how you could create better pictures using Photoshop. The podcast came out every Tuesday evening and I used to rush home, watch the episode and then spend an hour playing around in Photoshop practising the techniques I had just learned. It became one of the highlights of my week. All told I followed Photoshop TV for about 3 years and really came to learn how to use Photoshop properly. I also got to know other teachers such as Terry White, who I still follow today to learn more about Adobe’s suite of software.
So the sum up:
If you are not really excited about something then getting motivated to do something regularly every week, week after week is going to be really difficult. When you do find something you are excited about then the motivation to do it will last. My YouTube channel, for example, will be two years old next month and today I am more excited about planning, recording and editing the videos than I ever have been. It still excites me. That’s what you need to feel if you are going to really develop those side-projects.
When you do find that excitement, then use your calendar to schedule one or two evenings a week to play. And I use that word carefully. If it does not feel like you are playing and you are not enjoying yourself learning about or doing your side-project, then I am afraid you will not maintain your passion or your commitment to it.
Hopefully, that answered your question, Sophie.
Thank you very much for listening guys. Don’t forget if you have a question, please send me an email, or DM me on the usual channels. All the links are in the show notes.
Oh and if you have time, please check out my latest book, Your Digital Life 2.0. I am sure you will find it compelling reading over the holiday season.
There won’t be a show next week (Christmas day) but we will be back in the new year so I would like to wish you all very happy Christmas and a fantastic New Year! See you in 2018
LINKS:
Email: carl@carlpullein.com
Twitter: @carl_pullein
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarlPulleinProductivity
Monday Dec 11, 2017
Monday Dec 11, 2017
Links to Your Digital Life 2.0:
Your Digitial Life can now be bought from...
Direct from my website: http://www.carlpullein.com/books
Amazon: http://amzn.to/2AJz7bE
iBooks Store: http://apple.co/2BwQcZA
This week's transcript
Podcast Episode 6
In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about capturing ideas and then managing those captured ideas.
Hello and welcome to episode 6 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.
In this week’s show I answer a question about how best to capture your ideas, commitments and events. But before we get in to that, I would just like to unashamedly plug my latest book which has gone on sale today. Your Digital Life 2.0 is a re-write of Your Digital Life, a book I published in 2015. In this new edition I have updated and cleaned up the system I use and recommend, I have also written four new case studies, extensively extended the goals section to include better ways of planning and achieving your goals and of course P.A.C.T (Patience, Action, Consistency and Time). Pretty much everything has been updated and improved.
You can get your copy on Amazon, iBooks store and direct from my website. All the links are in the show notes of this episode.
Okay, plug over, lets get in to today’s show and hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for today’s question... Over to you mystery podcast voice...
This week’s question comes from Jerry. Jerry asks...
Do you have a system of how or what to use to capture your ideas and to do's? Such as a notebook, notepad, voice recorder, etc. I sometimes struggle with collecting my ideas or to do's in a way that is easy for me to process when I get home
That’s an excellent question, Jerry. Thank you.
This really comes down to how you have everything set up. One of the important features any productivity system should have is the ability to capture ideas, commitments and appointments quickly and efficiently. If there are too many clicks or you have to dig around in a bag looking for your notebook and pen then you are not going to be very good at capturing. You need to have your system set up so that whenever an idea strikes you or you make a commitment, you can capture it within a few clicks.
This why having your mobile phone set up so your capture tool of choice is on the home screen ready and waiting to capture that next brilliant idea. As I am sure many of you know, I use Todoist and the Todoist app is right there on my home screen on my iPhone. I also have 3D Touch enabled so capturing a commitment can done with one long press.
Likewise, for my notes I have Evernote right next to Todoist on my home screen ready and waiting to capture any ideas I might have.
On all my computers—I use both a desktop and a laptop—I have keyboard shortcuts set up so I can capture my ideas and commitments and events without having to go looking for the app.
For meetings or one to one sessions with students I will use my notebook and pen. I prefer writing notes down in meetings or in sessions with my students. If I have any to-dos or other notes I want to capture, I will either type them in to Todoist or if there are a lot of notes I will use Evernote’s excellent scanning features and scan the notes directly into Evernote.
I went through all that first because, if you do not have your capture tools set up so they are incredibly easy to access you will resist capturing and that’s how you miss important things and ideas.
So let’s say you have become a master at capturing, how do you make sure processing is just as easy as capturing?
This is the main reason why using the tools for what they were designed to be used for is essential if you want to create a workable system. For example, my system has me capturing tasks in Todoist. I capture ideas in Evernote and date specific commitments and event get captured into my calendar.
For my calendar, the date, place and time are added immediately. For that there is no processing to do. However, for tasks, these are captured, but something has to happen later for them to become meaningful. If I just left everything in my inbox, it would soon become an unmanageable list of to-dos that are either no longer relevant or are still relevant but have no context.
The reason why making sure your app of choice syncs between all your devices is so that when you sit down to do your processing, everything is essentially in one place. All the important things I captured, the ones that need action in the very near future will have been captured in Todoist. This means at the end of the day when I sit down at my computer, I can open up Todoist and all my captured tasks are there right in front of me waiting to be processed.
It’s a slightly different story when it comes to my notes or ideas. Usually these are not urgent and are not at this stage time sensitive. These I capture in Evernote and I process my Evernote inbox around once a week. In a typical week I will capture about ten to fifteen notes and articles. So, there’s never likely to be a huge inbox of stuff to process.
There is one caveat here though. Ideas for my YouTube videos and blog posts are actually captured using an app called Drafts. These are sent directly to their corresponding note in Evernote and so don’t need processing. I recently did a video on Drafts which I will link to in the show notes so you can see how I do that.
So, lets say it’s the end of the day, I’ve had my dinner, done my evening admin and email work and I am ready to begin my daily review and process.
The first thing I do is process my Todoist inbox. That’s where anything urgent is going to be and I process those tasks first. Because my Todoist is synced across all my devices, anything I captured on my phone, laptop or iPad will be there waiting to be processed. This process only takes around 5 mins or so and then it’s on to the daily mini-review. The secret here is really to have everything synced and to try and do your processing from the same place every day.
It doesn’t really matter where you do your processing, it could on your phone, tablet or computer. It doesn’t even matter when you do your processing. Morning or evening, whatever works for you. I prefer the evening, I know many people who prefer to do it in the morning. The basic rule is you need to be processing your inbox at least once every 48 hours. Personally, I will always try and do it every 24, but on a Friday, for example, I generally don’t process until Saturday. I might do a quick look to see if there’s anything urgent in there, but on the whole, I rarely process Friday evenings.
My Evernote inbox gets processed as part of my weekly review. As I said, I don’t capture a huge amount of stuff in Evernote, so processing it’s inbox doesn’t take very long at all. Making it a part of my weekly review just makes sense to me.
I do have one other collection bucket. I carry an A4 plastic wallet with me in my bag. In there I will collect receipts for my expenses, receipts for purchases that have a guarantee and the attendance paper I hand round in my university class. I empty this folder every Sunday when I do my weekly review, scan in my receipts and attendance records into their various folders. I keep an iCloud folder for my expense receipts that is connected to an app called Scanbot. Anything scanned by Scanbot is saved directly into that folder. My attendance sheets for the university class also gets sent to a specific folder in iCloud and can then be sent to the university’s admin office. Doing things this way means I can maintain an almost 100% paperless system effortlessly.
And that’s about it. In total I have three collection points. My inboxes in Todoist and Evernote and my plastic wallet. I do maintain a physical inbox next to my desk, but these days that is very rarely used at all. That’s just a relic from my pre-paperless days and is more of an ornament than a working inbox.
So to sum up then…
To really get your collection and processing system up and running properly, make sure the apps you choose for your to-do lists and notes are synchronisable across all your devices. This way, when you sit down to do your processing everything is in one place—your computer.
If like me you find you are not collecting very many processable notes, don’t feel under any pressure to process your notes inbox every day. This is really your call, but it can save you time during the week when really all you want to do is sit down and relax.
If you still prefer to use a trusty pen and paper for taking notes in meetings etc. Then make sure you have a good scanning app on your phone or tablet. This can save you so much time and an app like Scanbot is not really that expensive when you consider how much time it can save you.
Try to process your main inbox at least once every 48 hours. 24 hours is better, but I know sometimes, when you finish late, the last thing you want to do is be reminded of work you still have to do.
And that’s about it. I hope that answers your question, Jerry.
Don’t forget if you have a question you would like answering, you can email me (carl@carlpullein.com), DM me on Twitter, facebook or Instagram or you can fill in the quick form on my website (carlpullein.com)
Thank you all for listening and until next week, I hope you all have a very very productive week.
Monday Dec 04, 2017
Monday Dec 04, 2017
This week's transcript:
In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about managing open-ended tasks that don’t have a specific due date.
Hello and welcome to episode 5 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.
Before we get started, I would like to thank all you amazing people who invested in my productivity bundles over the holidays. The response was tremendous and I hope you all will get hours of good productivity advice and know-how over the coming weeks.
This weeks question comes from Alice in Italy, Thank you, Alice. Alice asks
Coming from a paper planning environment, one of the issues I have with task management apps is I don't know where to add tasks that have to be done during specific weeks or months but not on a specific day. How do you handle this kind of task? I tried to put them as all-day events in my calendar, but I don't like the way they clutter my entire week/month.
Hmmm good question, Alice.
With this kind of issue, it is always a good idea to go back to basic best practices. What I mean by that is how best to use the various apps we have.
You only need three apps. A calendar, a to-do list manager and a note-taking app. Which apps you choose, of course, is entirely unto you, but you need one of each.
Your calendar is for specific events that have a date and or a time. For example meetings, appointments with friends and family and conferences and workshops. In David Allen’s Getting Things Done book, David recommends you put things you absolutely must do on your calendar too, but for me, my to-do list manager does a better job of things I must do, so I only put specific events where I have to be somewhere or talk to someone on my calendar.
Your to-do list manager is where all the things you must do go. Now all to-do list managers I have seen, allow you to put dates on tasks and so, putting tasks onto your calendar seems to be a bit overkill to me. I use the date function on my to-do list manager for all tasks that must be done on a specific date. So for example, if I need to finish writing a report by Friday, there will be a task in my to-do list manager that tells me to “continue working on the report” with a date set for Monday. Once I have worked on the report on Monday, if it is not finished, I will change the date of the task to Tuesday and so on until it is finished.
Finally, your notes app is where you store all notes and support materials for things you are working on or would like to keep for future reference.
I have spoken and written about hard edges between these three areas quite a lot, and it is very important that you keep very hard edges between these. If you put things to do on your calendar and add notes to your to-do list manager, for example, very quickly your whole system will fall apart because you will never be able to find the things you need when you need them. Events and appointments go on your calendar, things you have to do go on your to-do list manager and all other support materials go into your notes app. FULL STOP.
So, going back to Alice’s question about how to handle tasks that do not have a specific deadline, but must be completed within a specific time frame, these I would put into my to-do list manager and date them with the date I want to work on them. For example, if I were developing an online course, I would have a task such as “work on presentation slides”. Now, this does not actually have a deadline date because it is a task that forms part of a larger project. The slides need creating, but there is no specific day they need creating on. So, when I do my weekly or daily review, I would see when I have time to do the slides and if and when I do have time, I would add the date. I know this sounds complicated, but it is not really. Creating an online course is a big project, there’s a lot of planning, thinking and developing. When I am preparing a course, that is the main project I am working on at that time. There would be no other big projects on at the time, so my focus is on completing that project. So, all I am doing is deciding which component I will work on today or tomorrow, for example, and that would depend on where I will be and how much time I have available.
Project deadlines can be a grey area. I work with some very busy executives, and usually between August and October, they are in the midst of planning next year. These executives not only have their own plans to work on, they also have to oversee the planning of their various departments. Departments such as sales, marketing, HR and customer service. They have to make sure that these department’s targets fit in with the overall company’s goals. In this situation, they have a lot of deadlines to manage and I recommend they use their calendars for these deadlines. Only the deadline is in there, tasks related to the project are in their task managers and notes related to various meetings will be in their notes app.
Getting really good at answering questions such as “what is it?” Is it an event, task or note? Is something well worth practising. It can save a lot of time when you are doing your daily reviews and help you to maintain the hard edges you need to maintain a functioning system.
How would you handle single action tasks? Tasks such as making a dentist appointment for a checkup and scaling or something related to work such as follow up on Mr Brown in six months time. Here you have a choice. For the dentist appointment, you could add that to a tickler file in your to-do list manager. What is a “tickler file”? I hear you ask, well so as not to go into too much detail, a tickler file is basically a folder in your to-do list manager that contain things you want to be reminded of on a specific day in the future. It doesn’t really matter how far into the future you want to be reminded, but I would not add in anything beyond 12 months. All you need to do is add the task to your Tickler file with the date you want to be reminded.
Another way to approach this is to take a look at how you managed these kinds of tasks on paper. Did you maintain a master task list you looked at every day or did you forward plan tasks in a diary? Pretty much all the ways you would plan on paper can be replicated digitally. Once you know how you did things on paper, it is relatively easy to find a digital way to do it. Think of Evernote as a digital filing cabinet and you have a natural way to store all your digital files. Think of Todoist as a ring binder with various projects organised on different pages and you have a digital to-do list notebook.
The final way to do this is to step back and ask yourself what you are trying to achieve. This is one of the issues I have with Evernote when it fills up with thousands of notes. I begin to feel it is bloated and I have to step back and ask the question what am I trying to achieve. Ultimately, I use the favourites function as I would use the top front part of a filing cabinet—a place for me to quickly grabs the stuff I use every day or almost everyday. The rest of it I use for storing my digital papers pretty much in the same way I would a physical filing cabinet.
Hopefully, this has helped many of you with the transition from paper planning and task management to digital.
So to sum up...
If you are coming from a paper-based system, then before moving everything over to a digital system take a look at how you are organising things on paper. Then, look for a digital system the replicates this as close as possible. You can modify things once you get comfortable with your new digital system.
Always keep a hard edge between your apps. Tasks and to-dos go on your to-do list manager. Events and appointments go on your calendar and everything else, your support materials, go into your digital notebook. This will help you when you process and it will help you to find the things you need when you need them.
Maintaining a digital organisation system is not particularly difficult if you keep it simple. I have always found that things go wrong when I try to be clever and make things complicated. Very soon, things start to fall apart and I always have to go back and simplify things again.
Thank you very much for listening. Don’t forget, if you have a question about productivity, self-development or goal planning you would like answering you can contact me either at carl@carlpullein.com, on my website carlpullein.com, through Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
It just remains for me now to wish you all, a very very productive week.
Monday Nov 27, 2017
Monday Nov 27, 2017
Thank you for downloading this podcast. Don't forget, if you would like any question about productivity, GTD, self-development or goal planning answers, all you need to do is head over to my website carlpullein.com and fill in the very short form.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Podcast Episode 4
In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about Projects, priorities and areas of focus.
Hello and welcome to episode 4 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.
This week, we have a great question about projects, priorities and areas of focus and how to manage all the tasks that populate these parts of a productivity system. Before I hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question I would just like to ask if any of you listening to this podcast have any questions about productivity, goal planning, self-development or GTD, then head over to my website (carlpullein.com) where you will find a form to ask your question.
Okay, now let me hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question:
This week’s question comes from Jerome from France - thank you, Jerome. Jerome asks…
In the AREAS OF FOCUS project, the tasks have no end date. As a manager at work, I have some projects that have no real end date but are priorities (for example Safety Improvement, Management Skills, Team Coaching, Costs savings). Do you think these projects should be kept in my AREAS OF FOCUS project?
Wonderful question, Jerome.
Okay, I think we need to start off by defining what a project is and what an area of focus is.
A project is anything that needs two or more individual tasks completing before it is finished by or on a specific day. For example, buy a new washing machine or prepare the end of year report.
An area of focus is something that needs attention but does not have an end date. An example of such an area would be an exercise programme. maintaining an exercise programme does not (or at least should not) have an end date. Exercise is something that is ongoing indefinitely… I hope.
Now at work, an area of focus could be ongoing staff training—generally, this would not end as new staff may be joining your department all the time— or it could be safety improvements— this may be made up of a list of thing that need attention or reviewing from time to time. Another area of focus could be managing individual staff members, you may want to keep ongoing issues with staff members here.
Now a grey area occurs when within one of those areas of focus a project starts. Let’s say your director or president asks you to develop a new safety manual for your department. Now, this on its own is a project, yet it could easily fall within areas of focus under safety improvements.
So how do you distinguish between the two?
In this example, the new safety manual is a project. It is specific and it will have a deadline date. It is not an ongoing thing, it is a specific thing with a deadline. That makes it a project and I would put that on my projects list, separate from my safety improvements area of focus. I may reference my safety improvements area of focus for information, but that is the only point of contact that area of focus has on this safety manual project.
If we go back to the exercise area of focus, let say you decide next year you want to run a full course marathon in September. Now, in this case, there are a few factors to think about before you decide whether to call this a project or be part of your exercise areas of focus. If you regularly run marathons, then personally, I would count it as part of my areas of focus. However, if I am a fun runner, not normally running distances above 10K, then I may very well make this a personal project. Running 26.2 miles is a lot different than running a 10K and would be a big jump up from being a fun runner. Your training and preparation for the marathon would be very different from your usual exercise programme. That, to me, make this a project.
You see the difference here is really whether or not there is an end date. If there is an end date, then it is very likely to be a project and not an area of focus. An area of focus is simply something you want to maintain indefinitely. Of course, there may be times when an area fo focus gets dropped. That’s fine. Either delete it or move it to your someday|maybe folder.
Okay, so let’s go back to a work example. Let’s say you have an area of focus where you keep all the things you need to talk with, monitor or develop with your staff members. And, as in many companies, you have to write the annual performance reviews for your staff. Now, usually, this is done in October or November and has a deadline. For this, I would set up a project for the annual reviews themselves. I would not include this project in my areas of focus. Again, like the running a full course marathon, there is a deadline date, and it is a one-off (or a one-off in the sense it only happens once a year at a specific time). As you only do these reviews once a year and they have to be completed by a specific date. That makes it a project.
I think we often worry too much about these kinds of things. But if you have a simple framework in place, such as end dates equal project, no end date equals an area of focus then you should find these decisions are much easier.
I should point out to avoid any confusion, tasks within an area of focus can, of course, have due dates. That’s perfectly fine. But the area of focus itself, should not have an end date. If it does, then it is a project.
So how would you prioritise these different projects and areas of focus? For me, prioritisation is really goal or deadline driven. In my world, I have my regular routine work, which includes my areas of focus such as my YouTube videos, blog posts and this podcast. These are not projects because they do not have an end date. I plan to keep creating content for these well into the future. To make sure the blog posts, videos and podcasts are created each week, the tasks required to create them are scheduled for specific days and times each week. Creating an online course, however, is a project. I set a deadline and I have tasks that are required to be completed before the course can go live.
When I developed my YouTube channel or this podcast they did start out as projects. That was because to set these up, I needed to create the channel, design the headers and set up the links etc. Once everything was set up and all I had to do was create content and upload that content each week, then they were placed in my areas of focus.
So to give you an example, the videos I put up on YouTube each week are all recorded on a Saturday afternoon. These recording sessions are scheduled in my calendar each week, so there is no task in my YouTube area of focus, I don’t need to duplicate the event. The editing of those videos is also on my calendar. Again, as the editing is on my calendar, I do not need a duplicated task on my todo list. My blog posts are all written on a Monday morning between 9 AM and 11:30 AM, and I record these podcasts on a Friday afternoon. These events/tasks are all scheduled on my calendar for specific times each week. They do not go to my task list manager.
Because I treat my calendar as sacred territory and anything scheduled takes priority over everything else, I can confidently get on with my day to day work knowing I have time to work on the important things in the week.
My advice would use your calendar for prioritising the important things. Schedule time to do them. The thing is, priorities need to be done, that’s why they are priorities. So schedule a time to do them. Put them on your calendar. When you use your calendar properly, and you treat it as a priority, then you will find the stress just washes away.
Okay to sum up then.
If there is any kind of deadline or end date involved, then treat it as a project. If there is no deadline and you want to monitor or maintain something indefinitely, then that would be an area of focus.
Use your calendar to schedule important tasks by blocking off time. Remember, if you are using your calendar correctly then anything on there has priority over everything else. If you don’t treat calendared items as a priority you are going to have all sorts of problems meeting deadlines and commitments.
And that’s about it. Thank you, Jerome, for your question and thank you all for listening to this show. I hope you found it helpful in your own endeavours towards achieving relaxed productivity. Join me again next week where I will be answering more of your questions.
It just remains for me now to wish all a very very productive week.