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Monday Nov 20, 2017
Monday Nov 20, 2017
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Podcast Episode 3 Transcript
In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about getting back into the productivity saddle after a crisis or illness.
Hello and welcome to episode 3 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 want to thank you all for listening to this podcast. We have built up quite a following in just 3 weeks. So, thank you, guys. I really appreciate all the support you have shown me. Don’t forget, if you like what you hear in this podcast, please share it with as many people you know.
Oh and one more thing… This week sees the start of the holiday season in many countries. To celebrate the holidays, I have put together a few special online course bundles at fantastic prices. If you want to learn more, head over to my website later this week and you can see what I have on offer.
Okay, let’s get to this weeks question.
This week’s question has been sent in by Leo and his question was:
How do you quickly get back in your "saddle" when your habits and routines fail, like when you have been sick or some urgent incident forces you to be disorganised.
Okay, great question, Leo. I think many of you out there experience this problem from time to time. When so many things happen all at once, your desk looks like it was in the middle of a hurricane with papers everywhere and you cannot see your computer’s desktop wallpaper.
The first thing to recognise is that when these things happen, you have to deal with the issue first. That is your priority. Running around trying to keep everything clean and tidy in the middle of a crisis is the wrong thing to do. Deal with the crisis first. If you are sick, the priority is to get yourself better. You do not need to be worrying about all those unchecked tasks building up. Make sure the people relying on you know your situation and then get yourself fixed. Those are the priorities.
But once the crisis or the sickness is over, you need to take stock. You need to take some time to look at what you have accomplished, collect all the next actions into one place — you may have been scribbling things down on bits of paper or adding them to your notes app when they should be in your todo app — just collect them into your inbox. Then throw away those bit of paper and delete the notes. You want to be cleaning up, not duplicating.
Now, what about all those tasks that you didn’t do because of the crisis. These either need deleting or rescheduling. A lot of my tasks are routine tasks that repeat at set days and times. I don’t have a problem just checking them off even if I haven’t done them. For example, updating my student attendance sheets, I can do those the next day if I haven’t had time to do them today, so for me checking the tasks off today without doing the task and doing it tomorrow instead is no problem. If you don’t like ‘cheating’ your system like that, then leave the task where it is an overdue task and do the task when you are ready.
Once you have your existing task list up to date, now it’s time to hit your inbox. Depending on how long your sickness or crisis was, this could be big or huge. The trick here is to just begin at the top and go through the list asking “what is it”? And “what is the next action?” and process your way down the list. In a way, you are doing a weekly review, just not at your usual weekly review time. Somehow, I find this process a great way to calm down after the craziness of a full-on crisis. There’s something very soothing about it. And there’s something else about doing things this way too, you find that you don’t really have as much to catch up on as you think. Our brains are great at deceiving us into thinking we have a lot more to do than we really do.
Doing an additional weekly review, by the way, is a great way to get back on top of your work and life if you find you’ve had a few exceptionally busy few days. When I have been doing a 2-day workshop, for example, I don’t have time to do my usual regular routine stuff. Once the workshop is over, I will sit down for a quiet hour or so and do a weekly review. It’s a great way to get back in touch with my regular life and brings a sense of calm tranquillity back after a hectic couple of days. It’s also a great time to process my overflowing inbox because I will have captured a lot of ideas for improving the workshop as well as names cards and other stuff.
One thing I would always stress is that no matter how big or bad the crisis or illness is, if you can just maintain your habit of capturing, you will find you are 90% of the way towards maintaining your system. Capturing to me is the habit you should develop as soon as possible when you begin down the road of GTD or any other productivity system. If you’re capturing, no matter what else happens to you, you will always be able to process when things calm down. It doesn’t matter where or how you are capturing all your commitments and todos. Even if it is on the back of a napkin, as long as that napkin gets dumped into your in-basket or you take a photo of it and send it to your todo list manager — that’s all that matters. It’s captured. You can move on and deal with the next problem.
A good idea is to carry a little notebook with you, keep it in your bag, or pocket and when you find your day turns south and situations turn into crises, then you can pull out the notebook and start writing down everything you need to capture. When the crisis is over— and all crises end sometime— you can tear off your notes and put them in your in-basket or send the photo to your todo list manager. Although I am pretty much 100% digital now, I still have a little notebook in my bag… You know… Just in case.
I think there’s also another reason why someone may fall out of the productivity saddle too. That one is you just lose the motivation for staying on top everything, you become lazy. It happens to all of us at some time or another. This is one reason why you should keep your system as simple as possible. In the days when I was experimenting with productivity systems, I found the more complex the system I had, the more likely it was I would fall off and not maintain my system. Once I got my system as simple as it could be, then I found I rarely fell out of the saddle and when I did, it was very easy to get back in. The more complex your system is, the harder it is to maintain, and if you do fall off, it is so much harder to get back on. Let’s be honest, you are going to have days when you are just not in the mood, or something very bad happens to you or your family or friends. Maintaining your ‘perfect’ productivity system will not be a priority in these situations and that is exactly how it should be. Just focus on your priorities in these situations, try to capture everything that is important and deal with them once everything is over.
To sum up then:
When a crisis happens, or you become sick and can’t work for a while, focus on dealing with the crisis or illness. That is and must always be your priority.
During the crisis or illness make sure you are still capturing. It doesn’t take a lot to capture a todo, an idea or a commitment you made. Write it down somewhere that you will find later, once everything calms down and you can return to your normal routine. And crises do end. You need to be ready to get back to your normal routine once it does end.
Once the crisis or illness is over, and everything calms down, do a complete weekly review. I know it might be difficult to find an hour or so to go through your inboxes and projects, but this part is really the key. When you do a full weekly review it will get you back into the saddle very quickly and get you back on your feet and in touch with your world.
Finally, if you do find you regularly fall out of the saddle, you might find it is because your system is way too complicated. Review your system, find where you can simplify it. Really all you need is a place to capture everything, a place to store your to-dos, a separate place to store your notes and support materials and a calendar. Anything else on top of those is probably going to be a level of complexity you don’t need.
Well, that’s it for this week. I hope you found it useful and don’t forget if you have any questions about productivity, GTD, Self-development or planning, then you can ask me via Twitter, Facebook or my website, carlpullein.com.
Thank you for listening and now it just remains for me to wish you all a very very productive week.
Monday Nov 13, 2017
Monday Nov 13, 2017
Podcast Episode 2
Hello and welcome to episode 2 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.
Let’s get straight in to it, with this week’s question. And that question was…
This question was sent in by, Nicolas. Thank you Nicolas.
How do you ensure a good weekly review and be ready for next week.
Ah the wonderful weekly review, the glue that brings together your whole productivity system. If you're not doing a weekly review, you likely find a lot of stuff falls through the cracks and you forget things, miss deadlines and wonder why there’s all this passion around productivity systems.
Let’s start at the beginning. Why do a weekly review? The weekly review is your chance to step back from the daily hustle and bustle and take stock of what is going on around you. It allows you to see what’s going on in your world, what you have done and what is on your list of things to do. It also allows you to check you are doing the right things and not allowing yourself to drift off into areas that have no value to you or your objectives in life.
Basically, if you’re not doing a weekly review, you’re drifting. Drifting through life with no direction and solid plan to achieve whatever it is you want to achieve.
So how do you do a good weekly review?
To answer this question, I thought it would be a good idea to run you through how I do mine. So here goes…
The first step here is to make sure you pick a day and time each week where you can sit down for around an undisturbed hour and go through your tasks and projects. When I began doing my weekly reviews I realised the best day for me was a Sunday. On Sundays I always do my admin and class preparation in the morning—if you don’t know, I teach business professionals here in Korea English communication skills—After I finish my admin and prep, I make a nice cup of Yorkshire Tea (the best in my opinion) sit down with my todo list manager and calendar open and begin my weekly review. I put on some soothing trance or deep house music or listen to BBC Radio 1’s Pete Tong and settle down and begin reviewing.
Now, as the name implies, this is essentially a “review”, not a “preview”. What this means is you begin with what you have accomplished since your last review. As it is a “weekly” review that means what you have accomplished over the last week. Ask yourself questions like how much did I do on my goals? What projects did I move forward? What projects did I not do anything on?
Other questions you could ask yourself are questions like where can I improve? What have I been neglecting? And rather more importantly why? If you find you’ve been neglecting something because your interest in it has fallen away somewhat, then think about moving that project into your someday|maybe list. You can always come back to it later.
Once I have completed that part, I will begin going through my projects one by one, beginning from the top and working my way down.
For those of you who follow my Todoist YouTube Channel, you will know I have a Routines folder that contains all my daily, weekly and monthly routines. This project folder is something I don’t usually review weekly because it rarely changes. But I do review it probably every two or three months just to make sure the tasks in there are still relevant.
When I check a project, I check all the tasks are in the right project, some do get misallocated when I am processing in a rush, I also check to make sure that the labels (contexts) are correct and that the task is still relevant. Another good tip is to make sure each task has a good, strong action verb. Something like “write”, “call” “contact” “research” etc. These help me to make sure it is very clear what needs doing and that when I am looking for something to do, I know exactly what needs doing.
As I go through my projects I am thinking about what needs doing next to keep this project moving forward and keeping it on track. For those of you familiar with GTD (Getting Things Done) the question is: what is the very next action? These tasks are the ones I would give a date to, based on what my calendar looks like for that particular day. I know this isn’t strictly GTD methodology, but it works for me. I am only adding a date to one task in each project, and this means throughout the week I am not going to forget about a project once the week begins and everything starts being thrown at me.
Once I have gone through all my projects, made sure all is up to date and there at least one next action in place for each project, I would go through my calendar to make sure everything is relevant and confirmed. If something is not confirmed I would add a task to confirm it first thing Monday morning.
There are a few other things I do with my weekly review. Some weeks for me are busier than others. For those busy weeks, I would reduce some of my tasks for the very busy days. I try to make sure there is enough room for me to deal with the unexpected. You know, all those unexpected tasks our colleagues, partners, friends and bosses will throw at us once the week begins.
If i have a quiet week ahead, I will look for a day where I can cancel the less important things and record an online course. I have found that there is usually one week each month where I can clear a day to spend in my recording studio recording an online course. I am always in the process of planning out a course or updating an existing course, so finding a day to spend in the studio is one of my objectives when I do my weekly review.
The final part of my weekly review is to look through my goals and make sure there is at least one task allocated each day that takes me closer towards achieving my goals. I try to have two of these tasks each day, but on days where I am teaching all day, or spending time in meetings, I will reduce it to just one.
And that’s about it. The whole process takes me about an hour to do. But it does set me up for a wonderfully productive week, it allows for disruptions because I do not overpopulate days with too many project tasks and the feeling I am in control of what I am doing is one of the reasons I love being organised and productive.
The thing is, you need to make your weekly review yours. It needs to fit in with your lifestyle and you need to make it a priority. No matter what, you should not be skipping it. If you have no choice to but skip it because of things outside your control, make it a priority to do it the next day, or do a quick review of your projects. That is not ideal, but it is much better than not doing anything.
If you are starting out on the road to being better organised and more productive, then create a checklist of things to do in your weekly review. I’ve been doing a weekly review for over ten years now and don’t really need a checklist anymore. The funny thing is if I find I cannot do my weekly review I feel awful. I feel lost and disorganised and I hate that feeling. This is the reason the weekly review has become a central pillar of my life and when you start doing a regular weekly review you too will find yourself in the same position.
The trick is to not think of your weekly review as a chore, but something to look forward to each week. Use the time to consume your favourite chocolate muffin or have a scone with jam and fresh cream to complement your cup of Yorkshire Tea hmmm. It is a time to destress and to discover that you are in control of your life and time, and that is a very nice feeling.
So, to sum up.
Make sure you do your weekly review regularly and at a time that suits your lifestyle. Try to do it at the same time each week and make it a priority.
When doing your weekly review, always have your calendar open and begin by reviewing what you have done and learned from the previous week. Then move on to your tasks and commitments for the following week.
A great tip David Allen suggests is to look a month ahead to see what you have coming up. The whole purpose of your weekly review is to avoid any nasty surprises and to make sure you know what is coming up and what needs doing to prepare for it. It only takes a few seconds to look ahead at your calendar and the surprises it avoids is well worth those few seconds.
Always allow some flexibility each day. People are going to throw all sorts of issues at you and you need the space to be able to absorb them. Don’t fill every day up with tasks and appointments, that’s just going to be a huge waste of time. You will only end up having to spend more time rescheduling tasks and appointments.
Finally, once my weekly review is complete, I head out for my Sunday afternoon long run. The feeling you have when you’ve completed a review and you head out into nature—well sort of nature, I live in a large city— is amazing. You feel relaxed, stress-free and in complete control of your life. If you’re not into physical exercise, then may I suggest a little walk around the block. It just seals the end to a wonderful week.
Okay, that’s it for this week. I hope you found all these little titbits useful and please don’t forget, if you do have a question about productivity, GTD, Self-development or goal planning, you can ask on me via Twitter, Facebook, my website or even smoke signals… Well maybe not. I will be more than happy to answer your questions.
Thank you very much for listening to this show and I hope to see you in the next episode.
It now remains for me to just wish you all a very productive week and I will see you in the next episode.
Monday Nov 06, 2017
Monday Nov 06, 2017
In this first ever episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer how to manage an overwhelming inbox, project list and todos.
Podcast Transcript:
Hello and welcome to this first episode of The Working With Podcast. A show dedicated to answering your productivity and self-development questions.
Hello and thank you for tuning in for this first ever episode of the Working With... Podcast. My name is Carl Pullein and in this podcast, I answer questions that you have sent me throughout the week and hopefully I will be able to help you develop a great personal productivity system as well as helping you to develop a life you want to live.
This week’s question is all about managing multiple projects, tasks and commitments. This was a very popular question when I asked for questions and it is a very difficult question to answer. But, that said there is always a way to tame an overwhelming inbox and project list so let’s get straight into it. The question was:
How should you manage an ever-growing list of tasks... some mandatory, some optional? Some in the near future, and some someday.
Okay, this question really boils down to how you organise your todo list manager. Mandatory tasks - taskthat just have to be done—usually on a specific day, should be put into a routines folder or project. These tasks can be set up with a recurring date, so when you have completed the task, it will come back the next time it is due. Tasks such as “send out weekly newsletter”, or “review customer feedback for items that need fixing” can all be kept in a routines folder and set to repeat on the appropriate day. As these are either daily, weekly or monthly repeating tasks, then you can put them away inside your routines project folder and forget about them until they come up in your daily todo list. I would recommend you review this folder occasionally, I find some routine tasks either end, or their date changes. Keeping it up to date will stop you from ignoring the tasks when they come up if they are not due.
Project mandatory tasks, tasks that must be done to keep a project moving forward should be dated and done on the days they need to be done. To be honest with you, I always have a good idea of what is important and needs doing. My daily review at the end of the day tells me what I need to be doing next. I can then schedule a day when I will do it. So, I find that adding dates to these kind of tasks is not that important, but if you feel more comfortable to see tasks like this on a daily basis, then by all means add a date.
I think the issue here is throughout the day you are going to get a lot of disruptions, That’s just life. You need to be realistic about what you can get done in a day. The cliche, don’t bite off more than you chew’ is very apt here. I usually have one big project goal each day. It could be “continue writing book”, or “continue designing the workbook”, what I don’t do is write something like "write 10 pages of my book”. That would be unrealistic. That might be something I hope to do but is probably very unrealistic given I am likely to be interrupted a lot.
Optional tasks, tasks that you don’t have to do, but would be helpful if you do. I suppose an example of this would be say, get you haircut or find out how much it would cost to replace the office computers really depend on how loud they are shouting at you. What I mean is if your hair is uncontrollably long and every morning when you look in the mirror you say to yourself I really must get my haircut, I think needs to be moved to a mandatory list. What you can do here is just apply a date and make that appointment. It could even become a daily outcome task—a task that you must complete on a given day—Really that choice is yours.
But I go back to how you are organising your lists. Some work just must be done on a given day. Well, those are the priorities for that day. Other, non-urgent tasks, can be done as and when you have time. I find if I have a spare 30 minutes before lunch, or before I finish my work at the end of day, is a great time to do a quick look at my non-dated tasks and do whichever ones I can do right then and there.
The thing is, if you are doing more work related tasks than your own self-development or goal tasks, you are prioritising the wrong things. To me, my goals and self-development are always the priorities, There are days when work takes up the whole day, that’s okay. But if 7/7 days are all work—work I am doing for someone else—then something is wrong in my priorities and I would have to re-evaluate what I am working on.
One thing you are going to have accept. Your tasks lists, both work and personal, are never ever going to get clear. If they did, you would be dead. There is always something we have to be doing. Eating, sleeping, talking with family, shopping, servicing the car whatever. If you ever found yourself in a position where you had completed everything on your lists and you were still alive, be worried. Either you are not using your todo lists properly, for example you are not capturing everything, or you have lost everything. We are human—designed to be always be doing. And that is normal and healthy.
That said, if one of your lists is becoming enormously long, then try allocating a week where your goal is to get as much done on that list as you possibly can. This is a great trick also if you need to really get a project moving forward. When you do your weekly review—you ARE doing a weekly review aren’t you?—You can decide if you want to focus in on a particular list or project the following week to get it under control.
Another tip is you make full use of a Someday / Maybe list. This is great for all those ideas, tasks and other things that are not particularly important right now, but you would maybe like to do someday in the future. This list or project doesn’t need to be reviewed every week, and is a great place to store ideas or things you would like to do in the future.
I will finish on some basis best practices.
Remember, you cannot do everything all at once. You can only do one thing at a time. The difficulty is choosing what to do. That’s where you need to develop your skill of prioritising, and prioritising is a skill worth developing, Look for the tasks that are time sensitive, ie the ones that for one reason or another must be done today or this week. Do those first. Tasks that are less time sensitive, but do have an upcoming deadline, should be done next and all those optional tasks and projects can be given the lowest priority.
I know sudden, urgent things will come up daily and weekly, and for those you will need to decide when to do them. It is your choice.
Ending the day by doing a quick review of what is coming up tomorrow can also help to focus you on the things that need doing. Don’t try and do too many things though, just try and do two important things, things that will have the biggest positive impact on your day. When you get into the habit of doing these daily reviews, you will very quickly get better at making the right decisions about what you need to work on tomorrow. Those ten to fifteen minutes at the end of the day can really help to give you enough breathing room to make sure you are moving in the right direction.
But remember, your todo list is never going to end. It will always be a fight between what you are doing and what you are adding. That’s perfectly normal and means you are alive and well. Really managing your tasks is all about making sure you are doing enough to stay afloat and that you are achieving some kind of balance.
Hopefully, this episode has given you some food for thought.
Thank you for listening and don’t forget, if you have a question you would like answering about productivity or self-development and achieving your goals, all you need to do is email me, DM me on Twitter or Facebook or just fill out the question form on my website - carlpullein.com.
It just remains for me to wish you an incredibly productive week and I hope you will tune in next week for the next episode.