Your Time, Your Way

Learn more about the Quiet Productivity Method here

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 419

Hello, and welcome to episode 419 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you will know I have written and spoken a lot about having standards.

Standards for how Long it takes you to respond to emails and messages, and how you manage your calendar, for example.

It’s the standards you set for yourself that will ensure that you do the right things day after day. That if things go wrong, you have something to fall back on that feels familiar and keeps you doing the right things.

My communication standard is to respond to emails within 24 hours. This means that no matter how busy I am, if I have an actionable email I have not responded to that is approaching the 24-hour limit, I will do whatever it takes to respond, even if that means working a little extra time at the end of the day.

This week’s question is related to these approaches. So to get us started, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Sonya. Sonya asks, Hi Carl, I love COD and the Time Sector System. Both have really helped me to get much more focused on what matters to me. But what frustrates me is that I still have too many days when I procrastinate and don’t get what I want done. How do you stay so consistent?

Hi Sonya, thank you for your question.

As I alluded to, it comes down to the standards you set for yourself. I know that sounds easy, and I know it is not, but the standards you set are what help you push through when you are not in the right frame of mind to do what needs to be done.

Let me explain.

It can be very tempting, when you have just finished reading a book or have taken a course, to be full of enthusiasm to change things.

And that’s not a bad thing. But it’s important to be realistic when setting up your processes and new way of doing things.

If you were to set up a two-hour closing-down routine at the end of each day, you would fail. It’s too long.

Similarly, I’ve seen people get excited by the idea of having a solid morning routine. Then they add so many things to their morning routine that it takes them two or three hours to complete them.

That’s never going to promote consistency. There will inevitably be days when you cannot complete those routines, and then you get it into your head that you’re a failure or that having routines doesn’t work for you. Neither of which is true.

The place to begin is with your non-negotiables. What must happen every day, no matter what?

I know many people, for instance, who will not go to bed until all the dishes have been washed and put away.

That might seem a small thing, but to the people who do that, it is their standard. They couldn’t imagine going to bed without doing it.

One standard I try to get my coaching clients to follow is to do a five-minute daily planning session before they end their day.

That planning session is to review your calendar for appointments, look at your list of tasks, make sure it is realistic and to decide what your two must-do tasks will be.

That’s it. Five minutes tops.

This is a realistic planning session. You can do it from your sofa and on your phone if necessary.

Once you have set it as a standard, you do this every day, including weekends and holidays. Now, weekends and holidays are easier. You will likely have fewer tasks and appointments, but it’s a standard. You do it anyway.

Consistency can be hard when you don’t have any clear standards. Yet, those standards need to be realistic.

One way to do this is to set minimums.

Imagine you decide to read a book every day. Now, I’ve seen people set very unrealistic targets here. This usually begins with deciding to read something like 50 books per year, which is then broken down into reading a book a week.

So far so good.

But what happens if you read something like Andrew Roberts’ book on Winston Churchill or Walter Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo Da Vinci? Both are over 1,000 pages. Those books will take you longer than a week to read.

That’s why this kind of target setting is wrong.

Let’s start with what your purpose is here. Is it to read a set number of books? If so, choose short books, and you’ll hit your target.

But it’s more likely that you want to build the habit of reading. This means it doesn’t matter how many books you read in any given year. All that matters is that you spend time reading each day.

So set a realistic minimum.

If you were to set the target at reading for a minimum of twenty minutes each day, it would not be long before you settled into a routine and just did your reading.

What happens is that the books you get into and enjoy reading, you’ll read for longer than twenty minutes. Slower, harder books will likely have you reading for twenty minutes. That’s fine; you’re still reading.

You did what you set out to do, and after twenty minutes, you can stop.

That’s a realistic standard to set for yourself and one likely to become a non-negotiable.

Incidentally, you can do this with exercise and dealing with your messages. Set a daily minimum amount of time you will spend doing these activities.

And I should say there is some psychology behind the twenty-minute minimum. If you were to tell yourself you will spend an hour on a particular activity every day, your brain will push back.

On the days you are feeling tired, a little sick or ‘just not in the mood’, that one hour will feel like an eternity.

Twenty minutes, on the other hand, seems achievable, no matter how you feel. Remember, it’s a minimum. Once you’ve done your twenty minutes, you can stop. Often you won’t, but you can if you are still not feeling up to it.

I do this with my emails and messages. I like to finish my day with all actionable messages cleared. But there are days when, for one reason or another, I cannot do so. I then apply the twenty-minute minimum.

I tell myself I will spend twenty minutes clearing as many as I can.

It’s this standard that makes it easy to keep on top of messages.

I began this episode by explaining how Arsenal’s manager, Mikel Arteta, turned around the club by setting non-negotiable standards.

Arteta’s attitude is that if you cannot accept these standards, then you’re out the door. It’s as simple as that.

And I saw this with Manchester United’s former manager, a brilliant manager, Alex Ferguson. Ferguson took over the management of Manchester United in 1986. On his arrival, he set about setting some very high standards at the club.

It took around four years, but by setting those standards, Manchester United turned the 1990s into Manchester United’s greatest generation.

Change is hard. It’s particularly hard to stick to your new set of standards when things don’t seem to be improving. When there’s no immediate payoff.

Your old habits don’t want to die, and they will fight to stay around. This is why trying to change everything all at once almost always fails.

Instead, start small. Daily planning is an easy place to start because all you are doing is reviewing your appointments for the next day, ensuring your list of tasks is realistic, and identifying your must-do tasks.

With practice, you will be able to do this in about two minutes, and the more you practice, the more you see the benefits of having clarity on what must be done and where you need to be each day.

From there, add in a weekly planning session. This is where you set your plan for the week and decide your objectives. It is not about reviewing all your tasks and projects. You’re not reviewing, you’re planning.

Reviewing is entirely different.

The best time to review a project is when you’ve just finished working on it. The project is fresh in your mind, and you will know precisely what needs to happen next.

It’s by having a plan that you will find you procrastinate less. You don’t become frozen by the number of things you need to do. You know what your objectives are for the week, and you will do what needs to be done to accomplish them.

Commit to your plan, and you will have the energy to push towards it. Without a plan, you’ll procrastinate because all you will see is a mountain of work to do, and you have no idea what to do or where to start.

Let me show you this in action:

Imagine you have thousands of emails in your email inbox, and you are desperate to get it under control and clean it out. But the sheer size of it freezes you. Where do you start? What would be the best way to go about it? And you’ll be thinking this will take forever.

But what if you decided to start with the oldest ones and spend a minimum of 20 minutes a day on this project until it’s done?

Let’s be honest, if you’ve got thousands of emails in your inbox, it doesn’t really matter where you start. You’ve just got to start somewhere.

Twenty minutes a day, from the oldest to the newest. Now that’s a plan.

And you’ll find that by starting with the oldest first, you’ll be deleting a lot. Most of what you have will be out of date, moved on or already resolved. That builds momentum, which in itself generates energy.

If you’d like to learn more about setting your non-negotiables, having a plan for the day and a set of clear objectives for the week, my recently released Quiet Productivity Method programme will help you.

It’s packed with ideas like these, along with the right set of tools to give you clarity, focus, and a sense of calm throughout your day.

I’ll leave a link in the show notes for you to learn more about this immersive programme.

Thank you, Sonya, for your question, and I hope this answer has helped.

Thank you also to you for listening, and it just remains for me now to wish you a very, very productive week.

A Calmer, More Human Approach to Time Management

Sun, 24 May 2026 12:13:54 +0900

Is it possible to remain calm and focused when everything around us is getting faster, noisier and seemingly more demanding?

I think it is, and in this week’s episode, I’ll share some of my insights so you, too, can remain productive in a quiet, focused way.

Links:

Learn more about the Quiet Productivity Method here

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 418

Hello, and welcome to episode 418 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Recently, I had a call with one of my coaching clients who is completely on board with AI. He’s gone down the usual rabbit hole of ChatGPT, then Claude, then back to ChatGPT, then to Google’s Gemini and now he’s obsessed with Claude again.

It reminded me of the late twenty-teens when everyone was switching between Evernote, Notion, Apple Notes, and then Roam Research. It was an amusing merry-go-round.

One of the ironic things about my client is that he’d had to wake up at 5:00 am to review the materials for a workshop he was delivering that day because he suddenly thought Claude might not have given the correct information, and he needed to check everything before 9:00 am.

I asked him how long he usually took to prepare for a workshop like this, and he replied that it normally took three or four hours. However, he said emphatically, with Claude’s help, it’s taking him around six to eight hours.

I did point out the obvious. With AI’s help, it’s taking twice as long, but he dismissed that, saying AI was the future and that by doing it this way, he was learning and would eventually be faster.

Fair point.

But he did have to wake up two hours earlier than normal. Not something I would enjoy doing.

This reminded me that life, whether it’s our personal or our professional lives, shouldn’t be lived at speed. Life should be lived at our own pace.

Two YouTube videos I recently watched emphasised this. One was by Matt D’ Avella, and the other was from Samurai Matcha.

In Matt’s video, entitled I Tried to Optimise my Life. It made it Worse, Matt pointed out that trying to live a productive life left him feeling frustrated. All the curated lists and time blocks on his calendar just set him up for failure.

If he didn’t clear his to-do list or he was unable to follow his time blocks, he’d end the day feeling that he’d failed. This left him feeling miserable all evening and wondering what was wrong with him.

Then I watched Samurai Matcha’s video entitled “10 Real Japanese Organisation Tricks”, in which he explained why his girlfriend’s organisation philosophy was brilliant.

Her philosophy was that the goal of organising is to always know where everything is. This meant that things were stacked so you could see what was in a cupboard or refrigerator as soon as you opened the door. That clothes were arranged so that, just by looking in a wardrobe, you could instantly see what was in there.

It isn’t about having everything look pretty and tidy, only to be unable to find what you are looking for. It’s about knowing instantly where everything is.

So there you have one person trying to optimise everything and setting himself up for failure every day. And another who is essentially working by her own logic, making her life as simple and easy as possible.

You can guess who was the more relaxed, settled and happy with life.

And this is the point. Life’s not about optimising everything. We’re human beings, but we’re trying to turn ourselves into machines that can be programmed to wake up at a particular time, jump into a bath of freezing water, do a two-hour morning exercise routine, spend an hour writing morning pages and then finish it all off with twenty minutes of meditation.

That’s not what life is about at all.

One way to get started in creating a calmer, quieter way of living is to begin with your non-negotiables. What are the things you must do each day?

There are the obvious ones, such as sleeping, brushing your teeth, washing and eating. Most of those our bodies have ways of ensuring we do them. We get sleepy, and we get hungry.

But what other things would be non-negotiable for you?

For me, taking Louis out for his walk, doing a little exercise and enjoying a cup of tea with my wife when she gets home from university are non-negotiable at a personal level.

At a professional level, my non-negotiable is spending 2 hours a day creating. That could be writing, recording or planning. It doesn’t matter what I create; all that matters is that I create something.

And that’s it. Together, that’s around four to five hours a day.

Once you have established what your non-negotiables are, it becomes easy to say no to things that could interfere with them.

Another way to bring some calm and quiet back into your life is to focus on time not what you have to do.

Let me explain.

Most of what comes at us each day is not within our control. You do not know how many Slack or Teams messages you will get today. Neither do you know how many emails you will get nor what you will be asked to do.

What you do know is how much time you can dedicate to these inputs.

Over the years, I’ve learnt that if I allow 40 minutes or so each day to respond to my actionable messages and emails, I’ll mostly stay on top of my communications. Sure, occasionally I am behind, but as I can see I am getting behind, I can allow a little extra time to catch up if necessary.

I also know that if I have two hours a day to create, I’ll always hit my publication schedule.

If you work on projects, what would happen if you dedicated 2 hours a day to quiet, focused work on them? No distractions, no interruptions, just quiet, focused work.

From the people I’ve worked with who have done this, they’re amazed at just how much work they get done each week. And how deadlines no longer become stressful or missed.

Two hours may not seem much, but over a working week, that’s ten uninterrupted hours. Ten hours you know you will not be interrupted by anyone.

The great thing about this approach is that you gain control over your time. And with a little consistency, you soon find yourself on top of your work.

You also learn where your limits are.

I know my brain gets tired around the 90-minute to 2-hour mark of focused work.

Sure, there are days I would love to spend three hours in focused work, but experience has taught me that the extra hour is a wasted hour. I make more mistakes; I start snatching a quick look at my messages and emails, looking for anything to distract me. That pile of washing suddenly needs to be put away, or those cups and dishes need washing and putting away.

Once you know your limits, you can work within them.

This approach is a more human way to go about your day. It’s not optimised to create impossible days, leaving you feeling exhausted, unfulfilled and disappointed with yourself.

It’s set up to work with your strengths and, more importantly, with your biorhythms. Your body’s natural rhythms.

The advantage of this kinder, calmer way of going about your day is that you naturally slow down. You have the space to deal with the urgencies and the demands of your bosses, clients and colleagues. And that results in fewer mistakes, leaving you with less corrective work to do.

The problem with being human is that we are really quite fragile. My client, who woke up at 5:00 am to fix Claude’s mistakes, will find the afternoon a dead zone. He’ll be exhausted and trying to operate at 100% with less than five hours of sleep.

That lack of sleep will likely affect his food choices at lunchtime. He’ll probably grab a quick sandwich or something else high in carbohydrates, which will spike his insulin levels, leaving him feeling drowsy afterwards.

And then we’re also susceptible to all sorts of bugs and illnesses, which can have a debilitating effect on our energy levels.

Again, not within our control unless we seal ourselves off from the outside world. Not a great idea.

I can assure you that the best approach to managing time and improving your productivity is to be human about it. Work with you and your natural state, rather than trying to be like a machine.

Take care of your three foundations: get enough sleep, eat healthy and move frequently.

Then, have a plan for the day. Not a minute-by-minute plan, but one that takes care of your non-negotiables, allows for some focused work time and has enough flexibility to take care of unknowns that will inevitably pop up throughout the day.

Since the 1980s, technological advances have consistently promised us less work and more leisure time. And yet that’s never materialised. Instead, the opposite happens.

Smartphones took business communications out of the office and made them omnipresent, leaving us with no place to hide. The desktop computer eliminated the typing pool and left managers and executives responsible for crafting their own letters and emails.

Cloud computing eliminated the filing cabinet and placed company documents within our reach 24/7, even when we were supposed to be on vacation.

What’s more, all this technological advancement has sped everything up. And it’s this speeding up that has left us with so much more to do. What used to take us three or four days to do is now expected to be done in an hour.

That’s where the problem is.

Fortunately, there are ways to mitigate this: be human. Make your own decisions about what you work on and when. Wrestle back control of your calendar and protect time to do the things that matter.

These are simple steps, not easy to implement initially, but worth putting the effort into implementing them.

As Matt D’Avella has discovered, and Samurai Matcha’s girlfriend already knew, keeping things human, simple and logical to yourself is the best way to live in a calm, quiet, focused way.

Now, before I go, if what you’ve heard today in this podcast resonated with you and you want to learn more, my Quiet Productivity Method programme will do just that.

Recently updated to cover your non-negotiables, the superb daybook system and how to plan your days and weeks so you are living within your time means, this programme will teach you, step by step, how to create a system that works for you. How to find time for what you want, and much more.

In addition, you will also become a part of the Quiet Productivity Method community, where you can share ideas, ask questions and join the monthly live sessions that will answer your questions and hold you accountable as you move away from the unsustainable task-based systems of old and towards a sustainable, humane, time-based system.

I do hope you can join me.

Thank you for listening, and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.

How to Stick with Time Blocking the Right Way

Sun, 17 May 2026 11:30:05 +0900

There’s a conflict in time management and productivity that few people ever talk about. That’s the conflict between being productive and being responsive.

It’s almost like the Ying and Yang of life. A sort of Newtonian “everything has an equal and opposite reaction.”

While we may want to shut ourselves away and give our full focus to an important piece of work, there’s always someone, somewhere, who wants to interrupt us and keep us from being productive.

It’s this that we will be looking at this week.

Links:

Learn more and register for the Ultimate Productivity Workshop here.

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 417

Hello, and welcome to episode 417 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

I’m sure we’ve all been there. We have an important piece of work to complete, and we need a good two or three hours of uninterrupted focus to do it.

We block our calendars and pre-plan our day to minimise the risk of anything happening that will interrupt our plan.

And then the day starts, you turn up for work, and all hell has broken loose. Bosses and colleagues are in a panic, and you’re told you must attend an urgent meeting in twenty minutes. No ifs or buts, you must attend.

Argh! It’s enough to have you asking what the point is in making plans when this always happens.

Well, not so fast. It’s just Newton’s third law of Motion acting in a way Sir Isaac Newton never expected.

The pressure of needing two or three hours of quiet, focused work is matched by the force of people needing your attention right now.

Finding the antidote to this phenomenon is what this week’s question is all about.

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 Tim. Tim asks, “ Hi Carl, I’ve tried to do time blocking for years and have never found a way to stick with it. My colleagues always seem to have urgent questions or need me to do something right now. Do you have any ideas to avoid this from happening?

Hi Tim, thank you for your question.

You may have heard of the concept of manager vs maker (or sometimes producer). A manager’s role is to ensure the work is getting done, allocate resources, and hold meetings.

A maker’s role is to produce the work.

The conflict is between the manager’s need to know what’s happening and the maker’s need for uninterrupted time to produce the work the manager is chasing.

In my experience working with teams, the best teams are those where managers trust their teams to get the work done. Where the flow of information is smooth and works both ways, and the need for “update” meetings is minimal.

The most ineffective teams are those where managers constantly want to know what’s happening, are unclear about what they want and by when, and don’t protect their team from interruptions.

You can tell these managers by the number of “status” meetings they have each week. Every day is full of them.

I remember seeing an interview with Toto Wolff, the CEO and team principal of the Mercedes-Benz Formula 1 racing team. In one response to a question, he said:

“My role is to hire the best people, tell them what I want, and then get out of the way and let them do their work.”

Toto Wolff is not an engineer or aerodynamicist, but he is an excellent leader and manager.

Many of the software engineers I’ve spoken with tell me they need about 4 to 6 hours a day to focus on writing code. And even with the help of AI, there’s still a lot of focused work required.

AI doesn’t magically produce code. It needs prompting, the right context given and a clear outcome. And the results need to be carefully checked and tested. A lot of focused work.

The answer to many of these issues for the people who produce the work is to use time blocking.

Now, time blocking often gets abused. I’ve seen countless articles and videos suggesting that you block every hour (and sometimes minute) with something.

This is wrong. That’s not time blocking. That’s setting yourself up for failure, bordering on self-abuse.

Time blocking that works is when you protect two or three hours a day for deeper, focused work. You then leave the rest of the day open for meetings, interruptions and lighter work such as responding to messages and emails.

It’s balancing the need for being productive with the need to be responsive.

Yet it’s also about putting in place barriers that help you get your work done, and communicating to your colleagues and bosses that you cannot be disturbed right now.

I’ve found it’s that communication step people struggle with. There seems to be a fear that people will think less of you because you are not available to their every whim when they need you.

Complete fallacy. The people in your organisation who get the most respect are the ones who are strict about when they are available and when they are not. They have clear barriers, and no one crosses those barriers.

The people who get the least respect and are often the ones left behind on the promotion ladder have no barriers. They are always willing to stop and chat about this, that, and the other.

These are the people who end up taking their work home and are always the last to submit on a project.

As Jim Rohn said, "When you work, work. When you play, play. Don't mix the two.”

The problem here is that when you don’t set boundaries and are always available, your bosses feel they have to supervise you more. You get caught in a vicious circle.

And because you are always submitting your work at the last minute, you’re being interrupted by colleagues and bosses asking how you’re getting on.

When it comes to protecting time on your calendar for focused work, timing is everything.

According to several studies, around 80% of people are at their most focused and creative in the morning. This means, if you want to produce your best work, do it when you are at your most focused and creative.

If that is the morning, protect time in the morning and leave your afternoons open for discussions, meetings and other responsive tasks.

To give you one example, I have a client who is a software engineer.

She’s the manager of a team of engineers, and each morning at 8:30 am, they have a 15-minute ‘stand-up meeting’ to inform everyone of their plan for the day. (They all follow the Daily Planning Sequence).

This informs the team when each of them will be doing their focused work time (usually a three-hour block), what meetings they have, and when they will be available to discuss projects.

My client blocks her calendar from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm for doing her focused work, but does allow 9:00 am to 9:30 am to discuss any issues with individual team members or her bosses.

Then 9:30 hits, and she shuts down Slack and email, opens up her coding software, and for the next three hours, it’s complete and total focus time.

Since she and her team adopted this practice, they’ve never missed a deadline, and no one ever has to take work home. And more importantly, their productivity, as individuals and as a team, has shot through the roof.

This has the added benefit of their bosses now knowing not to disturb them during focus time. There’s plenty of time to update projects or gather information before and after a focus block.

It works. It’s balancing the need to be productive with the need to be responsive. And during an eight-hour workday, her team is only unavailable for three hours, not all at once. So there is always someone available to field questions from higher-ups and clients, if necessary.

Now, there is another block I would highly recommend, and this one will help to reduce and even eliminate backlogs. This is the communications and admin hour.

Let’s be honest, Slack and Teams didn’t do what they promised. Make communicating between teams and colleagues easier and faster. All these tools have done is take away the immediacy of email, move it to another tool, and made it noisier than email ever was.

We still get far too many communications, and far too many low-value and time-wasting messages.

The problem today is the one we’ve faced since the dawn of email: the feeling that we must respond immediately. Now, I’ll take you back to the two opposing forces at play in your workday: the need to be productive and the need to be responsive.

If you were 100% productive, you wouldn’t be communicating with anyone and would be focused solely on your work. If you were 100% responsive, you’d never get any work done, as you’d be responding to interruptions and answering questions and messages all day.

So, there’s a need to find some balance.

In my real-life tests, I’ve found that if you set aside an hour later in the day to respond to your messages, backlogs rarely occur, and if they do, they remain under control.

This only works, though, if you are consistent with this method.

You’ll never be on top of your messages if you sporadically deal with them throughout the week.

But if you consistently spend an hour or so responding to these messages and catching up on relevant threads, you’ll never feel overwhelmed, and if things do build up, adding an extra 30 minutes is often all you need to get things under control.

Now, let’s deal with the elephant in the room. You’re open calendar.

Time blocking will never work if you do not get control of your calendar and get in first. In other words, your focus block and your communications and admin time should be pre-blocked on your calendar.

I’ve seen people wait until Monday morning to find time to get their productive work done, only to discover their calendar is full of meetings.

No, no, no. It doesn’t work like that.

You have to go into your calendar and begin protecting time today. Perhaps your calendar is now full for the next two weeks. If so, go out three weeks in the future and set up some recurring blocks of time for doing your productive work now.

You can change these later if the time you’ve protected is needed for something important, but if you don’t do it now, you will never do it, and the pattern you’re stuck in today will be the same pattern you’re stuck in in three weeks.

I would also recommend setting these up as recurring blocks. That makes your life easier, and you soon come to respect these time blocks.

This also makes planning the week simpler. Knowing that you’ve got a couple of hours each day protected for your productive work, you can assign dates to your work more confidently.

I know when I begin the week, that I will have time on Thursday to write this script. I have time protected for doing so.

So there you go, Tim. I hope that has helped.

Look at the work you do, calculate where your balance between being productive and responsive lies, and then reflect that in your calendar.

I mentioned two hours a day for focused work, but if you are in a role that requires you to be particularly responsive, you may only allow one hour a day. But that is far better than nothing.

Good luck, and thank you for your question.

Thank you to you, too, for listening. It just remains for me to wish you all a very, very productive week.

How to do a Reset.

Sun, 10 May 2026 11:31:33 +0900

If you’re listening to this, there’s a good chance you’re a human being. (Although the speed at which AI is developing may be not all of you… A big hello to Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT (As Boris Johnson would say it)

And, as a human being, you’re attacked every day by emotions, fatigue, viruses and micro-managing bosses and demanding colleagues.

You’re not going to be able to stay consistent with your productivity systems and processes. (And even AI gets confused from time to time)

You WILL fall off the wagon from time to time

As David Allen, of Getting Things Done (GTD), often emphasises, falling off the productivity "wagon" is normal and expected. His most famous quote on this topic is: “If you don't fall off the wagon regularly, you're not playing a big enough game.”

So, what can you do when you do fall off? How can you quickly get back on track? Well, that’s what we’re going to look at today.

Links:

Learn more and register for the Ultimate Productivity Workshop here.

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 416

Hello, and welcome to episode 416 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

One of the most common questions I get is what to do when your systems become neglected following a particularly busy period, a holiday, or illness or even plain, good old-fashioned laziness.

It happens to everyone from time to time, and it certainly doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.

Yet it can leave you feeling that there’s something lacking, that perhaps there’s something wrong with you.

Of course, simply not true. There’s nothing wrong with you at all. It’s another sign that you are a functioning human being. (That’s a good thing, by the way)

All that’s happened is you got very busy and attended to the most important work that needed doing in that moment, or that you’ve just got back from holiday (vacation), and there’s a lot of catching-up and cleaning up to do.

Both scenarios can leave you with some tidying up to do. That doesn’t mean everything has failed. It just means there’s some tidying up to do.

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

This week’s question comes from Ernesto. Ernesto asks, Hi Carl, thank you for the Time Sector System. Finally, I have a system that works after many years of trying. My question is, what do you do when, for whatever reason, you fall off the wagon and let things slip? Is there a quick way to get back on track?

Hi Ernesto, thank you for your question.

Firstly, as I mentioned, this is perfectly normal. So many things can cause us to stop following our system, leaving us feeling anxious about everything that needs cleaning up.

The first place to start is by cleaning up your to-do list for today. This is what I call the business end of any task management system. Your today list.

With the exception of your inbox, all your other lists are just holding pens of tasks that you have processed and decided do not need doing today. Your inbox is where unprocessed tasks sit until you decide what to do with them.

So get your list of tasks for today cleaned up. Reschedule tasks that do not need to be done today, and delete or check off those that have been completed or are no longer needed.

This one step will clear the runway and give you a curated list of things that do need to be done today.

One of the tricks I have to help me here is to give myself a few minutes each evening to clear this list. Anything I have not completed that day is either checked off if done, rescheduled if not, or deleted if no longer needed.

Doing this every day ensures it takes only a few minutes, and by the start of the new day, my today list is curated, accurate, and focused.

I’m reminded here of a story I learned from friend of this podcast, Simon Jeffries, a former UK special Forces officer, who mentioned that when he joined the Royal Marines, from day 1, the training instructors began teaching a simple habit that all marines live by:

As Simon says, “the military doesn’t take civilians and turn them into soldiers overnight. It can't. Day one of training, the standard is simple...

Turn up on time. Keep your kit clean. Look after your rifle.

That's it. A few weeks in, the expectations layer. Month after month, the load increases. The standards compound until discipline is second nature — under fatigue, under pressure, under fire.

Centuries of trial and error went into that approach.

And the reason it works isn't complicated. You cannot expect discipline under fire unless it's second nature. And second nature requires progressive, consistent training.”

Now I’ve often talked about the standards you set for yourself. That could always end the day with a clear plan for the next. It could also be to clear your today’s to-do list so it’s reset and ready for tomorrow.

Being consistent and making it a non-negotiable, no matter how tired you are, will soon embed this habit so it just becomes second nature.

The next list to clean up is your inbox. There’s potential for something important and urgent to be missed here.

If you’re like most people, you will be throwing a lot of things in there throughout the day. By the time you get to the end of the day, a lot of what you added will have been forgotten about.

It’s this that makes keeping this list under control important.

The good news about your inbox is that while you will be adding important things in there, you’re also likely to be adding things that, in hindsight, you do not need to do. These can be deleted.

What remains can be processed using three simple questions:

What is it? A note, an event or a task. If it’s a note, copy and paste it into your notes. If it’s an event, such as an appointment, move it to your calendar.

For what remains, ask yourself:

What do I need to do with it? This is about making sure the task is written clearly, so it’s clear what you need to do.

And finally, ask, “When will I do it?” That will guide you where to put it now that you have processed it.

Is it something that needs to be done this week, or can it wait until next week, etc.?

If it needs to be done this week, you will again ask the question: when? When will you do it?

Beyond that, everything else can wait until your next weekly planning session.

One of the side benefits of the Time Sector System is that you will find many of the tasks you postpone to next week, this month, or next month will sort themselves out and can be deleted. This is one of my favourite aspects of the Time Sector System, the natural elimination of low-value tasks.

It’s worth mentioning a couple of tips David Allen, yes, the Getting Things Done David Allen, gave me when we met in Seoul a few years ago.

David had been travelling through Asia for around ten days, and I asked him how he stayed on top of everything while he was away on business trips.

He said that the most important thing to stay on top while travelling was communications. Emails will back up very fast if you’re not dedicating some time each day to clearing them.

Even if all you can find is 20 minutes in the morning before your day begins, take it. One missed day of managing this beast, and you’re going to have to find twice as much time tomorrow, and so on.

The second tip is to block off at least half a day when you return to catch up. Process your inbox and clear or reschedule any overdue tasks.

David Allen blocks a whole day if he’s been away for a week or more. Half a day if it’s less than a week.

Treat this day as an extra day of your trip. Nobody knows you’re back. You quietly get on and catch up with everything you have collected while you were away.

I adopted both these tips for all my travels, and they work.

If you don’t do this, you’ll be spending the next two to three weeks trying to catch up while getting on with your regular work.

Think of it this way: if your regular work naturally takes up your full working day, why do you think adding in a load of catching up will be easily absorbed? It won’t.

Make the time for it.

Think of the end of each day only happens when you have done a reset and got yourself ready for the new day.

I will add that I also have a closing-down routine that involves washing any remaining dishes, brushing my teeth, locking all the doors, and closing the terrace curtains. It takes less than five minutes, but it’s now something I automatically do before going to bed.

It doesn’t require any extra energy or thought. It just happens.

Doing the daily reset should also be automatic. I remember when I first entered the workplace as a young twenty-year-old and seeing how all my colleagues used to tidy up their desks before going home.

Nobody would ever dream of leaving papers, pens, pencils and files all over the place. They were tidied up, and that marked the end of the day.

Funnily enough, as I think about it, I still do that today. My work day is not complete until I have a tidy desk and my task list is reset and ready to go for tomorrow.

Less than five minutes, and all reset and ready to go.

That’s how you guard against falling off the wagon. Having a few small habits to ensure you clean up at the end of each day.

I know it’s human nature to overthink things, but if you stop and consider what’s really important, knowing where you need to be tomorrow morning and what your most important tasks are for the day is all you really need to get yourself back on track.

And one of those important tasks could be to catch up and clear your inboxes, if that is where many of your current issues are. You get to choose. But do make that choice. Don’t ignore it and make the excuse that you are tired.

It’s less than five minutes. Come on, you can do that.

Many of the concepts I’ve talked about here and much more will be a part of next week’s live Ultimate Productivity Workshop. 2 sessions, 2 hours each over two Fridays (or Saturdays if you are in Australia or Asia)

There are some places left if you want to join us.

This workshop has helped hundreds of people finally gain control of their time and build a system that prevents backlogs and keeps them from falling off the wagon.

And, given that it’s live, you have the chance to share your own experiences, learn from others and ask questions.

There are a lot of exciting lessons in this workshop. I do hope you can join me and let me help you finally make time for the things you want time for.

I will include the link where you can learn more and register for the show in the show notes.

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

The Time Management Secret I Wish Everyone Knew About

Sun, 03 May 2026 11:51:48 +0900

What are your priorities today? What about tomorrow? Do you even know?

This week, I’m sharing a simple switch you can make that will make prioritising your work almost automatic… Almost.

Links:

What is Time-Based Productivity?

Learn more and register for the Ultimate Productivity Workshop here.

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 415

Hello, and welcome to episode 415 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

How do you decide what to do and when? Do you operate a FIFO methodology (First In, First Out) or is it something more nuanced than that?

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that almost everyone has too much to do and too little time to do it. That’s perhaps the reason you are listening to this podcast.

It’s further complicated by the scope of what we are asked to do. Today, we have Slack or Teams messages that somehow cut through our defences and turn into long, time-consuming “chats” about a minor issue on a project that isn’t due to be completed for another six months, preventing us from doing the rather more important work we had planned to do that day.

Then there is email, treated slightly less urgently than instant messages, but it can again destroy our focus, leaving us distracted and unable to finish the work we need or want to complete.

Every day is a challenge. What to do, what is the most urgent, and what is the most important thing you can do today? And if you can work on the most important thing, will you have enough time to do it? If not, would it be better to do something else?

Agh! It’s enough to drive anyone around the bend. And it’s not isolated. Every day we have to go through the same decision-making process. It’s exhausting and stressful (Is this the right thing to work on, or should I respond to that email I just received from my colleague?) and can lead to a prioritisation freeze and activity addiction, where looking busy is more important than doing work that matters.

This week’s question is about ideas for solving these challenges, so to get us started, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Benjamin. Benjamin asks, What are your thoughts on organising work into categorised FIFO-style lists, adjusted for priority, and then using time blocks to work through them without expecting every block to result in a fully completed task unless there’s a real deadline attached.

Hi Benjamin, thank you for your question.

I think you are on the right lines with your ideas there.

Let me give you an example of this working.

I teach a method called Inbox Zero 2.0 for managing emails. This method has two parts. The first is to clear the inbox. This is about speed, and all you are doing is filtering out the informational emails that don’t need any action, except to archive them and moving any actionable emails to a folder called “Action This Day”.

Later in the day, you go into that folder and try to clear it.

Now, the ‘secret sauce’ of this method is that the emails in your Action This Day folder are in reverse order. The oldest ones are at the top, and the newest ones are at the bottom of the list.

(You can do this from the folders’ settings in Outlook and Apple Mail. I’ve never been able to find a way to do this in Gmail)

This means, when you come to ‘clear’ the Action This Day folder, you start at the top and work your way down. You try to clear it every day, but often that’s not possible; sometimes there are too many in there.

However, because you start with the oldest, the remaining emails, the ones you were unable to get to, will likely have only recently come in, so the urgency is less than the ones you did respond to.

Now, occasionally, an email that recently came in needs to be responded to that day. Here, you would “adjust for priority”, as you aptly call it, Benjamin and respond to these out of their natural order.

It’s a system that has worked for years, never letting me down. Because I spend at least 20 minutes a day on my actionable emails, my emails rarely back up; my inbox is cleared every day, and nobody needs to wait more than 24 hours for a response.

Now, you mentioned doing as much work as you can within the time blocks you set. That is exactly how to do it.

This is also where many people go wrong with time blocking. Time blocking isn’t about squeezing in a specific amount of work within the time you have set. That’s never going to be possible.

You see, there are too many variables acting on us each day. The first is that you have no idea what emergencies will happen in the middle of a time block.

I’ve worked in offices where I settle down to write an important contract only to be interrupted by a fire alarm that took more than an hour to have the building declared safe. Rare, but does happen.

More common are the interruptions from our colleagues. We just do not know for sure that something more urgent will pop up when we are trying to complete a planned piece of work.

However, that does not mean time blocking doesn’t work. It does.

It does because it allows us to organise our days by what matters most.

For example, if you are a lawyer who needs time each day to prepare or review contracts, blocking two hours each day for this work ensures you always have time to do this important work.

Blocking time for it means no one in your office can steal that time from you. It’s like you have an appointment with yourself each day to do your most important work.

If you do not, for whatever reason, complete as much as you would have liked to, it’s okay, because you can pick it up again in your next blocked time slot.

This is more about consistency than time blocking. If you consistently turn up and do the work, you’re never going to be far behind and are unlikely to have any significant backlogs.

Yet if you don’t protect your time, it’ll be stolen.

Not blocking time for doing your most important work is like parking your car in a high-crime area and leaving your wallet on the passenger seat with the windows wide open. There’s a good chance your wallet won’t be there when you get back to your car.

Time blocking gets a bad reputation because people erroneously think it’s about blocking your entire day with activities. No. That’s not time blocking. That’s masochism.

Time blocking your whole day wouldn’t work anyway. A traffic jam, a distraught colleague, a micromanaging boss, or a fire alarm would ruin your day, and then you’d waste time trying to reschedule everything.

Time booking works when you use it lightly.

Look at it this way:

You build each day around a few critical blocks of time. For instance, two hours of deep solo work where you get on and write the reports, prepare the presentation, or sort out an issue that’s been dragging on for weeks.

Then there’s likely to be time required for responding to all the messages you get each day. I doubt anyone can escape that deluge, but ignoring it will just create bigger and bigger problems further down the line.

So perhaps you set aside an hour for dealing with your communications and any low-value admin. (Another area that can backlog pretty quickly if you’re not staying on top of it.)

That’s just two blocks, consisting of a total of three hours. Yet it’s three hours, which, if followed consistently, would keep you on top of your critical work and prevent backlogs in the areas most susceptible to them.

Three hours that would reduce your stress, lower your anxiety, and put you ahead of 97% of your colleagues.

This does not guarantee you will always be on top of your work. As Baz Luhrmann’s 1990s hit says:

“Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind… the race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself.”

But what will guarantee you stay ahead is being consistent with it.

When you start each day, ask yourself: where’s my focus time and where’s my comms and admin time?

You mentioned categorising your tasks, and that’s a great idea too, Benjamin. Not all work is equal, and sometimes a deadline will need us to adjust our priorities.

Now, categorising your work can be a minefield if you are inclined to overcomplicate things. This should be avoided.

Think of it this way: When a pilot prepares for a trans-Pacific flight, there are just three categories. Pre-flight, in-flight and landing.

Each of those categories has distinct types of tasks to be completed.

For us, knowledge workers, it really comes down to a few simple categories. For example, there are four that almost everyone will have (including airline pilots):

Communications

Admin

Planning

And chores

Chores are always there. We all occasionally have to pick up a prescription, make a dentist’s or doctor’s appointment or take our kids to ballet, football or cricket practice.

Beyond these four, it will depend on the kind of work you do. A lecturer at a university may have student affairs, lectures and research as categories.

A salesperson may have prospecting, follow-ups and proposal writing.

My advice is to keep your categories to no more than eight and make them as general as possible.

For example, with the lecturer, student affairs could include grading papers, setting exams, writing references and arranging for one or more of your students to participate in a work experience programme.

Once you have your categories, you have a way to prioritise your work.

Again, this will depend on your work. For me, my most important priority each day is my content category. I create content every day. It could be this podcast, a blog post or a YouTube video.

For a salesperson, the most important category may be prospecting, because without a steady supply of potential customers, everything else will eventually dry up.

This now helps you with what you will do in your time blocks. For me, 9:30 am to 11:30 am is my content creation time. It is blocked on my calendar, and everyone knows not to disturb me during that time—including my wife!

The salesperson may choose 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm as their prospecting time, and that, again, would be protected as a time block on their calendar each day.

The idea is to match your most important categories with time blocks on your calendar.

This is how time-based productivity works. It works on the time available to do your work. Not everything has to be done today or even this week or month.

When you’re processing your work inbox, you decide what you need to do with something, then choose the best time to do it.

There will be other factors to take into account, such as the deadline, who’s asking you to do something and so on. But ultimately, you are deciding when to work on a particular category.

This is the opposite of the more traditional task-based systems that treat every task as individually important and as something that must be done ASAP.

That way is unsustainable, as I am sure many of you have found out. It creates huge lists of stuff that may or may not need to be done, which just overwhelms you. You cannot do everything at once or even this week.

If you want to learn more about time-based productivity, I have added a link to a blog post I wrote about it in the show notes.

And just a heads up. The next Ultimate Productivity Workshop is coming soon. On Fridays the 15 and 22nd May, 2 sessions, 2 hours each over two weeks.

If your calendar is swamped with meetings and commitments, that leaves you with no room to do the work these meetings are generating. If you find your inboxes are overflowing with tasks and messages, and you cannot see a way out of it all, then this is the workshop for you

This workshop will teach you, in a live setting, how to move from an unsustainable, task-based system to a more sustainable, time-based one, along with many other lessons to help you get control of your calendar and all those inboxes.

I will put the details in the show notes so you can learn more about how this workshop will help you. (Oh, and a warning, be prepared for some homework if you join us)

I do hope you will be able to join me.

Thank you, Benjamin, for your question. I hope this has been helpful.

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

The Best Ways to Organise Your To-Dos

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 11:36:57 +0900

Podcast 414

"Organisation is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up. But if you spend all your time organising, you never do the 'something'."

That’s a paraphrase of a quote from A. A. Milne and his book The House at Pooh Corner. And touches on the question I’m asking this week.

Let’s go,

Links:

Learn more about the Time Sector System

Take the Time Sector System Course

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 414

Hello, and welcome to episode 414 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

How do you organise your work?

There was a trend a few years ago to organise our tasks in multiple different ways. There were the original Getting Things Done contexts: @office, @home, @phone, @computer, etc.

Some preferred to manage their tasks by project, creating long lists of projects and assigning tasks to them.

Most of these trends died out because, ultimately, they were just new ways of avoiding the work while still feeling that the work was getting done. A kind of modern-day equivalent of shuffling papers on your desk.

All these trends did was create a longer list of lists, full of spurious tasks that likely didn’t need to be done or had already been done but not checked off.

Then there is the idea that we can organise tasks by how much energy we estimate a task will consume. This one still persists, and I will explain shortly why this one doesn’t work.

Yet there is one way to manage your tasks that has been around for well over a hundred years and still works, one that almost all top-level executives use, but given that it is simple and we humans love to overcomplicate things, it never seems to get much coverage.

Anyway, this is what this week’s topic is all about, so to get us started, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Ken. Ken asks, Hi Carl, what do you think is the best way to organise tasks? I’m thinking about using energy levels to keep my lists low. Have you had any experience with this method?

Hi Ken,

Thank you for your question.

I have to confess that over the years, I have jumped on every trend for organising my lists of tasks. And, except for two methods, pretty much all fail.

They fail for the reasons I alluded to a moment ago. They are too complicated and require far too much maintenance to keep organised.

You see, the methods that work are simple, and therefore, in today’s world, they are not sexy.

The simplest of them all is one I personally have gravitated back to in recent years. That is a simple daily list of tasks to be done today. These are taken from a master list, which is organised during the weekly planning session into the days you plan to do them on.

This method has a built-in safety valve. You can see how many tasks you have allocated to a specific day, and if it looks unrealistic, you can move them to other days to balance out your week.

Given that you are looking at this daily list every day during the Daily Planning Sequence, it can be adjusted for any unknowns that suddenly arise as the week progresses. (Which of course always happens)

To maintain this method, all you need is two to three minutes a day and around thirty minutes for your weekly planning.

Not exciting, sexy or newsworthy. It doesn’t require expensive apps or AI. You can operate this method using a simple $1.00 notebook or a text file on your computer.

But it works. It’s flexible, and as long as you are being sensible, you’re never going to feel overwhelmed.

This is where other methods go wrong. They often involve a lot of organising, and given that you are not always looking at the lists you are creating, you have no idea what kind of monster is growing.

Take organising by projects as an example. I don’t know where this comes from. It certainly doesn’t come from David Allen’s Getting Things Done. GTD, as it is called, organises lists by what David Allen calls “Contexts”.

Contexts are created around tools, places or people. For instance, if a task requires a computer to complete it, you would assign it to the @Computer list. If you need to talk to your partner about something, you would add it to your @Partner list, and if you can only complete the task at home, you would add it to your @Home list.

The danger with this kind of organising is twofold. First, some of your lists will become enormous. So big that you don’t want to look at them, as they become scary and leave you feeling anxious.

And second, some tasks could theoretically fall into two or more lists. For example, if you need to book flights for a trip with your partner, you could allocate it to your @computer list or your @Partner list, and, as you will likely do this at home with your partner, it could conceivably be placed in your @Home list.

So where do you put it?

So you create a Project called “Family trip to Jamaica” and place the book flights task in there. Excellent. Next, you may add “Book hotel” and then maybe add a packing list and places to visit. Soon, a simple “project” has an array of tasks, some of which need to be done before you go and others when you get there.

That isn’t really the problem. The problem is you don’t have a single project like that. You may end up with projects like buying a new car, redecorating your living room, and, not to mention, all the various projects you will have at work.

Soon, that project list is out of control.

Just maintaining it and reviewing what needs to be done next takes hours.

And let’s be honest here, how many of you are willing to consistently spend two or three hours of your weekend reviewing all your projects?

For something like your trip, it would be far easier to create a note in your notes app. Here you can keep your flight tickets, hotel reservation confirmation, packing list and places to visit in one place and have a master checklist for everything you need to do.

In your task manager, all you need now is a single task reminding you to book your flights, or simply to look at what needs doing next on your checklist.

Now you mentioned managing your list by energy levels, Ken.

On the surface, this sounds like a great idea. After all, why would you tackle a task that will require a lot of energy when you are not feeling energetic?

And when you are feeling low on energy, you can clear off some of those low-energy tasks.

Hmmm, but does it work?

Well, no.

For one thing, your energy levels are not consistent. Some days you feel on fire, and others you feel like you’ve been hit by a bus and dragged through a hedge backwards.

The trouble is, when you go to bed, you have no idea how you will feel the next day.

Then there is the issue of deadlines. Whether you feel like doing a task or not, if the deadline is 12 pm today, you’ve got to finish it, no matter how energetic you feel.

Then there’s the human factor. We are wired to be lazy. This comes from the days when we lived on the Savannah. Food was scarce, and we needed to conserve our energy for hunting food.

Then there were the winters when finding food was even harder. Only fatter people would survive winters because we needed to live largely on our fat deposits when we were unable to find food.

This is why it’s easy to gain weight and much harder to lose it. Our body wants to store fat. It does not want to let it go.

While we consciously know food is not scarce for most of us today, our lizard brain doesn’t know that. And our lizard brain controls our survival instincts, so it will override our conscious intelligence.

This means when we are feeling low on energy, the last thing we will do is open up our task managers and pick something to do.

Instead, we’ll crash on the sofa or take a nap.

And so your low-energy list will keep growing.

Then there comes the question of how to define a medium-energy task. What does that mean?

It’s likely you will define those tasks differently depending on how you feel on the day you process them.

The second way to organise your tasks that actually works is to go by when a task needs to be done.

Let’s go back to the flight example. If you are planning your trip for September and want to get everything booked by the end of June, the window to complete that task is from now through to the end of June.

Given that you want to do this with your partner, it’s likely you will do this task when you are with your partner.

If you are away on a ten-day business trip this week and next, you cannot do the task then, so don’t put it on your list for this week or next.

As we are about to start May, I would add this task to my Next Month list. I don’t need to do it now, but it will need to be on my list in June.

Hopefully, you are familiar with the Time Sector System. This organises your lists by when you will do them.

The only list in play each week is your This Week list. This contains all the tasks you have decided need to be done this week. Everything else is in either your Next Week, This Month, Next Month or long-term and on-hold lists.

Each week, you look at these lists and decide what to bring forward to your This Week list.

The simplicity of this method is that when you process your inbox, you are asking three simple questions:

What is it? - Is it a task, an event, or a note?

What do I need to do to complete it?

And, when will I do it?

In a very short time, you get super fast at processing your tasks, and with the exception of your long-term and on-hold list, none of your lists will grow out of control. Well, not if you give yourself about 30 minutes each week to maintain and update your lists.

Given that you are working from a single list, your This Week list, once again, you have the built-in safety valve because you can see how many tasks are on your list before the week begins and can adjust it to be more realistic if it becomes too large.

The purpose of your long-term and on-hold list is to eliminate, not accumulate. In other words, every month or so, you go in there and delete tasks you no longer want or need to do.

To learn more about the Time Sector System, I have a course that will teach you how to use it as well as a comprehensive blog post explaining why this method works so well in today’s world.

I will put links to both in the show notes for you.

So there you go, Ken.

There are always new, exciting ways to organise your tasks, but ultimately it comes down to what needs to be done today. That’s all that matters at the work level of managing our tasks.

Things that don’t need to be done today should never be on your daily list.

Your energy levels will fluctuate throughout the day; it’s not something you can control. Energy levels can be affected by the quality and quantity of your sleep, what you ate for lunch and whether you are coming down with a cold or the flu.

What you can control is what you do right now. You could take a nap, go for a walk or sit down and attack that list of prospects that you’ve been meaning to contact for the last three weeks.

My advice would be to work with what you have direct control over, and that ultimately comes down to when you will do something.

I hope that has helped Ken. Thank you for your question.

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

How 1920s England can Inspire Your Productivity

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 11:26:51 +0900

“I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ought to have done. But it has not yet gone on strike altogether.”

I’ve been reading Dorothy L Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels. Set in the 1920s and 30s, the stories feature an aristocratic private detective in a style similar to Sherlock Holmes. And that quote comes from Lord Peter Wimsey himself.

In this week’s episode, I share some of the productivity methods these fictional characters followed, as well as some from the biographies of these authors.

Links:

Get the Designing The Perfect Retirement Programme

Interview with Harvey Smith

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 413

Hello, and welcome to episode 413 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

1920s and 30s England was an interesting time. The country was changing. The First World War broke down many of the class barriers that existed before the war, and while many manual labour jobs remained brutal, conditions were slowly improving.

The way people lived their lives was also changing. There was more leisure time, and cars were becoming more common, giving people more freedom to travel, certainly at weekends.

And yet, with all these changes, there were still some customs and habits people followed that gave them structure and balance. They also used nature far more than we do today. Lives were much simpler; heart attacks and cancer were rare; there was little waste; and recycling was part of life.

It could be asked, what went wrong?

I began this episode with a quote from the character Lord Peter Wimsey.

Lord Peter was very much in the style of Sherlock Holmes, and throughout the novels, many of Lord Peter’s friends would often accuse him of being “Sherlockian”.

What I noticed about these characters was that in the 1920s and 30s, some customs helped people avoid procrastination.

You can also see these in play in the Downton Abbey and Jeeves and Wooster TV series as well.

The first productivity method you will see is that days were structured around meal times.

Breakfast was informal, and people ate when they were ready. However, lunch was always a proper meal, not a quick snack taken at a desk. It would have been unthinkable not to take the one-hour lunch break.

Even manual workers would stop for lunch and eat together.

Taking a proper lunch break can do wonders for your productivity. First, it gives you a break from doing tasks, and it should always be eaten with other people.

But the biggest impact on your productivity was having a natural deadline. Because you were dining with others, you had to stop at the right time. No, “I’ll just finish this and take a quick lunch break”.

It was down your tools and go out.

This gave you a hard deadline to finish what needed to be finished before lunch. And when you have a hard deadline, Parkinson’s law comes in. This is “work fills the time available”

If you have two hours to finish a task, it will take you two hours. If you only have an hour, it will take you an hour.

What happens is that you enter a deeper state of focus when you are under time pressure. That’s how Parkinson’s law works. But it can have the reverse effect.

If an email would normally take you 30 minutes to respond to, but you have an hour before your next appointment, that email will take you the full hour to write.

This is why procrastination is now a thing; in the 1920s and 30s, it was rare. The natural mealtime deadlines prevented a lot of procrastination. Today, those mealtimes are woolly and ill-defined, removing a natural deadline, causing you to procrastinate.

What people ate also had an impact. It was largely fish or meat with vegetables. No HPFs (highly processed foods) or low-value carbs. It was foods that didn’t mess with your blood sugar, which leads to the afternoon slump.

Alcohol was often also included. How on earth deep focused work got done in the afternoons, I don’t know.

Dinner was an altogether different affair. The time was set, and you dressed for dinner too. The ladies wore evening gowns, and the gentlemen wore dinner suits (tuxedo for those of you living on the other side of the Atlantic).

This meant if you did have a job and were not of “independent means”, you had to leave work on time to be home in time to dress for dinner.

After dinner was interesting. The ladies would gather together in the drawing room for music and conversation. The gentlemen would retire to the smoking room for brandy, coffee and cigars. There, the day’s business was often discussed.

This was the aristocracy, not the middle or working classes. Although even the lower classes treated dinner more formally than we do today. It was the family meal of the day, and everyone was expected to be there.

After that, people often wrote letters, read books, or, in the case of people like Winston Churchill, went back to their studies and did some more work.

And that was something I have noticed. Because there were no fixed working hours for the upper classes, work occurred at all hours of the day. A lot of work happened after dinner, rarely in the early hours of the day.

This gave a lot more flexibility for things like admin and communications. Most letter writing was done late in the day.

The founder of the British Intelligence Service (MI6), Sir Mansfield Cumming, would retire to his study after dinner to read through all the papers he’d received that day and send out letters to his agents around the world, often until 2 in the morning.

Yet Cumming was famous for two to three-hour lunches and late starts to the day.

The problems we have today are caused by on-demand entertainment. There’s always something to watch on YouTube or Netflix. And our sofas are very tempting after a nice dinner.

Once there, it’s a real challenge to get up. Take those temptations away, and what else will you do?

If you think about that for a moment. If a family had dinner together at 7:00 pm, discussed the day, and afterwards joined in an activity, they would be spending quality time together every day.

Then at 9:00 pm, you could go back and clean up your messages, clear any admin tasks for an hour or so and still have time for reading or a hobby.

It’s often our fixation with work-life balance that puts unnecessary barriers in our day. No personal stuff during office hours and no work stuff in our personal time.

And yet, what do we do in our personal time? Spend hours in front of a screen, not talking with our family or friends, instead sending WhatsApp messages and commenting on social media posts.

Cal Newport and Tim Ferriss write their books late in the evening. In Cal Newport’s case, he spends time with his young family until they go to bed, and then goes to his home office and writes for two or three hours.

Cal Newport is a good example because he’s completely rejected social media, so he has time to write after his kids have gone to bed.

Rest was taken very seriously in the 1920s and 30s. A lot of it was social. Parties and weekend getaways.

I’ve spoken about Ian Fleming’s work habits before, particularly when he was in Jamaica writing the next James Bond book. But when he was back in London, he still worked in very much the same way.

Mornings were intensely focused work, followed by a long lunch, then letters, and then home for dinner, or out with a friend. Afterwards, he would go to his study and edit a manuscript or read through the papers he’d received from his foreign correspondents around the world. (He was the foreign news editor at The Sunday Times Newspaper)

The most noticeable thing I learned from this era has been to structure your days around meal times. I now do intense creative work in the mornings, followed by more leisurely afternoons, and then, after dinner, go back to doing some work for an hour or two.

I still work for around eight to ten hours a day, but I find that my energy levels remain strong whenever I am working. There are plenty of breaks throughout the day where I can socialise, spend time with my family and still get a lot of work done.

And then there was movement. A lot of movement.

The 1920s and 30s were a lot less convenient than they are today. This meant we had to walk a lot more than we do now.

Weirdly, people have become obsessed with their step count today. They struggle to get even 8,000 steps in. And gyms are everywhere.

There were no gyms, and nobody was counting steps back then. They didn’t have to. It was natural to walk 10,000+ steps every day. If you wanted food, you had to prepare it; there was no app to order it.

Although the upper classes did have servants who could produce it for them when necessary. But given that refrigerators and microwaves were not a thing then, a sudden order of food would have resulted in a cold meat salad and not much else.

As an aside, just do a search for 1950s New York or London and look at the images. There’s a significant difference between the size of people then and people today. Yet, no gyms, no smartwatches calculating steps, sleep cycles, or anything else.

It was purely natural. Real food, not processed rubbish, plenty of natural movement, and no gyms.

If you want to be more productive every day, move more. This is really what balance is all about. The so-called work-life balance is a modern concept, but what really matters at life level is the movement-rest balance.

With the right movement-rest balance, your productivity will naturally increase. You will be a lot less mentally tired, and when you do move, you can map out what you will do next.

I find that the biggest benefit of working from home has been that I can get up between work sessions to do the laundry or take Louis out for his walk. It gives me a natural mental break, and I do something physical. That refreshes my brain, and I can come back and do some more mental work feeling energised.

I know it will be impossible to turn back the clock and go back to living the way people did in the 1920s. Technology and cultural changes would make that impossible.

However, there are things we can do, as people did back then, that will naturally increase our productivity.

First, focus on the rest-movement balance. If you’re mentally tired, do something physical instead of collapsing on the sofa. If you’re physically tired, do something mental.

And move more than you currently do. We have become alarmingly sedate today. Dance while you’re cooking or making tea or coffee (I do that hahaha)

Eat real food, not processed rubbish, and take proper lunch breaks. Get out, move and socialise if you can. Treat them as a non-negotiable.

Be relaxed about work-life balance. It’s not natural. There will be times when the best thing you can do is to clear some backlogs in the evening, and equally, there are times when the best thing you can do at 3:00 pm is go out for a walk or hang out the washing.

Another aside. The worst invention has been the tumble dryer. Before we had them, we had to hang out the washing. This involved bending down to pick up clothes from the washing basket and then reaching up to hang them on the line. Possible one of the best workouts you would ever get.

I know today’s episode has been different. I hope you’ve found it interesting. It’s well worth reading some of these older novels to learn how people used to live their lives.

Thank you for listening, and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very active, yet productive week.

How to Find Your Purpose in Retirement

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 10:09:45 +0900

Podcast 412

Continuing my series on designing the “perfect” retirement, this week, I share some insights on one of the most common fears of retirement, that of losing your purpose.

Links:

Get the Designing The Perfect Retirement Programme

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 411

Hello, and welcome to episode 412 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Throughout our lives, there is usually some goal or purpose we are attempting to achieve.

When at school, it’s to pass our exams so we can go on to university or to get a job in a specific field. When we begin our careers, we are often driven to work hard to get promoted. Or at least that’s how the theory goes.

The trouble is, if you step back from these “goals”, they seem to be pushed onto us by our parents, society and our peers.

It’s rare for anyone to step away from this blueprinted path and set their own course. In the past, people who did not follow the well-worn path would have been politely described as “eccentric”, or impolitely “weird”.

I remember back in 2002, when I quit law and flew to Korea to teach English, my friends and colleagues could not understand why I would give up a career in law to teach English.

Yet, my heart was not in law. It always felt wrong. If I am being honest, I believe my motivation for studying law and working in a law firm was purely about status and about living a life that other people wanted me to live.

Coming to Korea turned out to be the best thing I’ve ever done. I discovered my purpose: to help other people, and I found the medium through which I could do that: teaching.

It’s what I still do today. I help people through teaching.

In our working lives, it’s easy to have a purpose. It might not be our true purpose, but climbing the promotion ladder does seem to give us a purpose. How high up the ladder can we climb?

Yet, chasing the next promotion is never going to be a life’s purpose. It might be a career goal, but ultimately, it will end at some point, and that ending point will unlikely be within your control.

I’m reminded of one of England’s top lawyers, Lord Jonathan Sumption.

Lord Sumption was a celebrated barrister, rising to the top of the legal profession when he became a judge at the Supreme Court.

The mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court judges in England is 70, so when Lord Sumption turned 70, he retired from the legal profession.

However, his real passion was never for law. That was his career, and he was very good at it. His real passion was for medieval history, and today Lord Sumption is regarded as one of the leading historians of that era. He continues to write books and talk on the subject.

Tony Robbins talks about the six human needs in his brilliant Unleash the Power Within seminar. These human needs are:

The need for: Certainty - the certainty that you can avoid pain and gain pleasure, and the need for uncertainty and variety - the need for the unknown and new stimuli.

The need for significance - the feeling of being unique, important, special or needed and then the need for connection and love - a strong feeling of closeness to someone or something

And then there are the two areas that when we are young, we often dismiss, largely because we are so caught up in our own lives. They are the need to contribute and the need to grow.

When I first did the associated exercise related to these needs, I did just that. My top two were the need for certainty and the need for significance. (Typical for someone who creates content, funnily enough)

I dismissed the needs to contribute and grow. Yet now, I see that these two needs are the source of our purpose.

All living beings need to grow. When we stop growing, we start dying. Just look at what happens to muscles when we stop using them. They weaken and whither. That’s your body doing its job. It wants to conserve energy, and if you’re not using an energy-expensive muscle, it will weaken the muscle.

That is just another reason it’s important to make sure you do your resistance training every day. (Or at least three to four times a week).

Yet growth is not just about the physical; it’s also about the mental. The need to be continuously learning.

This is where our hobbies come in. Hobbies such as learning languages, geology, car mechanics, medieval history, and problem-solving keep our brains active. Our brains continue to grow as we learn.

A good reason not to try to figure everything out by using customer service or Chat GPT. Use your problem-solving skills to figure it out.

And the contribution is where we get our sense of fulfilment. Passing on our knowledge and what we have learned from our life experiences by teaching others.

When I worked in law, it always felt like it was just about billable time. How much could we charge the client? I tried to convince myself that I was helping people, but my bosses were not interested in that part. They just wanted to know how much I had billed that week.

When I began teaching English to adults in Korea, that changed. It did not matter how many students I had in my classes. I got paid the same. Now I felt I was contributing to someone’s success.

Something changed in me, too. I felt excited to go to work every morning. I’d never felt that before, and it took me a while to figure out what that was. It was because each day I got the chance to help people improve their lives and career prospects, and it was a joy to see their progress.

If you were to build a retirement around growth and contribution, you would soon find that your purpose becomes clear.

For most of us, our purpose is unlikely to be as grand as bringing world peace or finding a solution to global warming. For some, maybe, but for most of us, not likely.

Purpose is often much smaller than that. It could be to raise and support your children so they can navigate through their worlds with positivity and pragmatism. For others, it could be, like me, to teach as many people as I can to be better organised and less stressed.

The late Prince Philip, who died five years ago, told his daughter, Princess Anne, that to find your purpose, you should find something that you feel you can make an impact on.

For Prince Philip, that meant conserving and protecting the planet, as well as helping young people be active through his Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme.

He was talking about conservation and climate change in the 1950s, well before it became fashionable to do so. He was a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund, wrote multiple books on the subject, and was active in climate science.

For Princess Anne, it has been, and remains so today, saving children in war-torn environments, animal welfare and hearing dogs for the deaf.

Which then leads us to the second problem here.

When we retire, it can be very tempting to fill our calendars with all sorts of work in the name of good causes. Don’t do that.

You are not going to be able to have an impact on everything. Instead, you want to look at what you are genuinely interested in.

Prince Philip gave a 19-year-old Princess Anne some sage advice when she asked him what she should get involved in. He told her that she would be inundated with offers to be a patron of this or that. He advised her that she could never be a patron of everything, so she should choose those in which she had a genuine interest.

Ron Dennis, the former owner of the McLaren Formula 1 team, retired from Formula 1 in 2017 and dedicated his retirement to helping young people achieve their aspirations and to become role models for future generations.

His experience of working with people like Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost and Kimi Räikkönen gave him the knowledge and experience to help young sportsmen and women achieve their dreams.

There’s likely to be something that you have an interest in. If that can be coupled with your knowledge and experience, then you have something you can contribute, and that, in turn, will give you a sense of purpose.

In many ways, the challenge is not about finding purpose; it is narrowing it down to the one or two things that we feel we can have an impact on.

The same challenge we faced when in the corporate world is still there in retirement: overcommitting. This is why it’s important not to rush into things when you transition. Explore, think, test, and experience by all means, but set a deadline for refining your activities into something more manageable.

One of the wonderful things about the world we live in today is that we can share our ideas and experiences by writing a blog, recording a podcast, or even starting a YouTube channel.

The great thing about these avenues is that they need consistency to grow. A weekly podcast does far better than a podcast that rarely adds episodes. This helps you to bring structure into your weeks. You can set aside a day or two each week for your content production.

As your blog, podcast, or YouTube channel grows, that in itself gives you a sense of purpose, particularly if it is contributing to making an impact on something you have an interest in.

So, if you are struggling to find your purpose, first, don’t overthink it. It’s rarely about solving the world’s problems; it’s more about helping people to better themselves, and as someone with the experience you have, you are in a very strong position to be able to help.

Make sure it is something you are interested in, something you enjoy reading about and something you like talking to other people about. If you wake up excited about doing something related to this, then you’ve found your purpose.

One of the most inspiring stories I heard about was about two Canadian gentlemen who loved skiing. Each year, they would go skiing together with their families.

When they retired, they both decided to take their ski instructor certification and become ski instructors. And that is what they do today. They are both qualified ski instructors, and each winter they spend their days teaching people to ski.

This keeps them fit and strong and brings an incredible social experience.

I hope this has helped. If you have any questions around your retirement or impending retirement, let me know. I’m happy to answer your questions in this podcast.

And don’t forget, I have recently launched a brand new programme called Designing the Perfect Retirement. This programme sets out a blueprint for you to create a retirement you find fulfilling and inspiring, and that keeps you fit, healthy and active.

In addition, this programme gives you access to a community where you can share experiences and advice. I will put the details for this programme in the show notes.

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

Lessons in Purpose and Productivity When Planning Your Retirement

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 10:30:00 +0900

Podcast 411

Last July, I had a conversation with my father-in-law. He was scared and worried. He was due to retire at the end of 2026 (now only a few months away), and he had no idea what to do.

It was that conversation that inspired me to dig deep into what it takes to build a solid, meaningful and joyful retirement. That’s what we’re going to look into today.

Links:

Get the Designing The Perfect Retirement Programme

Interview with Harvey Smith

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 411

Hello, and welcome to episode 411 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

I’m in my mid-fifties now, a time when many people start to think about what they will do when they walk out of their workplace for the last time and enter the next chapter of their lives.

It’s a scary time for many people. Yes, there’s a lot to look forward to: being able to design your own days and go on trips whenever you want, without needing to submit a holiday request form. But there’s an underlying sense of anxiety, will I be bored? Will I lose my health? Will I be lonely?

This is why giving some thought to your retirement before you retire can bring you a sense of relief and purpose.

But what do you want to do?

As the productivity saying goes, “You can do anything but not everything”.

So one of the first things to do when you begin thinking about your retirement is ask that question: What do I want to do?

And this is important.

My grandfather was a farmer all his working life. He had a dairy farm, and each morning at 5:00 am, he would wake up, bring the cows into the dairy and start the milking for the day.

He did this for over forty years, seven days a week. Farming is not so much work; it’s a way of life. When my grandfather was not milking, he was repairing machines and fences, and doing all the other odd jobs that needed to be done.

At the age of 60, he retired.

His plan was to travel, something he’s never been able to do, enjoy a little gardening and take life easy.

That didn’t happen. For someone who had been active all his life, not having to get up early in the morning, come rain or shine, and now being able to stay in bed and have a leisurely morning reading the newspapers was a temptation that was hard to resist.

And so he stopped. He didn’t do very much, and within two years, he was dead.

He was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, and while the operation to remove the cancer was successful, he developed complications and passed away a few weeks after the operation.

I was only 12 years old when he died, and it was the first family death I experienced. It was a horrible experience. I was close to my grandfather. He was a lovely person.

It woke me up to the frailties of a human life at an early age. Aunties and uncles often said he died because he retired. I was too young to understand that at the time, but I remember a friend of my mother’s later once telling me that the biggest killer is your armchair.

That person was the famous international show jumper, Harvey Smith.

Harvey is 87 years old now. When he retired from show jumping in 1990, he didn’t sit around in his armchair. His dream was to build a horse racing stable. And together with his wife, Sue, that is what they did.

In 2013, Harvey and Sue trained the horse Auroras Encore, which won the prestigious Grand National horse race at Aintree in Liverpool that year.

I know many of my non-British listeners may not have heard of the Grand National, but anyone in the UK will know it is one of the biggest races on the horse racing calendar.

But not only that, Harvey’s written at least four books, and he still doesn’t spend much time in his armchair.

If you want to hear Harvey’s words of wisdom, there is a superb YouTube video in which he and Sue are interviewed. I’ll put that video link in the show notes. Harvey is a true Yorkshireman with the wonderful Yorkshire wit.

Retirement is not the end. It’s the start of a new chapter in your life. You have built up a wealth of knowledge and experience and likely collected quite a few interests along the way. Retirement is your time to use that knowledge and work on the things that interest you.

So what interests you?

I’ve had a love of bonsai trees since I was in my twenties. I was probably inspired by the film The Karate Kid.

While I have a couple of trees now, I don’t have the time to properly learn to nurture and grow them. However, when the time comes for me to slow down and retire, one thing I will do is spend a couple of weeks in Japan learning from the masters.

When I was researching retirement for my father-in-law, I came to see that there are three pillars you need to ensure are built into any plans you may have.

The first is mental. This does not mean mental health as it is discussed today; it is about learning.

Learning something new.

That could be a foreign language, art history, or how to train racehorses. It doesn’t matter so much what you learn; it is about learning something challenging. Something to get your brain around. Something that will make you think.

The dangers today are AI and the loss of critical thinking. In retirement, you do not want to lose the ability to think critically.

Go out and buy the textbooks, enrol in courses, listen to podcasts and do the hard work of learning. Keep your brain active.

It’s this that will keep you sharp and cognitive. As the saying goes, “if you don’t use it, you lose it.”

The second pillar is physical. After we reach 30, we start to lose muscle mass. Again, it’s the “if you don’t use it, you lose it” problem.

Unfortunately, for most of us, around thirty, we get chained to a desk and a computer, and we use our arms to help us get out of a chair. We stop using most of our muscles.

This weakens our strength, and it is gradual. Hardly noticeable. So we don’t see the damage we are doing to ourselves.

When we reach our mid-fifties, that muscle loss accelerates. We can lose as much as 10% of our muscle mass over five years. It’s scary.

The consequence of this is that the risk of falling rises, and one of the biggest killers of older Adults is the complications of dealing with the injuries caused by falling. Broken hips, legs and shoulders. Not at all nice.

By adding in a daily exercise session that focuses on your core strength—stomach, legs and ankles, and doing some cardio such as walking up hills to the point where you become out of breath, is all you need.

Thirty minutes a day. That’s it.

If you add in some stretching exercises later in the day, you are building a natural defence against one of the biggest underlying killers among older people.

Your muscles are your natural defence against many lifestyle-related diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and gout! Yes, gout is making a comeback. A disease prevalent in the 16th and 17th centuries is making a comeback because of how we live today.

Build in some exercise every day.

If you want a simple exercise programme, the one that the late Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, used every day from his time in the Royal Navy, then look up the 5BX. Look for the original Royal Canadian Air Force instructional video on YouTube. It’s brilliant and very quaint.

If you want to know how effective this exercise programme is, look at Prince Philip at his final public engagement. He was 97 years old then, and you can see from the way he walked just how fit he was.

The final pillar is social.

When we are at work, there is a natural connection with our coworkers. There’s a camaraderie and a social aspect to working with other people.

We may not like our coworkers, but there’s still the connection.

When we retire, that disappears, and it’s important to replace it with new connections.

However, there’s a danger here. It can be tempting to replace all those meetings on our work calendars with volunteer work in retirement. Don’t do this.

Go back to asking yourself what you want to do. Hopefully, what you want to do excites you. If you are replacing those work connections with volunteer work you do not find interesting, you will soon find yourself swamped.

Not what retirement is all about.

Be very strict about what you will get involved in. Be clear about what you want out of this chapter of your life.

Perhaps some of the hobbies you try will bring with them exciting connections. Imagine how many new people Harvey Smith has met through horse racing.

But do not rush into it. Take your time. This period of your life is about you and what you want from it.

If you are worried about retirement, or are retired and have found yourself overwhelmed by all the activities you have embarked on, I have just launched a brand-new programme to help you.

Ever since I started writing about time management and productivity ten years ago, I have had many people ask me to put together something for retirees.

It was my conversation with my father-in-law last year that started my research. And that research uncovered some of the most inspiring stories of people I have come across.

There was Jack Weber, a retired dentist who wrote a memoir of his life and published it on Amazon at the age of 100.

And then there was the gentleman who inspired me when I was fifteen years old.

I was a competitive track and field athlete back then, and this gentleman was in his 80s. He would be one of the first people to turn up to training every Tuesday and Thursday evening.

When he was younger, he was a sprinter. Now, in his 80s, he ran marathons. Although he was in his 80s, he looked about 65.

I remember saying to myself that when I am 80, I want to be doing that. And that has been and still is a huge motivation for me. I’ve never stopped running and exercising for an extended period. I have tried to keep myself reasonably fit throughout my working life so that when I do finally retire, I will have the strength to run those marathons.

Watch out, London, New York, Tokyo and Paris. I’m going to be running your streets in twenty-five years’ time!

If you are interested in this programme, I will put the details in the show notes. This programme will teach you about the three pillars, the pitfalls to avoid, and how to manage your calendar so you are not overwhelming yourself.

In addition, by joining, you get free access to a community of like-minded people where you can share your experiences and learn from others who are enjoying this fantastic chapter of your life.

Thank you for listening, and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.

How to Time Block Like a Leader

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 13:06:38 +0900

Have you ever wondered how those in highly demanding jobs that require almost 24/7 attention to the job manage to do it? Well, I’ve been researching and found a few common habits that may help you get more out of your day.

Let’s begin…

Links:

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

The 2026 Spring 50 Sale

Script | 410

Hello, and welcome to episode 410 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

It seems everyone feels under pressure with increasing workloads and demands on their time. And research is backing this up.

Instead of reducing the workloads of the typical knowledge worker, AI is increasing it. In one study published last month in the Harvard Business Review, 83% of knowledge workers reported an increase in their workloads after adopting AI tools.

Yet even in the age before AI, smartphones, and desktop computers, there were jobs that required an intensity few people could or would endure for very long.

For example, if you were to look at the daily schedules of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter, you would see an official workday beginning around 6:30 am and ending well after 7:00 pm, 7 days a week.

Just look at pictures of President Carter on his inauguration day and compare them to pictures of him on President Reagan’s inauguration day; you can see the toll the presidency had on Carter. It seemed to have aged him 20 years, and yet it was only four.

If we were to look at President Obama’s schedule. While he did not typically start work until around 9:00 am, he would work well into the night, catching up on briefing documents and other background reading. In total, he was working 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

Yet each of these leaders used techniques that helped maintain some calm amid otherwise chaotic days. They were well-tested, proven techniques that so many people seem afraid to use today.

This week’s question is about these techniques and how you might adopt some of them to manage your workload while still having time for rest and family.

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

This week’s question comes from Aaron. Aaron asks. Hi Carl, what advice would you give to someone who cannot get on top of their work, no matter how many “time blocks” they put on their calendar?

Hi Aaron, thank you for your question.

Now, you didn’t specify what kind of work you do, but I can answer based on what I’ve learned from former world leaders and CEOs and how they managed their days when facing global challenges.

I know not all of us are running a major country, but lessons from people like Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Ford may help you see that there are ways to take control of your time, do the things you want to do, and get a lot done.

The first approach almost all highly effective people do is to protect time for quiet work. This might not necessarily be deep focused work; it could be reading reports or, in the case of presidents and prime ministers, briefing documents prepared for them by their staff.

Of the people I have read about and studied, all of them protected some time during the day. Mostly, this was early in the morning or late at night.

John F Kennedy, for instance, would read the newspapers at 6:30 am, before he met anyone in his office. This gave him a heads-up on emerging world events and often meant he knew more about a subject than any of his aides did.

One interesting note about Kennedy and his brother, Bobby, was that they both took a speed-reading course when they were younger, and it is reported that John Kennedy could read 1,200 words in one minute.

Imagine that. That’s going to save you a lot of time. That’s being able to read one of my longer blog posts in a single minute!

As a side note, it is reported that Theodore Roosevelt would read a book a day, sometimes two, as well as all his briefing documents.

Now, I suspect that in the early to mid 20th century, with no computers, people read far more than we do today. If you are reading thousands of words a day, you’re naturally going to become a faster reader.

Presidents Nixon, Kennedy and Johnson would read briefing documents late into the night. In the case of Presidents Johnson and Nixon, this was often until 2:00 am in the morning.

President Obama also read late into the evening, from around 8:30 pm, after spending some time with his family, he would go to a quiet room and read until midnight or 1 am.

The advantage of doing their reading late at night was that they were unlikely to be disturbed, and it was quiet.

One thing you could do is set aside time somewhere in your day for undisturbed quiet work. Whether that is reading, working on a project or simply replying to your emails and messages.

Just this one change in your day will relieve some of the pressure you may be feeling. It will give you time to work on the non-urgent things that, if you ignore, will soon become urgent and add to the stress and anxiety that working reactively inevitably causes.

Now let’s talk about structuring your day.

This is something that, if you’re not doing, you’ll find yourself getting pulled all over the place with no chance of getting on with anything important.

Structuring your day means planning out what you will do and when. When will you do your most important tasks of the day? When and where are your meetings? When will you take time to rest and relax with your family?

If you begin any day not knowing this, your day will run away with you.

Again, let me give you an example of a US president.

Jimmy Carter would disappear into the living quarters of the While House at precisely 6:30 pm every evening to have dinner with his family.

No matter what was going on in the world. Whether it was a Middle Eastern oil crisis, spiralling inflation or some other world crisis (sound familiar?), Carter would never miss his family’s dinner hour. It was sacred.

During that time, nobody from his office was allowed to interrupt him, no matter what was going on in the world. That could wait an hour. Spending some quality time with his family could not. His daughter was young at that time, and she would go to bed around 8 or 9 pm.

Could you do that? Could you “disappear between 12 pm and 1 pm, cut off from the outside world; no phone or computer for one hour, so you could stop and enjoy lunch with your family or friends?

It’s easy to believe that we have to be “available” all the time. No, you do not.

Not even the leader of the Western world needed to be available every hour and minute of the day.

You’re not dealing with a world crisis where people’s lives are at stake. You’re likely dealing with more mundane issues, like a customer who is frustrated because their ordered electric window motor hasn’t arrived as promised. Or a boss who suddenly becomes agitated because sales dropped 12% last month.

Gee whizz! What can you do right now? Probably nothing. You’re not going to be able to miraculously produce an electric window motor in a few seconds, nor can you change last month’s sales figures.

These things can wait an hour or two. They really can!

This is why, when I get clients to do the “perfect week” exercise, I ask them to do their personal life first. This is the one area most people will sacrifice for their work.

When will you spend time with your family? When will you exercise? When will you spend time on your hobby?

These should be your non-negotiables every day.

President Eisenhower would stop work at 3:30 pm every day to spend an hour or two practising his golf on the White House putting green.

President Johnson would go for his daily swim at 2:00 pm every day.

And Gerald Ford would start his day with an hour on his custom-built static bicycle and finish off with 50 push-ups. Every day!

It did not matter what was going on in the world; these presidents knew that exercise was important for them to function, and they made sure they were clear-headed enough to make the right decisions on some of the world’s biggest and most urgent problems.

Your customer’s missing electric window motor or your boss fretting about a 12% drop in sales is nothing compared to what these presidents had to deal with every day.

Make sure that what is important to you is prioritised, time protected and non-negotiable.

Urgent events will pass, and your being unavailable for an hour or two is not going to significantly affect the result one way or the other.

Another part of all these presidents’ days was taken straight out of Winston Churchill’s daily routine.

The daily nap.

When you are tired, stressed, anxious, and worn down by the constant noise and decision-making, you will no longer be able to make good, rational decisions. It’s as if your brain tightens up and can no longer access your creative thinking.

Winston Churchill discovered this while serving in the army in India in the early 1900s. India is very hot during the day, and it was customary among the officer class to take naps during the warmest part of the day.

Churchill discovered that by taking a proper nap mid to late afternoon, you could do high-quality work well into the evening. And so, when he returned to the UK, he continued to take naps.

As Churchill said, "Nature has not intended mankind to work from eight in the morning until midnight without that refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts twenty minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces.”

Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Carter all took daily naps. Ranging from 30 to 60 minutes. It was their way of shutting out the noise of presidential work and giving their brains time to re-energise and refresh.

I remember when I first came to Korea and discovered that many of the office workers I was teaching were working 18-hour days and surviving on only 3 to 4 hours of sleep.

I asked them how they managed to do that six days a week, and they replied that they took a nap when they returned from lunch.

Korean office workers are legendary for eating a full lunch in less than fifteen minutes. That left them with forty-five minutes to an hour for a nap.

Not so common today, working hours in Korea have reduced over the last ten years or so, but back in the early 2000s, work hours here were gruelling.

So there you go, Aaron. There are ways of managing our workloads. It may mean you need to consider redesigning your work hours. The 9-to-5 concept is a relatively recent one. Before the 1980s, people in positions of authority would take longer lunches, and these were often social; and they would do much of their focused work either early in the morning or late at night (Tim Cook still does this)

But whatever you do, put your life first. Work is fleeting. Yes, it’s a part of your life and an important one, but it is only a part of your life. Your personal life matters too.

Put your family and friends and health, both physical and mental, first. Then decide how you will structure your days so that the important things get done.

I hope that has helped. And don’t forget that my Spring sale ends on Tuesday, 31 March (two days left). If you want to pick up my recent Time-Based Productivity course (which includes free access to the Time Sector System course) for just $99.00, you have about 48 hours left to get it.

Plus, you can save $50 on my 2-session coaching programme. A great way for me to help you personally get control of your system so you are more focused and clear-headed about what needs to be done and when.

I will put all the details in the show notes.

Thank you, Aaron, for your question, and thank you to you, too, for listening.

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

How to Easily Manage Your Communications

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 11:34:00 +0900

Email, Teams, Slack and other instant messaging systems are great, until they clog up our day and we find we spend more time responding to messages than we do doing any meaningful work.

What can we do? Well, that’s what I’m answering in this week’s episode.

Links:

Get the Email Mastery Course Here

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 409

Hello, and welcome to episode 409 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Last week was a workshop week for me. I finished off the Ultimate Productivity Workshop and held an in-company session.

During both sessions, a similar question was raised. How to manage your time when you are compelled to respond to your messages instantly or at the very least within a few minutes.

The problem with this situation is that it’s an uncontrollable one. You have no idea when or how many messages will come in on any given day. This makes it practically impossible to do any work.

You will not be able to focus on anything if you have to be checking your messages inbox all the time.

Now, I should caveat this: if you are employed to respond to client messages, then being responsive is part of your core work, and therefore it is something you would prioritise.

However, in these situations, you’ll likely be working as part of a team, and most of your client queries will be handled in real time. Those that cannot be dealt with would be escalated to another person or department.

The issue of response times arises when you are expected to do work that requires quiet, focused time to complete. In this situation, you will need to find time during the day to do that work. If not, all you will be doing is building unsustainable backlogs.

To get to a place where you can complete your work and respond to messages in a timely manner, something will have to change.

The first thing I would address here is response times. What is the expected response time for the work that you do? Is it realistic?

Now, you have the data. You know how much time you need to do your work. Perhaps you need two hours a day to complete it. This means you have a degree of flexibility each day.

In this situation, I would recommend you look at the times when most of your messages come in.

For me, most of my messages come in through the night. I may go to bed around midnight with an empty inbox, but when I wake up, come through to the office and open my email, there will be between 100 and 150 emails sitting there waiting for me.

The first step is to clear those emails and sort the ones I need to act on from the ones that can be deleted or archived. That gives me a heads-up for my day and calms my anxious mind, knowing there are no fires to deal with.

Later in the day, I will set aside 40 to 60 minutes to clear the actionable emails.

Now, I am fortunate in that when I wake up, Europe is asleep, the east coast of the US is going to bed, and the west coast is finishing the working day. In the morning, there is no rush for me to respond.

If I were living in the UK, I would adjust my response time to better align with the time zones I work with.

This is working with the data I have.

But let me illustrate a different type of work and how to deal with it.

Imagine you were responsible for writing proposals for your sales team. On a typical day, you would receive six to eight new proposals and four or five adjustments to make to proposals you have already done.

If it takes you an average of twenty minutes to write a new proposal and ten minutes to make an adjustment, that will take up around four hours of your day just focused on writing proposals.

That does not take into account having to request any further information you may need to complete a proposal.

Now here’s where things get interesting. Not all proposals are equal. If you were asked to write proposals for a $10 million project and a $1,000 one, the $10 million project would likely take priority.

I’m also pretty sure the person asking for the $10 million project proposal will be chasing you to get it done faster.

If you already have a two-day turnaround on proposals, moving that project up would delay one of the other proposals. What do you do?

The problem here is that while you are fielding messages from the people wanting their proposal done today, you are not writing proposals. Everything is getting delayed.

Now, I’ve worked at companies with strict processes for these situations. Salespeople had to follow the process and inform their customers when to expect proposals or invoices. They were not allowed to contact the sales admin team to chase proposals unless they were overdue.

I’ve also worked in companies where there were no such processes. In those companies, nothing ever seemed to get done on time.

There needs to be time for things to get done, and in order to ensure they do get done on time, a process should be put in place.

For example, if your proposal turnaround is within 24 hours, then there needs to be a cutoff time. If you want your proposal done by tomorrow at 4:00 pm, it needs to be in by 4:30 pm today.

This puts the responsibility onto the person asking for the proposal. If they do not get the proposal in on time, the delay will be entirely their own problem.

When you do not have these processes in place, you risk running into a company that plays the blame game.

I remember working for an English Language training company here in Korea, and I wanted to launch a new Business English Programme in August.

We had a meeting at the head office and the CEO told me that if we wanted to launch on 1st August, then I would need to get the curriculum and artwork to the marketing team by the 15th June.

Brilliant! As long as we got the necessary work over to the Marketing Department by 15th June, then the responsibility for the marketing was on the marketing team.

They delivered, and we had a fantastic launch. From my perspective, handing over the materials to the marketing team before the 15th took a huge weight off my shoulders.

It was a superb team where both parties respected each other’s boundaries and, more importantly, timelines. Everyone involved knew each other’s deadlines, and these were respected.

Another way to deal with communications is to set some rules. A sort of “if this then that” rule.

For example, I have a rule that any message relating to lost passwords or money, I will deal with the moment I see it.

Fortunately, I do not get many of these, but I do get around three or four a month. When I see them, I act on them immediately. They don’t take long to deal with, but I know how frustrating it is to wait a long time to access a course or get a refund.

Another rule I have is that if I get a student question, I will respond within 24 hours.

With AI, it can be tempting to set up an AI system to respond to these for me, but I have a red line I will not cross. That is, I will personally respond to all questions within 24 hours and never farm them out to a chatbot.

That goes to my professional integrity. I would feel awful knowing that I am not communicating directly with my students. It would feel like I am cheating.

However, by far the most effective way to deal with the interruptions messages can cause, whether they are emails or messages, is to set your own communication response times.

For example, mine are:

Email within 24 hours, instant messages (Teams, Slack, etc.) within four hours and phone calls within an hour if I cannot answer immediately.

Those response times have worked for over ten years now. I’ve never received any pushback, and most of the time I get a “thank you for your quick response”,—which suggests people are really back at responding to emails.

If you do decide to set your own response times, communicate them with your colleagues and customers. This way, you can be held accountable for your standards. That’s a great motivator.

Let’s get back to checking messages.

If you do need time to do work that requires your focus, then, when you are doing that work, you do not check your messages. Period.

Turn off notifications when you are doing that work, close down your email, Teams or Slack and any other messaging system.

Your phone can be set up to allow only a vetted number of people through. For instance, when I put my phone or computer on “focus time”, only my wife and mother can get through. Only my mother or my wife would call me with a genuine emergency.

Most people can only do real focused work for around ninety minutes. At that point, you can check your messages.

According to neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, we work in 90-minute cycles. (We also sleep in 90-minute cycles). This means our brain begins to run low on energy after we have been intently focused on something for more than 90 minutes, and we need to change our focus.

I use this time to quickly check my messages and do some chores. Most of the time, I process my inbox, then respond to my team’s messages on my phone while I am doing the chores.

The reality is you cannot be constantly checking your messages and doing meaningful work at the same time. Something has to give.

If you are in a position where others cannot do their work until you have authorised it, you are the bottleneck, and that needs to change.

Working in a law office, we needed to get cheques signed by a partner in the firm. Normally, I would go to the partner in charge of my department, but if he were away or in a meeting, I would need to go to another floor and ask another partner to sign it. My boss knew there was a risk that he could be a bottleneck and took steps to prevent others from doing their work.

I know I have given you a lot of ideas in this episode. What I would suggest is that if interruptions from messages are causing you problems, look at where the main problem is.

If it’s because you feel you must respond instantly to messages from certain people (your boss or customers), that may indicate you need to have a conversation with them to set some boundaries.

I know that conversation may be uncomfortable, but not being able to do your work to the high standard you want is a much bigger problem. That’s going to affect your promotion chances, and eventually, you will start to believe that there’s something wrong with you.

There’s nothing wrong with you. All it requires is some processes and a boundary you can work within. Surely that’s not much to ask of anyone.

Thank you for listening, and thank you to all of you who have asked questions about this subject.

If you want a system that will help you to regain control of your emails and messages, then my Email Mastery course will show you how to build it. I will include the course details in the show notes for you.

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

How to Protect Your Time for What Matters

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 15:11:47 +0900

"The key is not to prioritise what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities."

Ah, Stephen Covey got it right. If you don’t know what your priorities are, whatever’s on your calendar will be prioritised, which often means low-value meetings and other people’s urgencies. Not a great way to work if you want to be more productive and better at managing your time.

This week, we’re looking at identifying your core work and eliminating the non-essential.

Links:

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 408

Hello, and welcome to episode 408 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Something that came up in last weekend’s Ultimate Productivity Workshop was around identifying your core work. The work you are employed to do or what you do to put food on your table.

In the past, this was easy to do. Job descriptions were simple, and job titles included things like salesperson, accountant, lawyer, administrator, receptionist, lifeguard, and office manager. It was very clear what your responsibilities were, and defining your core work was simple.

Today, hmmm, something’s gone disastrously wrong. Now we have job titles such as Empathy Engineer (a software designer), Scrum Master (a project manager of sorts from the twenty-teens Agile trend) or Digital Overlord (a website or systems manager). These are unclear and ill-defined, and figuring out what these jobs entail is challenging, to say the least, but not impossible with some thought.

Then there are jobs such as the “C” roles: CEO, CFO, COO, etc. These are notoriously difficult to define because they are intentionally vague and depend on the company’s size, its goals and often the state of the company when a person starts the role.

When Tim Cook took over from Steve Jobs in 2011, he took over a company on the up. When Satya Nadalla took over Microsoft, Microsoft was struggling in the rapidly growing mobile market. Same job titles, but entirely different roles given the state each company was in when they took over.

In today’s episode, we’re looking at core work and, more importantly, how to define your role so you can pull out the tasks you need to do consistently to perform well and make it easier to prioritise the things important to you.

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 Chris. Chris asks, hi Carl, I am really struggling to define my core work. I am a sales manager in a medium-sized car dealership. I manage a team of 12 salespeople, and I report directly to the General Manager. The part I am struggling with is what my tasks should be each week. Could you help?

Hi Chris, thank you for your question.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of core work, your core work is the work you are employed to do. It’s how you are evaluated and the reason you were employed.

The issue with core work is that over time, the scope of your work can expand to a point where you have so many competing priorities that it becomes practically impossible to decide what needs your attention. And that’s when backlogs of important work start to grow uncontrollably.

This can be caused by our innate human need to please people, so we say “yes” to too many things without considering whether we have the time to do the work we ‘volunteered’ to do.

The problem here is that once you have said yes to the work outside your core work, you own it. It is now your responsibility to get the job done. Do this too often, and the line between what you are responsible for and what you volunteered to do becomes blurred.

A few years ago, I worked with a client who was a product manager in a pharmaceutical company. Her core work was to ensure that her product’s labelling, literature, and local branding were accurate and up to date. She was also responsible for three sales campaigns each year.

Unfortunately, Sam was a people pleaser. She couldn’t say no to anyone. She volunteered to be on the Annual kick-off event committee (each year the company had an off-site retreat to motivate the team for the new year), she volunteered to be the lead of a breast cancer awareness campaign her company wanted to run, and if a sales manager asked her to do a presentation to their sales people, she’d always say yes.

But her people pleasing was not confined to her professional life. She volunteered to help organise events at her church, committed to watching her husband play football every weekend and would help her friends out at the drop of a hat.

When I began working with Sam, she was a mess. Her weight had ballooned because she had no time for any physical movement or to watch what she ate; she wasn’t able to sleep properly, and she was suffering quite badly from eczema, brought on by stress and a lack of sleep.

The first thing I did was get Sam to write down her original core work. I remember her having to pull out her job description to remind her what that was.

When she looked at it, she began to cry. She confessed that what she did at work was nothing like what was written on those sheets of paper.

So that’s where we started.

I also got her to talk to her boss about stepping down from all the volunteer roles she’d accepted so she could focus on the work she was employed to do.

Her boss was brilliant. She helped Sam remove herself from the volunteer roles so she could focus on what mattered.

Within six months, Sam’s product was the top-selling product in the company. She’d lost 20 pounds in weight, she was sleeping well, and her eczema had all but disappeared.

She was focused on what mattered and did that brilliantly. So much so that she was promoted after a further year.

I tell that story because it demonstrates why defining your core work is so important. If you are not clear about what you are employed to do, in an effort to look busy and not upset anyone, you will keep accepting more and more roles outside the scope of the job you were employed to do.

This does not mean that you should never accept voluntary roles or help out your colleagues from time to time. It means you should never lose sight of what you are employed to do. And to do that, you first need to identify what it is, then take it to the next level.

That level identifies what doing your core work looks like at the task level. In other words, what do you actually do to perform your core work?

So, returning to your role, Chris, as a sales manager, a part of your role will be to support your sales team. What does that look like at a doing level?

Does that mean you need to schedule weekly one-to-ones with your team? Maybe you are also responsible for ensuring that the sales data is correct and up to date.

Scheduling weekly one-to-ones is relatively straightforward. You may choose to dedicate a day to doing this, so your focus is on supporting your team and, in doing so, removing a weekly decision.

For example, if you choose to hold your meetings on Mondays, you can block your calendar on those days and get them all done in one day.

Maintaining your sales admin may involve 30 minutes a day of updating your company’s internal reporting system. If so, when will you do that?

You may also be responsible for the training of your team. I know many managers are. If so, what does that involve, and what do you need to do personally to ensure it happens?

So what you are doing is looking at the type of work you do and then asking yourself what that looks like at a doing level.

Many medical doctors I speak with tell me their work is more than just seeing patients. Some of their additional roles include renewing prescriptions, completing insurance claims, and sorting out referrals to specialists.

This means being a general practitioner is not as simple as walking into their clinic, going to their office and examining patients all day. They need to find time to do the additional work, which is often an extra 2 hours or more each day.

Once you have identified your core work and pulled out what that looks like at the task level, the next step is to calculate how much time you will need to complete those tasks each week.

In theory, this is easy. After all, if you have done something before, you should be able to figure out how long it will take you to do the same task in the future.

Hahaha, not so easy. We are not machines, and some days we are not at our best. We might be tired, distracted or feeling ill.

And those distractions may not even be of our own choosing. Other people interrupt you, ask you questions, or you are prevented from doing one of your critical tasks because a colleague has not given you the information you need.

I remember talking with a gentleman who ran a car servicing business, and he told me that the biggest issue he had each day was something called “back orders”. This is where a part for a customer’s car was out of stock and on order.

Nobody knew when the part would be back in stock, so they could not tell the customer when to bring their car in for the repair, or, worse, the customer could not come in to pick up their repaired car.

In these situations, all you can do is work on the averages.

I’ve been writing a weekly blog post of around 1,000 words each week for over ten years. You would have thought I would know how long writing a blog post would take by now, after doing it over 500 times. Not a chance.

Some weeks it can take me forty minutes; other weeks, as much as two hours, to write the first draft.

It’s the same for these podcasts. This week’s episode is number 408, which means I’ve written 407 scripts, and yet some weeks it takes two hours; others, four. And the worst thing is, I have no idea when I sit down to write the script how long it will take.

In these situations, all you can do is work on averages. I allow two hours for writing these scripts. Most weeks, I can do it in that time; other weeks, I need to find additional time later in the week to finish them.

Same with my blog posts. I have two hours each week protected for writing the posts. Most weeks, I finish well within that time; other weeks, I need the whole time.

I’m working on averages, which ensures the bulk of what needs to be done gets done every week.

And this brings us to the main reason for identifying your core work:

Once you know what your core work is and what you need to do at a task level, you know how much time you need to protect for this work each week. That information alone will tell you how many meetings and voluntary work you can accept each week.

Not knowing what your core work looks like at a task level risks putting yourself in Sam’s shoes. And if Sam were here with me, I know she’d be telling you never to let that happen to you. It destroys your health and leaves you feeling rotten every day.

There you go, Chris. Thank you for your question, and thank you to all of you who attended the Ultimate Productivity Workshop over the last two weeks. It’s always a joy to help you, and it helps me see where you are struggling with productivity and time management.

Thank you for listening, and it’s time for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.

Where AI Can Help Your Productivity and Where It Won't

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 14:08:18 +0900

“By far, the greatest danger of AI is that people conclude too early that they understand it” —Eliezer Yudkowsky, AI researcher

AI is everywhere today, and there are many exciting claims about what it can do to help us be more productive. But, is this just hype, or are there aspects of AI that can improve our productivity?

That’s the question I am answering today.

Links:

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 407

Hello, and welcome to episode 407 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

You may have noticed AI is everywhere. Our favourite apps seem to be adding more and more AI capability with each new update. And then there’s almost every video and article on productivity warning us that if we don’t get on board with this, we’ll be left behind on the scrap heap.

It’s also an exciting time, and there’s no doubt that things are changing, and people are finding new ways to use AI to help us do our work.

But beyond the hype, how are current AI models really helping with productivity, and what will this mean for us as we try to manage our time in the future?

That’s what I am looking at this week, and to get us started, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Chris. Chris asks, Hi Carl, I haven’t heard you talk much about AI in your videos or articles. How do you see AI helping us with our time management and productivity in the future?

Hi Chris, thank you for your question.

The reason I have not written or spoken much about AI is that I am waiting to see where it settles down.

Currently, it’s hard to work out what is true and what is pure hype. I saw a lot of noise about OpenClaw—an AI-type personal assistant that, if you give it access to your computer, can do a lot of things, such as make appointments for you, book flights, sort and reply to your emails and much more.

That was certainly interesting, but once I discovered that I would need to hand over all my passwords and credit card numbers to OpenClaw, I lost interest.

Call me old-fashioned, but I’m not comfortable giving up my passwords, credit card and banking details to a third party. Certainly not one that could be hacked very easily.

Last year, I read Dominic Sandbrook’s series of books on British history from 1956 to 1982. That period covered some very interesting developments in technology, from the dawn of the nuclear power age to the introduction of the personal computer.

In the late 1950s, it was predicted that we would all be driving around in nuclear-powered cars and that our homes would have their own nuclear power generators that would only need recharging every 10 to 20 years by the end of the century.

Hmm how did that work out?

To better answer your question, Chris, I stepped back and looked at how I am using AI today.

My main use of AI is searching for specific information. In a way, AI has replaced how I search the internet. I use Google’s Gemini, and it is fantastic at collecting the information I want.

No longer do I have to open multiple websites to try to find the information. This has significantly reduced the time I spend going down rabbit holes looking for something specific and being pulled down holes I never intended to go.

I also use AI to generate subtitles and timestamps for my YouTube videos. Without AI, these jobs would take hours. AI can do it in minutes.

I use Grammarly to spell-check my writing, and I believe it uses AI in the background to suggest how sentences are written.

I rarely accept Grammarly’s sentence suggestions. It seems to destroy my voice and turn sentences into bland perfections that lack resonance or feeling.

Beyond that, I am not knowingly using AI for anything else.

I asked my wife how she is using it. My wife’s a full-time student, studying physical therapy, so she’s learning a lot about human anatomy and medical terms.

She’s using AI to simplify complex concepts. She also occasionally uses Google’s Nano Banana to generate graphics for her presentations.

So, if I look at how AI might help us with time management and productivity in the future, it does look like there will be some aspects of our work that AI can significantly speed up. In my case, generating subtitles and time stamps for videos is a great example.

However, when it comes to managing our calendars and task lists, I’m not sure you would want AI getting involved.

One thing I’ve always been acutely aware of is that much of what makes us feel overwhelmed is the sense that we have no control over how we spend our time.

We have calendars full of meetings, and sometimes we find ourselves double and even triple-booked. And then we have long lists of to-dos in our task managers with no sense of when or even how we will ever get that work done.

At best, AI may be able to break down those tasks into what it thinks are manageable chunks, but that won’t take into consideration how you are feeling physically, whether you slept well last night or had a rather heavy lunch with an important customer.

AI can certainly suggest ways to manage your tasks and calendar, but you will still need to show up to those meetings and do that work.

Yet that will inevitably leave you feeling less in control of your time. Particularly if you use one of those AI-enabled calendars that suggest when you should be doing something.

What happens if you disagree with the suggestion, or you cannot make it? You feel guilty, or you start to think something is wrong with you.

Yet, there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re human, and you are going to feel tired sometimes or not in the mood to do that type of work.

The one area I would say you want to avoid AI getting involved in is how you manage your time. That should always be your responsibility and choice.

The idea that a computer tells you what to do and where to be is scary. Deciding what you do right now is what makes you human. You’ve chosen to listen to this podcast at this time. AI would likely tell you that, rather than listening to this podcast, you should be finishing that report you’ve been trying to finish all week.

I also read about the excitement over the idea that AI could reply to your emails for you. Hmm, for me, that is a red line I will not cross.

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that if someone has taken the time to write to me, I have an obligation to reply personally. That is just basic integrity.

Now, it is true I don’t reply to all emails. I don’t respond to spam emails; for example, I simply delete them if they get through. How hard is that?

I’m fortunate that I’m old enough to remember several technological advancements. It started with the Internet, then email, the smartphone and cloud computing.

I cannot remember a technology being forced upon us, but it feels like AI is being forced on us, whether we like it or not.

And then there are the frightening ads that claim if you are not on board with using AI, you will be left on the career scrap heap by the end of the year. Nobody needed to do that with smartphones or email.

Companies, focused on making the technology user-friendly in such a way that we all wanted to adopt it eventually. The fear-mongering I see around AI makes me deeply suspicious of it. Why do they need to do that?

Perhaps that question is for people better qualified than I am.

Anyway, AI is here, and it’s not going to go away.

Where I think AI will be a huge help to us is in repetitive, mundane work. I mentioned that I use AI to create subtitles and timestamps for my YouTube videos. That’s been a huge time saver for me.

But if you follow my email processing system, you will find that you are faster than AI. I can clear 80 emails in my inbox in less than 10 minutes. It’s also important that I do this, as I want to get a heads-up on my day. To know if there are any emergencies, what I want to read later and what I can delete.

What AI would do is categorise your emails between what it thinks is important and what is not. Trust me, you will do a far better Job of that than AI will.

The problem here is that you will not trust AI 100%, so you will still go through the emails it thinks are not important, just to check that it got it right.

And that’s a big problem with AI today, although I accept that in time this may change; people don’t trust it, which is a good thing, as AI can hallucinate and give you incorrect information. This means you spend time coming up with the right prompt, get the answer, and then have to check that it’s correct.

The question then is: did it really save you time?

I am monitoring AI carefully. I know that in time, it will bring us some productivity benefits, new technologies always do. But there are a few areas where I won’t use AI personally.

Writing emails and answering user comments. That’s a personal integrity thing to me. Your principles should tell you that.

Managing my calendar. That’s another personal thing, and giving control to any outside influence would always be problematic at a human level.

Creating content. If you’ve read an AI-generated blog post or watched an AI-created YouTube video, you can tell. Large Language Models will always default to the average, not just in the content, but in the words used. It’s horrible, and nothing unique will ever come from it.

And finally, deciding what I will do at a task level and when. That’s another one that, as a human, I will retain control. I had scheduled to write this podcast script at 11:30 today, but I had a cancellation at 8:00 am, so I switched things around.

I could have gone back to bed, but I felt great, so I decided to get on with this podcast script. My choice, made in the moment.

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

How To Stay Focused on Your Day

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 12:31:47 +0900

Steve Jobs once said, “Deciding what NOT to do is as important as deciding what TO do”, and that quote has been, and still is, a cornerstone of my whole time management and productivity philosophy.

Today, I answer a question about dealing with all the little things that pop up each day while staying focused on what is important.

Links:

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 406

Hello, and welcome to the real episode 406 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. (Apologies for the incorrect numbering last week) A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

What happens when your productivity system collapses? Do you go looking for new apps, or do you give up and just think you’re not the organised type or lack self-discipline?

People react in many different ways when their systems become backlogged and overwhelmed, yet this is a state that will happen to all of us from time to time.

Life has a bad habit of getting in the way. It throws up all sorts of problems to test us. No one week or even a day will ever be the same.

Only five minutes ago, my plan to take Louis out for our walk at 2:00 pm was changed by my wife asking if we could go at 12:30. That way, I could pick her up from her dance class and then go to the reservoir for his walk.

And that was a small change.

These little things are hitting us every day and disrupting our systems, yet that doesn’t mean our systems are broken. It just means we need to ensure that we have sufficient buffer and flexibility built in.

This week’s question is all about what to do when, for whatever reason, your system begins to collapse, and you have backlogs of work, emails, messages and commitments, and you have no idea how to regain control.

Now, before I hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice, just a heads up to say if you are considering joining next week’s Ultimate Productivity Workshop, there are only seven days left before the first session.

The workbook will be going out next week, and I would love for you to join me. This is your opportunity to get to grips with the COD and Time Sector Systems, where you can ask questions and come away with not only the knowledge, but with a rock solid system that is flexible, automatic and leaves you with enough time for the things you want to do.

PLUS, you also get, for free, four of my courses to help you go deeper in your own time.

I will put the details in the show notes, and I hope to see you next Sunday.

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

This week’s question comes from Nick. Nick asks, “ Hi Carl, all my professional life I have tried to be organised and focused, but every time I feel I have found the solution, something happens either at work or at home that destroys my plans. How do you suggest someone go about dealing with disruptions all the time?

Great question, Nick, and thank you for sending it in.

Much of what causes us these issues has little to do with our systems. It’s just life getting in the way.

Yet, what we are aiming to do is turn managing our time into a routine. Something we just do.

For instance, I would feel uncomfortable going to bed not knowing what my appointments and important tasks are for the next day. It doesn’t take long—five minutes tops —but most days it’s likely less than two minutes.

This is why I cannot get my head around it when people tell me they are too exhausted to plan the next day. It’s no more than five minutes! You only need to know when and where your appointments are and what your one or two most important tasks are. It takes a minuscule amount of energy to do it.

Those two minutes have a profound effect on my day.

Last night, I went to bed knowing that I had six hours of meetings today and one critical task to do. I knew if I was diligent, I would be able to complete my meetings and that one task.

The fact that my wife has already changed my plan has not caused me to drop the task. My original plan to do it after my morning calls finished has changed. I will now do it when I get back from taking Louis for his walk.

What matters is that when I finish today, I can look back knowing I have what matters done.

This all begins with respecting the basics. Those basics are contained in COD. Collect, Organise and Do.

You need a way to collect everything that comes your way throughout the day. This needs to be something you trust. That could be a task manager or a daybook (a notebook you use to manage your day).

Then, at some point in the day, you process and organise what you collected. That could be the first thing in the morning or the last thing you do before you finish your workday. If you’re doing it every day, you won’t need a lot of time for this part of the process.

If you’re inconsistent with it, you will need more time. This is why I suggested you turn these things into routines—things you just do every day. Like brushing your teeth when you wake up, or washing the dishes before you go to bed.

Finally, the daily planning, where you decide which tasks you must do that day and review your calendar for the next day’s appointments. These steps give you a clear plan for doing the work.

The great thing is that none of these steps takes a lot of time. Perhaps the processing and organising will take about 10 minutes. However, I find that this step is calming. It allows me to ensure I am not trying to do too much or limiting my flexibility.

So, step one, Nick, is to make following the principles of COD a non-negotiable part of your day.

For those of you who have not discovered COD yet, I have a free 45-minute course that walks you through the process and shows you the tools and formulas to build this into your day. I will leave the link in the show notes.

The next consideration is how you are organising your work.

There are some things that need to be done every day. Responding to your actionable messages (email, Slack, Teams, etc.) and any daily admin, for example. Salespeople often need to record their daily activities. Now you could do this once a week or do it daily. I find that doing it daily keeps the time required to a minimum.

Then there are your tasks. Now, some of these may need to be done today or before the end of the week. Others may not be quite as urgent, so you can push them out of sight until next week or even next month.

This is why I recommend you organise your task manager by when you will do something. Anything that needs to be done this week goes into a folder called “this week”. This means you are not being distracted by tasks that don’t need to be done this week, and it helps to keep your task list to a minimum. This prevents your lists from becoming overwhelming.

The other good thing about this approach is that the 40% of the tasks you think you will need to do that never actually need to be done can be deleted during your weekly planning. (That’s one of my favourite parts of doing the weekly planning)

This is the essence of the Time Sector System. It’s not about how much you have to do; we all have far more to do than the time available to do it. It’s about when you will do it.

There are two sides to the time management equation. Time and stuff to do. The time side of the equation is fixed. You cannot change that. There are 24 hours a day and 168 hours a week, and that’s it.

The only variable you have is stuff to do. That’s what the Time Sector System focuses on. Getting you to decide what you will do and when.

I can now give you an update on my changing day.

When I started today, I had three meetings between 8:00 and 11:30 am.

It’s now 10:30 am, as I write this, and my 8:00 am meeting went ahead as usual, but my 9:30 and 10:30 meetings have both cancelled.

When I planned my day yesterday, I accounted for all my meetings going ahead, and I would write this script before taking Louis for his walk. I would start the script between 8:00 am and 9:30 am, and then finish it after all my meetings ended.

I’ve been given 90 minutes back, so this script will be finished before I pick my wife up from her dance class. It also means I can work on an important project this afternoon, which I thought I wouldn’t have much time for.

Some days you win, others you have to fight for. Today’s a win.

On the days you have to fight for it’s important to stand your ground as much as you can. For example, had all my meetings gone ahead as expected today, I would still have had time this afternoon to write this script.

The consequences of not protecting time to write this script would be squeezing my day tomorrow, and I would likely have to work on Saturday just to catch up.

I’ve played that game too often in the past, and it’s not worth it.

It would be tempting to blame my system, but ultimately, my decisions would have caused the problem.

So, as you can see, Nick, life will always get in the way. You can only work with the information in front of you.

But if you are consistent with your daily and weekly planning, you are putting yourself in a position to be clear about what matters each day.

Yet, your daily and weekly planning only works if you are collecting everything that needs to be collected. Appointments are on your calendar, and tasks are in a task manager. That way, you will have all the information you need to plan your days so that the important things get done, and the lower-value ones can be eliminated.

And finally, you can avoid many issues by building buffer time into your calendar. Trying to squeeze in as many meetings as you can without allowing at least 15 minutes between them is storing up problems for you later.

I try to set aside 2 hours for focused work each day and 2 hours of buffer time for the unexpected. I’ve found over the years that on most days, that’s enough to give me the flexibility to deal with whatever comes my way.

So Nick, it comes down to following the principles of COD. Collect everything that needs to be collected. Allow yourself ten to fifteen minutes each day to process and organise what you collected. Decide when you will do the tasks, and use your daily and weekly planning sessions to map out your days so you are getting the right things done at the right time.

I hope that helps.

Now, don’t forget, if you want to learn how to put all this together, have me show you how to manage your calendar and task manager and stay of top of your communications, then my Ultimate Productivity Workshop will do that for you.

And don’t worry if you cannot attend all the sessions (there are only two). Both sessions will be recorded, and the video and audio files will be available shortly after the end of each session.

I hope you can join me. Details for this fantastic workshop are in the show notes.

Thank you, Nick, for your question, and thank you to you, too, for listening.

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

How to Get Control of Your Priorities

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 13:21:06 +0900

“If everything’s important, then nothing is important”. You’ve probably heard that many times. Yet, are you guilty of ignoring it?

In today’s episode, I share with you a few ideas on how to best prioritise your days.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Fac ebook | Website | Linkedin

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 405

Hello, and welcome to the real episode 405 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. (Apologies for the incorrect numbering last week) A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

How many overdue flagged tasks do you have in your task manager? If you’re like most people, you will have quite a few.

The question is: why are they overdue?

You made a conscious decision that these tasks were important, but then did not do them when you wanted to do them.

This is something I struggled with for years. I would add flags to anything I felt was important, then completely ignore them throughout my day. It wasn’t until I realised I was making a mistake and diminishing the power that flags give me, that I changed my approach.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen this coming up in a lot of my coaching sessions, where I notice overdue flagged tasks cluttering things up and becoming a distraction to the user.

The other issue here is that overdue flagged tasks cause an increase in anxiety. You flagged them because they were important or urgent, and now you have a long list of such tasks. Where do you start to get them under control?

Now, before I hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question, if you’ve been waiting for the 2026 Ultimate Productivity Workshop, then the wait’s over. Coming on the 8th and 15th of March, join me live for a festival of productivity. Featuring the COD foundation, the Time Sector System, and how to get on top of your backlogs and so much more, including the DPS (daily Planning Sequence and the WPM (weekly Planning Matrix).

Places are limited, so get yourself registered today. Full details are in the show notes.

And now it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice.

This week’s question comes from Caroline. Caroline asks, “ Hi Carl, I’ve recently cleaned up my Todoist, and as I was doing so, I found a lot of flagged tasks that I had ignored. These are important tasks, and I don’t want to remove the flag. But it’s become so overwhelming. What’s the best way to use flags, in your opinion?

Hi Caroline, thank you for your question.

As a Todoist user, you have many options for your flags. There are technically four flags. P1 (red), P2 (orange), P3 (blue) and P4 (white). The P4 flag isn’t really a flag, since all tasks default to it.

With these flags, there are many ways you can organise them. However, you do need one of them to be your priority flag.

When I say “priority flag,” this is the one you use when a task absolutely must be done on the day it was assigned.

Logically, you would use the P1 red flag for that.

Now, this is where many people go wrong.

It’s very tempting to add a flag to a task long before it is due. The feeling is that if the task is important, it will still be important on the day you plan to do it.

Not true.

Priorities change.

You plan to finish a proposal for your most important client on Thursday, but that morning, your daughter has a serious asthma attack, and you are now in the emergency room of your local hospital. Where’s your priority now?

Okay, I know that example is a little extreme, but those things happen.

Priorities also change throughout the week. That important client may tell you the proposal is on hold for a few months, so there is no urgency. But new priorities will come along, don’t you worry.

This is why adding your flags should be done at a daily planning level.

Now I will caveat that.

There are times when I know something will be the priority for the day. The script for this podcast, for instance, is today’s priority. I knew that when I planned the week, and I flagged it. It doesn’t matter what other things pop up through the week; when it comes to writing this script, it’s the priority for the day.

Your core work will always be a priority. This is why I have people spend time working out what their core work is. After all, your core work is the reason you are employed. If you didn’t do your core work consistently, you would not have a job for very long.

Even retired people need to consider what their core activities will be each day.

I’m reminded of this following a conversation I had with my father-in-law over the weekend. We’ve just had the lunar New Year here in Korea, and my parents-in-law stayed with us over the holiday.

During that time, my father-in-law mentioned he planned to hang up his silicone gun and tiling trowel at the end of the year. He fits bathrooms and was thinking about what he would do when he no longer needs to wake up at 5:00 am each morning.

The first thing I said was that he needs to prioritise exercise. His job ensures he’s getting plenty of exercise. Walking up and down stairs carrying sinks, shower kits and tiles is hard physical work. His job currently ensures he’s getting his exercise.

The moment he stops doing that five days a week, he will need to find a replacement activity to prevent muscle loss.

Losing his muscle mass will lead to him losing his independence very quickly.

We all have priorities that recur. Those tasks can be pre-flagged. They are critical, whether you are working or retired. Having a few tasks already prioritised helps you plan the day, since you can decide whether they will be the priority or not.

Let me explain.

All of us are limited by the same thing each day. Time. It’s the one thing none of us can change. Writing this podcast script takes about 2 to 2.5 hours. That eats a big chunk of my work time each week.

At the same time, we all have to deal with communications, meetings, admin and other day-to-day tasks. I need to include an hour each day for taking Louis for his walk, and next week, he also has a grooming appointment, which will take time out of my week.

Looking at next week’s calendar today, I can see where my appointments are and already guess which tasks will be a priority. When I do my weekly planning, I pre-flag what I think will be the priority for each day, but I am aware that when I do daily planning, I may need to change it. There has to be a degree of flexibility.

It could be that I get an email on Monday asking for a proposal to work with a company and design a workshop for them. That would become a priority for that week.

I would add a task, “Begin work on company workshop”, and schedule it. Yet, I would not flag it then. When the day comes, and I do my daily planning, I then get to see the real landscape of my day.

It could be that I have five hours of meetings that day and two or three pre-planned, prioritised tasks. Now I have to make a decision. What is my REAL priority that day?

If I have promised to get the workshop outline to the client by the end of the week, that will be my red-flagged task that day. I made a promise, and I will deliver on that promise.

Given that I have five hours of meetings and need two hours to put together the outline and proposal, there’s not going to be much time left for anything else that day. I need to re-prioritise my day.

So I add the flag to the workshop’s proposal and decide on what needs to be rescheduled.

It’s likely that, in that given scenario, I would not flag anything else. I know I don’t have time to do much else.

This is why daily and weekly planning complement each other. The weekly plan is about setting yourself objectives. The daily plan is about ensuring you prioritise your day so you work towards meeting those objectives—given the new information, ie, new tasks that will inevitably come in.

Now I know many of you will add a flag to a task because you keep rescheduling it and just do not want to spend the time doing it. The thinking goes that if you flag it, you will do the task. Hmmm, how often does that work?

This is often the reason many flagged tasks become overdue. The only change is that the task now has a flag. Yet you still don’t want to spend the time doing it.

When you use your daily planning time to prioritise your day, you’re using real, up-to-date information to guide you. You can remove flags from tasks you thought were important but are no longer, and add a flag to the tasks that are important that day.

I mentioned that you can pre-prioritise your week by flagging tasks at the weekly planning session. When you do the daily planning, you decide if your priorities have changed and, if so, remove flags or reschedule those tasks.

What I like about this approach is that it feels like your task manager is supporting you rather than the other way around. You retain control over what you will and will not do each day.

This works particularly well if you find yourself behind on something or have a backlog that needs dealing with. When you plan the day, you get to decide what to place on your task list and in what order.

Now, how many flags should you allow each day?

Several years ago, I decided to find out how many tasks I could consistently do each day for a week. I began with fifteen and soon discovered that if I wanted to be consistent, then that number was ten.

This number does not include routine tasks such as cleaning my actionable email, my daily admin tasks and the usual things we all have to do at work each day.

When it came to flagged tasks, I soon discovered that I could consistently do two important tasks a day. When I tried three or more, I frequently was unable to do one of them. I just ran out of time.

And so, my 2+8 Prioritisation Method was born.

This method forces you to realistically prioritise your day. You can choose only two must-do tasks for the day. These are flagged. The remaining eight are not flagged, and you will do what you can to clear that list each day.

This method works because it introduces constraints into your system.

Given that it’s human nature to want to do more than we can realistically do each day, adding this constraint of no more than ten tasks per day ensures you are picking the genuinely important tasks.

No, that interesting YouTube video is not important. You can watch that any time. But renewing your father’s prescription for him is.

Checking your car’s tyre pressures before you head out on a long road trip this afternoon will be a priority over reading that article your colleague sent you.

I have my Todoist set up so I can see my red-flagged tasks each day using a filter. That filter is “today & P1”.

Each morning, before I begin my day, that’s the first place I go. I review my flagged tasks and remove any excess.

This has taught me to become ruthlessly competent at prioritising.

Strangely, this goes back to something I learned in my teenage years. In Hyrum Smith’s Ten Natural Laws of Time and Life Management, he writes about establishing your governing values. Today. I think of these as my Areas of Focus.

These governing values are the predetermined priorities in your life. Often, family will be at the top of that list. The idea is that your governing values have a natural prioritised list. For example, if your family’s well-being is above your career, if your family needs you to do something, that will be prioritised over your work commitments.

For me, my health and fitness is above my work in my list of areas of focus. This means I will not schedule meetings at 4:30 pm. That’s my exercise time. I will not do any work at that time either. At 4:30 pm, I exercise.

So there you go, Caroline. I hope that has helped. The key is to prioritise your day during your daily planning and use that time to reset your flags so nothing is ever overdue.

And above all, respect your flags. If you know you will not be doing a flagged task on any given day. Either reschedule the task or remove the flag.

Thank you for your question, and thank you to you too for listening.

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

Why Hybrid Productivity Systems are the Most Effective Systems

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 11:29:08 +0900

Podcast 405

"Pen and paper will solve almost anything. Or at least start the process."

- Nicholas Bate

This week, I have a special episode for you about what I have discovered over the last two years from bringing pens and paper back into my productivity system. It’s certainly been an eye-opener for me.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Fac ebook | Website | Linkedin

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 405

Hello, and welcome to episode 405 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

A week ago, I launched a brand new course called the Hybrid Productivity Course. The purpose of this course was to help those who have found that a digital-only approach has led to a loss of focus on what’s important and a sense of extreme overwhelm and distraction.

As in most areas of life, a one-size-fits-all methodology rarely works. All humans are unique. We think differently, have different life experiences, grow up differently and experience life through many different cultures.

It stands to reason that none of us will have exactly the same needs as everyone else.

We saw this during the pandemic. Around 50% of people loved working from home. They thrived and became much more productive. The other 50% struggled, found it hard to do their work, and lost their enthusiasm and energy for it.

This highlighted the difference between extroverts and introverts. Extroverts bounce off the energy of other people. They need the bustling office environment to operate. Take that away, and they slump.

Introverts, on the other hand, thrive in the opposite conditions. Quiet spaces and solo environments are where they thrive.

I always struggled in an office environment. I found it difficult to concentrate and focus. When I began working from home in 2015, my productivity went through the roof. I suddenly had the freedom to work when I liked, where I liked and in the quiet solitude of my front living room.

One advantage of an all-digital system is that you can easily add many features to your digital tools without much thought.

I noticed this while testing Todoist’s new feature, Ramble. Ramble lets you have a conversation with Todoist, and it pulls out all the things you indicate need to be done. Sounds great in theory, until you test it out.

Just a two-minute “conversation” with Ramble led to 15 tasks!

When I went back into my inbox to sort them out, I realised that the majority of those tasks were low-value, would-be-nice-to-do tasks, but realistically, there was no way I would have the time to do them.

I edited down that list of 15 to 6 tasks.

The problem is that most people will not edit these lists. It’s time-consuming, and you have to think it through. Two things that are out of fashion these days, it seems.

This is where I found bringing a pen and notebook back into my system really helped. It forced me to edit down my list of tasks for the day. It also made me smarter when writing my lists.

If I had five people to call today, in the digital system, I would write out all five calls independently. It didn’t take long, and most of those would already be in the digital system. All I had to do was add a date.

In a paper system, it would mean writing out all those calls individually. You soon find that rather than doing that, you would write “do my calls”. Writing those three words strangely reinforced the action. All you then needed to do was to ensure that any communication tasks were correctly labelled in your digital system.

This is where the seeds of a hybrid system began to take shape.

If it were easier to collect using digital tools, then why stop doing it that way?

If you were more focused when writing out a daily to-do list than using a digital to-do list, why stop doing that?

My idea was to marry the two.

This led to the development of what I call my Day Book. However, before I got there, I went back to my roots and used the Franklin Planner for eighteen months.

The strength of the Franklin Planner is in the way the daily pages are laid out. You have your daily prioritised task list on the left, your calendar for the day next to it, and, on the right page, a place to keep notes and ideas.

This means that once you have written your appointments, you can see how much time you have available to do tasks. It forces you to be realistic.

If you had seven hours of meetings and began writing out a long list of tasks, you would instantly see that you were creating an impossible day.

If you were to consider meeting overruns, the “urgent” messages and “quick questions” that will inevitably come your way that day, it’s likely you won’t be doing any tasks.

Yet the digital system won’t show you that. All it shows you are the tasks you have dated for today.

And let’s be honest, most people are adding dates to tasks, not because they need to be done that day, but because they are afraid they will forget about them or they will get lost in the system.

That’s not how a to-do list is meant to work. It’s meant to give you a clear indication of what needs to be done. On a day-to-day basis, that means what needs to be done today.

The act of writing down on a piece of paper the tasks that need to be done today forces you to be realistic.

When it comes to storage, though, paper is not so great. It’s here where digital tools shine. You can easily store files and documents. You can keep meeting notes together in one place and create a master project note for all your projects, so everything is kept together in one convenient place.

And of course, digital’s piece de resistance, search.

If you were to keep all your notes in notebooks, you would soon have notebooks all over the place, and notes would be difficult to find unless you carefully indexed every notebook you used. Perhaps not the best use of your time.

Instead, you can keep all your notes in a notes app, and allow it to use keywords, date ranges or titles to find what you need when you need it.

However, I have discovered that paper is a great planning medium. This is where I always used to struggle.

When I first began teaching, there were no such things as Evernote or Apple Notes. They didn’t come along until five years after I began teaching. I therefore used my old counsel notebooks. These were what would be described as foolscap in size, slightly taller than A4, and had a royal blue cover.

Given that throughout my school and university days, I would always plan out my essays on paper, it was perfectly natural for me to make notes on paper when planning my lessons.

Then we had the digital explosion. Smartphones became a thing, followed shortly afterwards by apps. I began using Evernote in 2009, and I started planning digitally.

It was certainly convenient, but I did notice I rarely went into any depth. I tried using mind-mapping software, but it didn’t help.

I thought there must be something wrong with me.

Then, a couple of years ago, I began seeing studies about how our brains work differently between digital and physical tools.

The most striking studies found that when you write on paper (or a whiteboard), you activate the same areas that artists activate when creating art. This is the creative centre of your brain.

When you tap on a keyboard, you don’t. Tapping is formulaic and monotonous.

If you think about this, it makes perfect sense. When you handwrite, you are forming shapes. Letters are shapes. When you write via keyboard, all you are doing is tapping. There’s nothing artistic about that.

This was when the penny finally dropped for me. There was nothing wrong with me! It was science.

Now, I would never consider opening up my phone or laptop to sketch out an idea. I would open a notebook.

One of my favourite ways of doing this is to grab a notebook, a few pens and a pencil and head off to a local cafe for an hour or two. I can sit in a corner and brainstorm ideas for new courses, YouTube videos and blog posts.

Since I began doing this, my productivity has improved significantly. It helped because I have fewer re-edits to do. When I sit down at the computer to write, I now have a fully planned-out structure and well-thought-through points, and I am writing the first draft much faster.

It seems that planning works best on paper, yet storage and output are best digital. Again, leading to the conclusion that there is a place for both digital and analogue tools in a solid productivity system.

I saw this all in action recently. I was watching a UK Supreme Court session, where a barrister (a lawyer who speaks before a judge, not someone who makes coffee) had an iPad in front of him containing all the case files and documents. Yet his speaking notes were on paper. As he made his arguments before the judge, he marked off the points with a pencil and added notes.

The opposing barrister was also using the same tools. Her case files were on an iPad, yet as she listened to her opposite number, she was taking notes in a notebook and appeared to be adding revisions to her own speaking notes.

What’s more, if we’re being honest, stationery is much more fun than digital tools. Digital fonts, screens and keyboards are not really all that exciting.

But the many different types of pens, pencils, notebooks, and pencil cases at all different price ranges give you the ultimate way to make your tools truly personal.

I’m sure you already know I love fountain pens. I’ve been writing with them since middle school and just love the way the nib feels on a quality sheet of paper.

I remember being excited when Apple brought out the Apple Pencil. When I got one, and tried it out I was horrified. It was the worst writing experience I’d ever had. I’ve tried Paperlike and tested a Remarkable. Yuk! None of them comes close to the experience you get from a real pen and paper.

And so, after two years of testing, playing and refining, I came up with what I would describe as the “perfect” system. A method that marries the power of digital with analogue tools.

Digital for storage and output, paper for planning and thinking.

It works. I tested it with some of my coaching clients, and even my wife has started using it for her university studies.

What’s more, it works superbly with the Time Sector System. You keep all your tasks in your digital task manager, and only when you decide to do them, you put them on paper.

What you will discover immediately is that you are no longer staring at an almost infinite list of things you could do, and instead, you see a list of genuine tasks that need to be done today. No more overwhelm, just a focused list and a realistic day.

If you are interested in learning more about this course, I will put a link in the show notes. Currently, you can get the course with the early-bird discount for just $49.95.

But if you’re not interested, try using a notebook for your planning and daily task list this week. Watch what happens to your productivity.

Thank you for listening, and it just remains for me to wish you all a very, very productive week.

Time Blocking for People Who Hate Being Boxed In

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 12:35:06 +0900

Peter Drucker once said “Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else”

How is your management of time?

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Script | 403

Hello, and welcome to episode 403 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Are you in danger of boxing yourself in with too many processes and too much structure?

Now, it’s important to stress that having some structure to your day is important. But too much can lead to boxing yourself in and losing flexibility.

Let me give you an example I often come across. Protecting time for doing your focused work. Having this protected on your calendar so the time cannot be stolen by others is important.

If you protected 2 hours and finished in 90 minutes, that doesn’t mean you have to continue for another 30 minutes. Take a break. You’re done.

But this works the other way, too. If you have two hours protected for a project task but cannot finish it in that time. It’s okay. You turned up. You did the work, but you miscalculated how long it would take.

This happens to all of us. Some days we’re on fire and can plough through a lot of work. Other days, a lot less so.

The problem is that when you begin your day, you really don’t know what kind of day you’re going to have. There are too many variables. How you slept, whether you’re catching a cold or simply something else is on your mind.

Your life is not measured by what you do in one day; everyone has bad days.

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

This week’s question comes from Alex. Alex asks, hi Carl, this year I’m trying to be better at time blocking, but I am really struggling to stay consistent with my blocks. What advice do you have to help stay true to your calendar?

Hi Alex, thank you for your question.

Something I have always taught is that of all your productivity tools, one of them needs to be sacred. One of your tools must be the “truth” about what you are going to do that day.

Task managers are generally not good at this because we throw a lot of things into them. That’s a good thing. Yet, the issue is that most people never curate what they throw in. This creates overwhelming lists of low-value, ill-thought-out items that will never get done. They just cripple your task manager’s effectiveness.

The best tool for acting as your sacred base is your calendar. It’s never going to lie to you. It shows you the 24 hours you have each day and where you need to be, with whom, and when.

You cannot overload yourself without it being plainly obvious that you are trying to do too much.

And let’s be perfectly clear, an agreed appointment with someone will always take priority over an email or proposal you need to write. If not, you cancel the appointment.

I hope, at a basic, civilised human being level, you get that.

I’ve called off face-to-face meetings in the past if the person I am meeting cannot put their phones down and actually talk to me. It is rude, disrespectful, and no person with an ounce of integrity would ever do that.

One of the striking things I’ve noticed about the highly successful people I work with is that they never have a phone. Tablet or laptop near them when they are in meetings. A notebook and a pen are all they have.

That’s focus, professionalism, and demonstrates to the person you are meeting that you are focused on them in that moment.

When you make your calendar your primary productivity tool, you gain clarity about how much time you have available for the things you want to do.

It’s visual, it’s staring at you, and there’s no escape from reality.

If you work 9 hours a day and today you have 7 hours of meetings, you only have 2 hours to do solo work. That’s it.

If you need three hours to get your critical, must-do work done, then you have two choices. You either cancel a meeting or you accept that you will need to work an extra hour.

It’s strange how so many people waste so much time trying find other solutions. That’s time they could have spent on getting started on the work.

The solution is to time-block slots for doing the work that matters.

The best salespeople block time every day to prospect and follow up with their customers. That’s why they are the top salespeople.
The best CEOs block time every day for working on their top priority task. That’s why they are the best at what they do.
Best-selling authors block time for writing every day. That’s why they sell a lot of books.

Now, as I eluded to at the beginning, there will be some days when things don’t go according to plan. You might be sick, had an argument with a loved one or just be distracted for whatever reason.

Or there could be a good old-fashioned emergency that needs your attention.

It happens. That’s life.

However, it’s not really about what you do or not to do in one day. The purpose of time blocks is to get you to show up and do the work. It’s not about volume.

Spending twenty minutes on your actionable email is better than spending zero minutes. It’s surprising how much you can get done when the pressure of time is on you. You don’t dilly-dally around. (Wow! That’s a phrase I haven’t used for a long time!)

Ultimately, the measure is how well you did against your plan for the week, not necessarily an individual day.

Let me give you an example.

I have two blog posts, two newsletters, this podcast and a YouTube video to produce each week. They are my measurables. Six pieces of content.

I know I need about 12 hours a week to produce that content. I also have 15 hours of coaching appointments. So, in total, I need 27 hours protected before I begin my week to complete my professional work.

It’s doable, and based on my completion rates, I complete this work around 87% of the time over 12 months. I’ll take that. (I measure it at the end of every year)

I work with one highly successful CEO who writes a LinkedIn Newsletter every week. Her company has over 50,000 employees in six different countries. She protects two hours every week to write that newsletter. One hour for the first draft and one hour later in the week to edit it.

Last year, she didn’t miss one newsletter. She had a 100% completion rate. And that was her goal.

How did she do it? She protected her writing time every week. She would protect Monday mornings when in the office, and when travelling, she would take advantage of jet lag and write when she was wide awake in the early morning or late at night.

She time-blocked the time. She knew the only way to achieve a 100% completion rate was to make sure each week she had protected the time to do the work.

However, time blocking only works if you are planning your week. Not planning your week leaves you open to other people hijacking your calendar, and as I am sure you are aware, other people are often very persuasive… or demanding.

When you sit down to plan the week, you first look at what meetings and appointments you have scheduled. How much time does that leave you?

That will tell you what you could realistically get done that week.

If you’re away at a conference for three days, you really only have two days to work with. However, one of those days will probably be needed for catching up, so realistically, you’ve got one solid work day.

But let’s look at a typical week when you are at your usual place of work.

How much time do you need to do the work you are employed to do each week? A journalist may be expected to write an article a week. How long does it typically take to write the article, excluding the research and interviews? That would be their starting point.

Doctors I work with often need 2 hours or more after seeing patients to handle paperwork. If they want to get home at 7:00 pm each evening, then that will affect the time they need to stop seeing patients and do paperwork.

Salespeople are focused on seeing clients most of the day, but they also often have paperwork and follow-ups to do. Where can they fit the time they need for paperwork and follow-ups?

Knowing what you are expected to do as part of your job and ensuring you have sufficient time to do it each week is what I call protecting time for your core work, and it goes back to the birth of humankind.

Our ancestors on the Savannahs knew their core work. To hunt for food. If they’d had a big kill one day, they may have been able to take a day off, but when they started their day, they knew their job was to go out and find food. It was a non-negotiable part of their day.

That’s what time blocking does for you. It gives you clarity on what you need to do that day. All you need to do is show up.

One tip I can give you about time-blocking is to keep your time blocks general. For instance, the CEO I mentioned a moment ago calls her newsletter writing time simply “writing time”. That gives her some flexibility.

If she needs to write a report for the board and is up against a tight deadline, then that is what she will write in that time. She will then find another space for the newsletter writing.

I do something similar. I have writing time and audio/visual time protected on my calendar. I can then choose what I write or record on the day as part of my daily planning routine.

If you’re in sales or a client-facing role, the time you spend working for your clients can be called “client” or “customer” time.

I would also highly recommend that you set aside time every day to deal with messages, emails, and admin. These tasks will creep up on you if you’re not dealing with them every day. Even if you can only find thirty minutes, take it.

Whenever I am on a business trip, whether domestic or international, I make sure to set aside time during the day to address my actionable messages. The most challenging ones are domestic, as I generally drive to the appointment or event. The easier ones are international as there is a lot of time hanging around in airport lounges.

Another tip I would give is not to go crazy here. Time blocking is not about blocking every minute of the day. It’s about protecting time only for the important work you need to do.

When I look at my calendar, there are only three hours a day protected for solo work. On days when I have a lot of meetings, I usually reduce that time to one hour.

So there you go, Alex. I hope that has helped.

You are going to have good and bad days. That’s perfectly normal. But, you have complete control of your calendar, so you can move things around, change your blocks if necessary. But, and this is the important but, once you’ve locked them in for the day, you stick with them.

Remember, it’s not about how much you do in the time, it’s about turning up and doing the work.

And if you want to transform your time management and adopt a sustainable time-based productivity system, my newest course, the Time-Based Productivity course, will do that for you.

It will teach you how to time-block effectively and organise your work so you are doing the right things at the right time. PLUS… by joining the course, you get free access to my recently updated Time Sector System course and my Time Blocking Course.

If I were to recommend one course for 2026, that’s the one I would recommend.

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

Managing "AI-Generated Work Bloat"

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 11:54:42 +0900

You’ve probably heard of something called AI. It seems everyone is talking about it. The question is: how will this affect our productivity, and what can we do to ensure we are ready for the likely changes this year?

That’s what I’m answering this week.

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Script | 402

Hello, and welcome to episode 402 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Unless you’ve had the fortune to avoid seeing the news over the last few years, you may have come across something called AI. It seems to be everywhere today.

Just yesterday, I got a big update to Evernote, and it was all about AI. Todoist, my task manager of choice, is also on board with AI with their dictation tool called “Ramble”.

All great tools, all giving us the potential to collect and organise more.

I use AI a lot myself. It helps me brainstorm ideas, create subtitles for my YouTube videos, and write the video descriptions, which I hated doing myself.

And it is a phenomenal research tool. I can import my analytics from my blog, this podcast or my YouTube videos and ask it to tell me what is resonating with my community. Then that helps me to decide what the next best content will be.

Yet, with all this, there are some downsides. One of which is that I noticed last year that many of my coaching clients were seeing an increase in the number of tasks they had in their task managers.

It wasn’t until recently that I realised where many of these tasks were coming from.

Many companies are rolling out AI-supported meeting summaries. AI is particularly good at this. It listens in to the meeting and, at the end, produces a summary of what was discussed and a list of action steps to be taken following the meeting. Some of the more sophisticated versions of this will break down by who is responsible for which task.

Superb! Or is it?

What I’ve discovered is that AI is like that annoying new recruit who wants to impress by doing far more work than is necessary. It will turn a 10-bullet-pointed summary into a 20-page report, only for the recipient to return it to a bullet-pointed summary.

It reminds me of that wonderful quote from Winston Churchill:

“This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.”

Yet, from a productivity perspective, what AI is doing is creating a lot of tasks. So much so that it has now been given its own term:

“AI-generated work bloat”, or a less friendly version: “AI-generated Work slop”.

So, what can we do to “defend” ourselves from this AI-generated work bloat? Well, there are a few things we can do that will allow us to take advantage of AI’s incredible abilities, yet still keep our workloads within limits without it slowly becoming overwhelmed with a lot of “work slop”.

That nicely brings me on to this week’s question, and that means it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question:

This week’s question comes from Robert. Robert asks, Hi Carl, I haven’t heard you talk much about AI. Do you have any thoughts on how to get the most out of the new AI tools without them becoming overwhelming?

Hi Robert, thank you for your question.

AI is certainly causing some issues in the time management and productivity space. Yet, it is also helping many people to get better organised.

It is like all new technology. There is an initial period in which we try everything to determine where the new technology can help us most. I remember when email became a thing. There was a lot of nervousness about it initially.

I was working in a law firm at the time, and the legal profession in the UK was reluctant to adopt email, even though its benefits over snail mail were obvious.

There were fears over privacy and client confidentiality. Eventually, we adopted it, and when we did, it rapidly became an instant messaging portal. Clients who sent an email began expecting an instant reply and quickly called us if they did not receive one within a few minutes.

Fortunately, we had not at that stage entered the smartphone era and were able to explain to clients that when we were out of the office, we were unable to check our emails.

However, email became the new way of communicating, and it soon created a cascade of stuff for us to process and organise, eating up more valuable time—time we didn’t have then, let alone today.

I see the same thing happening with AI today. We are trying to adopt AI in so many ways. Some will stick, others will fall by the wayside in time.

It doesn’t mean we should reject these new ways immediately. We are in the experimentation stage. It’s the fun stage. Testing new ideas, playing with tools and seeing what works for us and what doesn’t.

However, some fundamentals remain in play.

The first, and the one that will never go away, is that we only have twenty-four hours a day. We are human. We need to sleep, eat and bathe. All of which takes time out of those 24 hours.

The second is that we can only focus on one thing at a time. We have the freedom to choose what we focus on, but we can only focus on one thing.

So the question is, what will you focus on and when?

We may not be able to stop all this AI-generated work, but we can choose when to work on it. This is where categorising your work helps you choose the right things to work on.

For example, pretty much all of us will have to deal with communications, and it’s a great example.

What happens if you don’t respond to your emails and messages for a day? Perhaps you’re travelling, or are caught up in meetings. That’s right, you create a backlog.

The problem with emails and messages is that they never stop coming in, and unless you have a process and time to deal with them, you will miss deadlines and opportunities, and probably upset a lot of people. There are consequences for ignoring your messages.

The solution is to set aside time each day to deal with them. How much time will depend on how much time you have and perhaps the volume of messages that require your attention.

If all you have is twenty minutes between some meetings, take it. You’re not going to get much else done. So take advantage of those twenty minutes and clear some of those messages. You may not be able to clear them all, but one is always greater than zero.

If the AI tools you use include suggestions for responses, take advantage of them for the shorter replies.

But, be careful of the longer replies that require your knowledgeable input. AI can respond to some of these, but its responses often sound a little inhuman or, worse, give the wrong information.

Always check the AI-generated responses.

AI can also organise your calendar for you. Personally, I’ve not had much luck with this, as it doesn’t have enough variable information about me to be accurate. What I find AI does is look at what I like to do at certain times of the day and suggests I do that every day, and then fills in everything else around that.

The last time I played with this AI, it recommended I get up at 6:00 am and do my workout. Pu ha ha! I am not going to get up at 6:00 to do any exercise. I hate exercising in the morning.

To get my AI calendar to be reasonably useful, I had to spend far too much time telling it what I wanted, and I realised in the end the fastest way was for me to do it manually.

Going back to the categorisation of your work, if you categorise it by the types of work you do, you can then match your calendar to your categories.

For instance, if you were a doctor, seeing patients would largely take up most of your workday. But you will also need time to complete your prescriptions, update patient notes, respond to messages, deal with any health insurance claims, and so on.

If you don’t want to be working late into the night, you will need to be disciplined with your calendar and protect time for the admin and communication tasks.

If you find AI is recommending a lot of tasks for you, from, say, meeting summaries, I recommend you first audit the list, then allocate a category to the work suggested.

Why audit the list?

Well, as I mentioned, AI is like that new recruit trying impress the boss by suggesting more work than is necessary. It will create a lot of tasks.

Your experience will tell you that a lot of those tasks will not need to be done. It’s these that need to be removed.

I recently did an experiment. I asked Google’s Gemini to give me a list of tasks, spread over four weeks, to start a blog.

This prompt resulted in 29 tasks! And the task of actually writing a first draft was not suggested until the start of week four.

While many of the tasks listed, such as choosing a domain to host the blog and your niche, do need to be done, in the real world, most people who want to start a blog will already know this. It’s part of the thought processes that lead to deciding to start a blog.

When I audited the list, I reduced it from 29 tasks down to 12. I also found I needed to move some tasks around because they weren’t in a logical sequence.

I’m sure over time, AI will get better at this, but always remember that your experience about doing your job will still be better at predicting what needs to be done than AI will.

If you’re using the Time Sector System, you will find that your processing naturally fits with AI’s method of breaking tasks down into when you “should” be doing them.

My blog experiment allowed me, once I’d audited the list, to quickly move the tasks into the correct sector. Tasks that should be done in the first week were moved to my This Week folder; those for the second week were moved to my Next Week folder; and everything else was moved to my This Month folder.

One of the benefits of using the Time Sector System with AI-generated tasks is that as you are simultaneously deciding when you will do the tasks. You retain the all-important human agency, deciding what is done and when.

But there’s one more benefit of the Time Sector System that will help you. That is your weekly limit.

If you have taken the course, you may remember the lesson on capping your weekly tasks to your known limit.

This is where you find the maximum number of tasks you can realistically do in any one week. This number does not include your routines or other recurring low-value tasks. Just the important ones. But we all have a limit.

For me, that number is thirty. If my This Week folder is higher than 30 at the start of the week, I know I am going to struggle to complete my tasks that week. I either need to go back into my This Week folder and remove some of the less urgent tasks or cancel some of my meetings.

This teaches you the vital skills of auditing and prioritisation. Skills you will need in the AI world. It is what will separate us from the AI tools being used.

However, one good thing about AI-generated meeting summaries is that you have a record of the meeting that can be placed inside your meeting notes for projects and teams without any editing.

The workflow I use with these is to use Todoist’s brilliant copy/paste feature. Here you can copy a list of tasks and paste them all into your inbox in a single click.

However, if there are a lot of them, I create a temporary project folder for them first, and then, before I move the tasks to their rightful place, I audit the list. Remove tasks that are not relevant, or that I don’t need to do, and then move them to the right time sector.

If you don’t use Todoist, you can do this with the original meeting summary. Audit, remove and then move the tasks you need to do into the correct time sector.

(A quick heads-up, I have a YouTube video coming out next week that demonstrates this.)

So there you go, Robert. It’s still early days, and we are very much in the experimentation period with AI. We’re testing ways to see how it can help us with our work. This is consequently creating a lot of tasks.

As long as you are auditing these tasks, following the principles of COD, and using the Time Sector System to manage your work, you will be fine. Things will remain manageable and exciting at the same time.

We don’t know what the future holds, but your experience and skills will see you through, I can promise you.

Thank you, Robert, for your question.

And if you haven’t taken the Time Sector System course yet, the all-new edition is now available and can be taken in less than two hours. Look at taking that course as your antidote to the AI-generated work bloat we are all beginning to experience.

Thank you for listening, and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.

How to Build a Searchable Archive for Your Personal and Work Documents

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 11:03:50 +0900

Albert Einstein once said, “Organised people are just too lazy to go looking for what they want.” And I think he makes a very good point.

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Script | 401

Hello, and welcome to episode 401 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Last week’s episode on what to keep in your notes sparked a lot of follow-up questions around the concept of how to organise notes and digital files.

In many ways, this has been one of the disadvantages of the digital explosion. Back in the day, important documents were kept inside filing cabinets and were organised alphabetically. Photos were mostly kept in photo books, which were then thrown into boxes and hidden under beds or in the attic.

The best ones were put in frames and displayed on tables and mantelpieces—something we rarely do today.

And notebooks, if kept, were put at the bottom of bookshelves or in boxes.

The limiting factor was physical space. This meant we regularly curated our files and threw out expired documents.

The trouble today is that digital documents don’t take up visible physical space, so as long as you have enough digital storage either on your computer’s hard drive or in the cloud, you can keep thousands of documents there without the need to curate and keep them updated.

Eventually, it becomes practically impossible to know what we have, where it is, or even how to start finding it if we do know what we want to find.

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

This week’s question comes from Julia. Julia asks, “ Hi Carl, I listened to your recent podcast episode on what to keep in your notes, and it got me thinking. How would someone go about organising years of digital stuff that has accumulated all over the place?

Hi Julia, thank you for your question.

A couple of years ago, I became fascinated with how the National Archives in Kew, London, handles archiving millions of government documents each year.

Compared to us individuals, this would be extreme, but they have hundreds of years of experience in this matter, and my thinking was that if anyone knew how to manage documents, they would know.

What surprised me was that they maintained a relatively simple system. That system was based on years and the department from which the documents originated.

So, for example, anything that came from the Prime Minister’s office last year would be bundled together under 2025. It would then be given the prefix PREM.

(They do use a code for the years to help with cataloguing, as the National Archives will be keeping documents from different centuries)

Upon further investigation, the reason they do it this way is that older documents are most likely searched for by year.

Let’s say I was writing a book on British disasters in the 20th century, and I wanted to learn more about the Aberfan Disaster, where a coal slag heap collapsed, crushing the village of Aberfan in Wales.

All I would need to know would be the year, and a simple Google search would give me that. From there, I could search the National Archives for HOME 1966. That search would indicate the Home Office files for 1966. (The year the disaster happened)

I would also know that the disaster happened in October, so I could refine my search to October dates.

If we were to use a system similar to the one the National Archives uses to organise its documents, we would create parent folders by year.

You can then go through your documents wherever they are and, using your computer’s ability to detect when a document was created, have it show your list of files by when they were created. That way, all you need to do is select all files from a given year and move them into their appropriate year folder.

Now, when I do this, I notice that I have files going back to 2015.

The next step would be to allocate time each week to review your year folders and organise the documents into topic folders.

For example, anything related to insurance can be placed in an insurance folder.

How deep you go after that will depend on you. I don’t go any further than that. I have three insurance documents. Car, health and home insurance. And given that these are now organised by year, if, in the unlikely event, I need to retrieve my 2019 health insurance documents, it would be very easy to find them.

I would suggest starting at the current year and working backwards. The chances of you needing to find a document from ten years ago are slim. The need to find a 2025 document would be much higher.

So start with your 2025 folder and work backwards.

Don’t be tempted to pre-set up your year folders with subfolders by topic. No one year will be the same.

In 2016, I was teaching English to executives in Korea—something I no longer do. I have a lot of teaching materials; I don’t want to throw away those, and they go up to 2020, so I have folders for those years related to my English teaching activities. After 2020, those folders are no longer in my files.

Once you have the year folders set up, it’s relatively quick and easy to get things organised. The important thing is not overthink this or to develop an overly complex folder structure.

My advice is two levels and no more. The year folder and the subject material. For example, 2024 > Electric bills.

Now, there is a category of documents that you need access to across multiple years.

For example, my car’s manual is something I will need to keep for as long as I have my current car.

For these types of documents, you can create a folder called “current” or “active” (you decide the best name for it) and keep these in there.

So, in my current folder, I have my company registration documents, my car’s manual and registration documents, current insurance certificates, and other miscellaneous files I need access to regularly. This folder is pinned to the top of my file folders (you can do this by adding a 00 before the word Current, then setting the list to organise by name).

Now for your work documents.

This one is more challenging, as you’re likely to be collaborating with others.

There may also be legal requirements regarding document storage and archiving. When I worked in a law office, there were strict rules about how files were organised and stored, and for how long they were kept.

However, that was not my concern. There were procedures that my colleagues and I followed for each file, and they were then sent to the archivist, who made sure that everything was stored in the correct way.

My advice here would be to follow your company’s procedures; if there are none, use the system I described above for your personal files.

Another challenge we face today is that Microsoft, Google, and Apple are encouraging us to keep files within their app containers.

For instance, if you create a Word document, Microsoft wants you to save that file within your OneDrive’s Word folder.

That makes sense, and for the current documents I am creating, I use that system.

However, once I’ve sent feedback to my coaching clients, I save the original Pages file in that client’s folder (I work in the Apple ecosystem).

These folders are not year-specific. Many of my clients have been with me for years, and many of them come back from time to time.

That is why, with work-related files, using years to organise your documents doesn’t always work—particularly with ongoing projects, campaigns and clients.

Given that most work related files and documents are shared with others and are kept within the company’s own file storage system, the best solution is to ensure that the title you give to these files is something you would naturally search for.

Think how you would find this document in twelve or twenty-four months time.

For example, each year I write a workbook for my Ultimate Productivity Workshop. The title of that document is “2026 Ultimate Productivity Workbook”.

I put the year first because if I were to search for “workbook”, within the results, I would find that the Productivity workshop’s workbooks would all be grouped together by year, making it easy for me to select the right one.

And that neatly leads me to another facet of working with digital files.

Your computer is built for search. It’s the biggest advantage computers have over your own brain. If it’s within your computer’s search scope it will find it within a split second.

Really the only thing you need to do is ensure that you have given the document a title you will be able to search for.

One of my favourite features of this computerised search is to use the “recents” smart list. This shows you all the documents you have worked on recently.

The chances are something you are looking for at work will be something you have worked on recently. You might be writing a report or a proposal in Word, then in the Word app those documents will be at the top of the list.

You may need to change the search setting in the list to last modified, not date created to see this, but it’s a phenomenal way to find a document you need quickly.

What about your notes?

Last weekend, I watched a documentary on the beloved British comedian Sir Ken Dodd. A brilliant comedian and a man who left millions of people in laughter and happiness.

Doddy, for that is what we called him, was in the habit of writing notes after each performance into a notebook. He would write how he felt the performance went, what jokes worked and didn’t work, and what he could do to improve his performance next time.

After his death in 2018, his wife set about saving his immense archive of props, costumes and puppets for the nation.

When it came to his notebooks, there were thousands of them, dating from the 1950s to his death.

His wife asked an archivist to come in to help organise these notebooks into something that could be searched by future comedians. The archivist decided to most logical way would be to organise them by year, and then add a tag for each theatre and city he performed in.

This meant that if someone wanted to search for a specific note, they could type in the year and the name of the city or theatre, and a list of notes for that search would pop up.

Simple, logical and minimised the amount of work required to get them in order.

When it comes to your notes, keeping the structure simple makes sense. With your digital notes, you are organising them for quick search and retrieval.

You don’t need to worry about the date; all decent note-taking apps will date-stamp the creation of a note for you automatically. All you need to do is focus on creating a title for the note that makes sense to you so you can retrieve it years later.

The key to getting your digital files organised is to keep things simple and let your computer do the hard work.

The year folders you create can be reviewed over time. It’s the kind of thing you can do while sitting on the sofa in the evening. Pick a year and categorise the documents you have collected for that year. If you do this over a couple of weeks, you will have all your digital files organised and searchable.

I can assure you it’s a wonderful feeling.

Receipts can be organised into a Receipts folder, and within that folder, you can organise them by month. If you need to separate your personal and professional receipts, create a work and personal folder within that month’s receipt folder.

I know that adds a lot of levels, but you are only setting this up once a month, and it won’t take you much more than a minute. Yet, that minute will save you hours later when you need to submit your expenses.

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

I have a course called Mastering Digital Notes Organisation that shows you a simple yet effective way to get your notes organised so they are searchable and easy to find. I’ll leave a link to that in the show notes.

Thank you for listening, and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.

Mastering GAPRA: A Simple Structure for Your Digital Life

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 11:51:08 +0900

WOW! We’ve reached the 400th episode of this podcast. I’d like to thank all of you for being here with me on this incredible journey.

And now, let us begin.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Fac ebook | Website | Linkedin

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Script | 399

Hello, and welcome to episode 400 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

15 years ago, I remember being excited to find Ian Fleming's explanation of how to write a thriller. I saved the text of that article from the Internet directly into Evernote. As I look back, I think that is probably my favourite piece of text that I've saved in my notes over the years.

This morning I did a little experiment. I asked Gemini what Ian Fleming‘s advice is for writing a thriller. Within seconds, Gemini gave me not only the original text but also a summary and bullet points of the main points.

Does this mean that many of the things we have traditionally saved in our digital notes today are no longer needed? I’m not so sure.

It’s this and many similar uses of our digital note-taking applications that may no longer be necessary

And that nicely brings me on to this week’s topic, and that means it’s time for me to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Ricardo. Ricardo asks, Could you discuss more about note-taking in your podcast, as I have difficulties regarding how to collect and store what’s important?

Hi Ricardo. Thank you for your question.

When digital note-taking apps began appearing on our mobile phones around 2009, they were a revelation.

Prior to this innovation, we carried around notebooks and collected our thoughts, meeting notes and plans in them.

Yet, given our human frailties, most of these notebooks were lost, and even if they were not, it was difficult to find the right notebook with the right notes.

Some people were good at storing these. Many journalists and scientists were excellent at keeping these records organised. As were many artists.

And we are very lucky that they did because many years later, those notebooks are still available to us. You can see Charles Darwin’s and Isaac Newton’s notebooks today. Many of which are kept at the Athenaeum Club in London, and others are in museums around the world.

It was important in the days before the Internet to keep these notebooks safe. They contained original thoughts, scientific processes and information that, as in Charles Darwin’s and Isaac Newton’s case, would later form part of a massive scientific breakthrough.

Darwin’s journey on HMS Beagle was a defining moment in scientific history. It provided the raw data and observations that would eventually lead to his theory of evolution by natural selection.

That was published some twenty years after his journey in his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

During Darwin’s five-year journey around the world, he filled 15 field notebooks with observations and sketches—these were roughly the same size as the iconic Field Notes pocket notebooks you can buy today.

Additionally, he kept several Geological Specimen Notebooks. These were slightly larger than his field notes notebooks. He used these primarily to catalogue the fossils and rocks he collected

Darwin also kept a large journal during his travels, which he used to record data and incidents.

These were all original thoughts and observations.

Today, all that information is freely available on the internet and, of course, in books.

What’s more, with AI tools such as Gemini and ChatGPT, finding this information today is easy. I, like many people today, rarely use internet searches for information. I simply ask Gemini.

This means there’s no point in saving this information in my digital notes. All my searches are saved within the Gemini app, as they are in ChatGPT and Claude.

But your original thoughts, ideas and project notes are unique. It’s these you want to keep in your digital notes.

Much like Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton wrote down their thoughts and observations, your thoughts, observations and ideas should be collected and stored.

When Darwin travelled on the Beagle, he was 22 years old. When he published The Origin of Species, he was 45.

And perhaps, like Darwin, not all your ideas today will have an immediate practical purpose. But if you don’t keep them, they never will. This is why it’s important to keep them where you can find them later.

And that’s where our digital tools today are so much better than the paper notebooks we kept. We can find anything, any time, from any digital device we have on hand.

I remember reading Leonardo Da Vinci’s biography, and he often travelled to other parts of Italy. If he needed to reference a note he had made—and he made copious notes—and he did not have the right notebook with him on his travels, it would have taken him days to retrieve the information.

We don’t have that problem today.

So, when it comes to collecting, be ruthless in what you keep.

I have a notebook in my notes app called “Suppliers”. This is where I store the names of the companies I regularly buy things from.

For example, I get my clothing from several preferred retailers. I buy my woollen jumpers (sweaters) from Cordings of Piccadilly. In the note I have for Cordings, are my sizes and the website address.

This makes it easy for me to find what I am looking for and order. I use Apple’s Password app to store my login details, so once I have found what I want, I can order it very quickly.

Amazon makes this even easier with a “Buy It Again” section, so if I am running low on Yorkshire Tea, I go to Amazon, click Buy It Again, and within a few seconds, I see Yorkshire Tea and can order straight away.

Ten years ago, I kept all that information in my notes. Today, I don’t bother as it’s faster to go directly to Amazon.

Another use I have for my digital notes is to keep all my client meeting notes. Each week, I will have around fifteen to twenty calls with clients, and I keep notes for each call as I write feedback, which I send to the client after the call.

These are unique notes, and each one will be different, so using the Darwin/Newton principle—keeping thoughts, ideas and observations in your notes—they will be kept in my notes in a notebook called “clients”.

What’s great about this is I have over eight years’ worth of client notes in Evernote, which feed ideas for future content as they’re directly relatable to real experiences and difficulties.

Another useful note to have in your notes is something called an “Anchor Note”. This is a note where you keep critical information you may need at any particular time.

For example, I keep all the subscriber links to my various websites there, which can be quickly copied and pasted whenever needed.

I also have the Korean Immigration office website there, since it’s not easy to find, and I only need it every 3 or 4 years.

Depending on how security-conscious you are, you can also keep your Social Security and driving license numbers there, too.

How you organise your notes depends on you and how your brain works. However, the more complex your organisational system, the slower you will be at finding what you need.

Now this is where computers come into their own. Whether you use Apple, Google or Microsoft, all these companies have built incredible search functionality into the core of their systems.

This means as long as you give your note a title that means something to you, you will be able to find it in five or ten years’ time.

I remember once my wife asked me for a password to a Korean website I had not used in ten years or more. I couldn’t remember it, and I didn’t have the password stored in my old password manager, 1Password.

As a long shot, I typed the name of the website into Evernote—the note-taking app I’ve been using for almost fifteen years—and within a second, the website with my login details was on my screen.

If I’d tried to find that information by going through my notebooks and tags, I would never have found it. I let Evernote handle the hard work, and it did so superbly.

However, that said, there is something about having some basic structure to your notes. I use a structure I call GAPRA. GAPRA stands for Goals, Areas of Focus, Projects, Resources and Archive. It’s loosely based on Tiago Forte’s PARA method.

I find having separate places for my goals, areas of focus and projects makes it easier for me to navigate things when I am creating a note.

My goals section is for tracking data. For instance, if I were losing weight, I would record my weight each week there.

My areas of focus notebook is where I keep my definitions of my areas and what they mean to me, and it gives me a single place to review these every six months.

My project notebook is where I keep all my notes for my current projects.

The biggest notebook I have, though, is my resources notebook. This is a catch-all for everything else. My supplier’s notebook is there, as is information about different cities I travel to or may travel to in the future. As I look at that notebook now, Paris is the note that has the most information. (Although Osaka in Japan is getting close to it)

I also have places to visit in Korea that I keep for when my mother visits—which she does every year—so I can build a different itinerary for her each year.

The archive is for old notes. I’m not by nature a hoarder, but I do find it reassuring that anything I have created is still there and still searchable.

And that’s it, Ricardo.

You don’t need to keep anything that is findable on the internet or in AI; that’s duplication. But what I would highly recommend you keep are your original ideas, thoughts, and meeting notes (even if they are being summarised by AI. How AI interprets what’s been said is not always what was meant)

And if, like me, you prefer to take handwritten notes, you can scan them into your digital notes app so you have a quick reference even if you don’t have your paper notebook with you.

I hope that helps, and thank you for your question, Ricardo. And thank you to you, too, for listening.

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

Standards vs. Motivation: How to Live Your Life on Your Own Terms in 2026

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 10:50:18 +0900

“Most people overestimate what they can achieve in twelve months and underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade.”

I first heard that quote from Tony Robbins, and it completely changed my approach to yearly goals. I stopped setting ‘New Year’s resolutions’ and began looking further ahead to see what I could do over the next twelve months that would move me closer to my longer-term dreams and goals.

In this week’s special episode, I will share with you why smaller steps over the next twelve months will do so much more for you than trying to do something big and scary that you ultimately fail at.

Let’s go.

Links:

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 399

Hello, and welcome to episode 399 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

What are the mistakes most people make when it comes to goals and resolutions for the New Year?

Well, the simple answer is that they overcomplicate things and try to do too much in one year.

Let me explain. Like most people, I used to set New Year’s resolutions when I was growing up. At various times in my life, they included losing weight and getting fit, quitting smoking, saving money and many more.

And, again, like most people, I failed miserably every time.

What Tony Robbins’ quote made me realise is that I was failing because none of these resolutions were connected to my long-term goals or vision.

I was in my twenties, and I believed I was immortal. It wasn’t until I reached my early thirties that three-day hangovers convinced me that I wasn’t immortal after all.

It wasn’t until I’d settled down, married and begun to see a life ahead of me that I started to wonder if I could control that life and the direction it would go in.

And yes, I could. And so can you. But you do need to know what kind of life you want to be living in ten or twenty years.

Hope is not a good strategy. It’s no good carrying on as you are and “hoping” you will one day reach the goals and the life you’ve always wanted to live.

To achieve that, you will need to take action.

To give you an example of what I mean.

I want to be active well into my eighties and nineties. I long admired Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh. He died in 2021, just a couple of months short of his 100th birthday. And yet he remained active throughout his eighties and nineties, being one of the hardest-working members of the Royal family.

The Queen allowed him to retire at 97.

How did Prince Philip maintain his strength and endurance?

He did something called the 5BX every morning for eleven minutes.

5BX is a series of body-weight exercises you can do anywhere that was developed by the Royal Canadian Air Force in the 1940s to keep their servicemen fit, healthy and strong.

I highly recommend you search for the original Royal Canadian Air Force instructional video on YouTube and watch it. It seems so quaint by today’s standards.

He also walked miles and miles every day, ate small portions of food based on a traditional balanced diet, limited his alcohol intake, and went to bed and woke up at the same time each day.

If we were to break that down into daily activities, it was simple and doable. Because he was able to do it every day—even when he was travelling—it meant there were few excuses he could use not to do it.

You wake up, and after a few minutes, do your 5BX session, shower, have a small, healthy breakfast, and get on with your day, taking every opportunity to walk. And you do it every day.

Tie that to going to bed and waking up at the same time each day, and you would be setting yourself up for a long, healthy, active life.

And in that, there is nothing complicated or time-consuming.

There are also no goals involved. It’s just a shift in your daily routine, so these activities become part of your daily routine.

Although I would suggest you use January as a “test”. Often, we read or listen to something, think it’s a good idea and then find that because of our circumstances, we struggle to make it work.

That doesn’t mean it cannot work. It means we need to rethink the routine and make a few changes so it works for us.

I remember reading Robin Sharma’s The 5 AM Club and thought it was a good idea. And it was a good idea in 2016. I could get to bed at a reasonable time.

Then I started my productivity work and coaching programme, and it became challenging to get to bed before midnight. Something had to change.

I realised that the power of the 5 AM Club was not in getting up at 5 AM. It was what you did when you woke up. So, the only thing I needed to change was my wake-up time. And ten years later, I still follow the morning routine I developed after reading that book.

Another example would be with your personal finances. Davie Ramsey’s book, The Total Money Makeover, gives a simple step-by-step approach to getting your personal finances in order.

The first is to build a starter emergency fund—usually around $1,000 to $5,000. Then pay off all non-mortgage debts as quickly as you can.

The third step is to build a longer-term emergency fund. That would be three to six months of living expenses.

And then to invest in your retirement and live on less than you earn.

Within that framework, there would be a few key things you could do. For example, try to save the starter emergency fund in 2026 and pay down some of your shorter-term debts.

Around those areas, you could set some goals in 2026.

The bigger principle in The Total Money Makeover is to pay off all debts, including mortgages. That’s unlikely to be possible for most people in one year, but over ten years? It could be possible.

The good thing about something like this is that you can plan five or ten years ahead and set a goal to be completely debt-free by 2036.

Whether it’s health or finances, what you are doing is setting standards for how you live your life. You eat healthy, do some exercise each day, and live within your means.

And really, that’s what a new year should be all about. Not resolutions or goals, but reaffirming your standards. The standards you live your life by.

Standards don’t need motivation; they are just the way you live your life.

However, when setting your standards, you will likely need some help from motivation and self-discipline initially. There will be days when you forget to do something or cannot do it. That’s perfectly normal.

It’s not about hitting everything 100% of the time. That would be impossible anyway. I would suggest a monthly target of 80%+

A good example of this is when I travel to visit my parents. The trip from our home in Korea to where my parents live on the West Coast of Ireland takes about 26 hours door-to-door.

During that time, I am not able to go out for a run or to the gym. If my goal were to exercise every day, I would be setting myself up for failure before I begin. I travel to visit my parents at least once a year.

And if I were determined to do it, why put myself through that extra stress? Travelling is stressful enough.

Then there would be those occasions when I am ill or delayed when travelling domestically.

However, if my target was an 80% success rate, I’m in with a chance, and on those days when I’m exhausted or an emergency comes up, I wouldn’t be destroying my standards.

If you want to discover what is important to you in your life, I suggest you download my free Areas of Focus workbook. That workbook will take you through each of the eight areas of life we all share, help you define each one and then set some actionable steps you can take to keep your areas in balance.

It’s a great way to kick off a new year, as it will help you focus on what matters to you and identify areas where you can establish habits and standards that will be meaningful to you.

A new year is a wonderful opportunity to review how things are going in our lives and reflect on what we could change to get our lives back on the right track, living the life we want.

If you’re entirely new to this approach to a new year, don’t really know what your longer-term vision is, or aren’t clear on what is important to you in life, and you’re ready to make changes, I would recommend my Time and Life Mastery online course.

This is a complete package that will help you explore what is important to you. Once you have established those, I then show you how to build your standards into your daily life.

Plus, you get my complete mini-course library for free when you join. And if you act now, you can save 50% with my End of Year Sale offer using the coupon code “codisgreat” (all lowercase, and one word).

I’ll leave the details in the show notes for you.

Thank you for listening, and let me wish you an amazing 2026.

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

The Best Way to Get Consistent With Your Morning Routine

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 11:43:49 +0900

"The first ritual you do during the day is the highest leveraged ritual, by far, because it has the effect of setting the mind and setting the context for the rest of your day."

— Naval Ravikant or was it Eben Pagan? I don’t know, but it’s a great quote to begin today’s episode.

Links:

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Use the coupon code: codisgreat to get 50% off.

Script | 398

Hello, and welcome to episode 398 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Your morning routine is one of the best ways to create a productive day.

If you were to wake up at the very last moment, rush around your home getting ready while trying to sip your hot coffee, and rush out the door to catch the train to work, you’ve started the day in a stressed state, and you’re likely to stay stressed all day.

It’s not a great way to begin the day.

If you were to start the day with a set of routines that you follow every day, two things would happen.

The first is that you have no decisions to make, which preserves your decision-making powers—powers that diminish throughout the day. And the second is that the routine itself allows you to slow down.

However, as with all things good for us, we can take it to extremes, which can create stress in itself.

I remember in 2017, I began doing Robin Sharma’s 5 AM Club. This is where you wake up at 5:00 AM, do twenty minutes of sweaty exercise, twenty minutes of planning, and twenty minutes of learning.

It’s a great routine, but unfortunately for me, in 2018, I began coaching, which meant I was doing calls late at night, significantly reducing the sleep I was getting.

I found myself walking around all day like a zombie.

I decided to stop doing the 5 AM Club routine and develop my own, which I’ve stuck with for seven years now, and I still love my mornings.

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

This week’s question comes from Teagan. Teagan asks, In my morning routine, I take care of my pets, check my home budgeting app, then have breakfast and coffee while doing my email sort. My daily planning is done the night before. The problem is that I don't want to transition to getting dressed and starting work after doing this routine. It takes me 3 hours or more to get going. I'd like to do some physical activity, but this would make the morning even longer. Do you have any tips on moving more efficiently through the morning?

Hi Teagan, thank you for your question.

I think the simple answer would be to include getting dressed as part of your morning routine. However, before you get there, I think there may be an issue in your routine.

Three hours is too long for a morning routine.

Let me explain. Imagine you had a flight to catch at 7:00 AM. It takes you 90 minutes to get to the airport, and you need to allow 2 hours for check-in and getting to your gate.

That would mean you need to leave your house at 3:30 AM.

If your morning routine takes three hours, you would need to start your day at 12:30 AM. Therefore, dangerously reducing your sleep time.

Most people think of doing their morning routines when everything is normal. Unfortunately, “normal” is not a consistent state of affairs for most of us. It may happen 90% of the time, but when we develop our morning routines, we need to consider the 10% of days when it doesn’t and how we will start the day on those days.

The “perfect” morning routine is a routine you do 100% of the time.

This would be your starting point.

I’ve found that a morning routine of around 45 minutes is realistic. This means that even on days when you need to start your day earlier than usual, there are few excuses you can use not to do your routine.

Although hopefully you won’t need “excuses” for not doing it.

Your morning routine should be something you look forward to doing. It gives you a reason to jump out of bed, not crawl out.

It should be built around things you enjoy doing. To give you an example, my morning routine is:

Wake up and put the kettle on.
Drink a glass of lemon juice water while the kettle is boiling.
Make a pot of Yorkshire Tea.
Wash my face and brush my teeth.
Then, sit down at my desk, with my mug of tea, open my journal and begin writing.
Finally, open my email and clear my inbox.

In total, that takes me about 40 to 50 minutes. It depends on how much I write in my journal.

As I know my routine won’t take any longer than 50 minutes, I can confidently decide when to set my wake-up time.

For example, on a Monday, I have a call at 7:00 am; therefore, I wake up at 6:00 am. Other days, I can wake up at my preferred time of 8:00 am.

Last summer, we needed to leave for the airport at 5:00 am. This meant on that day, I woke up at 4:00 am and was ready to go at 5:00 am.

I don’t include getting dressed in my morning routine. I get dressed as my tea is brewing after I’ve washed my face and brushed my teeth.

The purpose of your morning routine is to mentally prepare you for the day ahead. It’s not to create more stress.

I love writing my journal and that first cup of tea of the day. When my alarm goes off in the morning, it’s often the first thing I think about, and I do jump out of bed—much to Louis’s annoyance—he’s not a morning dog.

Robin Sharma recently posted his “new” four-hour morning routine on YouTube. It’s a superb, inspiring and motivational routine, yet completely impractical for most people.

You don’t need a four-hour morning routine to get the benefits of the morning routine.

Some people love exercise in the morning, others don’t. That doesn’t mean that those who don’t like exercise in the morning miss out.

For a morning routine that works for you, start with what you love doing.

You mentioned your pets. If your pets like to go out in the morning, and it’s something you enjoy doing, then you can build that into your morning routine. However, if it’s just refilling water bowls and giving them breakfast, you could use that as the trigger to start your routine.

The trigger is the first thing you do in the morning.

For me, that’s putting the kettle on; for others, it could be a visit to the bathroom or letting their dog out.

The trigger should be something you automatically do without thinking. This is similar to what James Clear calls “habit stacking”. It’s the first in a series of activities that start the stack.

So how do you transition from your morning routines to the start of your day?

This will depend on whether you work from home or go to an office.

If you work from home, the last activity of your morning routine should automatically transition you.

For example, clearing my email inbox is the last activity of my routine, and it smoothly transitions me into my first task of the day.

Today, that was to write this script.

Now, why do I clear my email first? I protect the first 30 minutes of my day for emergencies or urgent requests. So, today I began at 8:00 am and started writing this script at 9:30 am. 9:30 am is usually when my focus time starts.

If there’s an email that requires an urgent response, I have time to deal with it without it distracting me while I am focusing on my most important work of the day. It clears my head and reassures me there’s nothing more important than doing that first task.

If you work in an office, the last activity in your routine should be leaving for work. You know when you need to leave for work, so you have a reference point you can use to decide when you should be waking up.

The definition of a routine is something that you do consistently, often without thinking. I’ve been doing my morning routines for seven years, and I frequently find myself sitting at my desk writing in my journal, wondering how I got there.

I know I’ve followed my routines. I have a cup of hot tea next to me, and I am dressed. These routines are ingrained into how I begin each day.

One thing I do, though, that may help you, Teagan, is I lay out my clothes before I go to bed. When I wake up, my clothes are there right in front of me—no decision to make. Just put them on and start my day.

Having your clothes laid out ready for you in the morning may mean that you need a small end-of-day routine.

While you may not have a formalised closing-down routine, one thing you can do as you get ready for bed is to lay out your clothes for tomorrow morning after you’ve brushed your teeth.

Then, in the morning, you’ve reduced the resistance to getting dressed and starting the day.

So there you go, Teagan. I would first suggest you look at your morning routines and see where you could reduce them so they don’t last more than an hour. Think about those days when you may need to wake up early—could you still complete your morning routines?

Make sure what you have in your routines are things you love doing. If you don’t love doing them, your morning routines will become a chore. Not the best way to start your day.

And for getting dressed, set out your clothes the evening before so you reduce the resistance when you wake up.

I hope that has helped. Thank you for your question, Teagan, and thank you to you too for listening.

This podcast will be on a break next week, so let me wish you a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive end to 2025.

Overcoming Project Freeze: How to Start When You Feel Stuck

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 12:18:44 +0900

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

That was President John Kennedy in 1961, speaking at the Joint Session of Congress. It is possibly the best example of a project statement ever made.

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Script | 397

Hello, and welcome to episode 397 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Starting projects. It can be tough. Where do you start? Where will you find the time? And what do you need to do?

These are just some of the questions you will find yourself asking.

Yet the biggest obstacle to completing a project on time is overthinking and over-planning. Thinking about and planning a project are not the same as working on one. Working on a project is doing something that moves it forward.

Decorating your bedroom will require paint and brushes. The only pre-project decision you need to make is what colour.

The first two steps, therefore, are:

Decide what colour to paint the bedroom
Buy paint and brushes

I would add a third decision: when. When will you do it?

Once you’ve done those three things, you’re ready to go—no more planning, no more thinking. Just get on and start.

Yet, that’s not how most projects go, is it? There’s thinking, planning, then creating tasks in your task manager, and if it’s a work project, a meeting, then perhaps another meeting.

Often, by the time a project is conceived, 80% of the time required to complete it gets spent on thinking, planning, and meetings.

And that brings us nicely to this week’s question—a question about finding ways to reduce the thinking and planning time.

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

This week’s question comes from Phil. Phil asks, “Hi Carl, how do you work on complex projects?” I find I spend a lot of time planning a project, end up with a long list of things to do, and when it comes to starting, I freeze. It’s as if I don’t know where to start. Do you have any tips on handling this type of problem?

Hi Phil, thank you for your question.

“Project freeze” is a common problem for many people. I suspect this stems from the belief that every aspect of a project needs to be planned before starting. Yet, for many projects, this would be impossible.

Imagine you were part of NASA in May 1961, and you’d just heard President Kennedy’s speech at the joint session of Congress about why the US should put a man on the moon and bring him back safely to earth before the end of the decade.

At that time, NASA was struggling to get even the smallest of rockets into space—the idea of sending astronauts to the moon and back was a pipe dream.

Yet a group of incredible people at NASA in 1961 took on the challenge. Instead of planning every single step they thought would be needed to complete the project, they looked at what they already knew, the obstacles they would need to overcome, and the first steps.

That gave birth to the Mercury space mission. The Mercury programme was not to put a man on the moon; its objectives were to orbit a crewed spacecraft around Earth, study the human ability to function in space, and ensure the safe recovery of both the astronaut and the spacecraft.

Before they could reach the moon, they needed to understand how humans cope in space. So the project’s objective was to send a man into Earth’s orbit.

The key was to get started, and they did this by listing out the obstacles they needed to overcome first. They then worked out how to remove those obstacles.

Now, I know our projects are unlikely to be as big as sending someone to the moon and back, but we can adopt the same approach that NASA used to work on our projects.

Even small projects can adopt this approach. Let’s say you were asked to do a presentation on the likely effects of AI on your company’s business over the next five years. Where would you start?

For something like this, there would be several phases.

The first would be to research and gather information. For this, the task would likely be to find out who to ask or what to read.

Okay, when will you do this?

Here’s the key point. It’s no good just deciding what needs to be done first. You need to make it intentional, and to do that, you will need to set aside time to do it.

Perhaps you decide to give yourself an afternoon to research this.

Research is a challenge in itself. We can go down rabbit holes that bring no meaningful insights into what we are trying to do. Yet, we can also underestimate how much time is required for research. So the first step is to do an initial session of research to help you develop some boundaries.

You might be lucky and find that the first research session gives you everything you need to start the presentation. However, if not, and you discover you need to do more research, then when will you do that?

One thing you can do with creating a presentation is to set up your PowerPoint or Keynote file. Create the document, do the first slide and perhaps set the theme colours.

Having a document started makes it much easier to get into creating the presentation.

The danger of listing out all the things you think you need to do to complete the project is that 80% of what you think needs to be done doesn’t, and you will find that 80% of what ends up being done were things you never thought of in the first place.

All you really need is a starting point.

I recently did a video on how to write a book. The number one reason people who want to write but never do write a book is that they overthink and plan it.

Thinking and planning do not produce a book.

The best way to write a book is to get the first draft written as fast as you can. All that is required is a few ideas about what you want to write about. From there, you start writing the first draft.

The first draft will be the worst state your book will ever be in. It’s meant to be messy, unstructured and occasionally unreadable.

But, once you have a first draft, you have around 80,000 words you can manipulate, craft and organise into a best seller. Without that first draft, you have nothing but a few ideas.

How do you write a first draft? Set aside time each day to write. An hour or two every day for eight weeks will give you your first draft.

As you write, new ideas will form, and you can make a note of those along the way. That will make your editing easier.

The common denominator with any project is to get started. Everything has a starting point. Wherever that is, start there.

It’s as you are working on the project that your next steps reveal themselves.

When I first began creating online courses, I had no idea what I was doing. But what I did have was fifteen years of teaching experience, and I knew how to create a lesson plan.

I also knew what I wanted to create an online course on. So I could create a lesson plan and a topic. That was where I started.

Once I had a lesson plan, I realised I needed a storyboard of sorts to help me break the course down into lessons. That evolved into the outline I have written for every course I have created since.

Now, after eight years of creating courses, I have a process I follow. All I need is a topic and time to plan, outline, record, edit and post. (Five steps)

On big projects, many tasks are completed before the project ends. Yet, if you were to try to predict what needs to be done at the start, you will find you are wasting a lot of time.

NASA had no idea whether a human being could survive in space. What they did know was that they needed to develop a reliable rocket to get them into space. So, they began with that. Without the rocket, it didn’t matter whether a human could survive in space or not. There would have been no way of getting them there.

In 1962, NASA didn’t know that they would need software to keep the spacecraft on the right trajectory. There was no way they could have planned for that at that point. It was only when they began working on the Gemini programme that they realised software would be needed.

Without paint and brushes, it wouldn’t matter what colour you wanted to paint your bedroom.

In many ways, when you’re working on a large, complex project, you’re solving problems as you go along. Yet, there’s always going to be a starting point.

Another thing about bigger projects is setting a deadline.

Because we are not sure how long a large project will take to complete, it can be tempting to set an unrealistic deadline. Three months to complete a project that realistically would take twelve.

This is why setting up the project’s stages will help you.

What’s the first stage? Give yourself a realistic time frame to complete that first stage. The information you gather during that first stage will guide you with the deadlines for the next stage.

I would also take another leaf from NASA’s book. President Kennedy said, “before the decade is out”. Given that he made this speech in 1961, NASA had around 9 years to complete the project. Yet it was not absolute.

Theoretically, the deadline was 31 December 1969, but the actual deadline was a grey area until NASA got closer to achieving the goal.

Deadlines are good as they bring energy to the project. Yet, unrealistic deadlines bring nothing but stress to a project.

I know an online course will take me about 6 weeks to complete. I know the process, and I’ve learned from experience that the whole process takes six weeks.

If I were to stop doing all my other work, close my calendar to appointments and work solidly for fourteen hours a day for two weeks, I might be able to complete the course in two weeks, but all I would have is a lot of stress. Not pleasant.

Six weeks gives me time to bring the course to life, check things, and make sure everything fits together.

And the final part of developing any project is to be clear about your outcomes.

I refer you back to the opening quotation from President Kennedy:

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

A perfect project outcome statement. It’s clear about the objective, and there is a timeline. There was nothing else for NASA to know.

President Kennedy didn’t have the skills or knowledge to do this himself; that was for the scientists and engineers to work out.

Something they did with magnificent effort on the 20th July 1969.

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

The Chaos Trap: How to Reclaim Control in a Busy Environment

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 11:42:17 +0900

"In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention." — Pico Iyer

How do you feel when you have nothing to do but enjoy your surroundings? Where nothing is urgent, and you can enjoy the moment you are in?

Never felt it? Maybe that’s a problem you need to fix. Today’s world makes us feel that everything must be done now, yet it doesn’t. If you were to slow down, step back from time to time to think, you’d get a lot more important things done and eliminate much of what is unnecessary.

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Script | 396

Hello, and welcome to episode 396 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Slow down. There, I’ve said it.

If there were one distinguishing characteristic of those who control how they spend their time and when, it would be that they are slow.

Not in a negative way, more in an intentional way. They meet their deadlines, are never late for appointments and have clearly had time to read through the meeting preparation notes.

Even in one of the most stressful occupations, that of being a special forces soldier, they are trained to slow down. The US Navy SEALs have the expression “slow is smooth. Smooth is fast”, and I know from talking with former members of the UK Special Forces that a large part of their training is focused on slowing down and being deliberate with their actions.

Of course, the problem here is that when you’re faced with twelve urgent Teams messages, you have five missed calls from an important customer, and your next appointment is about to start, the last thing your instincts will tell you to do is to slow down.

Yet it is precisely in those situations that slowing down and being intentional about what you do next is what you do.

Slowing down calms your over-anxious mind, and when your mind is calm, you make better, more rational decisions.

And slowing down is what this week’s question is all about. So, to kick us off, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Hanna. Hanna asks, Hi Carl, I work in a very busy Pharmaceutical company, and from the moment I step through the door at work, it feels like chaos. My phone never seems to stop ringing, and my Teams feed looks like it’s alive. It’s always moving! The day’s a blur. What can I do to slow things down and regain some control?

Hi Hanna. Thank you for your question.

One of the things I’ve learned is that we do have control over the speed of the day. I know often it feels like we don’t, but we do.

The reason is that we always have choices, even when it often feels like we don’t.

You can choose to answer your phone or let it run to voicemail. You can choose to answer those urgent Teams messages immediately or not, and you can choose to go to the staff rest area and make yourself a nice cup of tea.

Unfortunately, it’s natural for us to head straight into the storm of those phone calls and messages. And when we do that, we start conditioning ourselves to do it consistently.

Yet maybe the best thing you can do is pause, make that cup of tea, and strategically plan your approach.

This is often what I call the tactical retreat. Step back, pause, and look at what’s currently on your plate and your most important tasks for the day.

However, you will only be able to do that if you can move from being a firefighter to becoming a fire prevention officer.

Firefighters charge straight into every issue with only one intention: putting the fire out. Fire prevention officers: pause, look at the bigger picture, and seek ways to prevent the fires from starting in the first place.

In all companies, you need both types of people. You’re not going to prevent every crisis or urgent issue. Yet many can be prevented.

I gave one example in last week’s episode.

If you have ten equally urgent messages to reply to, you’re going to have to choose which one to respond to first.

If you don’t have a process or a strategy for handling that situation, you will panic. Panicking slows you down because the act of panicking creates a lot of activity, yet nothing happens to deal with the messages.

The strategy I suggested was to use the first-in-first-out approach. Deal with the oldest first. This way, even if the last message you received is from your angry boss, at least you won’t have to deal with eight angry customers as well.

And let’s be honest, if you were to give yourself fifteen minutes to deal with these messages, nobody would be waiting more than fifteen minutes for your response.

There is one trick you can use every day that will help you slow things down. That is to protect the first thirty minutes of the day to get a handle on the day.

Hopefully, you won’t have a crisis every day, but those first thirty minutes give you a chance to review your Teams messages, emails, and your plan for the day. You can also speak with your colleagues to see what’s happening and deal with anything urgent that popped up at the start of the day.

More often than not, you won’t need the full thirty minutes, but you have it protected, and on the days you don’t need it, you can make yourself that lovely cup of tea.

Another trick is to give yourself a proper screen break between work sessions.

Now, this will depend on the kind of work you do. If you were a graphic designer, an accountant or a journalist, a lot of your work would be spent sitting in front of a computer screen.

If you were to stop after ninety minutes, get up, and walk somewhere for ten minutes without a screen, that screen break would give you time to stop and think.

That thinking might be what element you can add or remove from the design you are creating, or where to place a particular paragraph in the article you are currently writing.

Getting away from your screen allows your brain to relax. It’s when your brain is relaxed that you make better, more rational decisions.

Yet, when we are under deadline pressure, stepping away for ten minutes is often the last thing we feel we should do.

When you return, allow yourself 20 minutes to address any messages that may have come in while you were locked away doing focused work.

Sometimes I find it helpful to look at the messages before I take the ten-minute break. That way, I can think about the responses while I’m relaxed.

If you’ve found yourself reacting without thinking all the time, and from the moment you wake up, it feels like you’re go-go-go, that may be a sign you need to retrain your brain to slow down.

The best way to do this is to set aside 30 to 45 minutes each morning. This time must be focused on you. Not your partner or kids. It’s time dedicated to yourself.

You could write a journal or develop a slow, deliberate morning coffee ritual. Perhaps you could add some light stretching or go out for a morning walk.

As long as it’s focused on you and the things you enjoy doing, you’ll find that this morning routine helps to rewire your brain to slow down.

Now for an unusual one.

Avoid unnecessary conveniences.

Part of the Reason we all feel rushed today is the speed at which things can be done. We can order home-delivered food, have our laundry picked up and delivered clean and ironed, order our weekly supermarket shop online, and have it delivered straight to our door later that day or the next.

Convenient, yes. Good for us, no.

I recently saw a video about why people in the UK began gaining weight alarmingly from around the late 1970s onwards.

Yes, there was a shift in our diet. In 1979, Marks and Spencer introduced their first ready meal. It was their famous chicken Kiev, and it sparked a revolution in how families cooked.

The M&S chicken Kiev was introduced at around the same time microwave ovens began taking off, and suddenly people were eating ready-made meals.

No more “real” cooking. Boiling vegetables, cooking meat, it was pre-packaged and additive-riddled food that could be cooked in less than ten minutes.

Then there were more and more convenient ways to travel. People stopped walking to the shops. People working in offices would walk the two metres to their car in the morning, drive to their office, park in the underground carpark, and walk the five metres to the lift (elevator) to arrive at their office, having walked no more than ten metres.

Then to spend the rest of the day sitting behind a desk.

All in the name of convenience.

Yet, this convenience is causing us to speed up.

Walking is one of the best ways for us to slow down. It’s one reason why studies show owning a dog can reduce stress and improve health. Dogs need walking. For me, walking Louis is one of my favourite times of the day. I get to think without a screen, get some fresh air and relax.

And given that Louis will stop and investigate every tree and lamp post, it’s a slow walk.

And the final tip is to plan your day before you finish the day.

In other words, give yourself ten to fifteen minutes before you close out the day to review your appointments for tomorrow, curate your task list for the day based on how much time you have between meetings, and allow for the unknowns—there are some.

Then pick your two must-do tasks, make sure they are highlighted and stop.

You cannot do everything in one day, but doing a little often moves things forward, and soon things you thought would take hours are almost complete.

Yet, in my experience, the most significant cause of our feeling that we have no control over our day or time is the way many people are chained to a screen.

The current statistics indicate that over 7 hours a day are spent in front of a screen (and that does not include TVs).

The problem here is that messages, emails, news alerts and much more are a constant stream. The more time you spend looking at your screen, the more anxiety you feel that you are falling behind with everything. When this happens, you are no longer in control; instead, your devices are controlling you.

Yet if you were to go out for a twenty-minute walk after lunch, or do your own grocery shopping each week, you would find yourself slowing down naturally.

Add that to perhaps reading a real book in the evening and spending 30 to 40 minutes in the morning doing yoga, meditation, or journaling. You’ll find that much of the speed anxiety many of you feel will start to disappear.

As for walking into your workplace and getting caught up in the rush of things, take a deep breath, make sure you know what your two most important items of work for that day are, and between sessions of work, get up, move around, make yourself some tea or coffee and think about what one thing you need to do next.

I hope that helps, Hanna. Thank you for your question, and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.

Is Time Management Actually a Waste of Time?

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 12:55:30 +0900

"The mind is like water. When it's turbulent, it's hard to see. When it's calm, everything becomes clear." — Kobe Bryant

Kobe Bryant was definitely onto something when he spoke those words. If you’re not in control of your commitments and have no idea what needs to be done next, you’re going to be stressed. And stress, like turbulent water, makes it hard to see where you should be spending your time.

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Script | 395

Hello, and welcome to episode 395 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

What’s the point of learning how to be more productive and to be better at managing our time? Are we not just shuffling work around—work that will need to be done at some point anyway?

Well, yes and no.

Historically, people went to work, often in factories, where they performed repetitive manual labour. When their workday finished, they “downed tools”, clocked out and went home. As there were no TVs or smartphones, people often played cards or board games with their families, read books or went to the pub.

It was easy to leave work at work. It was easy to manage our time. There was personal time and work time, and the two did not mix.

Today, it’s very different. Most of you listening to this podcast will likely be working in what is commonly called “knowledge work’ jobs. You’re not hired for your muscles. You’re hired for your brain.

And this causes us a problem. Manual labour meant you did a hard day’s work, and when you went home, you could forget about work. In knowledge work, it’s not so easy to stop your brain from thinking about a work problem.

I remember when I worked in a law firm, I caught the bus home and often spent most of the journey thinking about an issue with a client and trying to figure out the simplest way to solve the problem. In the past, people would have looked forward to getting home to their families.

When you’re mentally distracted in that way, it’s hard for you to switch off and enjoy that time with your family and friends.

Today, it also means there’s no barrier—except our own willpower—to sending an email or a Teams message at any time of the day or night.

In the past, the factory gates were locked, or someone else was doing your job on the night shift. It wasn’t possible to work beyond your regular working hours.

Time management was much easier. Not so today.

And that nicely leads us to this week’s question. And that means it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice.

This week’s question comes from Michael. Michael asks, Hi Carl, I’ve spent years struggling with time management, and it’s got to the point where I think there’s no point. As hard as I try, there’s always something that needs to be done, and I never get a chance to finish anything and end up with everything being urgent. Is there any point to all this time management and productivity stuff?

Hi Michael, thank you for your question.

In many respects, you might be right that managing time, or at least trying to, is a waste of time. (I think there might be a pun there)

As I alluded to, with knowledge work and the explosion of communication tools over the last few years, things that could have waited a day or two now seem to have to be dealt with immediately.

It’s not that the task is suddenly urgent; it’s a combination of people’s expectations and the delivery system.

The problem here is that no matter how fast the delivery system becomes—or other people’s expectations— we are human. We can still only do one thing at a time. That is not going to change in our lifetime.

And that’s where to start—understanding that you, as an individual, can only work on one thing at a time.

In other words, if you have ten equally urgent messages to reply to, you’re going to have to choose which one to respond to first.

Now, you could come up with a complex, convoluted system for deciding which message to respond to first, or you could adopt a more straightforward first-in-first-out approach. Start with the oldest and work your way through your list of messages.

What are we talking about here—perhaps a ten-minute delay for you to get to a particular message? Does ten minutes really matter? You’re not trying to save someone’s life in an emergency room, are you?

Messages are often more time-sensitive than emails, and I find that responding to them between work sessions works best.

For instance, if you were to protect 9:30 to 11:30 am for focused work. That’s two hours where you are technically not available. Once you finish that session, check your messages and respond to any that require a response.

When I set these barriers of doing undisturbed, focused work for two hours a day, I used to panic every time my phone dinged. I felt I had to respond immediately. Of course, that was not true. It never was, and it’s still not true for any of us today.

It took a few weeks to wean myself off panicking every time a message came in, but the results were fantastic. My productivity went through the roof, leading to fewer urgent tasks.

Our brains are not good at handling interruptions to the flow of work. I’ve seen studies showing that even a minor interruption can take you up to 18 minutes to refocus and get back to where you were before.

Think about that for a moment. Even if you were taking ten minutes to refocus and getting an average of six interruptions per day, you’ve lost an hour. Or to put it into a better perspective, that’s 12 ½ per cent of your work day gone. Wasted.

By responding to messages between work sessions, you avoid losing focus and get more work done in less time.

And it’s there that you will find fewer urgent tasks to do. Because you are getting more done in less time, you will be able to stay on top of projects and other work without getting too close to the deadline.

Another area that can make us feel that managing our time is a waste of time is focusing on the number of tasks rather than the time we have available.

Again, this is linked to the fragility of being human. We are affected by how much sleep we get, our mood, and our diet.

Have a bad night’s sleep, then a fight with your kids over the breakfast table and a sugary doughnut as a midmorning snack, and you’re not going to get a lot of work done.

You have a sleep debt, you’re worked up by the argument, and that doughnut is going to give you a massive energy crash.

This is why estimating how long a task will take is challenging.

I’ve been writing a 1,000-word blog post every week for around ten years now. You’d think I would be able to estimate reasonably accurately how long writing 1,000 words would take after writing over 500 blog posts.

Ha! No chance. Some days I can write the first draft in forty-five minutes, other days it can take me two hours.

The biggest effect on how long it will take me is sleep. If I get my seven hours, I know it’ll take me less than an hour. Less than six hours, and I’m struggling to do it in two hours.

A better approach is to allocate time for doing groups of linked tasks. For example, group all your actionable emails and set aside 40 to 60 minutes at the end of the day to deal with them.

This way, it doesn’t matter how many emails you have to act on; you do as many as you can in the time you have.

If you’re doing this every day, you’ll soon find you have no email backlogs.

What amazes me is the people who try this for a few days and give up because their huge backlog of actionable emails is not getting significantly smaller. Well, of course not. If you’re starting with six hundred actionable emails, it’s going to take you a long time to get that under control.

What you could do is set aside a one-off period to get that backlog under control first. Then set a time each day to keep it under control.

Or make sure you have a “net-gain” with your responses. For instance, if you get 20 actionable emails in a day, respond to at least 21. That’s a net gain. If you do that consistently over a few weeks, your backlog of actionable emails will reduce significantly.

You’re not going to lose the holiday weight you gained in a few days. It might have only taken you a few days to gain that weight, but it’s going to take you a few weeks, if not months, to lose it. (Life’s tough, isn’t it?)

Most of the reasons why so many people quit making necessary changes, whether in their work or personal life, are linked to the initial difficulty of change.

All change is difficult at first. You’re changing. But soon that change becomes your norm, and then it becomes easy. It becomes “just what you do”.

There’s a time and place for the things you want to or must do. This is where your calendar comes into play.

Scheduling time for play, rest and exercise is just as important as scheduling meetings with your clients or boss. Trouble is, we don’t do that. We prioritise work over other essential things in our lives.

As Jim Rohn said, “When you work, work. When you play, play. Don't mix the two”

Ask yourself, where’s your boundary? If you don’t have one, you’re not managing time; you’re allowing time to manage you.

There are many ways you can take control of your calendar.

You could, for example, limit the number of hours you spend in meetings each week. If you work a typical 40-hour week, you could set the maximum time you spend in meetings at 15 hours. That will leave you with 25 hours dedicated to doing your work tasks.

Most people I talk with have no idea how much time they are spending in meetings each week. They say “yes” to every meeting request. WOW! If you don’t have control of that, you’re “up the creek without a paddle”.

Managing time is about managing your calendar and doing the hard things, like saying no to additional meetings that won’t help you do your work.

This is one reason why the old-fashioned paper planners were so good. Because you had to handwrite your appointments into your diary, there was no way you could double-book yourself. Sadly, that one simple feature does not exist in digital calendars.

I’ve seen people with four appointments all scheduled at the same time. Come on, you cannot be in two meetings at once, let alone four!

You can also protect blocks of time for doing your most important work each day. It’s not difficult, and with shared calendars, doing so indicates to other people that you are not available at that time.

And most important of all, you can do a short daily planning session where you look at your calendar to see where your commitments are, then curate your to-do list so that the number of tasks you have for today is realistic, given how much non-meeting time you have.

Yet none of these are tool issues. These are human decisions we need to make, and we need to be strong enough to follow through with them. Blaming our boss, colleagues, customers, or tools won’t improve the situation.

Only by being strong enough to say “no, not then, how about this time”, can you ever regain control of your time and see a corresponding increase in your productivity.

So there you go, Michael. Time management and productivity systems can and do work, but they only work if you are willing to make the difficult choices that come with them.

Be consistent in trusting your calendar. Allow it to structure your day between your work and home life.

Don’t allow someone else’s “urgent” to become your urgent. Respond to messages appropriately, but within your time frames.

I hope that has helped, and thank you for your question. And thank you to you, too, for listening.

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

Stop Drifting: Turn Your 2026 Ideas Into Reality

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 12:35:16 +0900

Back in October, I gave you the five questions to ask yourself before 2026. In this special follow-up episode, I share with you what you can do with the list you have been building over the last two months.

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Script | 394

Hello, and welcome to episode 394 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Hopefully, you’ve started creating a list of things you want to change and or do in 2026. If not, it’s not too late.

If you missed that episode, the five questions are:

What would you like to change about yourself? This question is focused on you, your habits—good and bad.

What would you like to change about your lifestyle? This is about how you live, the material things, if you like, such as your home, car and other possessions that improve your lifestyle.

What would you like to change about the way you work? The professional question. Perhaps you want to learn more about AI, or change jobs and work from home, or maybe go back to working in an office.

What can you do to challenge yourself? What could you do that frightens you slightly? This question is designed to help you move out of your comfort zone.

What goals could you set for next year? Realistically, what could you accomplish next year that has alluded you?

The idea behind this exercise is to give you time to think a little deeper and discover where you are happy and where you feel things need to change.

Now, one thing you will find helpful is to go back to your Areas of Focus. There, you have your definitions of what family and relationships, health and fitness, career, lifestyle, self-development and others mean to you. Often, you will find that by reviewing these eight areas, you will find something you have neglected over the previous twelve months.

As I’ve been helping my coaching clients with this exercise, it’s surprising how many of them have discovered neglected areas. This is quite natural, given that once the year begins, we can easily get caught up in the day-to-day crises. Then we drift away from our good intentions.

In a perfect world, you would give yourself two months to reflect on these questions. To explore options and talk with your family. But don’t worry if you have not started yet. There’s still time to develop your thoughts and ideas.

Now, some people have asked me where best to capture these ideas.

Over the last two years, I’ve written these questions out in the back of my planning book. This book is always on or near my desk, and I have captured a lot more ideas this way than I ever did digitally.

So, my advice to you is: if you have not started this exercise, grab yourself a notebook, write the five questions as headings, and over the next few weeks, allow yourself to think about them and write down your ideas.

Right now, it’s less about what you write out and more about just getting everything written. And there’s a very good reason for this.

If you do this exercise over a few weeks, what you will discover is that a theme will develop.

Let me explain. Last year, I failed at getting back to fitness. During 2023, I reduced my exercise time to focus on writing Your Time Your Way. I also wasn’t very careful about what I ate, and as a consequence, my weight ballooned.

Last year was supposed to be the year I got back into shape, and I failed miserably.

So, last year, as I went through these questions and captured ideas, I soon found that health and fitness were common themes. This meant when I began 2025, my focus was to get back into shape and not repeat the mistakes I made in 2024.

And it worked. I went from touching 88 kilograms (around 195 pounds) in January to where I wanted it to be—80 kilograms (around 176 pounds) by the middle of July.

To do that, I needed to change a few habits. Moving more and locking in a consistent exercise time were the obvious ones, but I also looked at my diet and removed all processed foods, replacing them with natural foods—real vegetables, fruit, and fresh meat.

Given that around Christmas and the end of the year are quiet times for me, I reviewed my calendar and moved a few things around to accommodate my new routine.

Another example, I remember two years ago, a client of mine was struggling to grow her side business. It was causing her a lot of frustration.

One idea she wrote down was to work harder on her business in the evenings, but every time she looked at that, she felt that was unrealistic, given that she had two sons, one aged three and the other five.

As we were talking about this, I asked her if she’d spoken with her husband about him possibly taking responsibility for the kids a few nights a week so she could “disappear” and work in her business.

She hadn’t. So her “homework” that week was to discuss with her husband. The result was fantastic. He agreed to take full responsibility for the boys Monday through Friday, leaving her undisturbed time in the evening to work on her business.

Within six months, she was able to give up her full-time job and work solely on her own business. That reduced the need for her to work on her business in the evenings, and she returned to what many would describe as a normal work/life balance.

Yet none of this would have happened had she not spent some time thinking about the five questions. She would have carried on as before and become increasingly frustrated.

The theme she discovered was that she desperately wanted her side business to succeed, but to do so, she needed to spend more time on it. Time she thought she did not have.

As I’ve been going through my questions this year, I’ve seen a theme emerge: Less but better.

Now I have a history with this quote from Dieter Rams, the celebrated industrial designer behind the German company Braun. He’s been one of my design heroes for many years, and his Ten Principles of Good Design philosophy is ingrained in my thinking about everything I produce.

Less but better bleeds into every area of my life, not just my professional life. For example, I have added to do a big clothes throw-out at the end of the year, leaving myself only with quality clothing made entirely of natural fibres—cotton, leather and wool.

These clothes and shoes are often more expensive than their man-made fibre equivalents, but they are also generally of a higher quality and last considerably longer.

So own fewer clothes, boots, and shoes, but better-quality items.

On a professional front, we’ve all heard a lot about how AI may, or may not, change the way we work. There’s a lot of hype around at the moment, and it’s not easy to see what’s realistic and what is fantasy.

However, what’s real is that AI is here and not going away. So, what could you do to keep up to date on what AI can do?

Maybe you could take a course, read a book, or do some self-learning beyond using ChatGPT or Claude to answer questions you used to ask Google.

Now, this may overlap with your self-development focus. It’s certainly a fascinating topic to learn, and in doing so, you may find that you can save yourself a lot of time by creating a process that AI does automatically for you.

The reason many people struggle to find what they really want is that life gets in the way. Family and professional demands pull our attention all over the place, and when we do stop, we’re exhausted and just want to flop into the easy chair, open our phones, and scroll through social media or the news.

One or two days like that is no problem, but it can rapidly become a habit, and we drift far from where we want to be.

Having a plan or a goal for the year gives you a roadmap for when you do become distracted and perhaps a little lost. You can use your weekly planning sessions to review your year-long plan, or, if you’re doing well, review it every 3 to 6 months.

If you’ve been working on this since October, now’s the time to begin filtering down your list. If you’ve found a theme or a few connected ideas, these will likely be the ones you highlight as potential goals to set.

This brainstorming exercise will generate many ideas, which will be too many to accomplish in 12 months. What you want to be doing now is looking for the ones that excite you and, more importantly, are realistic goals for the next 12 months.

Remember, you don’t have to do all of what you wrote. You can keep this list in your digital notes by scanning your notebook pages into a note titled “Annual Planning 2025.” Then next October, you can come back to the list to see if you can move anything onto your 2027 list.

Over time, you create an extraordinary archive of ideas you’ve had over the years, and you will see how much you are accomplishing—you really are.

While I haven’t filtered down my list yet, I’m already excited about 2026. It’s going to be focused on less but with a lot more quality.

You will make decisions, experience setbacks and failures, and face frustrations, but by the end of 2026, I know you will be further ahead than you are today. And that’s what it’s all about.

Now go on and break open that notebook and ask yourself the five questions:

What do you want to change about yourself?
What do you want to change about your lifestyle?
What would you like to change about the way you work?
What can you do to challenge yourself?
What goals could you set for next year?

Good luck, and thank you for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very productive week.

Why "Disciplined People" Don't Feel Disciplined

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 14:21:22 +0900

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going."

That’s a quote from one of my favourite people, and a friend of this podcast, Jim Rohn.

Listening to one of his lectures—for that is what they were—in 2017 changed my life, and I hope this episode will change yours. Let’s get started.

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Script | 393

Hello, and welcome to episode 393 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Discipline is unsustainable. You probably have discovered that. Yet there are many people we look at and see someone living what many would describe as a disciplined life.

So how do they do it?

Well, I can promise you it’s not discipline. Discipline is like a rocket used when launching a spacecraft—it’s required initially to get the spacecraft off the ground, but once in orbit, the rocket can be discarded. Then the balance between forward velocity and the Earth’s gravitational pull maintains the spacecraft in orbit.

And that’s how these outwardly “disciplined” people do it. They decide what it is they want to accomplish—healthy eating, regular exercise, journal writing, daily and weekly planning, etc. And then they “launch”.

A lot of effort and focus is required initially, but after a few weeks, their forward velocity—or the habit—takes over and it becomes something they just do.

And you can do the same. And this week’s question is about how to go from an idea to turning that idea into something you will “just do”.

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

This week’s question comes from Anna. Anna asks, Hi Carl, for the last three or four years, I have done your Annual Planning exercise. And each year, I fail to accomplish the things I set out to do. I feel I don’t have the discipline to keep my commitments. There’s always something else that gets in the way. How do you help people start to live a more disciplined life?

Hi Anna, thank you for your question.

As I alluded to a moment ago, it’s not really about discipline. That’s a fuel that will run out eventually. Sure, it can get you started, but if you don’t develop the habit or routine over a few weeks, the consistency you want will slip away, and you’re back at square one.

The problem with discipline—and, for that matter, motivation—is that they rely on the human condition. For discipline, you need willpower. Willpower diminishes throughout the day.

You start with strong willpower, and as the day goes on, that power slowly wears down. But it is also dependent on how much sleep you got, whether you are in a good or bad mood, whether you are stressed or anxious, and the people around you.

You may have heard the advice to ditch your “toxic friends”. They are the ones who keep pulling you down to their level. If someone were attempting to give up smoking, the advice given is to stay away from their smoking friends.

If you surround yourself with people who hate exercise and you decide, for example, you want to take up the “from couch to 5K” programme, you’re not going to find a lot of support from the people you surround yourself with. They have become what is known as “toxic friends”.

Instead of thinking you need discipline to achieve the things you want to achieve, look at what you can do to make achieving your goals easier.

Imagine you decided you wanted to read more books. Many people will set the goal to read a certain number of pages or chapters each day. This method requires immense discipline to maintain consistency.

You see, people often set these goals when they are rested, unstressed, and motivated. What you need to think about is what a realistic target would be if you were tired, unmotivated, and just wanted to curl up and scroll through your phone.

A better approach would be to set a time target. For example, one of my clients wanted to finish reading the pile of books in his home office this year. He had around thirty-five books he’d bought, and they were real books, not ebooks.

I suggested to him that he set a target of reading for 20 minutes every evening before going to bed. This, he felt, was realistic on days he was tired out.

Speaking to him last week, he said he had discovered that on most days he read for well over 45 minutes, and on some days he read for over an hour.

Over the course of 2025, he’s only missed two days—and those days were when he was at home, but was away on a business trip.

He finished reading the books by the end of August. He’s now buying books again and is confident he’ll stay on top of them.

What happened here was that my client set a realistic goal based on the worst-case scenario rather than the best-case scenario. On most days, he exceeded his set minimum, which meant he finished his goal well before the deadline.

Another factor in his success here was the set time in the evening before going to bed. That gave him an anchor point.

This is why I recommend that people who wish to write a journal do it in the morning rather than in the evening. You have more control over the morning than you do the evening. And it’s a great way to begin your day with a nice cup of tea or coffee, and a place to write down your thoughts and feelings before the day gets going.

You can add to your journal in the evening if you wish, but if you want to be consistent in writing, you will find that starting your day with your journal will help you write every day.

I remember back in July when we went to Ireland to see my parents. There were my wife and my parents-in-law, and we stayed at my wife’s aunt’s house the night before, since she lived close to the airport and our flight was early the next morning.

Waking up at 4 am with everyone running around, making sure they had everything, didn’t feel appropriate for me to write my journal at that point. So I skipped it. However, by the time we got to the airport, went through security, and settled in to wait for our flight, I felt this urge to write. So, I found a small coffee shop, got a coffee and sat down to write.

The sense of relief I felt after writing my journal left me relaxed and ready for the long travels ahead.

There was no need for discipline or motivation. It had become something I do every morning, and when I don’t, something feels wrong.

And that’s what you are trying to do. Turning whatever it is you want to do consistently into your way of life.

This is why brushing your teeth when you wake up and before you go to bed is automatic. You learn to do it when you are young, and after a lot of nagging from your parents, it soon becomes automatic. The thought of going out in the morning without brushing your teeth probably leaves you horrified.

But if you stop and think about it, brushing your teeth in the morning is inconvenient. There’s a lot to do: get the kids ready for school, prepare their breakfast and get yourself ready. Three or four minutes in the bathroom, moving your arm from left to right… Argh! But you do it.

You don’t need motivation or discipline. You just do it. It’s a part of your life.

I was talking with a running friend of mine recently who wakes up at 6:00 am every morning, rain or shine, and goes out for his morning run at 6:30. I asked him if he ever considered staying in bed when the wind was howling outside and the rain was pouring down. He shuddered. The very thought of not going out for his morning run shocked him.

He doesn’t need discipline or motivation to get up and go for a run. His problem would be if the doctor told him to stay in bed for a few days. Then he’s really struggling because staying in bed is not his lifestyle.

All those people you look at and think, “Gosh, they are disciplined” —they never think they are. To them, whatever they do is just a part of their life.

I’m lucky because I have a dog. Dogs need exercise. They love walking. And Louis is no exception. It’s one of the highlights of his day. This means I need to find an hour each day to go for a walk with him. Yet, I don’t need any discipline to take him for his walk. It’s just something I do each day.

Similarly, at 4:30 pm, I do my exercise. 4:30 pm triggers the start of my evening routine. I exercise for an hour, take a shower, then go downstairs and cook dinner. I do this six days a week, with Saturday being the exception.

It never occurs to me not to go upstairs and exercise. If I’m not feeling great, I’ll do a lighter session; sometimes I may only do some stretching. But at 4:30, I know it’s time to stop work and exercise. It’s just what I do. It’s a part of my everyday routine.

Now, one more thing, Anna. A mistake many people make is trying to do too many things at once. When you do this, you are diluting yourself too much.

Remember, to accomplish anything, you will need some discipline and focus to begin with. You’re trying to do something that is not a part of your regular life, and it will feel uncomfortable at first.

I mentioned focus there because this is when you may need your calendar or task manager to nudge you for a few weeks—reminding you that you have something to do.

It’s easier to focus on one thing at a time.

A trick I started using—and found very effective—was to divide the year into quarters and start one new thing each quarter. This gave me three months to develop the necessary habits to turn whatever it was I wanted to change into a solid habit.

There’s no rush to accomplish these things. As Bill Gates said, “most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can accomplish in twelve months”

Focusing on one thing at a time means you need less focus and less time.

And finally, if you were trying to do a new activity every day, you’re likely to miss some days. Take the reading habit, if your goal is to read for twenty minutes every day, allow yourself some wriggle room.

Rather than thinking you failed because you missed a day, look at achieving an 80%+ success rate. It’s hard to start a new activity and be consistent with it at first. It’s likely you will forget or just not do the activity one day. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean you failed.

What matters is that you acknowledge the skip and get back to it the next day. That way, you’re not looking at it as a matter of success or failure; you see it as a work in progress, and a day or two missed is not final. It just means you need to refocus the next day.

I always think of those early weeks as experimental weeks. If I find that the time of day I try to do something doesn’t work, I can try other times until I find the right one when I can be consistent.

I hope that has helped Anna. Do let me know how you get on, and thank you for your question, and to you too for listening.

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

When Everything Falls Apart: How to Recover Your Productivity System

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 13:43:29 +0900

“When I was Leader of the Opposition in the UK and some time out from an election which we were expected to win, I visited President Clinton at the White House. As we began our set of meetings, he said: “Remind me to tell you something really important before you leave.”

I was greatly taken with this and assumed I was about to have some huge secret of state imparted to me.

As I was leaving, I reminded him. He looked at me very solemnly and said, “Whoever runs your schedule is the most important person in your world as a Leader. You need time to think, time to study and time to get the things done you came to leadership to do. Lose control of the schedule and you will fail.”

I confess I was a little underwhelmed at the time. But he was right.”

That’s an extract from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s book. On Leadership: Lessons for the 21st Century. And it’s perfect for the theme of this week’s episode—finding time to do the important things.

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Script | 392

Hello, and welcome to episode 392 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

It’s nice when our systems work. We follow our plans for the day and the week, and when we arrive at the end of the week and look back, 80% or more of what we set out to accomplish is crossed off.

Unfortunately, those weeks are rare—even for the most productive of people. There are far too many unknowns that will pop up each day and week for us to consistently get what we plan to do, when we plan to do it, done.

But that doesn’t mean that productivity systems are a waste of time. They are not. A solid productivity system keeps you focused on what’s important to you and gives you a way to prioritise what matters most.

And it doesn’t matter where you are in life. You might be nearing retirement and in the early stages of preparing your business for sale, or you could be starting out on a university graduate programme.

There will always be things to do, some important, some less so. The key is to remain consistent with your system so you know each week, you are nudging the right things forward, even if you’re not getting everything done.

And that leads me to this week’s question, AND… The Mystery Podcast Voice is back! So, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Serena. Serena asks, Hi Carl, I have implemented productivity systems to keep me on track with my academics as a graduate student, and they have worked well when I consistently followed the steps. The problem is that when I get stressed out, I fall behind on deadlines. When the weekends come, I just want to decompress and do nothing. What can I do to get back on track with the system and continue to practice good personal productivity practices?

Hi Serena, thank you for your question.

When I was at university, we had four core subjects each semester. It was on these that we would be expected to write essays and be examined on at the end of the academic year.

This is nice because from an organisational standpoint, class times will be predefined for you. They would go onto your calendar. These become your weekly commitments.

And while you may not know the deadlines for the essays at the start of the semester, you will know roughly when they will be due. That would be the same with your exams; you may not know the precise date of the exams at the start of the academic year, but you will know roughly when they will be held.

This is often the same for many of you in the workplace. You may know which quarter a project deadline falls in, but you may not know exactly which date the deadline will be.

One thing you do know, though, is that there is a deadline.

Now, whatever we are working on we all have four limitations to deal with. Time itself, there’s only 168 hours each week. The fact that you can only work on one thing at a time, our emotions—sometimes we’re just not “in the mood” —and, as humans, we get tired and need to take a break.

There’s nothing we can do about these four limitations.

You can “optimise” the human things though, ensuring you get sufficient sleep being the obvious one, and becoming as stoical as you can be in any given emotional situation (a lot easier said than done)

Given that one of the “fixed” limitations is time itself, the first place to lock down is your calendar. As you will likely know when your lectures will be, the area where your calendar becomes powerful is locking down your personal study times.

For example, if you have a two hour lecture on a Monday morning, and a second two hour lecture in the afternoon, there’s going to be a gap somewhere in the day that will give you an hour or two “free”.

My wife’s currently back at university, and on Wednesdays she has a lecture from 9:10 am to 11:00am. Her next lecture begins at 4:00 pm and runs until 5:50 pm. For her, Wednesdays are her study and homework days.

There’s a five hour gap between lectures and so she can go somewhere quiet and study for the next test (they love tests at my wife’s university)

She calls Wednesday her study day. She’ll often do another two hours of studying after dinner on a Wednesday too.

This goes to something called “theming”. Theming given days for specific activities.

We all do this to a certain degree. For many of you, Monday to Friday are work days and weekends are rest days. But you can go further.

I do this with my week. Monday and Tuesday are writing days, Wednesday is audio/visual day, and Saturday mornings are my planning and admin mornings.

This does not mean all I do on those days is write or record videos and podcasts; it means that the bulk of what I do on those days is in line with that day’s theme.

This goes back to the limitation of being able to do only one thing at a time. However, if you know that on a Tuesday you will study a particular subject, the only decision you will need to make is what you will study. This means you avoid being overwhelmed by choice.

It’s Tuesday, so it’s anatomy day. That’s your theme, you study anatomy, for example.

Now, if you find yourself falling behind, there are a number of things you can do.

The most effectively one is to stop. Grab a piece of paper, a pen or pencil, and a highlighter, and write down everything you have fallen behind on.

Use the highlighter to highlight the most important items and start with them.

Then open your calendar and protect time for doing that work.

Remember, you can only work on one thing at a time, so pick one and start. It’s surprising that once you make a start on something, anything, how the anxiety and stress begin to fall away.

Many of my coaching clients have found that going back to their calendars and blocking two or three hours in the evening or on weekends to “catch up” also relieves stress and anxiety.

I know not taking work home with you is something many people strictly adhere to, but if not taking work home with you is causing untold amounts of stress and anxiety, leaving you with poor-quality sleep and emotions all over the place, perhaps that strict rule may be more damaging to your long-term health, than sacrificing two or three hours on a weekend to catch-up.

The thing is, you don’t have to do this every night or every weekend. It only comes into play when you identify a backlog or you feel you are seriously behind with something.

What you will find is the decision to work on something at a particular time, instantly takes the pressure off you. (Of course, you do need to carry through with your commitment to yourself to do the work at the time you set).

Another thing you can do with your calendar is to reserve some time each week as “catch up” time. Personally, I do this on a Saturday morning. The house is quiet and I have complete control over what I do at that time.

You don’t need to do this Saturday mornings. Many people I work with block Friday afternoons to catch up on work they are behind on, their communications, and admin. Of course this will depend on your lecture times.

If you have lectures on a Friday afternoon, there’s likely to be another day in the week when you have a block of time you could designate as your catch-up time.

It’s this “catch-up” time that gives you the peace of mind knowing that you have time at some point in the week to catch up.

The benefit of having these blocks of time for study, research, and catching up is that you start the week knowing you have enough time, and all you need to do is respect your calendar.

Now, I know that if you haven’t used your calendar as your primary productivity tool before and rarely use it to plan your day, it’s going to be challenging to develop the habit initially. All positive habits are difficult at first. You have to focus on it, and it’s easy to forget.

However, there are two ways to build this habit.

The first is to set aside five to ten minutes at the end of the day to open your calendar and look at what you are committed to the next day. Then mentally plot out when you will do what needs to be done.

The second is to do it in the morning; however, I’ve found the most effective way (and the least stress-inducing) is to do it before you end your day.

As an aside, talking to a couple of my longer-term clients recently, they both mentioned that the best thing they ever did was to set aside five to ten minutes after dinner to plan the next day. Both have recently switched to paper notebooks, and each new page marks a new day.

At the top of the daily page, they write out the two or three most important tasks for the day. Underneath, they capture notes from the day and when they do the daily planning, they transfer any important information or commitments into their digital system.

It’s simple and an A5 notebook is small and non-intusive.

So there you go, Serena, be aware that the limiting factor involved in maintaining your productivity system is time itself. How will you allocate what needs to be done over the 168 hours you have each week? Be clear about when you will do what needs to be done, and try to protect some catch-up time each week.

Thank you for your question and thank you for listening too.

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

What Matters Most: How to Find—and Defend—Your Priorities

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 12:04:20 +0900

"Prioritise what matters. You can't be everywhere, do everything, and have everything!"

That’s a quote from Oprah Winfrey, and it captures the essence of this week’s question.

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Script | 391

Hello, and welcome to episode 391 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

You arrive at your desk, open up your Teams messages or email, and your screen fills with line after line of unread (and read) messages. One message grabs your attention, it’s from your boss and you feel compelled to open it.

And from that one action, your whole day is destroyed.

And while I am sure that message from your boss was important and potentially urgent, but did it really warrant destroying your day?

That scenario is happening every day to millions of people, and it makes deciding what your priorities are for the day practically impossible.

So, what can you do to ensure you are acting on your priorities and not being distracted by what appears to be both urgent and important? Giving some reflection, putting aside that so-called urgent message might actually be the best thing you can do.

So, with that said, let me read out this week’s question (The Mystery Podcast Voice is on holiday this week).

This week’s question comes from Michael. Michael asks, hi Carl, I really struggle to decide what I should be working on each day. My work is very dynamic; a lot can be thrown at me each day, and whenever I plan my week or day, none of it ever gets done. What’s the best way to prioritise?

Hi Michael, thank you for your question.

In many ways, what you describe is what I see as the curse of the modern world. The incredible advances in technology have enabled us to do seemingly impossible things, yet they have also sped everything up.

I remember just twenty-three years ago when I worked in a Law office in the UK, and if we received a letter (remember them?) from another lawyer, we effectively had around twenty-four hours to compose our response—even if what was being asked was urgent.

We relied on the postal service, and no matter how fast we responded to that letter, it would not leave our office until 4:00 pm at the earliest on that day.

And if we missed the 4:00 pm deadline, tough. It would have to wait until 4:00 pm the next day—which incidentally gave us a wonderful excuse for anything arriving late.

The expectations from the “other side”, as we called them, were that they would receive the reply two days later.

Today, just twenty-three years later, those two days seem to have fallen to just two minutes. What went wrong?

The problem is that no matter how well planned our days and weeks may be, owing to others’ expectations, we are “expected” to respond within hours, sometimes minutes, not days. This has blurred the line between what we know is important and what is simply urgent noise.

This is why it’s more critical today to be absolutely clear about what is important to you. And I emphasise the words “to you”.

What’s important to you is not necessarily important to another person. When someone requires you to do something for them urgently, it’s urgent to them, not necessarily to you.

You may have twenty similar urgent requests waiting for you. You are expected to decide what is the most urgent. That’s an almost impossible decision to make—if you don’t know what’s important to you.

So, the important place to start, Michael, is to establish your areas of focus. These are the things that are important to you, and they are based on eight areas:

Family and relationships

Health and fitness

Finances

Career and business

Lifestyle and life experiences

Self development

Spirituality

And your life’s purpose.

The first step is to define what each one means to you and then pull out what action steps you need to take to keep everything in balance.

These are the higher-level priorities in your life.

There’s a little more to it than that, and if you want to learn more about developing your areas of focus, you can download my free Areas of Focus Workbook from my website; the link is in the show notes.

Next, what is your core work? This is the work you are employed to do.

Now, most people can describe their jobs. For example, I’m an architect, a doctor, a nurse, a bricklayer, a teacher, or a TV presenter.

Yet, there’s another step here. What does doing what you do look like at a task level?

I know what architects do—they design buildings—but I don’t know what they do at a task level.

I’ve seen building blueprints, so I guess they create those, but I don’t know how they do that. Is it with a pencil and a ruler, or is it done on a computer?

Those tasks that you identify as being critical to the work you are employed to do will always form your priorities each day when at work.

After all, if you are not doing the work you were hired to do, you’re not likely to be in your job for very long.

Now this makes your life a little easier. Once you know what you need to do each day, or week, for your job, you will also be able to make a reasonably accurate estimate how long each of those tasks will take you.

This will tell you how much time you need to perform your work each week.

Now, you can only work with averages here. There are some external factors that could throw off your timings. Things such as poor sleep or a crisis at work.

Yet, on the whole, you’ll find you manage to get all the essential work done each week.

Now the clever part is to protect time for doing your most important work.

I’ve found that if you can dedicate two hours each morning to your critical work for the day, you will be on top by the end of the week.

From a professional perspective, if you are writing off two hours a day for doing your most important work, that still leaves you with around six hours to deal with anything else.

I grew up on a farm. It was an arable farm with some animals. Each harvest time, when it was time to combine the corn fields, my father would never entertain the thought of meeting with the bank manager, tax inspector or representatives from the seed company.

And to make things more complicated, my father farmed in the UK, which has notoriously unpredictable weather. When the corn was ready and the weather was dry, it was out! Out! Out!

I remember my mother frequently calling dentists, doctors, the bank, and anyone else my father was scheduled to see to cancel appointments.

Harvesting the crops was core work. Nothing got in the way of bringing the barley and wheat in.

And that’s the approach you need to have with your core work. No matter who requests your time, when it’s time to get on with your core work, it’s no. No, No. Come back in an hour and I’ll be able to help you.

Now, I began by telling you to establish your areas of focus. Because these are the higher-level areas of your life, it’s important to adopt the same approach to protecting time for the things that matter.

For example, I have many clients who prioritise being home in time for dinner with their spouse or partner and kids. This means if the family sits down for dinner at seven and it takes thirty minutes to get home, then no matter what, you leave the office at 6:00 to 6:15 pm.

It’s a non-negotiable.

The good thing about this kind of constraint is that it invokes Parkinson’s Law, that is where the work will fill up the time available.

If I have thirty minutes to finish writing this script, I’m certain I will do it. Similarly, if I had ninety minutes it would take me precisely ninety minutes. It’s a weird law that works.

The sense of time pressure focuses your brain to filter out what would usually distracts you.

When it comes to priorities, knowing what is most important to you makes deciding what to work on first much easier.

Now, imagine you had ten pieces of work to complete, all equally important, urgent, and connected to your core work. How would you decide?

Well, your only option is to follow the principle of first in, first out. Begin with the oldest one and work from there.

Incidentally, I suggest you do the same with your actionable email. Begin by replying to the oldest first. In Outlook and Apple Mail, you can reverse the order of messages in each folder. By default, these will show you the newest at the top. Change that to show you the oldest first.

That might be a little uncomfortable at first because it will remind you how far behind you are with your email. But stick with it. You will soon find that your response times to emails speed up without any extra effort.

Another level you may wish to add here is to create some “if this… Then that” rules.

For example, if there are certain people whom you know you must respond to immediately, then apply a rule. “If I get a request from X, then I will prioritise that request”

However, be careful with that one. It’s easy to take the easy way out and add bosses, supervisors and pretty much anyone to this list.

For me, there are only two people: my wife and my mother, I would do that for. That’s because my Family and relationships are the most important area for me. (And because my father doesn’t have a phone, hahaha)

At a work level, I will prioritise anything related to money or lost passwords. I know how concerned people are about money—they bought the wrong course, or a refund needs processing.

Beyond that, any other request will have to wait its turn.

I know this will be difficult for some of you at first. It certainly was for me. But I can promise you that if you work at it and drill down into learning what is important to you, you will find making these decisions easy.

I hope that has helped, Michael. Thank you for your question, and thank you to you too for listening.

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

How a Surgeon, CEO, and Financial Advisor Mastered Their Time

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 12:45:41 +0900

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."

That’s a famous quote from Groucho Marx and encapsulates perfectly what this episode is about

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Script | 390

Hello, and welcome to episode 390 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

I’ve been coaching people one-on-one for seven years, and in that time, I picked up some ideas that, when adopted by clients, almost always guarantee they will transform their time management and productivity.

None of these ideas is revolutionary, which isn’t surprising since people have long struggled with time management and productivity issues.

Our attitude to time and the expectations of others has changed, but the amount of time we have hasn’t.

Technology, rather than helping us to do more in less time, has elevated the amount we are expected to do.

Fifty years ago, we might have received thirty letters; today, technology has elevated the number of digital letters and messages we receive into the hundreds. And while we may be quicker at responding, we’re not realistically able to respond to hundreds of emails and messages each day and still produce work.

(Even though I know a number of you are trying)

It goes back to what I wrote and spoke about two or three years ago, fashions may change, but the principles don’t.

AI and ChatGPT are all the rage today. If you’ve gone down that rabbit hole, you will have been blown away by what it can do. It’s incredible.

Yet what is it doing? It is making some parts of our work faster. Yet, most people still don’t have enough time to do all their work. What’s happening?

Well, telling everyone that you can now produce a sales review presentation in less than twenty minutes with the help of ChatGPT means you are now expected to create more presentations.

That sales review presentation may have taken you two days before, but now, if you can do it in twenty minutes, boom! Your boss can give you more work to do!

So what are the traits, best practices and ideas that do work that the people who have seen a massive increase in their time management and productivity follow?

Well, that’s the subject of this week’s question. And that means it’s time for me to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Lauren. Lauren asks, “Hi Carl, I know you have been coaching people for a long time, and I am curious to know what the most productive people you meet do that is different from those less successful at it.”

Hi Lauren, thank you for your question.

As I eluded to, the most productive people I’ve coached follow principles, not fashions, and are ruthless with their time allocation.

Those principles are to collect everything, process what you gathered, eliminate unnecessary things, and allocate time for doing what’s left.

But it goes a little deeper than that.

First, you need to know what is important to you. That relates to your Areas of Focus. Those are the eight areas of life we all share but will define and prioritise differently.

Things like, your family and relationships, career, finances, health and fitness and self-development.

Knowing what these mean to you and what priority they are in your life goes a long way to helping you to build productive days.

Almost every client of mine that has significantly improved their time management have gone through the Areas of Focus exercise and defined each one.

The second part to this is to be clear about what your core work is. This is the work you are employed to do.

What I found interesting is that my YouTube Short video with the fewest views is the one asking the question: What are you employed to do?”

That doesn’t surprise me.

Going through and defining your Areas of Focus and core work is not sexy. Quick fixes, new tools and apps are the sexy things, yet none of those will ever help you regain control of your time.

Sure, they are fun, exciting and interesting to explore. But they are distractions that will never help you be better at managing your time.

(I learned that one the hard way. I used to waste so much time each week playing with new apps, programmes and tools)

Speaking of tools, I have noticed that the most productive people use simple tools. Often it’s Microsoft ToDo or Apple’s Reminders. Quite a few use Todoist, but I suspect that’s because I have done nearly four hundred videos on Todoist and many of my clients found me through YouTube.

People who struggle the most are using project management tools like ClickUp or Monday.com.

Those types of tools require far too much maintenance to keep them up-to-date and that takes time away from you doing the work you are organising.

It’s as the old saying goes, you’re trying to crack a nut by using a sledge hammer.

But, the stand out change that people make that has the biggest impact on their time management and overall productivity is they get ruthless with their time allocation.

And I mean ruthless.

For example, one long term client, now a senior executive in his company, will not allow any meetings on a Monday morning or a Friday afternoon. Those times are blocked on his calendar.

He uses that time for doing his most important work for that week.

Three hours Monday morning and three hours Friday afternoon. That’s six hours he knows will not be interrupted and so he can confidently allocate work to those times.

I remember when we first started. He was all over the place. He had meetings lined up Monday through Friday and couldn’t even find a hour to quietly get on with his work.

His default answer to any request was “yes” and it was destroying him.

Now, not only does he have greater respect for his own time, his colleagues also do. Nobody even bothers to ask for a meeting on a Monday morning or Friday afternoon because they know he will say no.

The key here is to get control of your calendar. (Another principle). If you’re not in control there, it doesn’t matter what you do elsewhere because you’ve lost control in the one area that determines what you do and when.

Everyone will be different here.

I have one client who’s a surgeon and a professor. She has to divide her time between the operating room and the classroom.

Her surgery hours are fixed. So, she knows she will be in the operating room on a Tuesday and Thursday. Her teaching hours vary according to each semester, but once the academic year begins, her lecture times are fixed.

These times are locked into her calendar. But she goes further. She knows that she will have to meet with patients and students. So, Wednesdays are dedicated for patients. She will visit the patients she will be operating on the next day and deal with any out-patient clinics on a Wednesday.

So three days a week are dedicated to her role as a surgeon.

She will do her academic work on Mondays and Fridays. Most of her lectures are in the mornings, and she will stay in her office in the afternoons so she’s available for students if they need her.

What she has done is to become ruthless with how she allocates her time each week. Her calendar is sacred territory.

She does open Saturday mornings during exam times so students can access her if needed, and she can do any outstanding admin work in between.

What got her back in control was taking back control of her calendar and saying “no” to requests that did not fit in with her priorities.

And this is where it’s hard for most people. Getting control of their calendar. The easy part is organising and reorganising your task manager. Really all you are doing there is moving things around.

When it comes to getting control of your calendar you have to interact with other people and that means in some instances you will need to say No.

And there human nature will challenge us. We’re wired to “please people”. So saying “no, I cannot meet with you” is tough. It’s easier to find an excuse why you are different to everyone else.

Yet, you don’t have to say no. You can use services such as Calendly, that lets you pick times you will be available for meetings and all you need do is share your unique link with people requesting a meeting with you. They can then choose a time that works for them without all the hassle of trying to find a time.

Technology has conditioned us to become comfortable with automated systems. There’s little to no pushback these days. In fact I’d go as far as to say that people much prefer to choose their appointment time from an online booking service.

Another long-time client of mine is a financial advisor. He adopted Calendly for his clients to use to book a call with him.

He was expecting a lot of pushback from his clients. Instead he got a lot of compliments. They loved it. They could book a time to talk with him from the comfort of their own sofa late at night without having to call or message him during “office hours”.

Now, whenever he gets a message or email requesting a meeting, he sends them the link to his booking service.

This means he’s in complete control of his time. He can open or close meeting time slots during his weekly planning sessions, and he knows when he will be meeting clients so he can be better prepared for the meeting.

And speaking of weekly planning. This is possibly the number one idea that brings the most significant improvement.

Consistently planning the week is really a no-brainer no matter what role you have in your professional and personal life.

The senior executive, surgeon and financial advisor I previously mentioned wouldn’t dream of beginning a week without a plan. It’s how they can manage conferences, holidays and other extraordinary weeks.

Without a plan for the week, it’s like setting out on a journey without knowing where you are going. You’ll get somewhere but highly likely it’ll be a place you do not want to be.

The weekly plan is about deciding what is important to you that week. What projects need attention, where your meetings are, and what you want to accomplish.

For instance, many of my clients will decide when they will exercise at a weekly level. They’ll decide how many times they want to go to the gym or out for a run and set that as an objective. This gives them the flexibility they need to ensure they are getting the right things done whilst taking care of the personal maintenance we all need of the right amount of sleep, exercise and eating the right food types.

The final piece is the daily planning. This is where you decide at a task level what needs to be done.

Because the world we live in today is fast moving, there will likely be things on your weekly plan that need to change. It’s the daily planning where you can make those adjustments.

For example, if the senior executive came into work one day and walked into a crisis such as what recently happened to Jaguar Land Rover with the cyber attack, his whole week would need to change. It’s at a daily level that those changes can be taken care of.

Meetings can be cancelled, auto reply can be set up on email services to explain why they cannot respond to emails and messages, etc.

That might be extreme, but it clearly can happen and things will need to change.

So there you go, Lauren. The people who get it, who are living productive and well managed lives follow a few simple principles.

They follow the COD methodology—collect stuff, organise and process that stuff, eliminating the unimportant and then ensure they get on with the work.

They ruthlessly protect their time on their calendars and never delegate management of their calendar to anyone else.

They plan the week and day to ensure they are working on the right things at the right time and are clear about what is important to them.

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

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

30 Years Later: Rediscovering the Franklin Planner's Hidden Power

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 12:14:40 +0900

Hyrum Smith, the creator of the Franklin planner, once said: "When your daily activities are in concert with your highest priorities, you have a credible claim to inner peace."

And that nicely begins this week’s episode: what I’ve learned from my time with the Franklin Planner over the last twelve months.

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Script | 389

Hello, and welcome to episode 389 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Between October and the end of December, I like to experiment with different time management and productivity tools to see what I can learn and discover about managing my work.

Last year, I chose the Franklin Planner. That has been a revelation. It allowed me to revisit how I managed my time and work while working in a high-pressure work environment with rapidly changing priorities and a constant supply of crises each day.

In this week’s episode, I want to share what I learned from the experiment with the Franklin Planner and how it has changed how I manage my work and time.

I was first introduced to the Franklin Planner back in 1992. My former boss, Andrew, inspired me to start using it. At that time, I also read Hyrum Smith’s Ten Natural Laws of Time and Life Management, which was a book written to introduce the planner.A

From 1992 to 2009, I religiously used the Franklin Planner to manage not just my work, but my life.

I remember writing in my planner the first time I had the idea of coming to Korea, and then turning it into a project in the back of the planner. All my fears, concerns and excitements were written in there. Twenty-three years later, I still look back on that decision to come to Korea as being the best decision I’ve ever made.

For those unfamiliar with the Franklin Planner, let’s start with the idea behind it.

When you first receive your Franklin Planner, you are encouraged to write out your “governing values”. These are the things that are important to you—values such as honesty, integrity, how you treat others and your family.

From these, you can determine your performance against what is important to you and set goals based on that.

This is where I got the inspiration for my areas of focus. We all share eight areas of life, which we define and prioritise differently.

These eight are: family and relationships, Career or business, health and fitness, self-development, finances, lifestyle and life experiences, spirituality and life’s purpose.

It’s these governing values that become the foundations of your system with the Franklin Planner.

Once you have established your governing values, you can begin using the daily pages. On the left, you have a prioritised task list. Next to that, you have your schedule for the day, and on the right-hand page, you have a space to collect notes.

What became immediately obvious to me when I been using the Franklin Planner, was the way it forced me to stop and think.

The act of handwriting what I decided were my most important tasks for the day slowed me down and got me thinking about what was genuinely important.

With digital systems, it’s all too easy to add random dates to a task, hoping that by some miracle you will find the time to do it. And I know some of you add random dates because you’re afraid of forgetting about the task, even though the task does not need to be done on the date you assigned it.

With the Franklin Planner, you stop doing that. You become more intentional about what you will do each day, which ensures that you are focused on the important tasks.

What I noticed was that I became much better at prioritising.

It becomes annoying to rewrite a task day after day because you didn’t do it. So you either delete it or you do it.

With digital systems, it’s easy to give up and move the task to another random day. And when that day comes, you don’t do it again, so push it off again and again.

The other related lesson from the Franklin Planner was that you become hyper-aware of what you can realistically do each day.

Because you write out your appointments for the day first, you can see, in plain sight, just how much time you have for doing tasks.

If you’ve got seven hours of meetings, a concert to go to, and you want to fit in a thirty-minute exercise session, you will instantly see that you won’t have much time to do tasks.

With digital systems, all your tasks are hidden and given that most people don’t manage their calendars particularly well and have multiple events in the same time slot, it’s difficult to see where the important events and tasks are.

Not so with the Franklin Planner. You won’t be able to over-schedule yourself. Writing out your commitments each day ensures you don’t overcommit.

I did discover some redundancies with the Planner, though. One of which was the monthly calendar tabs in your planner.

The digital calendar is superb. If an appointment is rescheduled, it’s easy to drag and drop it to the new date and time. In the Franklin Planner, you would need to Tippex or cross out the appointment and rewrite it on the new date.

Although if you want to retain complete control over your calendar, the Franklin Planner would be a better option. Nobody would be able to add an appointment to your calendar, and you would have to go through you first to schedule anything with you.

I did find a useful way to use the monthly calendar tabs, though. Each month, I write out my goals and the projects I expect to complete that month. This has been very useful when doing my weekly planning, as it gives me a central place free from the distractions of other goals and projects.

A great way to stay focused on what you have decided is important in that month.

Another feature of the Franklin Planner is the way you reference information you collect. When you write a note in the daily notes area, each note is assigned a number.

For example, the first note you write is given the number 1, and the next is number 2. This then gives you a simple way to retrieve information you may have written.

At the beginning of each monthly tab, you have a sheet called the “Index”. If you want to find the note you made, all you need to do is write the date you wrote the note and its number. For example, 19-10/1 would refer to the first note you made on the 19th October.

It’s a wonderful retrieval system and one I found very useful when planning the month or the week.

But the biggest takeaway for me was the way the Franklin Planner slowed me down and got me to think about how I was using my time. Planning the day by writing out my appointments first to see how much time I had left after them to do my tasks forced me to get realistic about what I could do that day.

For example, yesterday, I took my mother to the airport. The airport is about a four-hour drive each way. This meant I was away for at least eight hours, and I could see that on my calendar for the day. It meant I had very little time to do tasks, which I could see when I did my daily planning the evening before.

It really focused me on getting the critical work done before we set off because traffic conditions are unpredictable, and I didn’t want to leave anything to chance when I got back, just in case I was delayed.

Sure, you can do that digitally, but because all our tasks are in our digital systems, it can become overwhelming and stressful looking at hundreds of tasks trying to decide which ones must be done that day.

With the Franklin Planner, you effectively have a blank slate each day to choose what you must do. Taking ten minutes away from your screen and really thinking about what is important for the day can do incredible things for your focus.

Oh, and I should mention that the dopamine hit you get from crossing off a task by hand is way more powerful than a digital click.

So what has this experiment with the Franklin Planner changed about my system as a whole?

Well, the first thing is I’ve started to add to my journal the two most important tasks of the day. I write my journal by hand each morning, and I’ve always tracked my morning routine habit and my exercise in there. Now I write out my two most important tasks.

Again, what this has done is to get me focused on the day.

My daily planning has changed, too. Now, I start by looking at my calendar for the next day’s appointments before I curate my list of tasks for the day.

For example, today I have seven hours of meetings. When I did my planning last night, I saw that and realised the only thing I would be able to do today was this podcast.

In the past, I would have ignored all that and begun the day with ten to fifteen tasks and seven hours of meetings. Those days were broken before they started. There was no way I would do all that in one day.

Will I continue with the Planner? That’s a difficult one to answer.

The areas where the planner has helped me can be replicated with a regular desk diary. I did not find that I added that many notes to the daily notes field. I carry a pocket notebook with me for random thoughts, and I like the randomness of that.

Meeting notes, project, and content ideas go directly into my digital notes system, and I have a paper-based planning book where I plan out my bigger projects, weekly plans, and YouTube videos.

And the “deal-breaker’ for me has been the poor quality of paper that Franklin Planner uses. I am a fountain pen user, and the paper in a Franklin Planner is terrible for fountain pens.

A good quality desk diary with fountain pen-friendly paper would give me everything I currently use the Franklin Planner for and allow me to use my family of fountain pens.

But for someone who struggles with digital systems, feels swamped by long lists of to-dos and wants to adopt a simple paper-based system, then the Franklin Planner would fit perfectly.

For me, a three-month experiment this year, I am going all in with Apple’s Productivity system. Using only Apple’s Reminders, Notes and Calendar for three months to see what I can learn about these tools.

If you’re interested in this experiment, keep an eye on my YouTube channel as I will be updating my discoveries there.

Thank you for listening and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.

5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before 2026 Begins

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 10:38:16 +0900

“I used to say, ‘I sure hope things will change, ' then I learned that the only way things are going to change for me is when I change."

That’s a quote from the wonderful Jim Rohn. A strong proponent of developing a plan for your life, and a part of that is creating a strong plan for the new year.

In this special episode, I’ll walk you through the steps for the Annual Planning Season, which began on October 1st.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Use the coupon code: codisgreat to get 50% off.

Script | 388

Hello, and welcome to episode 388 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

A mistake I used to make was to come up with some ideas about what I would like to change in the new year in that gap between Christmas and the New Year.

The only reason I ever did that was because my friends were asking, “What are your New Year’s resolutions?” I never really had any, so I used to quickly think up some cool-sounding ideas and say that was what I was going to do.

And yet, it wasn’t always like that.

When I was a competitive athlete in my teens, each year in December, I would sit down with my coach and plan what we would achieve the following year.

What times we were going for and which races were to be the “big ones”.

I still remember the year I broke 2 minutes for the 800 metres and 4 minutes for the 1,500 metres. We knew I was close, having ended the previous year at 2 minutes 3 seconds for the 800 and 4 minutes 6 seconds for the 1,500.

All that was needed was a good, strong winter and pre-season training. I remember going into 1986 in one of the most positive frames of mind ever.

Then, when I stopped running competitively—one of my biggest regrets—I stopped planning the year. And that coincided with my not achieving very much.

I drifted from one job to another. Had no idea what I wanted to do, and I remember feeling unfulfilled and lost.

Fortunately, I rediscovered annual planning. The sitting down and thinking about what I wanted to accomplish. It was that restart that resulted in me coming to Korea, and discovering my passion—teaching.

Everything I have achieved over the last 23 years can be traced back to following my annual planning method.

From finding a career I loved, to getting married and moving to the East Coast of Korea—one of the most beautiful places in the world—and starting the company I run today, now employing four people.

All of these ideas began with the annual planning method.

So, what is the annual planning method? Well, it’s five simple questions you ask yourself and give some thought to over two months—October and November.

Those five questions are:

What would you like to change about yourself?
What would you like to change about your lifestyle?
What would you like to change about the way you work?
What could you do to challenge yourself?
What goals would you like to achieve?

Let me explain the kind of things you can think about.

What would you like to change about yourself? This is about you. Your current habits and routines. Are these delivering the results you want?

When I sat down to write Your Time, Your Way, I knew I had to sacrifice some exercise time in order to write. I was okay with that, and I also knew a consequence of reducing my exercise time would be a gain in weight.

Two years later, I had gained eight kilograms (about 17 ½ pounds)!

Not good. If my weight exceeds 83 kilograms, I feel sluggish and quickly become tired.

So, in my planning last year, I made it a non-negotiable to get my weight back to my regular weight of 80 kilograms (about 176 pounds or 12 ½ stone)

Today, as I write this, my weight is 80.5 kgs. Well within my weight window.

That all started with asking myself, “What do I want to change about myself?” The answer was to get back into my regular exercise routine.

So, what would you like to change about yourself? Are you doing things that are not contributing to the results you want? Are you not consistently planning your days or weeks?

Are you not moving enough? Are you spending too much time sitting down in front of a screen and not enough time in nature?

Another one is how you dress. The pandemic saw a collapse in the way people dressed. This may not interest you, but perhaps you’d like to dress better when you go out. What could you do to improve your dress sense?

Maybe you’d like to begin journaling or meditation. Write anything you consider down. You’re not committing to anything yet; you’re brainstorming ideas. The commitments you make come in December. October and November are all about developing ideas and going deep.

The next question, “What do I want to change about my lifestyle?” Is about how you live your life every day. Is your house a mess? Do you leave your bed unmade when you get up in the morning? What about your car? Is it a garbage can on wheels?

Perhaps you’d like to come home to a clean home at the end of the day? If so, what could you do to change things?

One idea that my wife and I had at the end of 2019 was to move to the East Coast of Korea. To do that, we knew we’d have to finally get a car. Living in Seoul, the capital city, with its superb public transport system, meant that having a car was not a high priority for us.

Yet, for us to get out of Seoul and live in a cleaner, quieter city, we needed to explore Korea. So, that became the plan: to buy a car and begin exploring possible places to live.

By the end of 2020, we had a car and moved to the East Coast.

That change brought some tremendously positive changes in our lives.

Yet, I know that had we not sat down to talk about our future plans, we’d still be living in a crowded, noisy, polluted city. Seoul is a great city, don’t get me wrong, but with 11 million people sharing it, you can imagine how noisy and crowded it can be.

Is there anything you’ve always wanted to do relating to your lifestyle that you’ve never considered what you need to do to make happen? Write that down.

What would you like to change about the way you work? A great question if you’ve found yourself stuck in a job or career that leaves you feeling dead inside.

Some people I know have decided to completely change their careers when answering this question, while others have started their own businesses.

It doesn’t have to be as dramatic as that, though. Perhaps you don’t like the structure you have in place to do your work. It could be a tools thing, too. Do you need to upgrade the way you manage your tasks and projects?

What about your workspace? Does it need an overhaul? I’ve done that a few times. Does your current workspace feel sterile and cold? Could you change your desk or your chair?

If you work from home, can you do anything to make your workspace more stimulating? Perhaps move your desk nearer a window or change the lighting?

All these ideas can lead to some fantastic changes. However, you do need time to think things through, and that’s what October and November are for.

The fourth question is What can you do to challenge yourself?

This question is there because often we get stuck in our comfort zones. We become afraid to change anything because we fear what those changes may bring. Yet, if you’re not challenging yourself, you soon find yourself trapped in stagnation.

Physical challenges are a great place to start. If you feel you’ve become a little too sedentary, perhaps you could challenge yourself to do a park run in March.

Or for those of you who are more ambitious, perhaps you could challenge yourself to do a triathlon or a full marathon in 2026.

What about going back to school and getting a degree? One such challenge that comes up each year on my list is to do a master’s in contemporary British history. I’m sure it will be on my list this year, too.

Think of the things that frighten you. Is there anything you could do to overcome that fear?

The final question is What goals would you like to achieve in 2026?

There’s a reason this is the final question. That’s because after you’ve thought about the previous four questions, you’re more likely to think about how you can measure success in the changes you want to make.

One such goal my wife and I have already added is to have a big savings goal in 2026. This will affect both our spending habits—no more fountain pen purchases for me (oh no!) We haven’t settled on an amount yet, but we’re thinking about it.

Perhaps you want to set the goal of getting a promotion next year or finally starting that business you’ve been thinking about for years.

Or it could simply be a bad habit that you want to stop. Doom scrolling, the new smoking bad habit, or going to bed earlier. What about reading books? How many would you like to read in 2026?

The purpose of these questions is to get you to think. Think about what you want out of life.

You are amazing, and there’s so much you could do. Yet, you will only be able to do those incredible things if you externalise them and begin to think about how you could make them happen.

The best place to keep this list of questions is in a paper notebook. I used to do this digitally, but found I was too easily distracted when trying to write them out on my iPad or phone.

When I switched to writing these questions out in my Planning Book—an A4 notebook where I keep all my initial project plans, weekly planning sessions, and YouTube video plans—I found I thought more deeply and better.

But, if you prefer digital notes, then by all means use that.

Remember, now is not the time to make any firm commitments or even to think about how you will accomplish any of these things. Now is about idea generation.

Many of the things you write down may not be practical or realistic next year, but they may begin a chain of thought that leads you towards achieving them in future years.

That’s why it’s important to write your thoughts down in a place to return to next year. It’s a starting block. I’m always amazed at what I accomplished when I review my previous years’ notes on 1st October. And yes, occasionally disappointed that I didn’t follow through with something.

The focus, though, is ultimately on 2026. What do you want to accomplish?

Now, for those of you who have taken my Time And Life Mastery programme, October’s a great time to retake it.

When I developed that course, my purpose was to create something you could return to each year to help stimulate ideas and remind you of what you want to do in your life.

I must confess, even though it’s a course I created and wrote, I use October to go through it myself. It reminds me of my long-term vision of the life I want to live and refocuses me on my objectives.

If you haven’t joined the programme yet, you can do so today. And if you use the coupon code “codingreat,” you’ll get 50% off your purchase.

I’ll leave the details in the show notes for you.

And there you go. That’s how to plan out a fruitful, exciting year. Start now and begin thinking about what you want to change. Don’t hold back either. Be as wild as you can be. You do not have to commit to anything right now. That’s for December. All you are doing now is preparing the land, if you like. You can choose what to sow later.

And, one more thing… Have fun with this and talk with your partner and loved ones. I involve my wife because the lifestyle question involves both of us, and the things I want to change about myself can often be stimulated by asking her what she thinks. My wife can be brutally honest, frequently leading to some excellent changes.

Thank you for listening, and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.

Why Your Ego Is Writing Checks Your Body Can't Cash

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 10:46:04 +0900

“Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.”

That is possibly one of Stephen Covey’s most famous quotes. It’s at the heart of almost all time management and productivity advice today. It addresses one of the biggest challenges today—the cycle of focusing on the urgent at the expense of working on the important. If you focus on the urgent, all you get is more urgent stuff. If you focus on the important, you reduce the urgent stuff.

It’s all about priorities, and that’s what we’re looking at today.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 387

Hello, and welcome to episode 387 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

There are two natural laws of time management and productivity that, for one reason or another, are frequently forgotten, and yet they are immutable and permanent, and you or I cannot change them.

They are:

You can only do one thing at a time, and anything you do requires time.

When you understand this and internalise it, you can create a solid time management and productivity system based on your needs and what you consider important.

This doesn’t change at any time in your life. When we are young and dependent on our parents, these natural laws still hold true.

These laws are still then when we retire from the workforce and perhaps gain a little more agency over our time. You can take the time to landscape your garden and travel the world, yet you cannot do both simultaneously.

Even if you are fortunate enough to be able to afford to hire a landscape gardener to do the bulk of the heavy lifting for you, you will still need time to plan what you want done and find the right landscaper.

What this means is every day you have a puzzle to solve. What to do with the time you have available that day.

And the secret to getting good at solving this daily puzzle is to know what your priorities are. And that is where a little foresight and thought can help you quickly make the right decisions.

And that neatly brings us to this week’s question, which means it’s time for me now to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice.

This week’s question comes from Mel. Mel asks, Hi Carl, I’ve followed you for some time now and would love to know your thoughts on prioritising your day. I have family commitments and work full-time, and I often struggle to fit everything in. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Mel, Thank you for your question.

I must confess it took me many years to understand these natural laws. Like most people, I felt I could get anything done on time, that I had plenty of time to fit in more meetings, accept more demands on my time, and still have time to spend with my family and friends.

Yet, I never managed to accept more meetings and requests, meet my commitments, and spend quality time with the people I cared about.

I found myself working until 2:00 am most days and starting earlier and earlier each day to keep my promises.

And, like most people, I thought all I needed to do was to find another productivity tool. A new app would surely solve my time problems.

This was at the height of the “hustle culture” trend ten to fifteen years ago. It was all about working more and more hours. I fell into the trap of believing that to be successful, all I had to do was throw more hours at the problem.

Well, that didn’t work out. All that happened was I felt tired all day, and my productivity fell like a brick.

It felt good to work until one or two in the morning. I felt I was doing what I needed to do to be successful. Yet, I conveniently forgot I was having to take naps throughout the day, and when I was awake, I procrastinated like I was in the Olympic procrastination final.

And all those new tools I was constantly downloading, looking for the Holy Grail of productivity apps, meant I had tasks, events and information all over the place, which required a lot of wasted time trying to find where I had put the latest world-changing idea.

What I was doing was violating the laws of time.

You can only do one thing at a time, and everything you do requires time.

The lightbulb moment was realising that I had a limited amount of time each day, which meant that if I was to get the most important things done each day, I needed to know the most important things.

Here’s what’s important to you.

The promises you make to other people, particularly those you make to the people closest to you.

And it doesn’t matter who you are. Anything you promise you will do for another person becomes a priority.

On a personal level, this means if you promise your daughter that you will take her to the theme park on Sunday, you don’t look for ways to get out of it because your boss asked you to finish a report and have it on her desk Monday at 8:30 am.

You take your daughter to the theme park, and you negotiate with your boss. If your boss won’t negotiate, you find a way to finish the report before Sunday, so when you do take your daughter to the theme park, you are 100% committed and present.

Meetings you have committed to are a promise. It’s a promise that you will be in a given place at a specific time. Once you have confirmed the meeting, you’re committed and, except for exceptional circumstances—illness, for example—you turn up on time.

When you treat your promises as a commitment you cannot break, you start to see that your time is limited.

It’s limited because no matter what, you get twenty-four hours a day, and that’s it.

Now, it’s a little more complicated than that. We are human beings, and an inconvenient truth about being human is that we need a certain amount of sleep each day to perform. Without enough sleep, you will discover what I discovered when I was all in on the hustle culture: Your productivity drops significantly.

You might think you are working sixteen to eighteen hours a day. Yet, your output will have dropped, and your results will only be as if you have been working eight to ten hours.

There are other factors too. A poor diet and a lack of movement will also significantly lower your performance and overall productivity.

In the end, when you think you can fit everything in and continue to say yes to every request, “Your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash”, as Stinger said to Maverick in the movie Top Gun.

You will quickly find you’re making promises you cannot keep because you’re constantly tired, not in the mood and letting the people around you down.

Prioritising your day starts with you. The first thirty minutes of the day should be focused on you and the things you enjoy. That could be a freshly brewed cup of tea, ten minutes of meditation, a few light stretches, or a few moments writing your thoughts down in a journal.

I know many of you may have young kids; if they are waking up with you, could you engage in some quiet activities that involve them? Perhaps you could sit quietly together and read a real book or do some light exercise together.

Next, come your confirmed appointments. When are they, and where do you need to be? These appointments give you structure to your day. You’ve committed to them, so you are now obliged to turn up on time.

Then comes your core work—the work you are employed to do. What is that, and what does that look like at a task level? In other words, what does doing the work you were employed to do look like?

Finally, from a work perspective, comes everything else. The work you volunteered for, the emails and admin and any other non-core work activities you may have said yes to.

One way to look at your day is how your grandparents would have seen their days. There’s work time and then there’s home time.

When at work, your priorities are your work promises and commitments. When at home, your priorities are your family and friends.

As Jim Rohn said:

"When you work, work; when you play, play. Don't play at work, and don't work at play. Make best use of your time"

A simple philosophy and one that works superbly well today.

I’ve found that a simple daily planning sequence helps people to focus on the right things at the right time.

First, review your appointments for the day. This gives you a good idea of your available time for everything else.

Second, look at your list of tasks for today and curate it based on how much time you have left after your meetings. It’s no good thinking you will get ten or more tasks done today if you have seven hours of meetings. That won’t happen.

Yet, on days when you have one or two meetings, you can schedule more tasks.

Finally, prioritise the list of tasks. For non-core work tasks, you can prioritise based on time sensitivity and your promises.

If you told a client or colleague you would complete the work they asked you to do by Friday, and today is Thursday, that task would be your priority. You made a promise, and your integrity is at stake. If you fail to meet the deadline, you don’t keep your promise, your client or colleague has every right to question your integrity and reliability.

One more idea you could adopt, Mel, is to think elimination, not accumulation.

It’s easier today to collect stuff than it’s ever been. We see something online we’d like to buy and send the link to our task managers. Someone recommends a book, send it to your task manager.

This results in a task manager stuffed with promises you’ve made to other people and random items you’ve seen online that you found attractive. It’s the Magpie Complex—attracted to shiny objects. (Although that’s apparently not scientifically true. Magpies are not naturally drawn to shiny objects.)

By all means, collect these items if you wish to, but when you process your task manager’s inbox, you move low-value items somewhere else. For example, things you’d like to buy can be moved to a purchase list in your notes app.

Then, create a task that reminds you to review the list once a week. I do this every Saturday as part of my admin time. I’m relaxed, have no meetings, and the house is quiet. I can review those lists and decide whether to buy something from the list or eliminate items.

The goal is to keep your task manager clean and tight, showing only what matters and eliminating the things that don’t.

This has the advantage of making your daily planning faster and easier. You don’t need to go through a long list of random stuff to find the essential tasks for the day. Your only decision is, “Will I have time to do that today?”

So, there you go, Mel. Be aware of things you’ve promised others—they will always be your priority. Ensure you have enough time protected for your core work and eliminate, don’t accumulate.

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

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

How to Protect Your Focus Time When Everyone Wants You Now

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 12:18:41 +0900

I want to begin today’s episode by thanking you for listening to this podcast. Earlier this week, this podcast surpassed one million downloads.

For context, that puts this podcast in the top 3 to 5 percent of the productivity and time management niche.

So, thank you. I do this for you, and for all of you who have sent in questions for answering. You keep me on my toes and challenge me every week. For that, I am eternally grateful.

Thank you.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 386

Hello, and welcome to episode 386 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

This week’s question is about a subject I’ve always been a little afraid of covering. I’m afraid because there is no simple answer, yet it’s certainly one that has a solution. Unfortunately, that solution isn’t an easy one to implement.

How do you manage your time and productivity in a dynamic, fast changing work environment?

The problem is that standard advice often doesn’t work. For instance, if you are in IT support and systems and company wide software are continually breaking down, how do you find the time to do focused work, when you are being interrupted by emergencies from the moment you arrive at work to the time you leave?

It does have a solution, but it involves the word “no” and the use of experience and knowledge to determine how “urgent” something really is.

I’m currently reading Dominic Sandbrook’s book, Seasons in the Sun. It’s about Britain between 1974 and 1979. Five years when the British government was in perpetual turmoil. Not just dealing with one or two crises. There were hundreds and they were happening every day.

From economic breakdown to Northern Ireland being on the verge of civil war. Every day brought a new emergency that needed instant solutions.

Reading it today makes the political turmoils we face now look like a walk on the beach by comparison.

Yet the government managed, just. It wasn’t easy, but they muddled through, and economic collapse and Northern Ireland civil war did not happen. It was close, but these catastrophes were fortunately averted.

Reading about it now, it seems the UK between 1975 and 1980 was collapsing, yet as Dominic Sandbrook points out, it didn’t and most people were able to get on with their lives and improve their living standards.

If you’re working in an environment where you feel you are only one crisis away from a total shutdown, don’t despair. It can be handled, and it’s possible to implement some processes and techniques to maintain some sanity when you may feel things are about to fall apart.

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

This week’s question comes from Jan. Jan asks, Hi Carl, I work in a company with no boundaries. Anyone can send a Teams message to me anytime, and I am expected to deal with it immediately. This means I never have time to do my important work. What advice would you give to someone in my position?

Thank you, Jan for your question.

One of the most dangerous things one can do is to believe there is no way through when the work piles up and there seems to be no respite.

The first place I would begin in your situation, Jan, is to look at the type of requests you are getting. Not all of them will be urgent must be done immediately.

It’s also likely when you look at them, you will find that very few are of that nature.

Back in the day, when I worked in hotel management, it could be said that no one day was ever the same. And there were a lot of unknowns happening practically every minute.

Yet, our training was build on understanding what was urgent and what was not.

A business party turning up at 8:30 am asking where their pre-booked meeting room was, when no such room had been prepared was a drop everything and get the room set up urgently.

Similarly, a guest asking for a hairdryer, was also a drop everything urgency—it was likely they discovered their hairdryer was not working after they had just washed their hair.

Yet most other requests were handled in the normal fashion. A change of towels, a noisy air conditioner that won’t turn off or missing bottles of water from a room’s mini-bar.

All of these “urgencies” would have been unknown when the day began, but given that they happened every day, the hotel had processes in place to deal with them.

One thing we did have, which I notice many companies do not, is a clear list of priorities.

Take for example my priorities for handling email.

Anything to do with money or forgotten passwords are things I will deal with immediately I see the email. Sorting them out doesn’t take long—five minutes for most—but I understand how frustrating it can be waiting to get a response.

Everything else has a 24 hour response cycle.

It’s rare I will get either of those two emergencies—perhaps one or two a month—but when they do happen, it’s automatic for me to immediately jump into action and deal with them.

And that’s one of the first things I would recommend you do, Jan. Categorise the requests you get and put in place some rules for dealing with them.

What are genuine emergencies? What are not?

I know if you are new to your company, there will be a period where you will need to learn what’s urgent and what’s not. That’s where experience and knowledge comes into play.

Given time, you will be able to analyse the types of requests you are getting and learn the patterns. There will be some people you work with that expect immediate responses. Is that a people issue or a genuine problem issue.

Some people have become conditioned to expect an immediate response. With these people it might be prudent to slowly change their conditioning by gradually reducing your response time.

Now, of course, you may not be able to do with people in higher positions than you but for others you may be able to do so.

In Your Time, Your Way, I wrote about how emergency room medical staff use the medical triage method. Each patient is assessed against a scale or urgency.

A Level 1 needs immediate attention and their condition is life-threatening, Level 2 is urgent attention required as their is potentially a threat to life, Level 3 requires timely intervention but life is not threatened, Level 4 is less urgent, and Level 5 can wait for care.

You can use this approach when you are dealing with customer care or IT issues.

Monitor the requests you get over a week or so and grade them. You may not need five levels, three or four levels would be sufficient. For example:

A Level one request requires immediate attention.
A Level two request requires attention within two hours

A Level three request can be dealt with within the day

And a Level four can be ignored.

You will need to be careful not to treat everything as a Level One. If everything was a level one, then nothing would be urgent because everything was.

One of the great things about this kind of approach is there’s no hesitation. You know exactly what to do. If something is urgent, for example, the whole company’s system goes down or there is a security breach, everything stops until the issue is resolved.

Hopefully, this kind of emergency won’t happen often. If it does, then there’s likely to be a problem in the company’s systems that need fixing and that would need to be escalated to the relevant person.

The next problem in these circumstances is that you may feel obligated to be constantly watching your email and internal messaging system. If you want to be able to get on and do your work, that’s going to be a no no.

You cannot do both. There has to be some flexibility.

What I’ve found helpful for many of my coaching clients is to protect the first thirty minutes of their work day for going through all their communication channels to see what’s happening.

This way, you can deal with any immediate problems before they destroy your day.

Then the next hour (or two if you dare), you do your focused work.

You can then check your messages and emails once you have finished your focused work. It’s only one hour.

If you’ve never done this before, I should warn you that it will be scary. You’re likely to have become used to being reactive, and changing that to being proactive by focusing on your most important work for the day for an hour or so, can be deeply uncomfortable at first.

Here you will need to be persistent. It gets easier, and your confidence grows with time.

I used to be always checking my mail for “problems”. It was horrible. It took me several weeks to become comfortable turning off all communication systems for two hours while I got on and did my most important work for the day.

But it was worth it. For one thing, I began understand that most things were not really urgent and as long as I responded within twenty-four hours people were happy.

For you, you may need to respond faster than that. But it’s unlikely that you will need to be responding immediately to everything.

You’ve got to remember that no matter what work you do there is always a limited resource—time. You get twenty-four hours each day and that’s it. No more and no less.

And while you can expand that to a week, that still only gives you 168 hours.

However, careful management of that time can help to reduce many emergencies. Ruthlessly protecting one or two hours a day for your most important work, for example, ensures that you are not dealing with final demands and missed deadlines.

One way to do that is to again monitor when most of your requests come in. I’ve learned that between 9:30 and 11:30 am it’s extremely rare for me to receive an urgent request. This is why I protect that time on my calendar for doing my most important work for the day.

Most of the urgent requests I get come in through the night, and I always keep 9:00 to 9:30 am free for dealing with them if they do arise.

So there you go, Jan. The best thing you could do right now is to start analysing the requests you are getting and to develop a triage system for prioritising those request.

You’re not changing anything immediately, but you are gaining information you can then use to develop a process for reducing the urgency and for bringing some structure back into your work day.

You will feel uncomfortable when you first begin implementing these changes, and you may get some pushback from your colleagues, that’s the be expected, but it’s important to persist if you want to gain some control back.

You may find you will need to adjust things. That’s normal. Don’t worry, just because you need to move things around in your categorisation system doesn’t mean it’s failed. Your adjusting, learning and, more importantly, improving your system.

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

Why Your Life Feels Like a Mess (And the 3 Basics That Will Fix It)

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 11:37:55 +0900

"The real magic lies at the intersection between eating, moving, and sleeping. If you can do all three well, it will improve your daily energy and your odds of living a long, healthy life,"

That’s a quote from Tom Rath, author of Eat Move Sleep. The three most important factors in you becoming more productive, focused and motivated each day.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 385

Hello, and welcome to episode 385 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Don’t skip the basics. For me, this was a hard lesson to learn. I used to stay up late to finish work or watch TV. I’d skip my exercise or allow myself to get involved in meetings I didn’t really need to attend—just to feel a part of something.

And I would eat rubbish—cereal for breakfast, sandwiches and rice or fries for lunch and pizza for dinner.

And I felt it. I was tired, unproductive, and did not know where I was going. My weight kept going up and up, and every day felt like a drudge. I would wake up, feel horrible, go to work, come home, collapse onto the sofa, turn on the TV, and escape the real world.

It was easy to blame everyone else. My boss, my colleagues, my customers, the weather, where I lived, the company, etc.

Yet, it wasn’t anyone else’s fault. It was mine.

I had allowed myself to wallow in self-pity. That was a choice.

I cannot say there was a particular moment that changed me. It was more a gradual change.

What I learned, though, was that creating an enjoyable, exciting, and fulfilling life started with getting the basics right.

And that is what this week’ question is all about. What are the basics, and why do they matter? So, with that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Ali. Ali asks, hi Carl, my life’s a mess. I stay up all night watching TV or YouTube videos, and then wake up late and have to rush to get to work. Then at work I feel tired and unmotivated all day. What can I do to have some better habits?

Hi Ali, thank you for your question.

The first step would be to read James Clear’s Atomic Habits. It’s a brilliant book, that explains how habits work, how to create your own and does all that in a simple step by step approach.

The next step is to understand some time tested basics.

One of the many reasons why anyone would feel demotivated about the day is they are not clear on what is important to them.

Not everyone wants to be supremely fit and sporty and that’s fine. You don’t have to be. But it’s equally true no one wants to die prematurely.

As Steve Jobs said in his famous commencement address in 2006

"No one wants to die... even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there"

To find your purpose, or simply the motivation to jump out of bed each morning go through the Areas of Focus workbook. It’s free and you can download it from my website.

This will give you the eight areas of life that should be in balance.

Those eight are:

Family and relationships

Career or business

Health and fitness

Finance

Lifestyle and life experiences

Self development

Spirituality

Life’s purpose

Now, when I say in balance, it means defining what each one means to you. For example, for your finances area of focus could be something as simple as “I live within my means and not over spend on trivial things” or your lifestyle and life experiences could be “I live in a clean and tidy home”.

Getting these eight basics of life in balance will give you some purpose each day. Living in a clean and tidy home may mean that before you leave to go to work, you make your bed and wash the dishes.

To keep your finances in check, you may decide to do a weekly or monthly budget to track how you are spending your money.

That becomes a habit. It’s a must-do.

None of these takes a lot of time, but they help to keep your areas of focus in balance.

Now onto another important factor. One of the things I’ve noticed about highly motivated and successful people is they have some structure in their lives.

They wake up at the same time each day, they follow a morning routine and have some structure for the rest of the day. That could be exercising at the same time each day or just going for a walk at the end of the day to decompress.

Apple’s Tim Cook, for example, starts his day with an extremely early wake-up, around 3:45 AM, to read emails from customers and employees before heading to the gym for an hour of exercise. He eats a healthy breakfast, gets coffee, and then begins his workday.

I recently wrote about Hercule Poirot, the Agatha Christie detective in many of her novels in my weekly newsletter.

Poirot was obsessive, it’s true. He was immaculately turned out at all times. Yet he had structure to his days. Breakfast was at the same time each day and he had his famous tisane (a kind of herbal drink) served in the same glass.

What draws me to Poirot is that fastidiousness. Nothing was rushed. The only things that ever bothered him was if his routines were interrupted. Perhaps not a good thing, but it did enable him to have a purpose each day.

If he was taking a holiday, he refused to entertain any work. He was resting his “little grey cells” and that was the purpose of the holiday.

When he was working he was engaged completely. He actions were methodical and deliberate. I know Poirot is a fictional character, but in fictional characters there’s always a grain of truth somewhere.

Perhaps Poirot’s obsessiveness for order and structure, was motivated by someone somewhere.

The one thing I’ve learned is if you’re not getting the basics right, then everything else falls apart.

The basics are your daily routines. Your sleep schedule, what and when you eat and stepping away from screens and moving.

They are not difficult to do, but without one essential ingredient, you won’t do them. That ingredient is self-discipline.

You need discipline to get out of bed on a cold, wet morning. You need discipline to say no to that plate of unhealthy food, and you need discipline to turn off the TV and go to bed at the right time.

I often shy away from advising people to develop their self-discipline because it’s hard to do. And these days I find many people have simply given up and just tell themselves they have no self-discipline and that they never have had.

They will look back in their lives to find examples and use that to prove it to themselves. Ignoring the fact that there will also have been examples of them being disciplined.

It’s complete rubbish for anyone to say they lack self-discipline. It’s innate and inside all of us. But, like a muscle, if you don’t use it, it will weaken. But never disappear entirely.

Strengthening your self-discipline isn’t particularly difficult. As Admiral McRaven said in his Texas University Commencement address—begin the day by making your bed. Is that so difficult? It’s one thing, but it’s the start of strengthening your self discipline.

Now you mentioned that you want better habits. What would you consider to be “better habits”?

That would be the place to start.

I’ve never been a good sleeper—as a consequence I fell into the trap of believing it was “just the way I was wired”. Of course, that’s not true.

In January I made a commitment to myself I would be in bed no later than midnight. It was a struggle, but I persisted. Now, nine months later, I’m in bed consistently at midnight and my sleep is better than ever.

It took a bit of self-discipline for the first week or two, but soon it was a habit.

Changing your sleep habit is straight forward. Calculate how much sleep you need, then decide what time you want to wake up, and work backwards.

So, if you discover that you need seven hours sleep and you want to wake up at 7:00 am, then you need to be in bed by 11:30 pm. (It’s not like we instantly fall asleep when we get into bed)

Another thing you mentioned, Ali, is you lack motivation at work. That may be a bigger issue. If work is demotivating you, it’s also draining you of purpose. That’s where I would spend some time analysing.

When your purpose is drained, that has a big effect on your mental energy.

What is it about your work that is demotivating?

If it’s just a stage—we all go through that at times—what can you do to find some purpose. Perhaps you could set yourself a target. Sell X amount of products, solve a particularly difficult problem for your team or do something to improve your own workflows and processes.

If it’s bigger than that and it’s about the job itself, then it may be time to begin looking at alternative jobs. It doesn’t mean you have to quit your current job, what it means is you begin looking at alternatives.

What kind of work would motivate you?

It’s perfectly okay to accept that you made a mistake in your choice of career. That does not mean you are stuck with that mistake. You can change careers at any time. I’ve been a hotel manager, car salesperson, a lawyer and teacher.

The hardest part for me was accepting that the legal profession was not for me. I’d spent six years in school and training, but after graduating and working in a law office, I soon found myself hating it.

I felt I was in a day release prison. I had to sign in at 9:00 each morning and was not allowed to leave until 5:30 pm. During that time it felt I was chained to a desk only being allowed to move to go to the bathroom.

It was hard to accept I had made a monumental mistake. But the thought spending the next twenty-five years stuck behind a desk was terrifying. I had to change my career.

That was when I came to Korea—I told myself it would be for one year and during that time I would think about my future.

I was lucky, I fell in love with teaching, loved the way of life in Korea and met some amazing people. At the end of the first year, there was no way I was going to go back to the UK. So, when my employer in Korea asked if I wanted to sign an extension to my contract, I ask, where’s the pen?

Twenty three years later, I’m still here. Doing what I love day in day out.

Sometimes, we have to do the unthinkable. I remember my friends telling me I was mad to give up a career in law to become a teacher in a foreign land. But I knew deep down I was not cut out to be a lawyer.

So, Ali, take a step back. Ask yourself what needs to change. Do you have the basics right? Are you getting enough sleep, moving enough and eating right?

If not, focus your attention there. Build some habits around those three areas.

Then look at your career. Are you happy? If not, what alternatives could you look at. Remember, you do not have to quit your job to do this. Perhaps you decide to go back to school and learn a new skill, or simply to change the way you work—you processes and workflows.

I should add, you do not have to rush this. Just getting the basics right will bring you better focus and energy. From there you can decide what to do next that will bring some purpose back into your life.

I hope that has helped, Ali. Thank you for your question and thank you to you too for listening.

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

How to Stay Productive When Everything Changes

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 12:24:39 +0900

Let me take some pressure off. Your problem is not discipline. Your problem is not organization. Your problem is not that you have yet to stumble upon the perfect schedule. And your problem is not that the folks at home demand too much of your time. The problem is this: there’s not enough time to get everything done that you’re convinced—or others have convinced you—needs to get done.

That’s a quote by Andy Stanley, an author and church leader and perfectly captures the topic of this week’s episode. Enjoy.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 384

Hello, and welcome to episode 384 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

It’s easy to create a productivity system on paper, working with theories and concepts. The challenging part comes when that system is confronted with real-life events.

The upset customer who demands immediate action, a colleague off work sick and a boss who thinks you can drop everything and work on their latest wheeze.

It’s not that these productivity systems don’t work, they do, it’s that a system is only as good as the person adopting it is willing to slow down and consider how important the demand in front of them really is.

It’s also understanding what you have control of and what you don’t.

You don’t have control over whether your daughter’s after-school class is cancelled at short notice or not. You do have control over putting in place a contingency in case it happens.

In the real world, things change fast. An urgent email you received at 9:15 a.m. Is resolved on its own by 9:28 a.m. A meeting you spent all weekend preparing for get’s cancelled two hours before it’s due to begin. The list is endless.

Yet, having some kind of system still helps you.

And that’s what this week’s question is about. How to use a productivity system in a fast moving, chaotic world.

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

This week’s question comes from Alan. Alan asks, hi Carl, how would you advise someone that is struggling to set up a system because their work is always changing. My customers expect me to be available all the time and my boss keeps calling meetings without any notice. I never have any time to do my work.

Hi Alan. Thank you for your question.

I think it was Jim Rohn that taught me to understand that there are a lot of things in life that we cannot control. Obvious ones would be the weather, or a train breaking down that prevents you from getting into work on time.

Yet, there are also things like phone calls and urgent messages that can significantly change your plans for the day.

This is what I suppose we call life. Life has a nasty habit of getting in the way of our plans.

However, it’s always been like that. Life has always been unpredictable and yet many people have managed to deal with it.

There are a number of things you can do that will help you to stay on track, yet have the space and time to deal with the unexpected when they occur.

The first one is when planning the week, don’t focus on tasks, focus on objectives.

What I mean by this is when you focus on scheduling tasks for the week, it’s likely 60% or more will not get done. Either you don’t have the time or things change and they no longer need to be done.

Too much can change over seven days.

I’ve seen people carefully schedule out an exercise plan for the week, only to pick up a calf strain on Tuesday that prevents them from doing any more running for the rest of the week.

Yet, had they set the objective to exercise four times that week, the calf strain would be a minor inconvenience and perhaps to fulfil their exercise objective they could go swimming or to the gym and do non-leg exercises instead.

Similarly in the work environment, if you were to plan out a project’s tasks for the week, and you keep getting pulled into a last minute “urgent” meetings, the chances are by the end of the week you will have done practically none of the tasks you scheduled for yourself.

If you had instead set the objective of doing some work on the project, you would give yourself more flexibility to choose what to do given the changing circumstances of your week.

This way, although you may have only done three things on the project you still completed your objective. That’s a win.

Had you set yourself up to complete ten tasks on the project and only done three, you would consider that a failure and feel planning the week is a waste of time.

It’s as if all you are doing in a weekly planning session is scheduling tasks you won’t do. Which then makes it feel like a waste of time. But It’s not a waste of time if you are setting yourself realistic objectives based on what your calendar says you have time for.

Tasks are assigned at a daily level.

When you assign your tasks at a daily level you can take into account the changing nature of the week.

I’ve had clients have their complete week destroyed because of a crisis with a client in another country. They go into work with one expectation and by 11:00 am they are driving to the airport to catch a flight to the other side of the world to resolve a crisis.

This is why weekly and daily planning go hand in hand.

Another tip I would recommend is to avoid scheduling anything for the first thirty minutes of your work day.

Use that time to get a heads up on the day.

Go through your messages and emails to see what is happening.

I don’t subscribe to the idea that you should not check your email or messages in the morning. That to me is a ridiculous idea. When you stop yourself from processing your messages, you start to worry that there might be something in there that is important.

That worry causes distraction and it becomes difficult to focus on anything else.

The chances that there is a crisis that needs your urgent attention is slim and if there is a crisis that needs your attention better to know about it early so you have time to slow down and consider the best steps to resolve it.

But more importantly, those first thirty minutes gives you a chance to get a feel for the day, confirm your plan and decide when best to do whatever work you had decided to do that day.

To give you an example. I woke early this morning for a meeting at 8:00 am. I did my morning routines, and as I was preparing for the meeting, I got a text message informing me that the meeting had been cancelled.

That gave me back an hour I had not planned for.

So, I looked at my plan for the day and decided that the best use of that hour would be to begin writing this podcast script. Doing that would take the pressure off the rest of the day and give me a chance to bring forward other work.

All this does not mean having a system is pointless. Having a system means you can switch focus quickly and you know where to look to make better decisions on what to work on next.

For example, having a quick and simple way to collect stuff is a no-brainer. A paper notebook open on your desk with a pencil ready to go allows you to quickly jot something down when on a call or in the middle of doing something else.

Making sure that your phone and computers are set up for quick capture is also important. Ideas and requests can happen at any time. Being able to collect those ideas with the minimum of fuss is important.

Then, allowing yourself ten to fifteen minutes at the end of the day for processing what you collected so you can delete the unnecessary and ensure that what is left is either scheduled or dealt with.

This is why I urge everyone to take the free COD course. COD stands for Collect, Organise and Do and it’s the foundations of every solid productivity system.

I’ll put a link in the show notes for you if you haven’t taken the course yet.

Another thing you can do, which is linked to the first thirty minutes of your day is to mentally map out when you will do something. This is where you use the power of “implementation Intentions”.

This is where you used an “if this, then that formula”

If it’s 2:00 pm then I will spend an hour clearing my actionable email.

If it’s 5:30 pm, I will stop and plan tomorrow for ten minutes.

I like to use the first thirty minutes of the day to review my calendar and then visualise the different times in the day what I will be doing at that time.

It really helps to get you focused and prevents you from getting involved in things you do not need to be involved in.

Don’t be too strict with yourself. If you planned to respond to your actionable emails at 2:00 pm and it’s now 2:20 pm, it doesn’t matter. Just start going through your actionable emails. Whether you spend an hour or forty minutes on this activity isn’t the issue. What matters in you spent some time doing it.

Being consistent and allowing yourself to get back on track is what really matters. When it comes to things like emails and messages and daily admin, it’s never going to be about clearing everything in one day. It’s always about spending some time doing it daily.

If you’re just starting out on an exercise programme, it’s not really about the quality of your workout initially, It’s about spending time doing exercise. Getting fit and healthy doesn’t happen with one workout. It’s an accumulation of many workouts done consistently over a period of time that results in your increased physical fitness.

A final point is if you work in a dynamic environment. This is work that involves multiple interruptions each day and rapid changes in focus.

Here we have to be careful. Many people believe their jobs are dynamic, but often the chaos is not the job, but the way they are structuring their day.

I remember once being contacted by someone who worked in customer support. They worked in an office and they were customer facing. There was no place to go and do other work without the risk of someone coming in and interrupting them.

In this instance asking what is their core work gave then the answer they were looking for. They were employed to deal with customer issues, face to face.

The priority here was to be available for customers coming in to their office. If there was a lull, then they could make calls or follow up people they were waiting to hear back from. If there wasn’t a lull, then as long as they were in front of the customer, they were doing the job they were employed to do.

The solution in this instance was to arrange with their team leader to allow the customer support team to have thirty minutes each day away from talking with customers face to face to deal with any follow up issues.

As it happened in that case the team leaders realised that this was a good idea and allowed all customer support people to have two thirty minutes periods each day. Those times were fixed where possible so the team could better plan their days.

The key here is to protect periods of time in the day for doing the non-dynamic work. You can do this weekly or daily. If you do it daily, the daily planning will become more important as you will be fixing in these protected times when you do your daily planning.

And remember, thirty minutes is always going to be better than zero minutes.

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

The Art of Showing Up Every Single Day

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:32:42 +0900

“I'm not gifted. I'm not smarter than everybody else. I'm not stronger. I just have the ability to stick to a plan and not quit.”

That’s a quote from Jonny Kim. A Navy SEAL, Harvard educated medical doctor and NASA Astronaut. All of which was achieved before he was thirty five.

Now the key part to that quote is “the ability to stick to a plan and not quit” And that’s the topic of this week’s podcast.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 383

Hello, and welcome to episode 383 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

It took me many years to learn that the best things in life never happen by accident. They are the products of slow steady work.

Becoming a lawyer or a doctor is not about making a decision in middle school and then miraculously ten years later you’re performing in the Supreme Court or surgery in a top hospital.

It takes years of slow steady study, experiencing ups and downs and frequently wanting to quit because it’s hard.

Yet that’s the way it’s supposed to be. It’s hard because as human beings we thrive when we have a goal that requires us to work hard consistently.

Jonny Kim is remarkable because he did three incredibly hard things. Yet, to achieve all of them required him to follow a simple process of study and preparation. It wasn’t impossible. All it took was a steely determination to achieve these things, being consistent and, to take control of his calendar.

And that’s what this week’ question is all about. How to do the the hard things consistently so you start to see progress.

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

This week’s question comes from Joe. Joe asks, hi Carl, the one thing I find incredibly hard to be is consistent. I’m great at setting up task managers and notes apps, but after a few days, I stop following the system. How do you stay consistent?

Hi Joe, thank you for your question.

There could be two parts to this. The first is what I call the “Shiny Object Syndrome”. This is where you see every new tool on YouTube or in a newsletter as something that promises to solve all your productivity and time management problems.

We all go through this phase. In many ways, I think it’s important to do so. This way you learn the limitations of tools and find out, the hard way, that no tool will ever do the work for you.

You also discover that the more addictive the tool (I believe they call it “sticky”), the less work you will do.

For me, Notion was a classic example of that. When Notion first came onto my radar around 2018, I was fascinated. I downloaded the app and began setting it up. It was exciting. Far more editable than Evernote or Apple Notes.

There were all these cool things you could do with it. Change the font, the colours, the background, create increasingly more complex dashboards and so on.

On that first day, I spent eight hours “setting it up”. It was later that evening I realised that if I were to use Notion I would never get any work done. I’d always want to play with it and try and get it to show me what I wanted to see, when I wanted to see it. A goal I was never likely to achieve.

So, I deleted the app.

It came down to one very simple thing. Do I want tools that will help me do my work or not?

Well, the answer was I wanted tools that got me to work fast. And that was not going to be Notion.

The tools that best promote solid work are boring. They have no flamboyant features. They just do what they are meant to do. In other words they are so featureless the only thing you can do is get on and do the work.

I rather envy those people who have the time to be constantly changing their apps. I know from experience that transferring everything to a new app takes time. And then there’s the learning curve, although I suspect that’s where the dopamine hits come from.

I certainly don’t have the time to do that. I’d prefer to spend my free time with my family, walking or playing with Louis or reading books.

The other area where a lack of consistency comes in is when you have no processes for doing your regular work.

Humans work best when they follow a pattern.

If you’ve ever learned to ride a bicycle, you will remember it was difficult at first. You were wobbly, probably fell off. Yet, if you persisted, today riding a bicycle doesn’t require a thought. You jump on and off you go.

There’s an illustration that Tony Robbins talks about. When a child learns to walk it’s a painfully slow experience. There’s the crawling, the pulling itself up on a chair, the inevitable first step and the constant falling over.

Yet, no parent would ever say stop! Give up. You’ll never be able to walk.

We persist and after a few days or weeks the child is walking everywhere.

If you want to be consistent with something, there will inevitably be a period of a few weeks or months where things don’t go smoothly. Mistakes are made, plenty of falls and a lot of frustration.

That’s the initial learning curve. We all have to go through it.

Recently, I updated my iPad to the new operating system. I do this annually to get to know what’s new in preparation for updating my Apple Productivity Course.

This year, Apple has significantly changed the design of the operating system. It’s slick, fast and very different to what I am used to.

Now, each morning, I clear my email inbox on my iPad. I’ve done this for years and it’s automatic. Write my journal, then grab my iPad and clear the inbox.

Over the last few days I’ve felt a little frustration. The layout of Apple Mail has changed and buttons have moved. For two days I was trying to get rid of the sidebar (a new feature). I done that now and after a week, I’m beginning to get used to the new layout.

The issue here is that those changes slowed down my processing speed. This in turn threw out my routine a little.

It reminded me why changing apps all the time destroys ones productivity. But more importantly it reminded me that consistently following processes ensures speed—which ultimately is what reduces the time required to do the work.

The problem with following routines and processes is that doing so can be boring. Yet, anything worthwhile is going to be boring at times.

But boring is good for your brain. It doesn’t have to think too much and it gives it a chance to relax.

Constant stimulation, problem solving, learning to use new apps, messing around with routines and processes that work may be exciting (dopamine hits), but they don’t get the work done.

This one of the reasons why having a regular morning routine is a great way to start the day. By following a set routine every morning from the moment you wake up, allows you to do healthy things that do not require a lot of thought.

A morning routine could be making yourself a cup of coffee, doing some stretches, brushing your teeth and taking a shower.

Or it could be a little more with meditation, journal writing or exercise. These are your morning routines, so you get to choose what you do. All that matters is that whatever you choose to be your morning routine, you consistently do it. Every morning (including weekends)

Another way to bring consistency into your life is to put some stakes in the ground. In other words, build some structure around your day based on meal times, for example.

I do the family’s laundry when I go down to cook dinner. The washing machine is in the area of the kitchen, so it seems natural to take down the laundry and do the washing while I cook dinner. Once dinner is done, the washing is finished and ready to be hung up. (I refuse to use a dryer as it destroys clothes).

With work, I try to protect 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. each day for doing the most important work of the day. It’s not always possible, sometimes I need to be in a meeting, but I will fight tooth and nail to protect that time where possible.

It took a year or so to consistently protect that time, but now, even my wife respects it. She knows not to disturb me when I am doing my focused work.

It’s just two hours a day. That still leaves me with six hours for emergencies, customer queries and team requests.

You can also do this with your communications and daily admin. If you were to protect the same time each day to respond to your actionable emails and do whatever admin is required it makes things so much easier for you.

If, you were to choose 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. For your communication and admin time, and got serious about protecting that time each day, after a few weeks it would feel very strange if you were not doing it.

This is how Jonny Kim managed to do what most people would consider impossible. It wasn’t because he was smarter than anyone else. He never graduated top of his class. Instead it was down to ruthlessly protecting time to study and train.

It’s how averagely talented athletes win Olympic gold medals. They prioritise the small things. The long boring runs, the hours in the gym, or practicing their serve over and over again.

It’s boring, yes. But it gets results, every time.

And yet, if you were to look at how much time you spent on these routines, it’s tiny. Out of twenty-four hours, you’re using two to four hours a day on doing the basics.

It’s when you don’t do that, that you need to find eight to twelve hours just to catch up. And because you don’t have a regular process for doing the work, it’s slow, feels laborious and horrible and you have to repeat multiple times each month.

When you’re consistent, you don’t think about it. You just do it. It’s neither boring nor difficult. It’s just what you do.

Think about brushing your teeth and washing your face. It’s boring right? You do it two to three times a day, yet it’s something you just do. You don’t think about it.

That’s how being consistent with doing the important things—keeping backlogs at bay, dealing with messages and emails and doing your core work works.

It’s exciting the first time you do it, less so the second time until it’s just boring. Then suddenly, it’s something you just do. It’s neither boring nor exciting.

Getting there is the challenge. That why kids argue with their parents about brushing their teeth or washing their hands before meals. It’s boring and unexciting, until it isn’t. It’s just something they automatically do.

So there you go, Joe. You will have to go through the valley of despair, go through the boredom stage until suddenly, it’s just something you do. It’s then when you know you are now consistent.

Good luck. Thank you for your question and thank you to you too for listening.

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

Stop Chasing Work-Life Balance - Do This Instead

Sun, 24 Aug 2025 11:31:42 +0900

"There's no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences."

That’s a quote by former GE CEO, Jack Welch.

This week’s episode is about finding balance in our lives.

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Script | 382

Hello, and welcome to episode 382 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

It’s always fascinated me how so many people see the attainment of a “work-life balance” as their goal in life. Yet, that balance is easily achieved if you know what is important to you, are clear about your core work activities, and take control of your calendar.

I’m reading Dominic Sandbrook’s brilliant book State of Emergency: The Way We Were, Britain 1970 to 1974.

In Britain in the early 1970s, the economy was in dire straits. The labour unions were fighting the employers and the government, inflation was rising uncontrollably and unemployment was becoming a serious problem. Nothing the government tried worked and often made things worse.

Yet, despite all these travails, people got on with their lives. They went to work, came home had dinner with their families or dropped into the pub to meet up with friends. At weekends kids went out to the cinema, or hung out on the high street with their friends.

Parents would potter around their gardens or attempt DIY projects at home.

Balance was a given. Work happened at work. Home life happened at home. There were clear boundaries.

Today, it’s easy to find people being nostalgic for those halcyon days, yet they weren’t all great. There were frequent power cuts (power outages), droughts, and the incessant strikes meant often people couldn’t get to work, or their workplace was closed because of the strikes.

Having a work life balance shouldn’t be a goal. It should be the way you life your life. There’s a time for work, and a time for your hobbies and family. Not in a strict sense, but in a flexible way.

This week’s question is about ho to achieve that with the minimal amount of effort and fuss.

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

This week’s question comes from Isabelle. Isabelle asks, Hi Carl, I’m having a lot of trouble trying to balance my professional and personal life. I never seem to have time to meet my friends, and often skip going to the gym because I have to finish my work late in the evenings. What do you recommend someone do to regain some work/life balance?

Hi Isabelle. Thank you for your question.

One of the most effective ways to start this is to create what I call a “perfect” week calendar. This is where you create a new blank calendar and sketch out what you would like time for each week.

Begin with your personal life. How many times do you want to go to the gym, how much sleep do you want each night, and how much time you want to spend with family and friends?

Add these to your calendar.

Then sketch out how you would like to divide up your work time. How many meetings per week, how much time can you spend on admin and communications each day and time for doing deeper, focused work.

Once you have done this, you will get to see if what you want time for each week is realistic. I’ve found most people who do this exercise discover that they are trying to do the impossible.

You only have 168 hours a week. And you do not have to do everything you want to do in those 168 hours.

Before coming to Korea, I used to go to watch Leeds Rhinos Rugby League team every home game. In those days, those games were usually held on a Friday night.

This meant, every other Friday, I’d make sure I left work on time, got home, changed, had a quick dinner, then went to pick up my friends and off we went.

After the game we’d call into the local pub for a few beers before going home.

During the season, we made it a non-negotiable event. It would have been unheard of for any of us to miss a Friday night game.

If I had urgent work to finish, I would rather go back into the office on Saturday morning to finish it off than miss a game.

That was the mindset. Those games and meeting up with friends were non-negotiable.

And that is the first lesson here. If there is something you want to do, then make it non-negotiable.

Of all the productivity and time management tools available, the only one that will tell you if you have time to do something is your calendar.

Task managers and notes apps can collect a lot of stuff. Ideas, things to do, future projects, meeting notes. The list is infinite.

Yet, the time you have is not infinite. It’s limited. Each day has 24 hours, each week has 168 hours.

Part of the reason many feel there is no balance in their lives is they’ve allowed task managers to become their primary time management tool.

If you look at your task manager, it’s just a list of things you either have to do or would like to do. There’s no time frame. Some of the things on there will be important and time sensitive. However, a lot won’t be. And when you scroll through the list, all you see are things to do.

It numbs the mind and makes you feel you have no time to rest.

The difference between today and the 1970s is what we are prioritising.

Because in the 1970s the only productivity or time management tools we had were desk or pocket diaries and notebooks, the only tool we looked at when asked to do something was our diaries.

This meant we would instantly see a conflict and would be able to say “No, sorry I cannot do that on that day”.

Today, when we are asked to do something we add to our task manager-after all, it’s easier to add it there than to open up our calendar app, and look at what we are committed to.

If you have on your calendar a regular aerobics class on a Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. And you’re asked to attend a meeting at 4:30 p.m. You’d more likely say you cannot attend that meeting if all you had is your calendar to look at.

Today, we don’t do that. We say “yes, okay” then later realise we’’ll struggle to get to our class.

I remember when I was at university, my finish time at work was 5:30 p.m. and my lectures began at 6:00 p.m. There was no way I would accept a meeting request on a Tuesday or Thursday after 3:30 p.m.

It took me twenty minutes to get to my university from the office.

Attending university was a non-negotiable for me. Meetings with colleagues could be arranged either earlier in the day or the next.

This is why you cannot afford to leave things to chance if you want to bring balance into your life. If something is important to you, you need to be intentional about it.

But there’s another important consideration and that is flexibility. Balance is about being flexible.

Most nights, I finish my coaching calls around 11:00 p.m. Now it would be very tempting for me to quit and flop down in front of the TV and mindlessly watch something. Yet, reading real books is something I get a great deal of pleasure from. So, before I consider turning on the TV, I grab my book, go through to the living room and read for twenty minutes or so.

It’s wonderfully relaxing—much more so than trying to find something to watch TV.

Yet, if there is something I do want to watch on TV, I’ll skip the book and watch the TV show.

There are sometimes when for one reason or another, I have not cleared my actionable email. If all I have is the hour after my calls finish to do it, then I’ll spend thirty minutes or so clearing as many emails as I can.

Doing my email late is far better than having to try and find additional time the next day.

On Wednesday this week, my wife asked me if I would go with her and her parents on a little trip to the mountains that afternoon.

I had not planned for it, but said if I could have the morning to record my YouTube videos and get my Learning Note out, I would love to go.

I knew I would have to edit the videos when I got back that evening, but spending time with my family was important. So, that’s what I did.

We had a lovely afternoon in the mountains and I got my videos edited.

As I sat down to read my book on Wednesday night, I had a little smile on my face because the day had been fantastic, and all my important work had been done.

Creating balance in life is not about adding more and more stuff to do in a task manager. It’s about how you are allocating your time each day.

What is important to you? That’s what goes on your calendar. There’s a time when you can sit down at your desk and do work. But there’s also time when you need to stop, relax and spend time with the people you care about, or do your exercise, play with your kids or walk your dog.

Everything you want to do requires time. Yet, time is the one thing in your life that is limited.

You can accept thousands of tasks, and have hundreds of ideas to do things but none of those will happen if you do not have the time to do them.

That’s why I advocate managing your work by when you will do it, rather than managing endless lists of tasks. When you focus more on your available time to do stuff, you begin eliminating more of the low-value stuff and begin to appreciate your time more.

There are thousands of things you could do, perhaps would like to do someday. None of that matters today. What matters today is you get the important things done. And choosing those are is entirely within your power.

Yes, you can go to the gym, you can also have a movie night with your friends or family. They are important (think family and relationships and health and fitness areas of focus).

Yet, if you have an important interview tomorrow and feel a couple of hours this evening spent preparing would be a better use of your time, then ask if you can postpone the movie night to tomorrow.

Tonight is not zero hour. You can move things around to better fit with your priorities for today.

And that neatly brings us back to the daily and weekly planning.

Weekly planning is about the big picture. The big things you want to get accomplished. If you decide that you will go to the gym three times this week, schedule it.

If you see that a good use of your time would be to work on that big project where the deadline is approaching, schedule time for working on it.

The daily planning is about making the necessary adjustments to deal with the things that you were unaware of when you did the weekly planning. The client with a crisis, your disorganised boss that forgot to tell you about her impending deadline, or your son coming down with a heavy cold.

It all starts and ends with your calendar. That worked perfectly well for hundreds of years, it still works today.

Task managers and notes apps support you. Your calendar is where you get to see what you’re committed to and tells you if you have time to take on more, or whether taking a few days break would be more beneficial for you.

I hope that helps, Isabelle. Thank you again for sending in your question.

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

Hobby-Less and Stressed: Why We Need Real Activities Again

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 11:59:08 +0900

"Think of yourself in a concert hall listening to the strains of the sweetest music when you suddenly remember that you forgot to lock your car. You are anxious about the car, you cannot walk out of the hall, and you cannot enjoy the music. There you have a perfect image of life as it is lived by most human beings."

There, Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello reminds us to focus on the magic in front of us.

What are you doing to switch off, and if you cannot do so, how can you do it? That’s why we’re looking at this week.

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Script | 381

Hello, and welcome to episode 381 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

How often do you completely switch yourself off from tasks, projects, emails and messages?

And not just professional emails and messages and tasks, it includes all the WhatsApp messages from friends, strangers and the home projects you promised yourself that you would do this weekend, but never did?

It seems we’ve found ourselves caught in the to-do trap. Where the only thing on your mind is all the things you’ve listed somewhere that you think you must do.

It’s a horrible existence. As soon as we sit down to relax, our phone reminds us there’s more to do. More emails and messages come in, task manager reminders pop up on the screen with a bing telling us we’re supposed to call this person or that one.

And given that we now carry our phones around with us everywhere we go, it’s as if the phone no longer serves us, but we serve it: jumping to its every whim and beep.

The problem here is that it’s not something you suddenly start doing. It’s a gradual creep. It begins with waiting for your daughter to text you the time her train arrives at the railway station, to suddenly worrying about whether a customer or your boss sent you last minute Teams message before the end of your work day. You’e got to check right?

And before long, you feel intensely uncomfortable if your phone isn’t in your hand or near you. It’s then when you have gone beyond experiencing a healthy relationship with your digital devices. It’s time to unravel all those now ingrained impulses.

And that’s where this week’s question comes in. And that means it’s time for me to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Maggie. Maggie asks, hi Carl I see all these productivity YouTube videos, and listen to a lot of podcasts, but very few of them ever talk about how to switch off at the end of the day and relax. This is something I am really struggling at the moment with.

Hi Maggie, thank you for your question.

You’re right, I rarely see videos or hear podcasts talking about switching off and relaxing. I do sometimes hear people saying to stop and relax, but not how to do it.

As I mentioned a moment a go, this is not something we just stop doing. It creeps up on you. One moment you’re a child without any digital devices, being curious, running around, trying new hobbies then falling asleep to suddenly being held hostage by task lists, projects and long lists of thing you think you should do.

Not to mention the anxiety of responding quickly enough to a friend’s text message or your boss’s email.

If you think about it, while we seem to have adapted well to this new phenomenon, and appear to just accept this as the way of life, it’s really a horrible existence.

Last week, I mentioned that I had embarked on a 13 hour autobiographical TV series on Lord Louis Mountbatten.

The series was recorded in and around 1969, so was shot before the dawn of home computers.

What I noticed was how people in those pre-home computer days relaxed. There were family board games, book reading and going out for walks and having picnics by the river.

Because the only way you could be contacted was via a letter, telegram or land line phone, once you left the house you were free. And “free” in a real sense. If you were to take a walk by the river or pond or lake, you could fully engage with your surroundings and the people you were with.

And family meals were important.

The aristocracy in the UK would dress for dinner, and even as we went into the post-war years, there would be a ritual of adults and children washing their hands before sitting down to dinner.

I rarely see that with people today. I should point out that it’s still a good practice to do—you know, washing your hands before eating your meals.

Currently, I am reading the enormous series of books by historian Dominic Sandbrook, the co host of the excellent podcast The Rest is History.

Sandbrook begins this series of books in 1950s UK and I am currently up to 1970, having just finished reading his excellent book Mad As Hell: The Crisis of the 1970s and the Rise of The Populist Right, a book about how US culture changed in the 1970s.

The books have chapters on how families lived and the activities they did in their spare time and as I was reading these chapters I felt a sadness that many of these activities seem to have disappeared.

For instance, in the UK, there was in almost every town and village a working mens club. Yes, today that would be considered sexist, but when these clubs started they were established for the men who worked down the mines or in the factories.

One of the clubs I used to go to would have a guest act on every Sunday night. Sometimes the act was a musician other times it might be a comedian. These clubs would be full of husbands and wives having a drink, playing bingo between the act’s sessions.

It was a wonderful evening. I remember never once worrying about work, or even talking about work. It was families talking about where they were going on holiday, playing bingo and watching the acts.

I never experienced what we called in the UK “Sunday night blues”—that depressing feeling of knowing you had to go back to work tomorrow.

I only ever experienced that when I stopped going to the club on a Sunday and instead sitting at home watching TV.

Somehow, we’ve sacrificed human activities—going out with friends and family three or four times a week—to sitting on sofas watching TV or scrolling through endless feeds in social media. Often feeling jealous of the fake lives people put on there.

And certainly not engaging with other human beings in the same room as you.

And the word “Hobby” seems to have become a quaint old-fashioned word. I mean, who’s got time for hobbies today?

And that to me is where people need to start. Have a hobby that does not involve a digital tool.

One of my rediscovered hobbies is collecting books. Real books. I’ve always enjoyed reading. It’s been a big part of my life.

I remember before I got an iPad in January 2011, I would spend weeks deciding which book to take with me on the plane when I travelled. It became an annual ritual. A week or two before I was due to fly I would spend a Saturday afternoon at the bookstore in the local shopping centre looking for something I could read while I was on holiday.

After January 2011, I no longer went to a bookstore. I downloaded books from Apple Books or Amazon. Accidentally, something I had found immensely pleasurable—spending an afternoon wandering around a bookstore, to simply hearing about a book, finding it on a digital bookstore and buying it.

The pleasure of aimlessly wandering around a bookstore was ripped away from me for the sake of convenience.

I can fully understand why the sales of vinyl records and record players have exploded in recent years. The lack of convenience and a limited record collection makes listening to music a genuine pleasure.

Those of a certain age may remember creating something called a “Mix tape”. This was where you recorded from a hi-fi system records to a tape cassette that you could play on a cassette walkman or in the car when going on a long journey.

There was was something deeply pleasurable in make those tapes. I used to do this when going on family holidays. It didn’t require a lot of brain power. Just looking through your records (and later CDs) for songs and then recording them, in real time, to a cassette.

You had to sit and listen the whole song before pressing pause on the tape and choosing the next song. Completely inconvenient by today’s standards, but that wasn’t the point. It was relaxing, enjoyable and there was a sense of pride when finished of a job well done.

And that’s where I think we should be looking for activities that help us to switch off at the end of the day or at weekends. Activities that take us away from the digital noise.

For example, this year, I’ve made it a habit to spend a minimum of thirty minutes reading a real book after I finish my evening coaching calls.

I close down my office, grab the book I am currently reading, and go through to the living room, settle down on the sofa with the book and read. While I will read for at least thirty minutes, I often find myself still reading after an hour. During that time, it’s just me and little Louis lying next to me.

It’s quiet and incredibly relaxing.

Another “hobby” I began this spring was to have a bedding box on the terrace outside my office. In this box I’ve been growing flowers. It needs watering and the occasional weed needs pulling out. This had led me to want to add more flower boxes for next year.

I’ve been sketching out on paper ideas of where I’ll put these boxes and what flowers I could grow in them. I’ve even considered growing my own vegetables too.

All non-tech hobbies that have brought some real enjoyment with them.

Other activities you may wish to consider are knitting and needlework. I’ve remember teaching myself to sow buttons onto shirts and jackets—great fun but can be equally frustrating.

Water colour painting. There’s an initial cost in paints and paint books, but again great fun when you get going. This is a particularly good hobby if you like to get out into the countryside.

Winston Churchill used painting as a way to destress at weekends and on holidays.

While I’m not a big fan doing digital detoxes or restricting use of digital tools, that’s just a waste of time because you end up finding excuses to check your digital devices.

What I have found, though, is if you have a hobby or activity that is non-digital, you lose the temptation to “check” for messages and notifications. You become engrossed in the activity you engaged in.

Perhaps you could have a Saturday or Sunday morning family walk. Give it some added interest by including some bird spotting or trying to find new routes around the park or woods.

When to comes to switching off, look for activities that don’t involve phones or computers. Puzzles are good, learning to detail a car (my current hobby) or some gardening—which can large or small.

I hope that has helped, Maggie. Try to use things to switch off that do not involve a screen and you’ll find yourself relaxing and rediscover some lost pleasures in life.

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

Stop Competing with Computers: Why Slower is Actually Faster

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 12:24:01 +0900

"Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why."

Eddie Cantor

This week, I’m answering a question about why it’s important to slow down and allow your brain to do what it does best and why you do not want to be competing with computers.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 380

Hello, and welcome to episode 380 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

It’s very easy to get caught up in the hype about AI and what it promises to do or can do for you.

And it is an exciting time. AI promises a lot, and our devices are becoming faster. Does this mean it’s all good news? Well, maybe not.

You see, while all this technology is becoming faster, our brains are not. Evolution takes time. We can still only process information at the same speed people did hundreds of years ago.

And it’s causing us to take shortcuts. Shortcuts that may not necessarily be in our best interests.

Thirty years ago, people would buy a newspaper in the morning and that single newspaper would furnish us with analysis and news throughout the day.

I remember buying my newspaper from the newsagent outside the office I worked at in the morning. I would read that newspaper during my coffee breaks and lunch. I’d begin with the front page, then the sport on the back page and usually in the afternoon, I’d read the opinion pieces.

It was a daily ritual, and felt natural. I’d pay my fifty pence (around 75 cents) each morning and by the end of the day, I would feel I had got my money’s worth.

I remember reading full articles, getting to know both sides of the argument and the nuances within each story.

Today, people are in such a rush, they rarely read a full article, and only get a snapshot of what’s really going on. There are apps that will summarise documents, articles and important reports for you. But is this really good for you?

This is why over the last two years, I’ve been intentionally slowing down.

It began with bringing pens and paper back into my system, then going on to wearing an analogue watch instead of an Apple Watch. It’s moved on to buying real books, and this year, reacquainting myself with the joys of ironing, cooking and polishing shoes.

And that brings me on to this week’s question. So, that means it’s time for me now to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Michael. Michael asks, Hi Carl, you’ve talked a lot about your pen and paper experiment and I was wondering why you are going against technology, when clearly that is the future.

Hi Michael, thank you for your question.

I should begin by saying I am not against technology. I love technology. I still use Todoist and Evernote, and I use Anthropic’s Claude most days. Technology is still a big part of my life.

However, I began my “analogue experiment”—if you can call it that—because I began to realise that trying to keep up with all the advances in technology meant I was missing out on life.

I had stopped thinking for myself and was looking for confirmation of the opinions I had formed about a subject. And technology does that extremely well.

I remember during the last US Presidential election I was curious about what the arguments were about. I watched a few videos on YouTube from Fox News and MSNBC trying to maintain some kind of balance.

That didn’t turn out so well. I must have accidentally watched a video or two more from Fox News and suddenly my YouTube feed was full of Greg Gutfeld and Meghan Kelly.

So much for trying to hear both sides of the argument.

It took over a month to get those videos out of my YouTube feed.

From a time management and productivity perspective I’ve always felt it’s important that you decide what is important and what is not.

For most of you, you will have gained a few years experience in the work that you do. That experience is valuable. It gives you an advantage. You have learned what works and what does not work. Not in a theoretical way, but in a practical way.

Sales courses can teach the theory, but to become a great salesperson requires real, hands on experience. Talking with real people, dealing with objections and allowing your personality and charm to come through. You can’t learn that from an online course or four hours chatting with an AI bot.

Henry Kissinger was a divisive figure. Some loved him, others hated him. Yet successive presidents both Republican and Democrat sort his advice long after he had left government. Why? Because of his vast personal experience dealing with dictators and uncompromising world leaders.

Now I understand why technology does this. Companies such as Google and the media organisations want my attention. Their algorithms are trained to do just that. And as a human being it’s very difficult to resist.

But the biggest problem with this is everything is becoming faster and faster. So fast, that your brain cannot keep up.

Now there are things we should move fast on. An upset customer, a natural disaster in your town or city, A suddenly sick loved one or a burst pipe in your bathroom.

Equally, though, there are a lot of things we shouldn’t be moving fast on. Deciding what must be done today, for example, sitting down and talking with your kids, or partner. Talking with your parents, siblings, friends or taking your dog out for a walk.

One work related example would be managing your email. There are two parts to this. Clearing your inbox requires speed. You’re filtering out the unimportant from the important. And with experience, you soon become very fast at this.

Then there’s the replying to the important emails. That requires you to slow down and think.

Now I know there are AI email apps that promise to do the filtering for you. Yet do you really trust that it got it right? That lack of trust results in you going through the AI filtered emails, “just in case”.

Which in turn slows down the processing. You would have been faster had you done it yourself.

But this goes beyond where AI and technology can help us. It goes to something deeper and more human.

One of the most mentally draining things you can do is sit at a screen all day.

You can respond to messages, write reports, design presentations, edit videos, and read the news all from a single screen. This means that, in theory, except for needing to go to the bathroom, you could spend all day and night without getting up from the chair.

That’s not how you work. Your brain cannot stay focused for much more than 90 minutes without the need for a break. Yet, if a break means you stare at another window, perhaps stop writing the report and instead read a news article, your brain is not getting a rest.

Instead, one of the best things you could do, particularly now, with the new flexible ways of working, is to get up and do something manually.

Perhaps take the laundry and do a load of washing. Then return to your computer, work for another hour and then hang the washing up.

Two things happen here. First, your brain gets a rest from deep thinking and does something simple. And secondly, you move. Another thing your brain requires to work at its best.

Repetitive tasks are therapy for your brain. This is why some say that jogging or hiking is therapeutic. The act of putting one foot in front of another is repetitive and your brain can operate on automatic pilot.

Yet, there’s something else here.

The other day I had a pile of ironing to do. It wasn’t overwhelming, but there was around forty-minutes of work there to do.

At the same time, I was working on an article I was writing. That writing began strongly, but after an hour or so, my writing had slowed considerably. I was struggling. It was at that moment I looked up and saw the pile of ironing.

So, I got up, pulled out the ironing board and iron and spend forty minutes or so clearing the pile.

WOW! What a difference. After hanging up the clothes, I sat back down at my desk and the energy to write returned and I was able to get the article finished in no time at all.

Now what would have happened had I stayed tied to my desk? Probably not very much at all. I would have continued to struggle, perhaps written a bit, but likely would have had to rewrite what I had written.

Instead, I gave my brain a break. I did something manual that was repetitive, ironing. I know it’s not exciting, but that’s the point. It recharged my brain and I was able to return to my writing refreshed and didn’t need to rewrite anything later.

Other activities you can do is to make your own lunch. Going into the kitchen to make a sandwich does not require a lot of brain power. It gets you up from your desk, gives your brain a break from the screen and you’re making something.

It was a sense that everything I was doing was done at a screen that was the catalyst for me to return to doing some things manually.

I remember when I decided to start using a pen and notebook for planning out my week. I was shocked how much better I thought.

When I was planning my week digitally, I couldn’t wait to get it over. Just to make it feel more worthwhile, I would clean up a folder or clear my desktop of screenshots and PDFs I no longer needed. I noticed I was doing anything but actually plan the week.

When I closed my computer, pulled out a notebook and one of my favourite fountain pens, I actually planned and thought about what I wanted to accomplish that week.

My Saturday morning planning sessions have become one of my favourite times of the week. I can stop, slow down and just think slowly and deeply about what I want to accomplish.

And all these little things that have slowed me down have resulted in me getting far more done each week.

Without consciously choosing to do so, my social media time has dropped significantly. I don’t watch as many YouTube videos as I used to do, and I feel more fulfilled and accomplished at the end of the day.

A couple of months ago, while my wife was studying for her end of term exams, I would finish in my office, go through into the living room where she was studying, pick up a real book and read.

It was a lovely feeling. My wife, Louis and myself all on the sofa engaged in something meaningful. We were still able to ask each other questions, but for the most part it felt calm, quiet and natural.

Last weekend, during my TV time, I began watching the autobiographical series on the Life and Times of Lord Louis Mountbatten.

Mountbatten was born in 1900 and died in 1979. He lived through two World Wars, was a part of both, was a member of the Royal Family, being the cousin of King George 6th, and was involved in many post war events.

As he was describing his work, I noticed there was no “9 til 5” hours or any of the structures we impose on ourselves today.

For most of Mountbatten’s life there was no television. Instead, people wrote letters or read books in their quiet times. Most weekends were spent socialising with family and friends and there was a lot of walking in the countryside.

Yes, Mountbatten lived a privileged life, he was royalty after all, but even if you study the working classes of the time, they went to work—often hard manual labour, and come home where they would either spend the evening talking and playing games with their families or call into the local pub and enjoy time with their friends and neighbours.

They were different times, of course, but the noticeable thing was the everything that needed to be done got done.

Was was most striking about these times was the sense of fulfilment people spoke and wrote about. They were doing hard manual work, yet had a sense of accomplishment each day.

Today, that sense of fulfilment and accomplish can be lost and instead because of the endless lists of to-dos, messages to respond to we feel overwhelmed and swamped.

The most noticeable benefit I’ve found by returning to a few analogue tools is I no longer feel overwhelmed. I find I am more intentional about what I do and at the end of the day, I feel a sense of accomplishment.

So there you go, Michael. That’s why I’ve brought back some analogue tools into my life. They slowed me down, enabled me to think better and ironically, I am getting a lot more done that I did when I was completely paperless and digital.

I hope that has helped. Thank you for your question. And thank you to you too for listening.

Now I must go and hang up the laundry.

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

Plans vs. Planning: The Churchill Principle for Real Productivity

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 12:42:42 +0900

“Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential”

That quote from Winston Churchill perfectly captures the dilemma we face when it comes to planning.

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Script | 379

Hello, and welcome to episode 379 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Planning and organising have their place. Yet, there is a danger of taking them too far and using them as an excuse or as a way to procrastinate.

Ultimately, whatever you are planning to do will eventually need to be done. The goal, therefore, is to get to the doing part as quickly as possible.

One of the dangers of David Allen’s Getting Things Done book, is the emphasis on organising and doing the weekly review. It’s a procrastinators heaven. An authority in the the productivity space giving you “permission” to spend two to four hours a week planning and reviewing and another large proportion of your time organising and reorganising your lists.

Don’t get me wrong. Both planning and organising have their place and as Winston Churchill says, “planning is essential”, but it’s a thin line between helpful and unhelpful planning and organising.

In today’s episode, I will share with you some ideas that you can use to ensure that you are following some sound principles with your planning and reviewing.

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

This week’s question comes from Sally. Sally asks, hi Carl, I’m struggling to get myself organised. I have so many things on my desk and on my computer’s desktop I don’t know where to start. I feel like all I do all day is plan what to do and tidy up my lists. How do you avoid over planning and organising?

Hi Sally, thank you for your question.

Firstly, I must admit I have been down this road of over-planning and organising.

I read Getting Things Done in 2009 and loved it. I ditched my Franklin Planner, the “tool” I had been using consistently for over fifteen years, bought myself a nice Quo Vadis notebook (the paper quality was better than Moleskine) and spent a whole weekend setting up the notebook as a GTD tool.

I also printed out the GTD weekly review checklist from David Allen’s website and stuck that into the back go my planner and became a GTDer.

It took me seven years to realise that I wasn’t getting anything significant done. I had a lot of ideas, plans and goals, yet all I seemed to be doing was reviewing, planning and doing the easy things from my context lists.

Replying to emails was much easier than sitting down to write the first chapter of the book I wanted to write. Spending more time mind mapping the presentation I had to give on Friday seemed more important than opening up Keynote and designing the presentation.

Yet, ironically, it was an end of year review that forced me to face up to reality and see that while I was excellent at planning and reviewing, I had become terrible at doing the work.

And this is one of the most common problem areas I see with many of my coaching clients. The fixation on having everything perfectly organised and planned.

You see, the problem here is not that everything is neatly organised and you have the plans to do whatever it is you want to do. The problem is nothing is being done to do those plans.

While I was working on my recent Time-Based Productivity course, the project note I had for it was a mess. I had a lot of notes, ideas and thoughts. Yet, I maintained a strict next actions list at the top of the project note as well as links to the documents I was working on.

It didn’t matter that below those items was a horror show of ill-thought out ideas and random thoughts. They were there in case I got stuck somewhere. What mattered was the important information was clear and at the top of the note.

The note was designed so that the work got done. It was not designed to look pretty.

I’ve seen clients with thirty page Word documents detailing their department’s plans for the year. It’s written in some vague management language that leaves a lot to interpretation. It’s as Winston Churchill once said of a similar document from the government’s treasury department:

“This paper, by its very length, defends itself from ever being read.”

You can spend hours going through a document like that, and nothing will ever get done.

What matters is knowing what the department’s objectives are and what needs to be done to accomplish them.

That does not need thirty pages. That can be summarised on one page, at most.

If you’re working in an organisation that loves using management speak to communicate their ill-thought through ideas, one of the best ways to navigate these documents is to establish what the ultimate goal is.

What are the targets, or in management speak “KPI’s” (Key Performance Indicators)? Once you know how you or your department will be measured, you can use your own experience and knowledge to put in place a plan to achieve those targets.

Ultimately, your boss, and their boss, are concerned about your targets. How you achieve those targets are less important, although they should always be achieved legally, of course.

In many ways translating these verbose annual planning documents is the role of the departmental managers. This means translating them into actionable items so that everyone in the team clearly understands what they are aiming for.

This then reduces the necessity of further planning meetings and everyone can get on and achieve the objectives.

And this is the same for individuals.

When we plan things out we are exploring options, considering best ways to do things and perhaps thinking of potential outcomes.

While these exercises do have their place, they cannot replace doing the work.

The objective, therefore, is to figure out as quickly as possible what you need to do to get the work completed.

My wife bought me a new iron and ironing board for my birthday. I love ironing, I find it relaxing. I’ve learnt that no matter how big the pile of ironing is, the pile is not going to diminish by more planning and strategising. The only way the pile of ironing will shrink is for me to plug my iron in, set up my ironing board and get started.

Now years of ironing has taught me to begin with the clothes that require a cooler setting and finish with clothes that require a hotter setting such as linen shirts. That’s experience, although, I remember being taught that one by my grandmother many many years ago.

The final part of this is choosing when to do the ironing. For me, I find ironing after I’ve been sat down for a long time works best. I’m stood up and have to move around to hang my shirts up after they’re ironed. So, doing the ironing in the afternoon or early evening works best for me.

Given that I generally do the ironing once a week, all I need to decide is when. When will I do it? That’s the only planning I need to do with something I routinely do.

When it comes to organising, I’m always surprised how so many people have missed one of the best features of computers and technology. It’s not so you can sit and stare at a screen for hours on end. It’s the speed at which a computer can organise your files.

You can choose to organise your files by date created, date modified, title, type of document or by size. The only thing you need to do is to put the file into a folder.

If you were to keep things as simple as possible, two folders one for your personal life and one for your professional life would work. (And I know a lot of people who do just that and can find anything they need with the use of a keyboard shortcut or a few typed letters.

While travelling last month, I had all my flight confirmation emails and car hire documents stored in Evernote in its own notebook. Before we set off, I made sure this notebook was downloaded to my phone so that no matter where I was in the world, I was not going to be relying on flakey internet.

This meant, when we finally reached the car hire desk at 11 p.m. At Dublin Airport, all I needed to do was open Evernote, type Europcar in the search and all my details we instantly on my screen ready to show the assistant.

Most notes apps people are using today have incredibly powerful search features built in. Evernote was build on its search features. I’m frequently amazed at how quickly Evernote can find something I vaguely think might be in there.

I remember my wife trying to sort something out for me on a Korean website while we were sitting in cafe. She asked me if I remembered my password for a particular website I had not used for over ten years.

I opened up Evernote and typed in the name of the website and in less than second the login and password details were there. My brain cannot work that fast when trying to recall something from ten years ago.

What this means is you do not need to spend days or months trying to come up with a “perfect” notes organisation system. You could quite easily operate on a simple professional and personal folder system.

You’d still be able to find anything you were looking for, and all you would need to do is to learn how to use the search features.

So, Sally, if you want to get things organised, let your computer do the work for you. Start by creating a simple folder structure of personal and work, and organise your documents there first.

As you’re doing this I would add that you ensure the title of the documents and files are clear. Sometimes we download something from the internet and we end up with a jumble of letters and numbers. While your computer will be able to tell you when you downloaded it and what the file type is, it won’t be able to tell you what it is. That part of the organising process is on you.

If you wish to have a little more structure than simply personal and professional you can modify things later. The goal here is to begin the cleaning up process.

And don’t forget the delete key. It’s your best friend when cleaning up.

Once you’ve tidied everything up and you know where everything is, when it comes to what to do next will naturally follow.

This organising may take you a weekend to do. Yet, that investment in time will be well worth it. You’ll feel less anxious, lighter and will have begun developing confidence in your system. That’s a very nice place to be.

I hope that has helped, Sally. Thank you for your question and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me to wish you a very very productive week.

From 600 Tasks to 8: How Paper Planning Saved My Sanity

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 12:39:00 +0900

“Word-processing is a normative, standardised tool. Obviously, you can change the page layout and switch fonts, but you cannot invent a form not foreseen by the software. Paper allows much greater graphic freedom: you can write on either side, keep to set margins or not, superimpose lines or distort them. There is nothing to make you follow a set pattern. It has three dimensions too, so it can be folded, cut out, stapled or glued.”

That’s a quote from Claire Bustarret, a specialist on codex manuscripts at the Maurice Halbwachs research centre in Paris. And is the start of my attempt to explain why you don’t want to be abandoning the humble pen and paper just yet.

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Script | 378

Hello, and welcome to episode 378 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

I recently came across a short video from Shawn Blanc of the Sweet Setup website who argued that paper-based planners enable better focus and less distractions that their digital counterparts.

And in my now ten-month experiment with the Franklin Planner I also have discovered that planning on paper gives me greater insights about what is important and what is not, it has allowed me to reduce my to-do list dramatically and improved my ability to think at the next level—the level that really matters if you want to go beyond just the rudimentary basics and create something special.

This week’s question is about my “experiment” and what I did it and what I learned. 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 Phil. Phil asks, hi Carl, I’m curious about your Franklin Planner experiment. Why did you do it and what have you learned from the experience?

Hi Phil, thank you for your question.

Before I begin, I should give you some background.

My planner journey began on my 18th birthday when my uncle and auntie bought me a black leather Filofax. These were all the rage in the mid to late 1980s. They were a symbol of what we called in the UK the “YUPPIE generation”

A YUPPIE was a young urban professional or young upwardly mobile professional. It was a term used to describe a young, well-educated, and affluent person who worked in a city. It was often associated with a particular lifestyle and consumption patterns.

Filofaxes had a diary—usually a week to view—, an addresses area, and other planning pages such as a goals and notes area and an expenses tracker.

I loved that Filofax. And I remember carrying it around with me everywhere. I was living the YUPPIE lifestyle without having the job, type of car or luxury apartment associated with them. I was pretending hahaha.

A few years later, while working in car sales, I was introduced to the Franklin Planner. I think it was around 1992 or 1993, by my general manager, Andrew.

That changed everything for me. No longer was I just carrying around information—really what a Filofax did in those days—and I had a tool that enabled me to establish what was important to me (my “governing values”) and a way to plan the day, and week.

I used that Franklin Planner for fourteen years. It went everywhere with me. I’d take it on holiday with me and often find myself sat on the hotel’s balcony late at night writing out how I felt my life was going and what I wanted to change.

It was a tool that kept me accountable to my goals and values and really did change my life for the better.

Then came what I call the digital explosion in 2009. That’s when I got my first iPhone and that coincided with my first reading of David Allen’s Getting Things Done.

I stopped using the Franklin Planner and began a transition to digital tools.

It was an exciting time and my whole time management system began to change. Often for the better, sometimes for the worse. Yet, on the whole I enjoyed the evolution.

That’s the background.

So, why did I decide to go back to using a Franklin Planner.

Well, I had begun to notice that I felt I was rushing everything. Sure, some things needed to be done quickly, but the majority of my work didn’t need to be done right now. Those tasks in my task list could wait until another day, yet, I had this feeling I had to complete them today.

It created a sense of anxiety. A sort of low level buzz in my head telling me I should be doing work, checking off my tasks and not taking time to step back and think if what I was about to do was necessary or important.

It was unpleasant.

So, I decided to go back and try a Franklin Planner for a few months to see what would happen.

It was a revelation and I was shocked.

The first thing I noticed was I slowed down. Because you have to manually write out your tasks and appointments each day, you had time to contemplate whether they really needed to be done.

With my digital system, I had things like watch this YouTube video, or read this article. Yet, these were not important at all. For some reason the digital task manager elevated their importance because they were on the list and had to be done—which, of course, they didn’t.

I never wrote those down in the Franklin Planner. I might have written them down in the notes area for later, but they would not be a task.

It was too easy to add stuff to a digital task manager, which meant all sorts of rubbish got added to the list. What that did was to make my task lists bigger and bigger. It got to a point where there were over 600 tasks in my task manager.

I remember looking at that realising that 80% of what was in there was either no longer relevant or would be a waste of time if I did do them.

That never happened with the Franklin Planner. The act of writing down tasks, meant you would carefully consider whether it was worth doing or not.

The result of this transition was instead of having fifteen to twenty tasks on my task list each day, in my Franklin Planner I had less then eight most days and what was there was genuinely important.

Another area that changed almost immediately was I started to think again.

Earlier last year, I had started planning out my projects, YouTube videos and weekly plans in what I called my Planning Book. This was an A4 ring-bound notebook that contained all my plans and initial thoughts about a project or video.

Suddenly, I found I was thinking things through better. When I sat down to plan out something, I was completely engaged. There were no pop-up notifications, or other digital distractions that would stop my thoughts. I could go deep, much deeper than I ever did digitally.

And the results were almost instant. My YouTube video views went from an average of 3 to 4 thousand in a week to over 10,000!

The only change I had made was to plan out my videos on paper instead of an Evernote note.

On analysis, what I noticed was I became a better storyteller—and important part of creating YouTube videos. And that resulted in almost three times more views on YouTube.

I quickly began to see that there was something going on here.

Digital tools are great. They are so convenient, and it’s fantastic that you can carry around fifteen years of notes on a simple device like your phone. But, is that really helpful.

99% of my journeys and trips never required me to have to look up some important information.

And on those rare occasions when I did need to look up something, I could have easily explained to the person I was meeting that I would send the information when I got back to my office.

In fact, remembering to do that after writing it down on a piece of paper may have impressed the person I was meeting and would have given me time to think of a memorable way to convey the information.

Returning to the Franklin Planner and bringing some paper-based planning back into my life has been a revelation. It’s slowed me down, while at the same time has helped me to become far more productive.

It’s done that by getting me to think again.

And that’s perhaps where digital tools are failing us.

Technology is all about speeding things up and making things more convenient.

Think about it, the introduction of elevators and escalators has coincided with people becoming less fit and healthy. The convenience of delivery food has created a generation of people who wake up, sit down at a desk all day, then order food and continue to sit while they eat highly processed foods that are slowly killing them.

Walking up stairs and cooking your own food ensures you are moving and likely eating a lot healthier. It also means you more likely to eat with your family and as a consequence maintain that all important communication with the people you love.

Technology has massively increased the speed at which things can be done. And in some areas that’s helpful. But, and this is a big but, your brains ability to process all that information has not speeded up.

This means, if you want to feel fulfilled and be more productive, you should become better at filtering out the noise and focus on the things that are genuinely important.

Digital tools make that difficult with their emphasis on speed and monotonous lists.

Paper-based tools enable your brain to slow down, work at a healthy pace and to think deeper. A consequence of which means you think better, make better decisions about what to work on and feel less stressed and overwhelmed.

Will I go back to an all-digital system? No.

I’ve found a happy balance. My Franklin Planner allows me to make better choices about what I should work on today. My Planning Book gives me a space to think about what I am trying to do and to brainstorm better ways of doing the work.

However, I do see a space for digital tools.

I always scan in my plans to a digital project note. The output of my work is digital. Blog-posts, YouTube videos, online courses and even my coaching programmes are all done digitally. (I use Zoom to talk with my clients who are based all over the world)

I also use Todoist to keep track of the recurring stuff I would likely forget to do. Reminders to water the office plant (every four days), to do my expenses, respond to my actionable emails and to send out regularly recurring invoices are all managed in Todoist.

The conclusion I have come to from this experiment is that the perfect system is a hybrid of digital and analogue tools. Your calendar works best digitally, yet on a daily basis, slowing down and writing out what you will do that day works better in an analogue form. It stops you from overwhelming yourself.

Thank you, Phil, for your question. And thank you to you for listening. It just remains for me to wish you all a very very productive week.

The Vacation Productivity Paradox: How to Rest AND Get Ahead

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 12:25:20 +0900

“If you want rest, you have to take it. You have to resist the lure of busyness, make time for rest, take it seriously, and protect it from a world that is intent on stealing it.”

That’s a quote from Alex Pang’s book, Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less.

How many of you are taking a holiday (“vacation” for my American friends) this year?

I know that for many—myself included—taking a holiday is not something they find comfortable. They know they need it, yet there’s just so much to do and so little time to do it.

Anyway, having just returned from a ten-day holiday, I thought I would share with you some ways you can get some significant rest and still use your holiday time for some useful work.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 377

Hello, and welcome to episode 377 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

For many people, going on holiday is something they look forward to. It’s an opportunity to get away from the daily grind of meetings, deadlines, emails, and messages.

Yet for others, it can be more stressful than when at work. There’s a worry that something important will be missed or that an emergency of their making will occur while they’re away.

However, there’s is something else a holiday offers you, that few people ever take advantage of. In this week’s episode I will share with you the things I do while away.

Now, some of what I do may not be for you—I run my own business which means I need to be watching, at the very least, what is happening within the business each day. Yet, many of the things I will suggest may be just the thing for you to help you get on top of your work.

Now, before I get into the ideas, just a quick heads-up.

Before I went away, I launched a brand new, ground-shattering course. The Time-Based Productivity course.

It’s an evolution of everything I’ve taught over the last several years.

You have no control over what’s coming in each day, yet feel you must finish everything. Trying to decide what’s important, what can wait, and what must be done right now causes you to freeze, become anxious, and then spend time reorganising all your tasks.

It’s unsustainable and leaves you feeling lost, out of control, and overwhelmed.

Enter time-based productivity, where what matters is how much time you allocate to the different types of work you need to do.

It’s a method that works, and will transform your relationship with time once and for all.

There’s currently an early-bird discount of 20% on the course. So, if you want to become less stressed, more in control of your time, and have the time to do the things you want to do, this course is for you.

Oh, and I should point out that this course also gives you free access to my Areas of Focus and my all-new Time Sector System course.

Okay, now on with the podcast.

First up, we have to accept that even though we are on holiday, email and messages are not going to stop coming in. They just don’t.

If you’re employed, I would strongly advise that you set up an auto-respond email that informs the sender that you are away and will not be checking your email while away or responding to anything when you get back.

Instead, inform them to resend the email on the day AFTER you get back.

This does two things. The first is it allows you, if you wish, to delete anything that came in while you were away. For those of you who are more squeamish, you can archive them instead.

The second is it sorts out the important from the not important automatically for you. If something’s important, you will get the email again the day after you return to work.

Why the day after you return? Well, I can promise you on your return to work, there’s going to be a lot of catching up to do. You don’t want a lot of emails coming in on that day causing you to instantly feel overwhelmed on your first day back.

For those of you, like me, who cannot, or are not willing to, stay away from their email, then setting up a routine can help.

I travelled to Ireland. That’s eight hours behind Korea, so my sleep schedule changes. Normally, I am a night owl. I prefer to work late into the evening and start the day around 8:30 am.

When I am in Europe, that changes and I become an early bird. I normally wake up around 4:00 am and go to bed around 8:30 pm.

I use the two hours between 4:30 and 6:30 am to deal with communications and admin tasks that, as a business owner, are my responsibility to deal with.

It’s just two hours a day done before the day gets started.

The great thing with this approach is that once I’ve done it, that’s it for the day. I won’t return to my email or messages for the rest of the day and I get on and enjoy the holiday.

This is a better approach than to come back to 800+ emails and messages on your first day. If you’re going straight into meetings and catching up with what has happened while you were away, you’ve just created a huge backlog for yourself that will take weeks to get back on top of.

Next. One of the biggest issues I get from my coaching clients is they don’t have any time to step back and define what is important to them, reorganise their daily structure or to establish what their core work is.

Holiday time is great for this. There’s often a lot of travelling involved, and it’s likely to be with your family. This is a wonderful opportunity to talk with your partner about what you want as a family.

My wife and I use flying time to talk about what we want to accomplish as a family over the next year. It’s not planned. It’s spontaneous. And, it’s usually when we are flying back home rather than when we fly out. Yet, we always do it.

I remember when I was employed and suffering from what we called “the holiday blues”. This is where you feel slightly depressed on your return to work for a week or two. You miss the sense of relaxation and have nothing to look forward to except for the daily drudge of work and meetings.

Having a talk with your partner and or family on your return journey can give you a multitude of things you can do as a couple or family. Giving you something to look forward to.

If you’re taking a summer holiday, this is also a good time to review how you are doing on your goals this year.

When this year started, I was 88 kilograms (about 195 pounds or nearly 14 stone). That’s way above my target weight of between 80 and 83 kilograms (175 to 180 pounds or 12 ½ to 13 stone)

So, my number one health and fitness goal for 2025 was to get my weight back to within my normal range. That was achieved, but, while away I ate too much—don’t we all when on holiday?—and need to refocus my attention on getting it back.

Fortunately, it’s only two or three pounds, so the target it to get it back within acceptable limits by the end of July.

This means, I need to quickly get back into my exercise routine and eat healthily.

It’s a great way to get yourself refocused on your return.

Another thing you can do while away is to do some digital cleaning up. I love this time.

While you’re on holiday there is likely to be pockets of time you can use to clean up your notes, calendar and task manager.

Let’s be honest, when we’re in the day to day hustle, we throw a lot of useless information into our notes and add tasks into our task manager that we know we will never do.

This is a wonderful time to clear these out.

Last Wednesday, my first day back at work, my notes were organised, my task manger was clean and tight and my calendar was cleared of conflicts. What a wonderful way to restart.

What I noticed was I felt organised, focused and ready for anything. Isn’t that what a holiday is meant to do for you.

Yet, if you don’t do any cleaning up, you come back to a mess. Nothing has changed and the very things you hate about your work life continue. No control, a messed up list of things to do and a calendar that fills you with dread.

And, something powerful happens when you do this learning up. You learn a lot.

You discover better workflows and processes and you gain a sense of optimism about how the changes you make now will bring you incredible rewards once you return to work.

I often find I cannot wait to get restarted because I’m excited to test out new ways of managing my work day.

And let’s be honest, cleaning things up doesn’t require a lot of mental energy. It’s the kind of thing you can do in the evenings with a laptop on your knees while enjoying a cocktail or two. (Although not too many. You don’t want to delete important things)

Now, you may be thinking ‘no way! I’m on holiday I don’t want to deal with any work issues’. And I get that.

But, and it’s big but, your holiday may only last a week or two, and then you’re back at work. Doing all or some of these tips, will last far longer and leave you with less stress and overwhelm.

It gives you optimism, and helps you to refocus on the important things in life. Surely, a few hours out of your holiday time to do some cleaning up is worth it to feel that way?

In the past I’ve not done any of these things and just found myself in the same mess I was in before my holiday. It’s not pleasant and that’s when I struggled with the holiday blues.

Now, I do these things and I’ve never experienced holiday blues and instead am excited to get back to work feeling refreshed and energised.

It’s your choice. But I can assure you, if you do all of these or just some of them on your next holiday, you will continue to do it for every holiday in the future.

Thank you for listening and don’t forget to check out the brand new Time Based Productivity Course.

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

The Power of Mundane: Simple Systems for Complex Lives

Sun, 29 Jun 2025 12:27:24 +0900

“Every morning in SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing they'd do is inspect my bed.

If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers would be pulled tight, the pillow centred just under the headboard, and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack. It was a simple task, mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection.

It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that we were aspiring to be real warriors. Tough, battle hardened SEALs. But the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over. If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day.

It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another, and another. And by the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter.

If you can't do the little things right, you'll never be able to do the big things right. And if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made that you made. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.”

That is an excerpt from Admiral McRaven’s Commencement Address at Texas University in 2014. And it’s the heart of this week’s episode. Simple, mundane tasks that carry far more weight than you may think.

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Areas of Focus: The Foundation Of All Solid Productivity Systems.

Take the Areas of Focus Course

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 376

Hello, and welcome to episode 376 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

If you were to read the comments on any productivity or time management YouTube video, you’ll find many well-meaning commentators talking about this app, or that new method or hack to play with.

The truth is few of them will work and most involve adding more and more layers of complexity which only stops you from doing the work that matters.

Real improvements in your time management and productivity comes from the boring and mundane. It’s the sitting down to respond to your emails and messages every day. It’s taking the laundry to the washing machine and hanging it up after it’s been washed. And yes, it’s making your bed each morning before you leave to take your kids to school.

Doing the simple, basic tasks each day whether you’re in the mood or not, is the secret to massively improved outcomes. It means when you get home after a particularly stressful day, everything is calm, peaceful and ready for you to relax get some rest.

It’s how you avoid getting home, stressed out and exhausted only to find your breakfast things are still on your dining table, your bed’s unmade and your laundry basket is overflowing with clothes that are beginning to give off a rather unpleasant odour.

And, yes, it means giving yourself five to ten minutes each day to map out your day. To see where your appointments are and what tasks you must get done.

None of this is complicated. It’s basic, it’s almost laughably unimportant, yet it isn’t. These are the critical things each day that ensure you remain on top of everything and know what needs to be done, where you should be and when and leaves you feeling calm, serene even, and ready for the next day.

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

This week’s question comes from Charlie. Charlie asks, hi Carl, over the last twelve months, I feel everything has spiralled out of control. I get home exhausted and just never seem able to catch up. My Task list is out of control and my calendar seems to fill up with random meetings each day. What can I do to get some control back into my life?

Hi Charlie, thank you for your question.

This is something that can happen from time to time. Things spiralling out of control. It’s often because we say “yes” a little too freely, or we stop following some basic principles.

The basic principles of better time management and productivity are planning your days and week. Not in a micro-management way, but more in a what’s happening tomorrow or this week way.

It’s also understanding that in most cases you can cancel or reschedule a meeting. I’ve often looked at my diary for tomorrow and seen I was over scheduled and realised I needed to postpone some meetings or rearrange some of the things I had planned to do.

It’s never the end of the world if you have to reschedule. It’s just a part of life.

For example, if you’re scheduled to pick your kids up from school but realise that if you do you’ll not be able to finish the proposal that must go out today, you could ask your partner or parents to help you out today.

It’s only today. Or, you may decide to ask to be excused from a team meeting so you can finish the proposal.

We always have options. Yet, if you want more options, plan the day the evening before and you will see any potential conflicts with plenty of time to explore all options.

If you don’t plan your day, it’s likely you will see the problem you have a couple of hours before you have to pick your kids up. You’re not leaving yourself with much time to sort out the conflict.

It’s the same reason why weekly planning is critical. The weekly planning session gives you the “big picture” view of your week. It your chance to see any potential issues well before they become crises.

This is the number one reason you will find you feel behind, rushed and overwhelmed. You’re not giving yourself a moment to pause to look ahead for potential storms so you can plot an alternative route through.

To start getting back in control, do a weekly plan for next week. Open you calendar and first look for any conflicts—these are where you have inadvertently double booked yourself. You cannot be in two places at once, so pick one.

Next, open your task manager. This is probably where the bigger problems lay. When we lose control we start throwing all sorts into our tasks managers. It’s easy to put stuff there.

If your sense of control has completely gone, it’s possible you may have stopped looking at your task manager altogether. If that’s the case, open it.

Now you have a choice. You could declare task management bankruptcy and delete everything. Don’t worry, if something’s genuinely important, you’ll be reminded of it somewhere. You can then add it back later.

The second choice is to go through everything in your task manager one by one. Delete what’s no longer relevant, update what is by making sure the task is written in an actionable way. In other words you have an actionable verb in the task so it’s clear what you need to do.

Then for anything in your inbox, ask the three processing questions:

What is it?

What do I need to do?

When will I do it.

Then, organise your tasks by stuff you will do this week, next week, next month.

Once done, go back to your this week list and, with your calendar open, put the day you will do the tasks next week.

Now be smart here. If you have six hours of meetings on Wednesday, avoid putting tasks on that day. You won’t have time. Not when you remember you will need to spend some time on your email and messages and any other matters that will inevitably pop up once the week gets going.

Anything not in your this week list can be left undated. Hopefully, many of those will sort themselves out. If they don’t, you can look at them again when you do you next weekly planning session and decide if they need to be brought forward into the following week.

Just doing these basic weekly planning steps, you’ll instantly give yourself a sense of control.

Yet, this is only as good as your ability to say no.

You cannot be in two places at once, and you’re not going to be able to complete sixty tasks and attend seven hours of meetings in one day. If that’s what your day looks like stop.

You’re going to have to say no to something and the sooner you do this the easier it is to do it.

The consequences of not doing these planning sessions are missed deadlines, over booked calendars and a lot of late nights and weekends spent catching up, feeling stressed and blaming your company.

The blame game solves nothing unless you’re willing to say “no. This has go to stop”. If you’re not willing to do that, don’t complain. A bit harsh, I know, but you always have a choice remember.

More basics are giving yourself time each day for your messages and emails. I’m always surprised how unwilling people are to protect time for dealing with these.

99% of the time it’s out of control email, Slack and Teams inboxes that people are most stressed about. And I know, if you don’t spend sometime on your communications daily, they will backlog quickly.

And when I say quickly I mean it. One day missed will mean you will need double the time tomorrow. And that keeps increasing until you decide to spend a whole day clearing up your email.

If you want to avoid spending days clearing your email inbox, protect time every day for dealing with it. That has to be a non-negotiable.

I believe it was Einstein who said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

Well unless you protect time for managing your communications each day, you’ll be spending days clearing your inbox every month. Nothing will change unless you are prepared to change the way you schedule your day.

So there you go, Charlie. The important basics of getting back control and staying in control, is daily and weekly planning and protecting daily time for dealing with communications. Do that, and you’ll soon find yourself regaining control.

I know it sounds simple, perhaps too simple but it goes back to what Admiral McCraven said in his commencement address, “if you want to change the world, begin by making your bed.”

Thank you for your question, Charlie, and thank you to you too for listening.

Oh, and just a quick update, this podcast will be on holiday for a couple of weeks. We’ll be back in a couple of weeks.

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

The Time-Based Productivity Revolution: Stop Counting Tasks, Start Managing Time

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 12:59:46 +0900

”But the fact remains, with all the changes that have happened in our lifetime—whether we’re “boomers,” “Gen Xers,” “Millennials,” “Gen Zers” or whatever comes next—one thing has never changed nor will it ever change, and that is the amount of time we all have.”

That’s a quote from Hyrum Smith’s book, The 3 Gaps: Are You Making A Difference

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Areas of Focus: The Foundation Of All Solid Productivity Systems.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 375

Hello, and welcome to episode 375 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

One thing you may have noticed is that there are many things we have to or want to do, yet there never seems to be enough time to do them.

You are not alone. Everyone feels this either all the time or at least some of the time. The reason is that it’s true. There will always be more to do than time available to do it.

This means we should approach the problem from a different angle.

Traditionally, people have spent extra hours trying to catch up. Working late or even working the weekend. Yet, is throwing more time at the issue the best solution?

I don’t think so.

We live one life. Our work is just one part of that life. If you work an average forty-hour week, your work only accounts for around 25% of your time.

Yet, for many people, their work causes 80% or more of their stress.

This week, I want to share some ideas and a paradigm shift in how you think about the tasks you have to do and the time you have available. It’s a simple shift, but one that will reframe your relationship with time and ultimately give you more time for the things you want time 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 Marcos. Marcos asks, Hi Carl, I struggle to keep up with all the tasks in my task manager. Most days feel like I am adding more tasks than I complete, and my inbox is now full. Todoist won’t allow me to add any more. How do you cope with an ever-growing list of things to do?

Hi Marcos, thank you for your question.

There could be a number of reasons for this. One of the most common ones is moving any email you need to respond to into your task manager’s inbox.

You don’t need to do that. Instead, you can create a folder in your email system and call it “Action This Day”. Then, any email you need to act on—reply, read, forward, etc. You place it there.

Then, add a recurring task in your task manager that tells you to “clear my Action This Day folder”.

That will remove many tasks from your task manager. It will also begin the process of changing the way you think about things to do and the time you have available to do them.

It’s no longer about how many emails you must reply to; it’s about when you will work on your emails.

Other things that can clog up a task manager are articles and newsletters to read, YouTube videos to watch and books to buy.

All good stuff, but since so many of these are non-urgent, you would be better putting them in a dedicated note in your notes app.

That way, when you do have time to read or watch these, you can open up your notes app and choose something.

I covered this recently in one of my YouTube videos. There is information we like to collect—articles, YouTube videos, etc., often the easiest thing to do is to add this information to your task manager’s inbox. After all, reading or watching them is something to do.

Yet, the worst place to collect these items is your task manager. There’s no urgency to read or watch these. We can do it anytime. Perhaps we’re waiting at the doctor’s office, or, in my case, for my wife somewhere.

In these situations, I can open my notes app and, depending on my mood, choose between reading or watching something—my notes are always on my phone.

So, Marcos, one of the first things you can do is to remove all these non-urgent informational items from your task manager and move them to your notes app.

I would add that a great place to read articles is something like Instapaper or Read. Both of these apps are designed to collect newsletters and articles.

Using tools like these gives you a central place to read your saved articles. It’s like having your personalised curated news feed.

The only addition is finding a regular time to read what you collect. The problem with keeping these in your task manager is that you’re not reading them. Moving them out of your task manager and into a read-later app is just shuffling things around if you are not committing to a daily reading time.

When I commuted to work each day, I read these articles on bus and train journeys. This prevented me from getting sucked into the negative news cycle and clickbait headlines.

My news feed was free of junk and algorithmically generated stuff I was no longer interested in.

And there is another tip for managing the things we have to do. Having a set time each day for doing the things we want to do.

The challenge we all face today is that everything is so convenient; we can pretty much do anything at any time. You can set up a bank account, apply for a credit card, and even buy a car online today.

You don’t have to leave the comfort of your own home.

In the past, if we wanted to open a bank account or buy a new car, we would have to go to a specific place. Going to these places meant we needed to schedule time to go.

I remember when I was in car sales and couples would come in either in the evening or at weekends. During the weekday, things were relatively quiet for us. Time spent with a customer would typically be around an hour or two.

So the customer had to go to a showroom intentionally, talk to a human being and in most cases test drive a car.

Now, if you can do almost anything at any time from anywhere, the challenge becomes, what do you do now?

If you are task counting, you’re putting yourself into an impossible situation. The number of tasks you have to do is not within your control.

You do not have control over what your boss or customers will ask you to do today. You don’t have much control over what your partner or family members may ask you to do. You also don’t know when they will ask you to do something.

By focusing on what you have to do, you’re setting yourself up for overwhelm.

Instead, you will find focusing on when you will do something a much more realistic approach. Not only do you put yourself back in control, you will also be working within a realistic system.

This system is called time-based productivity, and it’s been around for a very long time.

I’ve tracked it back to 1918 with the Ivy Lee Method. That’s where you wrote down the six things you want to get done the next day, and when the day began, you started with the first item and worked your way down the list until the end of your work day.

Anything you did not get done would be moved to the list for tomorrow. It’s simple and based on a realistic evaluation of how much you could get done in a day.

From there, it advanced throughout the century to when we began using things like the Franklin Planner.

Something went wrong in the early 2000s. Somewhere along the line, we stopped calculating how much time we had available to do things and began focusing on the things themselves.

Well, that’s an impossible situation. You’ll always have stuff to do. If you focus on all that stuff, you’re going to feel anxiety, stress and overwhelm.

If you want to stop the struggle Marcos, then returning to a time-based system will do that for you.

The first step is to look at all the tasks you have to do and categorise them. You will have admin and communication tasks—we all do. Then there will be tasks related to your specific work. If you work with clients, then there will be client work to do. If you work in management, there will be management duties you will need to perform.

Once you know what your categories are, you can then allocate specific time for doing those categories of work.

Let me give you an example of this with email.

Imagine you get 150 emails a day. Of those, around thirty require you to take action. When you process your email, you move those actionable emails into your action this day folder, and either delete or archive the rest.

This leaves you with thirty emails that require some action from you.

If you were to allocate an hour each day for dealing with your actionable emails, you will always have time to respond to your email. Sure, some days you may not be able to clear them all. However, if you consistently spend an hour a day on these, you will never develop a significant backlog.

Most days you will be ahead; other days you might be slightly behind. But you won’t feel it’s out of control.

You can also apply this to your admin tasks. Admin tasks have a habit of building up over time because they are generally low in urgency and importance.

If you were to give yourself thirty minutes or so each day for admin tasks, you would find that no backlog is building up, and you are, for the most part, on top of things.

You can do the same for your client work. If part of your responsibilities is to send out proposals to customers, then allocating some time each day for doing this means all you need to do is refer to a list of proposals to write, and for that allocated time, you do as many as you can.

That list may be in a CRM system or a simple note in your notes app. Your calendar will tell you that it’s time to write proposals. You then go to your list of proposals to write, and start.

This way, you won’t need to use your task manager.

I do this with my coaching clients. Every day, I allocate an hour to writing feedback for each client. The list of feedback to write is in Evernote. Some days, there will be six or seven pieces of feedback to write, and other days, perhaps only two or three.

I know I can write around three pieces of feedback in an hour. This means if I do this every day, nobody is likely to be waiting more than 48 hours for their feedback.

I’m not focused on how many pieces of feedback I have to write. All I am focused on is writing the feedback in the hour I have to write it. I will write as many as I can. No pressure. Just begin with the oldest and carry on down the list.

And that, in a nutshell, is what time-based productivity is all about. It’s not about how much you have to do. It’s about how much time you have available to do the work you have to do.

If you have enormous backlogs now, you may need to increase the time you allocate to specific work periods for a little while. That actually helps because it means you are learning new habits and processes for getting the work done, which ultimately speeds you up over time.

So there you go, Marcos. I hope that has helped. Take a look at your task manager. Remove individual emails and stuff to read or watch.

Then in Todoist, use the labels to categorise your work and use those categories to protect time in your calendar to do the work.

Be consistent with this and you will soon find that the overwhelm and struggle diminish.

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

Finding Your Direction When Life Feels Chaotic

Sun, 15 Jun 2025 12:29:06 +0900

“Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.

Alice: I don't much care where.

The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.

Alice: ...So long as I get somewhere.

The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.”

That is the famous dialogue between Alice and the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carrol.

And it’s a great illustration of what happens when you don’t know what is important to you and where you want to go. You’re going to go get somewhere and that somewhere is probably going to be a place you never wanted to go to.

This week, I’ll share with you why developing your Areas of Focus is so important.

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Areas of Focus: The Foundation Of All Solid Productivity Systems.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 374

Hello, and welcome to episode 374 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

So, why are your Areas of Focus important? Well, in a nutshell, they give you direction. They help you to prioritise your days and weeks and give you purpose.

Without them, you’ll end up helping someone else achieve their goals, more often than not, in exchange for money, only to discover you’re health is shot to pieces and you’ve spent your forty years of working life miserably giving away five days a week to something you hated doing.

A bit harsh, I know, but if you’ve read the book The Top five Regrets of The Dying by Bronnie Ware, you’ll know that the number one reason given was “I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

It’s your areas of focus that will allow you to live a life true to yourself because by developing your areas of focus, you’ll learn what is important to you and what is not.

And the second reason? I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

When you don’t know what is important and what is not, you will work too hard. Everything becomes important, and that means you work long hours and at weekends, missing out on your children growing up and enjoying the best years of your life doing the things you want to do.

I’m pretty sure that’s not how you want your life to work out.

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

This week’s question comes from Julie. Julie asks, hi Carl, I hear you mention knowing what’s important to you a lot, yet I really don’t know what’s important. I’m under pressure at work and I have two teenagers at home. I feel my life is being pushed and pulled by everyone but myself. What can I do to create some boundaries in my life?

Hi Julie, thank you for your question.

It’s when we feel lost and out of sorts that our Areas of Focus can help to bring back some peace to our lives.

Our areas of focus are focused on our needs and wants. And because of that, people feel it’s an indulgence to even consider spending time on developing them. That’s particularly the case when we have a young family and we’ve allowed our work to dominate our lives.

The first book I ever read on time management and productivity was Hyrum Smith’s Ten natural Laws and time and Life Management, and around the first quarter of that book is spent on developing what Hyrum Smith calls your governing values.

Your governing values are the values by which you live your life by. With these, we will all be different. For some, being a good mother or father will be their most important value, for others, it might be building a successful business.

Now, when I read that book I was around eighteen or nineteen and that part of the book washed over me. I was young, I believed I was immortal and I could do anything I wanted to do. I didn’t have time to think about my “governing values”.

Yet, with age, came wisdom and around my late twenties I began to see the importance of having a set of values to guide me.

That’s when I gave myself a couple of weekends to write out my governing values. Funnily enough, as I look through my old Franklin Planners from that era, I can see that the values I wrote down then are not far away from how I define my Areas of Focus today.

it’s these areas that give you a direction and a purpose. They help you with prioritising your days and weeks and give you a solid foundation on which to build your goals.

For example, I used to be a smoker. Throughout my twenties and thirties I’s smoke around twenty cigarettes a day. I found it relaxing, a great way to step away from my work and to think. Yet, I knew that by continuing to smoke I was violating my area of health and fitness.

I was going to the gym and running, I was eating healthily, but i was destroying all that by continuing the smoke. As I got older, the pressure inside me to quit something I enjoyed doing grew stronger. it eventually reached a point where I had to quit.

Every time I reviewed my areas of focus, I had that niggling voice reminding me that the vision I had for my later life—being able to travel the world running marathons, exploring places like Mount Kilimanjaro and the Rocky Mountains would be just a pipe dream because I would be spending my later life in and out of hospital.

And so, I set the goal to quit smoking. Now for anyone who has gone through the process of quitting smoking, you’ll know it’s one of the toughest things to do. It took me two years to finally quit. Yet, the effort was worth it.

Quitting gave me a sense of accomplishment, a realisation that I could do anything if I put my mind to it and it was compatible with what I felt was important.

Yet without a set of principles—something your areas of focus will give you—things like stopping something that is slowly killing you or staying in a career that is draining you and leaving your feeling depressed and unhappy—will never occur to you. They will be placed on what Brian Tracey calls, “Someday Island”, a place where nothing happens because you’re waiting for “someday”.

another illustration of this was when i joined a law firm. I had spent six years training to be a lawyer. I worked hard, to get my legal qualifications, yet when I began working in a law firm, I quickly realised I’d made a huge mistake.

I hated being stuck behind a desk eight or none hours a day.

Prior to working in an office, all my jobs had involved a lot of moving around. I began my career in hotel management, where I spent all day running around a large building dealing with all sorts of issues. I’d sometimes be on reception helping to check people out, then I’s be in the restaurant serving lunch. It was fun, physically exhausting, yet incredibly fulfilling.

Then I went into car sales. And again, my days were largely spent running around a showroom and forecourt talking with customers.

Suddenly, I’m chained to a desk and within six months I’d gained 20 pounds in weight, I was unhappy, and felt trapped. It was as if I had been sent to open prison where I was expected to be in one place for eight to nine hours a day Monday to Friday. it was horrible.

So, I quit and came to Korea. a decision that turned out to be the best decision I’ve ever made.

Yet, when i told my friends and family I was quitting the law firm and going to teach English in Korea, they thought I was mad. Why was I quitting a potentially lucrative career to go and do something I knew nothing about?

Yet, it was my areas of focus that told me what I needed to do. staying in that legal job violated my career and business area. I was trapped in an industry that held firm to a tried and tested career path. I didn’t want that constraint. I wanted a lot more freedom to help people and perhaps change their lives for the better. Being a lawyer would never give me that freedom.

The benefit of having a set of established areas of focus is they give you a blueprint for the life you want to live. By writing them down, and reading through them every six months or so, you get the chance to realign yourself with the way you want to live your life.

Now, for those of you who have not looked at your areas of focus before, there are eight areas we all share. These are:

Family and relationships,

health and fitness,

Finances,

Business / career

Lifestyle and life experiences

Self development

Spirituality

life’s purpose

Each one of those mean something to us. However, how we define them will be different of each of us, snd in what order of importance will change as we go through life.

For example, as you get older, your health and fitness and finances will likely move up the list and your career and business will drop down.

When or if you start a family, your family and relationships will rapidly climb the list.

You may even find that over time you redefine one or more of your areas. This is perfectly normal.

however, at their core, these areas define who you are and what’s important to you.

This means, Julie, when it comes to juggling your career with your family, you will be able to see by how you prioritise your areas whether you should attend your daughter’s netball finals or that important meeting at work.

If family and relationships is above your career, then it’s an easy choice to make. However, if you have prioritised finances above family and relationships, you’ll need to decide if the risk of missing out on a promotion, is worth it to see your daughter play in the netball finals.

The problem most of face is there are too many competing demands on our time. Time is fixed. We get twenty-four hours a day; that’s it. The good news is, no matter what work you do, you always have control over how you spend those twenty-four hours.

I know many people will say they don’t have control over their time. But you do. You can decide not to attend a meeting you’ve been invited to. You get to choose whether to tap the accept, decline or maybe button when it appears on your calendar.

Whether you accept a meeting request or not, will depend on what you prioritise.

Given a choice between a meeting with an important person on a Saturday evening or spending that time with my wife, I already know the answer. my wife will have priority. Family and relationships is much higher than my career/business area.

I can renegotiate the meeting with the important person. Saturday nights are my family’s protected time. It’s one night a week, and I won’t sacrifice it for anything.

This also translates to my work week. My exercise time is 5:00 pm. At that time, I stop what I am doing and either head out for a run or go upstairs to the loft and lift weights. I never schedule meetings at 5 pm. That’s my exercise time and right now, my health and fitness area is higher than my career/business area.

All this comes down to knowing what’s your areas of focus mean to you and how you prioritise them. There we will all be different, but it’s your areas of focus that will give you a blueprint for how you want to live your life, what is important to you and where you want to spend your time.

Not knowing what your areas of focus are will be like being Alice in Alice in Wonderland. you’ll feel the need to go somewhere, but will have no idea where and then you will end up following someone else, and that someone else will not always have your best interests at heart.

I hope that has helped, Julie. My advice is to spend some time working on your areas of focus. Determine what’s they mean to you and pull out any activities that you can do consistently and add them to your task manager or calendar. That way you will stay on course. And, if you find you are not happy with the direction you are going, redefine your areas and adjust course.

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

Whoever Controls Your Calendar Controls You: Mastering Executive Time Management

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 12:51:47 +0900

“Whoever runs your schedule is the most important person in your world as Leader. You need time to think, time to study and time to get the things done you came to leadership to do. Lose control of the schedule and you will fail.”

That is a quote from former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. And it strikes at the heart of mastering time management. Today’s episode explores why your calendar is your most important productivity tool.

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The 2025 Summer Sale

Script | 373

Hello, and welcome to episode 373 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Whoever controls your calendar controls you. They can (and often will) destroy your plans for the day, prevent you from doing your most important work and be the reason you fail in your career goals.

If you are a leader, you will likely have plans for your team. In order to implement those plans and move them to completion, you will need time. It’s up to you to find that time.

Top leaders understand this. They are very strict with their calendars. Nobody but themselves has control of it. And, probably the most important factor of all, they have the confidence to cancel appointments if those appointments do not align with their weekly or daily strategic plan.

And yes, it’s a confidence thing. Nobody, not even your boss, really has control over your time. You always have the option to negotiate an appointment or say no.

In this week’s episode, I will share some ideas you can use to get control of your calendar and have the confidence to negotiate appointments and/or say no.

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

This week’s question comes from Karen. Karen asks, Hi Carl, I lead a team of sixteen people and am struggling to get my work done because my boss and team are always demanding meetings with me. Do you have any tips on protecting time for important work when you don’t have control of your calendar?

Hi Karen, thank you for your question.

This can appear to be a difficult change to make. Particularly if your team and bosses have become conditioned to you being available whenever they need you.

One of most powerful lessons I learned in my early career was from the so—called “my office door is always open” concept. For those of you not familiar with this concept, it began in the late 80s or early 90s (possibly earlier). This was where bosses used to tell their employees my office door is always open. You can come and talk to me at anytime.

Nice concept. It gave the impression that your boss was approachable. Yet in reality, it was not really a practical way to operate.

It meant that bosses were constantly being interrupted—well, those that we not scary, anyway,

The two most productive bosses I had in my early career did follow this policy, yet with one addition. That was to tell us that when their door was closed they were not to be disturbed.

One of those bosses, would close his door every day around 2 pm. He would then use that time to get his most important work done. David, had a secretary, who would hold his calls too. If you needed David between two and four, you had to go through his secretary, Michaela and Michaela protected David’s time ruthlessly.

Yet, for the other times in the day, David was available. He’d walk around the office from time to time asking if we were okay. He made himself available.

What happened, was if we needed David for anything, we knew we had to catch him before 2 pm or wait until after 4 pm.

I don’t recall anyone complaining. The Managing Partner of the firm respected it. And so did David’s clients—he was a partner in the law firm I worked at.

The key to this working was David’s consistency. His team, bosses and clients all knew that David would not be available between two and four.

Since then, every productive person I have met, has operated something very similar. They have periods of time in the day where they are not accessible. In that time they are doing their most important work. That period of time is generally at the same time each day.

I remember, once being on a training course and the instructor, told us she would be available at any time after 11:00 am if we had any questions.

That’s it. A simple sentence. “Available at anytime after 11:00 am”. I don’t recall any one of us on that training course ever trying to contact her before 11:00 am.

Now, it might not be possible for you to cut yourself off from the outside world at the same time each day—although we all do this when we are sleeping and the world doesn’t end, does it?

A lot of this depends on the job you do. I’ve mentioned before in this podcast the best salesperson I’ve ever worked with, Claire.

Claire would never be available between 9:00 and 10:30 am. It was during this time she was on the phones prospecting and following up customers. That one strategy was the difference between her and every other salesperson in that company. She outsold her nearest colleague two to one most months.

We worked a nine hour day in that sales job, and Claire was unavailable for just ninety minutes. She was in charge of her diary. That still left her with seven-and-a-half hours where she was available.

So, Karen, the place to begin is to ask yourself how much time do you need each day to stay on top of your work?

Given that a managerial role is largely about communicating with a team and bosses, you will likely need to be available most of your working day. Yet, you will still have some individual work to do. So, how much time do you need to complete that work each week?

You will only be able to work with averages. You will not be able to be specific about how much time you need each week. You’re human. Sometimes we are on fire and can plough through a lot of work. Other days, we’re tired and anything we do is sluggish and slow.

By working with averages, you’re still getting work done and when you are on fire you can catch up.

For instance, on average, I need around 14 hours a week to create my content. This means each day I protect two hours for content creation where nobody can interrupt me. I then have an extra hour or so in the afternoons I keep flexible for finishing off any work.

I allow no more than twenty one hours of meetings each week. 90% of the time that is more than enough for the meetings and coaching sessions I have each week.

I know if I allow more than 21 hours, the additional admin cost and lost time for critical work will mean I have to work late nights and Saturday just to catch up. Not something I am prepared to do.

Earlier, I alluded to “negotiating” appointments.

Imagine you’re in the market to buy a Rolls Royce car. (I said imagine). If you call the Rolls Royce dealership, you’re going to have to negotiate a day and time. The “sales process” for buying a Rolls Royce is not your typical process. It’s an experience.

You’re not just buying a typical car. These days, you’re buying a unique bespoke car. The salesperson you talk with will need time to go through all the panelling options, Exterior colours and interior seat fabrics, and even the type of material you want your dashboard made from.

The person you speak with when making your appointment, will negotiate a time to visit the showroom. That’s part of the experience.

Now if you were in the market to buy a Ford, Toyota, Hyundai or VW, and call to make an appointment, you can name your day and time. The salespeople will very likely accept your first day and time.

Now which experience would leave you feeling special?

If you think about your readiness to accept any appointment at any time, what does that say about you?

Negotiating your appointments elevates your status in the mind of the person wishing to make an appointment with you. The harder it is to get an appointment with you, the more likely you will have a favourable outcome. It’s the “you must be important if it’s difficult to make an appointment with you”.

Try getting an appointment with Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai or Satya Nadala. It’s not that they don’t do appointments, it’s just they restrict the number of meetings they are available for each day and the meetings they do attend must count.

So, if you protect 9:30 to 11:00 am each morning, if someone wants to have a meeting with you during that time, you would say could we meet at 11:30 am instead? 9 times out of 10 your suggested time will be accepted. If not, the person wanting to meet you will likely suggest an alternative time.

If you cannot find a suitable time, then you will have to use your protected time. But with this strategy, it will be very rare that you need to do that.

I promise you, if you do this a few times, your confidence will rapidly improve and you will find that your focus time blocks will be protected.

The challenge we all face today is we feel we must be available at all times for whoever wants to communicate with us. If it’s not Teams or Zooms calls, it’s instant messages and email. The trick is to become less available.

Be like the Rolls Royce salesperson. Make getting an appointment with you part of the experience. If it’s a little harder to get an appointment with you, the person you’re meeting is going to be much more open to finding a solution with you there and then, instead of scheduling another meeting with you to “sort the details out”.

Ask yourself, what the worst that could happen if you “negotiate” with the person wanting to meet with you? The worst is they refuse your suggested time and insist you meet them at their preferred time. At that point you can accept.

Yet, I can promise you, the majority of people you negotiate times with will accept your time. The time they chose was completely random anyway. No matter who they are, your boss, your most important customer or whatever, they will thank you for taking the initiative and suggesting a time.

I will end with a recent example of this. I am in the process of changing my car as the lease on my current one is expiring in September. We called the dealership to arrange a test drive in a car I was interested in, and the sales manager informed us that this week they were fully booked up, but they had an opening on Thursday or Friday afternoon next week.

I was both impressed and relieved. Impressed because he did not jump at the chance and suggest we come down that afternoon or tomorrow. I had a sense of scarcity. Relieved because he took the decision for making the appointment out of our hands.

We arranged 1pm the following Thursday and when we arrived, the car was on the forecourt ready and waiting for us. A very impressive experience.

So, there you go, Karen. Don’t be afraid to negotiate your appointments and meetings. Build confidence in negotiating interruptions from your team and protect sufficient time for getting your core work done.

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

From Burned Out to Balanced: The Three Pillars of Productivity

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 12:20:04 +0900

Do you feel you have to push yourself every day just to stay on top of your work? Well, this week I’m looking at why this happens and what you can do to prevent it.

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The 2025 Summer Sale

Script | 372

Hello, and welcome to episode 372 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

If you have ever watched a Formula 1 race, it can be easy to believe that from the moment the lights go out and the race starts, the cars go flat out until the end of the race.

Ah, as if it were that simple.

The truth is if a team tried to do this, they would be guaranteed to lose the race.

Even though a race may only last ninety minutes, during the race the teams will need to conserve their tyres and fuel. Going flat out to the finish would degrade the tyres too quickly, which would mean they lose essential grip in the corners, and running out of fuel would be game over for a team.

You are like that Formula 1 car. When you start your day you have a limited amount of energy and your ability to focus needs to be managed through the day.

It’s not physical energy. Your body has a way to utilise your fat reserves to help keep you out of danger when necessary, physically. It’s your mental energy. That is limited. And it’s a lack of mental energy that results in you making mistakes, procrastinating and being unable to make a decision about what to work on next.

It your mental energy that requires careful management each day. Getting home exhausted each day won’t do very much for your relationships. You won’t be in the mood to do very much, and having a conversation with your partner or kids won’t be a top priority.

Yet, your family may have been waiting for you to get home to talk with you, play and just have some quality time.

The good news is it doesn’t have to be that way. There are things you can do to preserve your mental energies so you arrive home feeling relaxed, fulfilled and ready to engage with your family.

However, before we get to how to do that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Matt. Matt asks, Hi Carl, do you have any ideas on how to stop feeling constantly tired and using the weekends just to recover before doing it all again on a Monday?

Hi Matt, thank you for your question.

If you are constantly feeling tired, my first advise would be to go see your doctor. A constant feeling of fatigue or tiredness could have an underlying reason and it’s better to get that checked out first.

If, your doctor reports there are no underlying illnesses, then it’s time to look at your lifestyle.

As I wrote in Your Time, Your Way, there are three areas you need to keep in balance. These are the foundations of any productive life.

They are:

Sleep, movement and diet.

Are you getting enough sleep for you? We are all different when it comes to the amount of sleep we require. Some of you may work well on six hours, while others may require eight or nine hours sleep.

If you want to operate at your best each day, finding out how much sleep you need would be a first step.

For years I thought I only needed six hours of sleep. Yet when I did the test that Matthew Walker, the sleep doctor, suggested, I discovered I actually needed seven hours twenty minutes.

What is that test? I hear you ask. What you do is sleep with no alarm for seven days and calculate how much sleep you slept each night. Then you add the total number of hours you slept and divide that number by seven.

That will give you roughly the number of hours of sleep you need.

I did this experiment while I was on holiday—when I didn’t have to wake up at any particular time. That way I had no anxiety about not waking up on time.

Now I make sure I get seven hours at a minimum.

Movement does not mean you have to go to the gym or out running. If you look back to a time when fewer people were overweight, the 1950s for instance, there were very few gyms—and the gyms then were centred on specialised bodybuilding or competitive sports people.

You didn’t see people jogging round parks either.

Instead, people moved more. They walked, took the stairs, manually cleaned their houses and were more active in general.

The statistics are shocking. In the 1950s, around 10% of the adult US population were classified as being overweight. That number was 6% in the UK.

In 2020, those numbers had increased to over 40% in the US and 38% in the UK.

While I know convenience is wonderful, it’s also destroying our health. Humans were designed to move. We are not designed to spend as much as fifteen hours a day sitting down.

Your brain needs movement. This is why often you will find you come up with solutions to difficult problems when walking down a street or exercising.

Movement does so much more for you. It gives your brain a chance to reset, relax and more importantly these days, gets your eyes off the screen.

And then there is diet.

I am sure you re familiar with how you feel after a lunch high in carbohydrates. You feel drowsy, sluggish and sleepy. It even has a name; the afternoon slump.

If your diet is a mess—full of highly processed foods, sugars and carbohydrates, you are going to struggle to focus. You’ll always be feeling tired, sluggish and exhausted.

Switching your diet to a healthier one, will do wonders for your overall productivity and mental energies.

So, get those three basic fundamentals of a productive day sorted first and you will see a significant improvement in your productivity and focus.

Next, though, is how we apply ourselves each day. In other words, how we manage our workloads.

Constantly switching your attention between designing a presentation or trying to figure out how to ask Chat GPT the right prompts so it gives you the answers you are looking for while a the same time responding to Slack or Teams messages will leave you completely wiped out in no time at all.

Your brain was not designed to be switching contexts in that way all day. It’s called cognitive overload and while, perhaps, in the moment you don’t recognise it, what you are doing is rapidly depleting your brain’s capacity to make decisions, and remain focused on the job at hand.

It’s the most inefficient way to go about your work.

The danger is it becomes addictive. I’ve seen in recent years this called “dopamine addiction”. This is where you have become addicted to the drama of urgent deadlines, the sound of another notification and constant buzz of distractions from breaking news and short videos with flashing lights and rapid changes in context.

It destroys your focus, mental energy and leaves you feeling worn out and exhausted at the end of the day.

To improve your focus and better manage your mental energies, look for ways to group similar work together.

For example, if you find that you focus better in a morning, try to avoid having meetings at that time. Instead, perhaps start your day with a two hour session of work on a particularly difficult project or task. One that requires a fair bit of creativity or skill.

Then give yourself thirty minutes or an hour before you attempt to do another mentally challenging task.

I’ve found that when I suggest to clients that they use these gaps between periods of deeper focused work to get up move around and use their phones to reply to messages using the dictation feature, or return phones calls, they get an instant boost in their energy levels.

If you think about it physiologically, you’ve gone from hardly moving at all—sitting down and focusing on something—to getting up and moving and suddenly your blood is surging again, in a positive way.

More importantly, you’re not context switching in a mentally depleting way.

A quick tip I can share with you here is to keep the first thirty minutes of your work day free. Use that time to get a heads up on your day. Clear your email inbox, have a chat with your colleagues or hold a quick team meeting to discuss the objectives for the day.

What this does is prevents that sense of FOMO (the fear of missing out). It settles your mind, gets you focused on your objectives and gives you time to deal with any unknown emergencies before you settle down to doing some difficult work.

I’, currently reading a book called “In Search of C. The Biography of Mansfield Cumming”. Mansfield Cumming was the founder of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. The British version of the CIA.

The service was founded in 1909—five years before the start of the First World War. The majority of the UK’s workforce at that time were employed either in factories or in service.

In service meant people who worked for the aristocratic landed gentry in their large mansions and palaces.

Very few people worked in offices.

Those that did, didn’t work a nine till five job. It was far more flexible than that. Often the day was spent travelling between meetings. And given that most transport at that time was horse and cart, you can imagine how slow that was.

Then there was large liquid lunches, often taking up to three hours.

It was in the evenings that any work managed to get done. Mansfield Cumming, for example, would spend most of his evenings replying to letters and reading documents.

One time, when Cumming was ill and bed ridden, his superiors send over a typist so he could stay on top of his correspondence.

120 years ago, people recognised the dangers of letting correspondence get out of control on the efficiency of getting work done.

And don’t be fooled into thinking things were very different then. Not only did they get an equivalent number of letters as we do emails, they also got telegrams—the equivalent of Slack or Teams messages today.

It might not have been digital, but the volume was very similar.

Today, we allow ourselves to neglect staying on top of our correspondence and admin. When we do that it creates a low level of anxiety draining our energies. The fear of not knowing what is waiting for us. And the fear that we might be missing something important.

To avoid this, find some time each day to dedicate specifically to dealing with your messages. Try to do this as late in the day as you can. This avoids you getting trapped in email ping pong. That’s were when you reply you give the receiver time to reply to you the same day. That just doubles up the time you need to spend dealing with your messages.

Slowing down your response times, gives you space to get back to doing the work you have identified as being important.

So there you go, Matt. If you want to have the energy to do a days work and have enough left in the evening to spend doing the things you want to do, then first make sure you are taking care of the basics, tough sleep, movement and a healthy diet.

Then avoid getting trapped by context switching. Protect time on your calendar for doing specific types of work that is similar in nature, and allow sufficient flexibility between these sessions for moving and dealing with the inevitable message load.

I hope that has helped. Thank you for your question and thank you to you too for listening.

Oh and one more thing. Yesterday, saw the launch of my summer sale. If you would like to pick up a course, or a bundle of courses, or perhaps join my coaching programme, you can now save up to 25%. All you need to do is visit my Summer Sale page and get all the details. I will put the link in the show notes.

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

Half Your Life Is Over—Now What?

Sun, 25 May 2025 11:54:40 +0900

How important is it to develop your Areas of Focus? That’s the question I am answering this week.

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Download the Areas of Focus Workbook

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 371

Hello, and welcome to episode 371 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Why spend time working on your areas of focus when there’s already a ton of stuff to do and not enough time to do it?

While very few people ever overtly ask that question, I recall asking myself that question when I was starting out on my productivity and time management journey in my twenties. It seemed such a waste of time when I had people to call, work to do and a multitude of other commitments waiting for me to deal with.

The trouble was that while I was running around dealing with all the so-called urgent things, I was neglecting what was genuinely important to me. You know things like spending time with my family, reading books, and knowing what I wanted to do with my career. Those things felt like a luxury I just didn’t have time for.

But what was I really doing? I was prioritising the unimportant over the important because I was addicted to being busy. And that’s not healthy.

It destroys relationships, damages your health (mentally and physically) and just leaves you feeling empty and exhausted at the end of the day.

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

This week’s question comes from Ben. Ben asks, Hi Carl, I hear you talk a lot about Areas of Focus. What advice would you give to someone who hasn’t got time to write out their areas of focus? To me, that doesn’t honestly seem like a good use of my time.

Thank you Ben for your question.

Let me briefly explain what your Areas of Focus are.

We all share eight areas of life. These are:

Family and relationships

Career or business

Health and fitness

Lifestyle and life experiences

Finances

Personal development

Spirituality

Life’s purpose

They all mean something to us. Yet, how we define them will be very individual. How we prioritise them will also be personal and will change as you go through life.

When you are young your career and business area may be high on your priority list. Once you have a career or run a business, you may find other areas such as your life’s purpose and spirituality will rise up the list.

I remember when I was in my twenties, I felt I was immortal. I smoked and enjoyed a beer or six on a Friday and Saturday night. Health and fitness was not a priority.

When I reached thirty, I realised I was overweight and climbing the stairs was ridiculously hard. It left me puffing and panting embarrassingly. Something needed to change. So I reduced my drinking, eventually quit smoking and began running. Health and fitness shot up my list of priorities.

The thing is, if you do not know how important these areas are to you, you will continue to ignore them. It’s surprisingly easy to develop horrible diseases such as diabetes if you have not prioritised health and fitness.

And, of course, the elephant in the room. How many relationships have been destroyed because a person’s work takes over their life?

Your time is limited. According to Oliver Burkeman, you have around 4,000 weeks. That’s it. And if you’re 40 years old, you’re around half way through those 4,000 weeks. Scary thought, right?

So spending time defining what these areas mean to you is a critical first step to building a life that leaves you feeling fulfilled, energised and in balance with what is important to you.

The way to do this is to download my free Areas of Focus workbook, which you can get from my website. That workbook will take you through the steps to dine your areas of focus and to pull out the actionable steps you can take to keep things in balance.

These will range from simple tasks such as sending an amount of money to your savings each month. A task that will likely take you less than two minutes each month. To having a date night with your partner every Friday evening.

Your health and fitness area is another one that does not require a lot of time. Twenty to thirty minutes a day. Think about that for a moment. Twenty to thirty minutes a day to protect your long-time health, keep you energised and help keep your weight down. That’s a no brainer.

Yet to me, the most useful part of developing your areas of focus is it makes prioritising your day easy.

If you know what is important to you, you know what your priorities are.

For your work, if you know what is important to you in your career, you will be fifty percent of the way to knowing what your priorities are.

For example, if your career goal is to become the CEO or head of a department, you can develop a career path that will take you towards achieving that goal. You will be clear about what experience you need to gain in order to move to the next promotion, what skills you need to develop and which areas you need to improve.

The other fifty percent comes from knowing what your core work is. Your core work is the work you are employed to do. (Not the work you volunteer to do). The clue to this is often in your job title. A salesperson is employed to sell, not spend days in internal sales meetings. A teacher is employed to teach, not waste time dealing with student administration.

Once you are clear about these, you will find planning your days easier and prioritising your work almost automatic.

There is another way knowing what your areas of focus mean to you is it helps you to structure your week.

If you decide that maintaining your health is a priority for you, you can open up your calendar and schedule in your exercise times. Similarly, if you enjoy weekends going on adventures with your friends, that can be managed in your calendar.

With your work, once you know what your core work is, you can ensure you have sufficient time set aside for doing that work. For instance, if you are a software developer, how much time do you need to spend developing software so that you meet your deadlines?

That might equate to four hours a day of undisturbed coding. If that’s the case, you can block that time out and get very strict about accepting meetings.

Yet, none of this will be obvious if you have no idea what is important to you. You’ll find yourself being pulled and pushed into doing things that do not align with your values and areas.

There’s a great quote from Jim Rohn which says:

“If you don't have a plan for what you want, then you will probably find yourself buying into someone else's plan and later find out that was not the direction you wanted to go. You've got to be the architect of your life.”

And that’s what your Areas of Focus do for you. It gives you a blueprint for the life you want to live.

Once you know what your blueprint is, you can begin making changes to build the life you want to live.

It’s funny because as I think about this, Ben, I’m reminded of what my life was like before I sat down to work out what I wanted for my life.

I felt I was drifting. Everything that came at me appeared urgent. I was being pushed this way and then the next day I’d be pulled in another direction. Other people were telling me how I should be living my life. Even down to what I should be wearing, the kind of car I should be driving and the career I should be following.

Yet, none of that was what I wanted. It was what other people wanted me to do. It wasn’t until I read The Ten natural laws of time and life Management by Hyrun Smith that I finally woke up and realised I did have a life worth living and I could build the life I wanted to live.

And that’s when I sat down and worked on my Areas of Focus. The initial ideas were reasonably easy to write out. It became a little harder when I fine tuned them and pulled out the action steps I needed to follow consistently in order to stay on track. In total it took a few weeks to come up with a set of areas I was happy with.

But it was worth it. Almost instantly my life changed. I was more focused, intentional and other people’s opinions about how I should be living my life were listened to, but if they did not align with what I had identified as being important to me, quietly rejected.

Now one thing about your areas of focus is they will change. You will find yourself fine-tuning them from time to time. How you think about family and friends will be different when you have your first child or grandchild.

Your career might be important today, but less so after you retire.

You may not have discovered your purpose in life yet. I didn’t know what mine was until I was in my mid-thirties. But it’s worth thinking about as that one area has the potential to bring you so much joy and fulfilment.

I get to help hundreds of people every day. Nothing can beat the feeling of receiving an email or a comment from someone I have been able to help.

And that’s what your areas of focus will do for you. They give you focus, they show you what to prioritise and brings purpose and fulfilment into your life.

To me establishing what your areas are is the most important part of building any time management and productivity system. Without these, you have no foundations and will be at the mercy of everyone else.

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

Digital Overwhelm? How Getting the Basics Right Changes Everything

Sun, 18 May 2025 13:53:10 +0900

How can you preserve simplicity and work at a reasonable pace in an increasingly complex and rushed environment? That’s the question I’m answering today.

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The ULTIMATE PRODUCTIVITY WORKSHOP

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 370

Hello, and welcome to episode 370 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Two of the challenges we face today are the increasing complexity in our work life. Yet, that has been around forever. New technology requires us to learn new techniques for doing things and, perhaps, the biggest challenge of all is dealing with the speed at which things come at us.

Interestingly, the number of emails we get today is comparable to the number of letters people in the 1970s and 80s received. Yet the number of phone calls we get have dramatically dropped. That’s largely due to the move towards instant messages—which were not around in the 70s and 80s.

The difference is the speed at which we are expected to respond. With a letter, there was some doubt about when the letter would arrive. It might arrive the next day, but there was always a chance it would take two or three days.

And when it did arrive, we had at least twenty four hours to respond. Today, there are some people who expect you to respond to an email immediately—no thought that you may be working on something else or in a meeting with an important customer.

So the question we should explore is how we can navigate the way we work today without letting people down, but at the same time work at a comfortable speed which minimises mistakes and leaves us feeling fulfilled at the end of the day.

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

This week’s question comes from Tom. Tom asks, Hi Carl, over the years, my productivity system has changed with technology. I began, like you, with a Franklin Planner in the 1990s, then I moved to Getting Things Done and managed everything digitally. These days, I am struggling to keep up, and it just seems so complicated. Do you have any thoughts on how to keep things simple?

Hi Tom, thank you for your question.

One way to look at this is to remember that the basic principles of good time management and productivity will never change. Those principles are incorporated in COD—Collect, Organise and Do.

No matter how complicated or fast things get, we still need a way to collect stuff and trust that what we collect will be where we want it to be when we process it.

We need an organisation system that works for us. And that means, we can find what we need when we need it.

And finally, we want to be maximising the time we spend doing the work, so we avoid backlogs building.

It’s within this framework we can evolve our systems.

Thirty years ago, we would have been collecting with pen and paper. Today, it’s likely we will collect using our phones or computer.

Thirty years ago we would have had stacks of file folders and a filing cabinet or two to store those folders. Today, those files will likely be held in the cloud—Google Drive, iCloud or OneDrive, for instance.

So while the tools have changed, the principles have not.

I’m a big rugby fan. I’ve been following Leeds Rhinos since my grandfather took me to my first game when I was five years old.

The teams that win the championships and cup games are the ones who get the basics right. In rugby, that is playing the majority of the game in the oppositions half. Being aggressive in defence and ensuring their players are disciplined—giving away silly penalties is one sure way to lose games.

The teams that lose are the ones who don’t get these basics right. They try to be clever, get frustrated, and drop the ball (quite literally) and give away unnecessary penalties, which results in them giving away territory and playing the majority of the game in their own half.

The message is always the same. Get the basics right and the results will come.

This is the same for you, too, Tom. Get the basics right and that’s following the principles of COD.

The problems will start when we begin trying to do multiple things at the same time. Multi-tasking is not a strategy. Sure there are some things you can do at the same time. Walking and thinking about solving a problem, listening to a podcast while doing the dishes or cleaning up the house.

But you are not going to be able to write a report, prepare a presentation and reply to your emails at the same time. These are very different types of work requiring different skills.

A report is well thought out words and conclusions. A presentation is a visual representation of your main points and writing emails is about communicating clearly in words. All requiring different parts of your brain.

This is why categorising the work you do works so well. With categorising, or chunking or batch processing—they all mean the same thing—you are grouping similar tasks together and doing them at the same time. For example, you can collect your actionable emails together and set aside thirty to sixty minutes each day for responding to them.

If you were consistent with that, you would always be on top of your mails and no one would be waiting much longer that 24 hours for a reply.

Similarly if you were responsible for sending out proposals to prospective customers, if you were to spend an hour or so on those each day, you would rarely have any backlogs and your proposals would be going out quickly without errors.

It’s when we stop following these principles we become like the losing rugby teams. We’ve stopped following the game plan and become frustrated, which leads to mistakes which in turn means we lose the game.

Or in the world of work, we create backlogs, deadlines are missed and we feel horrible, stressed out and overwhelmed.

I’ve always found it fascinating to learn how productive people work. I saw recently an interview with Tim Cook, where he mentioned he wakes up at 4:00 am, and the first hour of his day is spent doing email.

I remember reading that Jack Dorsey, one of the founders of Twitter and the CEO of Square, who would schedule his days by category of work. Monday and Tuesdays were spend on marketing, Wednesdays were problem solving and Thursdays would be spent at Square and Fridays at Twitter.

They all have some structure to their days. Incidentally, this was the same for Winston Churchill and Charles Darwin. They both followed a strict structure to their days which ensured they spent time each day on the things that mattered.

While the way we work and the tools we use to do our work may change, the way we structure our days doesn’t have to.

Twenty years ago, spending an hour on returning phone messages was the norm. Today, that same hour will likely be spent responding to Slack or Teams messages and email.

If you want to get control of your time and remain productive, it will be helpful to know what is important.

What is your core work? The work you are paid to do? What does that look like at a task level? Working in concepts doesn’t work here. You need to go to the next level and determine what your work looks like at a task level.

An accountant will need to put numbers into a spreadsheet (or something similar) in order to get the information they need to be able to advise their clients. The question therefore becomes how much time do they need to do that each day to ensure they are on top of their work?

As a former Franklin Planner user, you will know the importance of daily and weekly planning. This is about knowing what is important today and this week. It’s about allocating sufficient time to getting that work done and being strict about what you allow on your calendar.

Perhaps part of the problem we face today is the increasing demands on our time. It’s easy to ask someone to jump on a Teams or Zoom call for “a few minutes” Ha! How often does five minutes turn into thirty minutes?

And because of the simplicity of doing these calls, we accept. Perhaps too readily.

I don’t have Zoom or Teams on my phone. If I am not with my laptop, I cannot do a video call. It’s a rule. And a non-negotiable one too.

Where are your rules? What will you accept and, more importantly, not accept?

One way you can manage this is to limit the number of meetings you have each day. If you spend seven hours of your eight hours of your work day in meetings, how will you find the time to do the work you are employed to do?

That isn’t a task management issue. That’s a time issue. It doesn’t matter how many tasks you have to do today if you do not have the time protected for doing them. It’s on you to protect that time and that doesn’t matter where you are in the hierarchy chain.

If your boss expects you to be in seven hours of meetings each day and write reports, prepare presentations and respond to your emails and messages, that’s an issue you need to take up with your boss. No tool or productivity system will sort that out for you.

Even with the help of AI, you will struggle to do your work with that kind of time conflict.

Now when it comes to managing your files and notes, I would say don’t reinvent the wheel.

Several years ago, Microsoft and Apple’s engineers released we were terrible at managing our documents. So, they began rolling out self contained folders for their professional tools such as Word and Keynote.

You no longer need to file these documents in folders you create. Instead you can save them and let your computer organise them for you. For example, if you use Word, all your word documents can be saved to the Word container folder in OneNote. Just like Google Docs. These are all kept together and you can then organise them in a variety of ways.

You can do it alphabetically, the date the document was created or when it was last modified (great for when collaborating with other people). In iCloud and Google Drive, you can also organise by which documents are shared.

Your computer does the hard work so you don’t have to. There’s certainly no longer a need to create sophisticated file folder structures that take forever to keep organised. You don’t have time for that. Let your computer do the work for you.

And not only have these companies made organising our work easier, they have been gradually improving search features too. Now as long as you know a date range, a keyword or a title, you’ll be able to find any document in seconds.

There is no longer any need to manually organise your documents. The only responsibility you have is to ensure the names of the documents you have saved mean something to you. If you’re downloading a document, make sure you rename it. There’s some very strange file naming conventions out there.

And that’s about it, Tom.

Stick to the basics of COD—Collect, Organise, Do. Be strict about what you allow on your calendar (even if that means you need to an uncomfortable talk with your boss) and let your computer do the hard work of filing for you.

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

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

The Intentional Day: How Top Performers Plan Their Time Differently

Sun, 11 May 2025 11:23:56 +0900

Podcast 369

What’s the most effective time management practice you can adopt today that will transform your productivity?

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The ULTIMATE PRODUCTIVITY WORKSHOP

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 369

Hello, and welcome to episode 369 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

I’ve often answered questions on this podcast about the best or most effective time management or productivity system, but I don’t think I’ve answered a question about the best practices before.

A practice is something you do each day. It’s just what you do. You don’t need to think about it. It’s automatic. And there is something that the most productive people I’ve come across do each day, that I find people struggling with their management of time don’t do.

In many ways, becoming more productive and better at managing time is a two-fold practice. It’s the strict control of your calendar and being intentional about what you do each day.

Yet to get to those practices each day, takes a change in attitude and the squashing of some pre-conceived ideas.

And that is what we’ll be looking at in today’s episode.

Before we get to the question, just a quick heads up. The European time zone friendly Ultimate Productivity Workshop is coming next weekend. Sunday the 18th and 25th May.

If you want to finally have a time management and productivity system that works for you, and have an opportunity to work with me and a group of like-minded people, then join us next Sunday. I will put the link for further information into the show notes.

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

This week’s question comes from Mark. Mark asks, Hi Carl, what do you consider to be the best daily habits for living a productive life?

Hi Mark, thank you for your question.

This is something that has always fascinated me about the way people work. What is it that the most productive people do that unproductive people don’t do.

Surprisingly it’s not work longer hours. That’s usually the domain of unproductive people.

What the most productive people do is to have a few daily rituals that are followed every day.

Let’s start with the easiest one. Have a solid morning routine. It’s your morning routine that sets you up for the day.

Cast your mind back to a day in your past when you overslept and had to rush out the door to get to work. How productive were you that day? Probably not very. You will have been in a reactive state all day, treating anything and everything as urgent.

The “secret” is to use your morning routine to put you in a proactive state. That means looking at your calendar for your appointments for the day and identifying what you must get done that day.

Then mentally mapping out when you will do your work.

For instance, today I have seven hours of meetings. That does not leave me much time to write this podcast script. Yet, when I began my day, I looked at where my appointments were, saw I had an hour mid morning free and a further hour in the afternoon between 4 and 5 pm.

Two hours is enough to get the bulk of this script written. Now all I have to do is resist all demands on my time today so I can get this script written. That’s the challenge. Resisting demands.

Resisting demands on my time today is reasonably easy. Seven hours of meetings is about my limit anyway. So if someone requests an additional meeting, it’ll be quite easy to tell them I am fully booked today and I can offer them an alternative day and time.

And that’s a mindset shift I would recommend to you. Know where your limits are and to be comfortable offering alternative days and times. If the person demanding your time insists and is in a more senior position to you (does that really happen today?), then you can decide which of your other meetings you could postpone.

If your day is full of meetings, make sure you task list reflects that. What I see a lot of people doing is having a day full of meetings and a full task list. Yeah, right. That’s not going to happen.

For most of us the confirmed, committed meetings will be the priority. Tasks will not be. So, on days when you have a lot of meetings, reduce your task list. That will immediately remove anxiety and give you more focus for your meetings.

Next up, is to not use the excuse of a busy day to not do your communications.

Email and messages build up very quickly. Just one day neglecting these means tomorrow you will need double the time to get back in control.

The goal here is to protect time each day for dealing with your actionable emails and messages. If all you have is thirty minutes, take it. It’s surprising how much you can do in thirty minutes. That’s a lot better than having to try and find two or three hours the next day to get on top of an out-of-control inbox.

Email and messages are the things that are apt to throw you off a well planned day. Yet, it’s surprisingly easy to get on top of these if you were to make it a daily practice to spend thirty minutes or more dealing with your actionable emails.

The next tip I’ve picked up from super-productive people is to group similar tasks together. This technique has a few different names. Batching and chunking are two of them.

What you are doing is grouping similar tasks together and working on them as one task. For instance, if you have a lot of messages to respond to, you would call that your communication time and do them all at once.

This is quite easy with email as you can stay within one app to do the work. You can do this with writing proposals. If you have five or six proposals to write, then schedule time for writing proposals. Don’t look at each individual proposal as a single task. See the activity of writing proposals as one task.

This way you are working with time. You could set aside an hour or two for doing your proposals and after your allocated time is up, move on to the next category.

For example, a sales person, may decide that between 9:30 and 11:00 am, they will do their follow-ups and prospecting, then from 11:30 am do their appointments for the day.

Sure, there may be days when a customer can only see you early in the day, and you can move your follow-up and prospecting time to a little later in the day, but what you want to be doing is trying to set up a structure to you day. It just makes your life that little bit easier.

The problem with most to-do lists is that they are just that— a list of random things that may or may not need to be done today. If you were to allocate time for doing different types of work, you’re going to be pretty much up to date with most things.

It’s unlikely you will be able to avoid backlogs completely. But if you are consistently doing your important work, nothing is going to get out of control.

I think of this very much like running an airport. You’ve got flights taking off and landing all day. Yet, in the air traffic control centre, you can only land one plane at a time. This means around all commercial airports you will see what is called a holding pattern. This is where planes are circling waiting to be given permission to land.

Once a plane is given that permission, it comes into land.

Well, you are like that airport. You can only work one piece of work at a time. Everything else waiting for your attention needs to be held in a holding pattern.

And like an airport, aircraft in difficulties or running low on fuel will take priority over others. You too, will have little emergencies and urgencies, and you can decide which piece of work has the priority while you are working on the category you are currently working on.

This is why ultimately your calendar is your most important productivity tool. That’s directing your day. It tells you where you need to be at what time. It also tells you where you have time for doing your tasks.

If you leave things open, it’s likely to be stolen by low value stuff or other people. Making it a practice to plan your day using your calendar, ensures that you have the time to do what needs to be done and if you don’t do it, there’s only one person to blame—you.

Never ignore your calendar. Reschedule, by all means, but never ignore it. It’s your calendar that will ensure you know when to leave to pick your son up from school, and what time that appointment with an important client is.

The final part is to know what your non-negotiables are. These are the things you will never miss. For example, three things I will never miss are writing my journal each morning, taking my dog for a walk and my thirty minutes of exercise each day.

Start with your personal life. What are you non-negotiables there? Then look at your professional life. What are you non-negotiables at work.

For example, with the exception of my calls days, I will ensure I spend at least two hours working content each day. If you were a designer or engineer, that could be spending a minimum of two hours designing or engineering.

Ensuring you have a few hours each day dedicated to doing the work you were hired to do, will put you ahead of most of your colleagues.

When you have non-negotiables, you find planning your day is easy. I know Louis needs his walk, I know also that when I wake up, after making my coffee, I’ll be sitting down to write my journal. I don’t need to think about these things. The only thing I need to decide is where Louis and I will go today. We try to go somewhere different each day.

I also find towards the end of the afternoon, I begin thinking about what exercise I will do today. There’s no question about whether I will exercise or not. Exercise is a non-negotiable. All I need to decide is what I will do in my thirty minutes.

Non-negotiables can be anything that is important to you. I’ve had clients who would never miss their meditation session, or go to the Synagogue, or temple in the early morning. Others won’t miss their Saturday morning family breakfast.

The key here is to identify what your non-negotiables are and then do them.

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

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

Breaking the Backlog Cycle: Never Get Behind Again

Sun, 04 May 2025 11:08:52 +0900

Backlogs. We all have them. But, how do you clear them and then prevent them from happening again? That’s what we’re looking at today.

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Getting Things Done With Linda Geerdink

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 367

Hello, and welcome to episode 368 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Organising your work, creating lists of things to do, and managing your projects in your notes are all good common-sense productivity practices. However, none of these are going to be helpful if you have huge backlogs of admin, messages, and emails creating what I call a low-level anxiety buzz.

You’re going to be stressed and distracted and in no place to be at your very best.

What’s more, this can become a chronic problem if those backlogs are growing. This is when critical things are going to get missed.

I’m often surprised to get an email from someone asking me if they can have a discount code for an early-bird discount that expired three or four weeks previously. I mean, come on. If it’s taking you three to four weeks to get to an email—even if you consider it to be a low-value email—there’s a serious problem in your system. (Or more likely, you don’t have a system at all.)

So this week, I want to share with you a few ideas that can help you regain control of these backlogs and, more importantly, prevent them from happening again.

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

This week’s question comes from Wyatt. Wyatt asks, hi Carl, how would you help someone who is backlogged beyond belief. I’ve got over 3,000 emails in my inbox, and my team are still waiting for me to finish their appraisals from last year! I feel so stuck. Please help.

Hi Wyatt. Thank you for your question.

Sorry to hear you feel swamped. I know it can be a horrible place to be.

Before we begin, let me explain the three types of backlogs we all have to deal with.

The first is the growing backlog. This one is the worst because it’s getting bigger and unless you take action immediately, it’s going to overwhelm you. These kinds of backlogs will always be your priority.

The next type of backlog is the static backlog. It’s not growing, but it’s there and it’s on your mind. It needs to be dealt with, but the urgency isn’t as big as a growing backlog.

And then there’s the shrinking backlog. These are the best because if they are shrinking, they’ll soon disappear altogether.

Now, one of the most common areas of our work that backlogs is our email. The last statistics I saw show that on average, people are getting 90+ emails a day.

If you need an average of 30 seconds to deal with each email—which I know is low—that’s around forty-five minutes to deal with them.

Do you have forty-five minutes today to deal with your email?

Remember, that’s a small amount of time for each email. It’s likely you’ll need more than thirty seconds for most of those mails.

Now the good news. If you’re starting with a backlog of over 3,000 emails, many of those emails will no longer require a response. The moment’s passed.

What I would suggest is you take any emails older than a month, and move then to a folder called “Old In-box”. While my instinct it to tell you to delete them, I’ve never come across anyone courageous enough to do it.

Although, if you think about it. Deleting them gives you a perfect excuse if someone follows you up—“sorry, I don’t seem to be able to find your email. Could you resend it?”

Doing this means you’ve cut your list by a large margin. What’s left can be processed.

Email is a two step process. Just like we used to do with regular letters. Open your post box, take out the mail and sort it between letters you need to read or respond to and throw away or file anything you don’t need to act on.

And by the way, nobody left their mail in the mail box. Why do we do that with email?

With email, it’s the same process. Clear your inbox. As you clear ask yourself two questions:

What is it?

What do I need to do with it?

If you need to read or reply to an email, then move it to a folder called “Action This Day”. If you don’t need to do anything with it, either delete or archive it.

This is the processing stage. All you are doing is processing. You are not replying or reading. That comes later. This means, with practice, you’ll be able to process an individual email in a second or two—ten tops.

Now, towards the end of the day, set aside some time for clearing your actionable emails. Try to do this as late in the day as possible. This prevents what is called email ping pong.

If you reply in the morning, you’re going to get a reply in the afternoon. If you reply in the afternoon, even if you do get a reply, you can leave it until tomorrow to respond. Genius, yes?

There are two additional things here.

The first is to reverse the order of the mails in your action this day folder. This puts the oldest at the top. If you’re responding to your mails once a day, you want to be working from the oldest first.

That way, no one will be waiting more than 24 hours or so for a reply from you.

The second is to follow this process every day.

I require around forty-five minutes a day for dealing with my actionable email. If I skip a day, then tomorrow I will need ninety minutes. I don’t have ninety minutes to spend on emails. If I do skip a day, I’ve got a backlog building. Not good.

So, it’s an everyday thing if you want to prevent your email from becoming backlogged.

And remember that one is greater than zero. In other words, if you don’t have a great deal of time available today, still do some of your actionable mail. That keeps you in touch with what’s going on in your mail box and it’s surprising how much you can get done in twenty minutes.

Now, let’s move on to your appraisals.

You mention that your team is still waiting for their appraisals from last year. That suggests it’s an annual event rather than a quarterly event. Either way, the same principle works.

For this kind of task, you need to be scheduling time for doing it. Often, with staff appraisals, you need a week to hold one-to-ones with your team before you can write anything. So, if you begin the appraisals in October, I would suggest you go into your calendar now and set up those appointments.

I know we are a good four months away from October, but by getting them in your calendar now, it’s one less task to deal with and you’re not going to be going back and forth trying to get these appointments scheduled into one week. You’ll end up wasting time negotiating the best time. Do it now.

Then, schedule the third week in October to write your appraisals. Depending on how long, on average, this work takes, you could block a whole day—or two if you need it—to spend writing appraisals.

Getting it on your calendar means you are less likely to allow anything else to take that time away.

To deal with last year’s appraisals, it’s the same process. If you have not completed the one-to-ones, schedule those for next week. Make it a non-negotiable part of your week.

Then go into your calendar and block time out for writing the appraisals.

For things like this there’s an element of intentionality. Things don’t get done until you intentionally set aside time to do it and then get started.

Agin, this is two steps. First set aside time—that’s the easy bit—then sit down and do it—that’s the hard part.

Yet, as long as you begin, once you’re in the flow and you know nothing else is coming up to tear you away from doing the work, you will get it done.

Clearing backlogs is one thing. Preventing backlogs from occurring is another.

Email is a good example, if you are not following the process every day, a backlog will occur. This is not something you can wish away. It doesn’t go away. It’s the same with Teams and Slack messages.

If you’re getting a lot of notifications from these channels of communication, you’re not going to get a lot done if you’re responding to these messages moment they come in. It will exhaust you because of the constant cognitive load switching.

I find dealing with messages is best done between sessions of work.

Let me explain. We know about the sleep cycle—where you sleep in cycles of 90 minutes. Well, it turns out you are also awake in 90-minute cycles.

What this means is you can focus on a piece of work for around 90 minutes. After which your brain will tire, and you will need a distraction. That could be a toilet break, or the desire to get up and refresh your coffee or water.

This is your brain telling you that you need a break.

Now, if you use that to your advantage, you could schedule your focused work sessions around 90-minute blocks. For example, your first, and most important block, could be set for 9:30 to 11:00 am. Then you make sure you have a 30-minute gap before you allow anything else that requires a degree of focus.

In that thirty minutes, you could get up and go to the bathroom, refresh your water and deal with your messages. The longest anyone will be waiting for your response would be 90 minutes.

No demanding boss or client can complain at that. I know, I’ve dealt with some very bad, demanding bosses and clients in my time. They can be trained.

If you were to stick with these ideas and processes, I can promise you that you will get a lot more important work done, reduce your backlogs and feel a lot less exhausted at the end of the day.

You’re in effect working with your brain instead of against it.

Preventing backlogs really comes down to how you structure your day. Most people are not doing that. They have no structure, so they are working on the latest and loudest thing. The problem is that the latest and loudest thing is often not the most important thing.

However, if you set aside time each day for dealing with your communications—say an hour and respect that time—and perhaps a further thirty minutes for dealing with your admin—another area that can become backlogged—you will prevent backlogs from happening.

If you run your day by the seat of your trousers, then, yes, you will have huge, growing backlogs. Responding to your email is rarely urgent, so it gets left behind on busy days. And that means you require double the amount of time tomorrow. And what happens if tomorrow is a busy day?

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

Beyond the Chaos: Building a Low-Maintenance Productivity System

Sun, 27 Apr 2025 11:58:04 +0900

Where would you start if you were to completely redesign your productivity and time management system? That’s what I’m looking at this week.

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Getting Things Done With Linda Geerdink

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 367

Hello, and welcome to episode 367 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

One of the things that can hold you back from creating a solid time management and productivity system is the legacy of your old habits and systems.

It could be you have always done things a particular way, which may have worked well in the past, but no longer does. Yet, the hold of the familiar keeps you wedded to that old habit.

Or, your company may have adopted a new system or piece of software that has a number of possibilities that you haven’t explored yet. And, of course, the elephant in the room where you have so many tools it’s paralysing you when it comes to deciding what to use.

So, how would you go about doing an overhaul on your system so it’s simple, easy and does not require a lot of maintenance to keep working?

That’s the topic of this week’s question and 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 Lindsay. Lindsay asks, hi Carl, I recently took your new Time Sector System course and I love it. The trouble I am having is I have so much stuff all over the place, I don’t know where to start to rebuild my system. Do you have any tips that may help?

Hi Lindsay, thank you for your question.

There’s a great YouTube video, where David Allen, author of Getting Things Done spends a day with Linda Geerdink, a Dutch journalist showing her how to get her life organised. (I’ll put the video in the show notes)

It’s quite emotional at times as Linda has never had any kind of system in the past and has lived her professional and personal life by the seat of her pants.

David Allen comes across as being a little cruel at times, yet, I can understand where he is coming from. Sometimes you need to be cruel to be kind in order to help someone get to where they want to be.

What fascinated me about this video is the utter chaos the start of the process of building a system can be. When you gather everything you may or may not need to do into one central place, it can seem daunting.

And when that involves papers, documents and digital stuff, it can feel like you are drowning in an ocean of stuff that must be done.

But, it doesn’t have to be that way.

So, where would I start if I was to rebuild my system?

I would suggest watching that David Allen video. It starts in Dutch, but when David is introduced to the video, it continues in English.

What David gets Linda to do is exactly right. Gather everything you have into a central place. Today, that’s going to be largely digital stuff.

If you have notes in several notes apps, pick one and go through the process of bringing everything together into one. Which notes app you choose doesn’t really matter too much, although I would choose one that is simple to use. The more complex a notes app is, the more time you will need to maintain it in the future. (Which is not a very productive way to go about it)

The good thing about notes is they are rarely urgent. Notes are support materials for meetings, projects and ideas. Most notes apps will allow you to get a URL link so you can link the important notes to tasks in your task manager.

Now with you task manager, again, if you have a few of these laying around, again, pick one—a simple one, and move any tasks from the apps you discard into the one you’ve chosen’s inbox.

Then process your inbox. Use the three questions:

What is it?

What do I need to do?

When will I do it?

And then move the task to the appropriate folder.

Now, I know all this may take a long time. Often it can take a few days. The best way to do this is to take a day or two off and dedicate those days to getting your system sorted out. It can be fun, no really, it can be.

Just be careful when you do this. We can become quite nostalgic when doing this and keep stopping to read through old notes. Now’s not the time to do this. If you do find yourself doing this create a folder called “nostalgia” and drop them in there. You can then go back to that folder when you’re finished.

One tip here is to think elimination not accumulation. In other words focus on deleting as much as you can. Notes can be archived, sometimes your old ideas can spark fresh ideas. With your task manager, though, be ruthless and delete as much as you can.

Your notes can hold as much as you like. You task manager needs to be clean and tight. The less in there the more effective it will be.

I’ve stressed the importance of keeping things simple and this is something you want to be thinking about as you process what you have in your inboxes.

Complexity is the enemy of productivity. It slows you down by adding what I call an administrative cost. That’s the cost in time it takes to maintain your system.

This is why the Time Sector System is powerful. It narrows down you options to when you will do something. After all, it doesn’t matter how much you have to do if you don’t have the time to do it, does it?

Moving forward, you want to be quite strict about what you schedule to do this week. It’s quite easy, when planning your week, to think that’s it. But it isn’t. Once the week begins, new stuff will be coming in daily, and some of that will need to be done this week. You do need to keep some space—white space as I’ve heard it called—for these tasks and appointments.

Now, what about the future? How can you prevent chaos from returning in the future and to put yourself in a position where you are in control and know what you are doing and when?

First accept your human limitations.

You and I have two limitations. We can only work on one thing at a time and the number of hours we have each day.

These are human limitations and there nothing we can do to change them.

Then there is the need to sleep—although you may be able to pull an all nighter occasionally if you must, which I hope you don’t need to do, ever—and eat. Both of which take time.

This means, the place to start would be your calendar. How much time do you need for your personal needs. That would be family and social time, sleep, exercise and anything else you want time for.

You don’t want to be worrying about work at this point.

Your work has a fixed time—usually Monday to Friday, so you can deal with that later.

The benefit to starting with your personal life is it will help you to establish some boundaries between your personal and professional life.

Once you have your calendar of personal activities set up, and I would set these to recur in your calendar. You can always move things around when you do your weekly planning. By setting them up as recurring events, you’re much more likely to stick to them.

Now look at your work.

First where are your fixed meetings? Get them on your calendar.

After that, how much time do you need, on average, to do your core work. That’s the work you’re employed to do.

When I was a teacher, my teaching schedule was fixed. Yet, I also needed to schedule time for class preparation and my admin duties.

When I worked as a lawyer, I required more time to work on the cases, so I made sure I had five hours a day for just working on the cases—that involved preparing court documents, requesting documents from the Land Registry and responding to letters from other lawyers.

That meant I had only three hours available for appointments.

There was no point in me believing I could fit in five hours of meetings and spend five hours on my cases—which I genuinely needed to do in order to keep my head above water—I wasn’t being paid enough to work ten hours a day and sacrifice my social life and my exercise time.

Now, I did allow a little more flexibility at the end of a month, but on the whole I strictly controlled my calendar to ensure I was not trying to do the impossible.

And, for those of you who believe you cannot get control of your calendar, when I worked in a law firm, I never got fired and received my annual bonus for exemplary work each year, and I was the most junior or juniors in my time in the law office. You can do this—control your time. You’re evaluated on your work, not how many meetings you attend.

This is why I always recommend you start with getting control of your calendar. It’s your calendar that controls one of your limitations—available time.

Now, the other limitation, only being able to work on one thing at a time, means you can group similar tasks together and focus your efforts on clearing that list. For example, if you allocate an hour a day for dealing with your communications, you’re not worrying about how many emails you have to respond to, you don’t need to.

All you need to do is begin with the oldest message and do as many as you can until your hour is up. If you consistently follow that process, you’ll rarely have any communication backlogs.

It’s not about the number of emails and messages you have to respond to, it’s about how much time you have available to respond to them. Do them all at the same time and that way you won’t be jumping around inside multiple different apps trying to find what to do.

It’s the same with your admin and project tasks. It’s never about how many you have to do at anyone time. It’s about how much time you have available to do them.

If you’re work is largely project based, make sure you have sufficient time scheduled on your calendar for working on your project tasks each week. If you’re role is mainly admin tasks—for example you’re in customer support, then how much time, on average, do you need to do your work without the build up of backlogs each week?

If you’re focused on how much you have to do, you will always feel overwhelmed. If you focus on how much time you have available for working on different types of work, you’ll be a lot less overwhelmed and you will be getting your work done.

This also eliminates the impossible challenge of trying to estimate how long a task will take. Nobody can do that with any degree of accuracy. This comes back to you being a human being. Some days you’ll be on fire and churn through a lot of work. Other days you’ll be feeling exhausted and find everything you do is like trying to run through treacle.

I hope that has helped, Lindsay. Thank you for your question, and thank you for listening. It just remains for me to wish you all a very very productive week.

How To Be Productive And Organised.

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 12:08:50 +0900

This week, what does it take to be organised and productive?

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Script | 366

Hello, and welcome to episode 366 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

One thing you will discover if you begin reading around the subject of time management and productivity is the importance of planning your week and day.

Every successful person i have come across, or read about, never fails to plan their days and week. Every person who is struggling, and not achieving their goals are not.

Instead, they find excuses. “I’m too tired”, “I don’t have time”, “I have more important things to do”, etc, etc.

Yet, there’s more to it than that. It’s not just about having a plan for the day and being clear about what needs to be done. it’s also about protecting time for the important, but not urgent work, and knowing when to say no, when to push and when to pull back and take some rest.

In essence, it’s about understanding yourself and knowing your limits. So with that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice, for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Tammy. Tammy asks, hi Carl, I’m trying to understand what I need to do to become more organised and productive. I know it’s holding me back, but there’s so much conflicting advice out there that I am confused. Can you help?

Hi Tammy, thank you for your question.

As I just alluded to, the best place to begin is to understand yourself.

This means knowing when you are at your most focused, when you are prone to distractions and how much sleep you need.

The chances are, if you stop and step back, you will already know this information. Perhaps you find yourself being able to get quite a lot of work done in the morning, but struggle in the afternoons. Or, you may come alive around 3 pm and can get a lot of work done then.

This knowledge, allows you to better structure your days. You can avoid meetings, where possible, at the times you are at your most focused, and rely on human connection to keep your energy levels up by holding meetings when you are less focused—there’s something about human interaction that raises our energy levels.

You can also ensure you are getting enough sleep, and that means being consistent when you wake up. As I recently learned, it’s not the time you go to bed that matters, it’s waking up at roughly the same time each day as that starts your 24 hour sleep/wake cycle.

If you mess around with your sleep/wake cycle, you will feel dreadful, and that destroys your productivity.

Once you have the basics locked in, you can then move on to structuring your days.

A couple of years ago, I wrote quite extensively about some famous authors. This was inspired by the book Daily Rituals by Mason Curry. In that book, Mason Curry wrote about incredibly productive people and how they got their work done.

One person, not featured in the book, I wrote about was author Jeffrey Archer. He writes a book every year, and he has his year structured to allow him to take care of writing the new book, promoting the book he wrote the previous year and dealing with his publishers, book cover designers and much more.

Archer also loves cricket. So his year is structured so he can reduce his workload in the summer when the cricket season is on.

This works brilliantly. Jeffrey Archer is consistent. Everyone who works with him knows he will be in Majorca between 27th December and the beginning of March writing his next book. They also know he will be available for meetings, promotions and events between March and June. From July to October, Archer is less available, and from October he’s happy to do book tours, interviews and anything else his publisher needs him to do.

It’s simple, consistent and makes working with Jeffrey Archer easy.

Now, I know it’s unlikely you are a multi-million selling author. It’s likely you work in a place where there are multiple demands coming at you each day from bosses, customers and colleagues.

Demands such as wanting to know how you’re getting on with this or that. If you dig a little deeper, though, most of these demands are because people don’t trust that you remember that you committed to doing something for them.

What’s the most common reason you chase someone up? It’s most likely because you’re worried they’ve forgotten they said they would do something for you.

Why is that? The most common reason is because most of the people we work with are inconsistent. And, yes, sometimes things fall through the cracks and get forgotten and we need to chase them up.

So, if you want less interruptions, which equals more time to do your work, be more consistent.

Consistent with your focus work times. Don’t throw your hands up in the air and say “I cannot do that in my job”. You can. You just have to figure out how to communicate your focus work times.

As I was taught, if someone else can do it, so can you. If an airline pilot or surgeon can do their focused work without allowing distractions, so can you. Find the way. What do you have to do to resist interruptions?

So how do you become consistent? You put in place a structure for your day and for your week.

How much time do you need to stay on top of your communications each day? Most people tell me if they could have an hour daily dedicated to responding to messages and emails they would be on top of it. So schedule it.

The alternative is not good, is it? If you don’t spend an hour on your messages today, how much time will you need tomorrow? If you skip tomorrow as well, now, how much time will you need? I’m sure you can find one hour a day, but to find three? That’s verging on the impossible.

If you were responsible for sending out proposals to clients, how much time would you need for proposal writing to prevent a backlog?

You won’t be accurate with your times; you don’t have to be. You are using averages. If you get five proposals to write each day, and each proposal takes around thirty minutes to write, that means to prevent backlogs from appearing you need about two-and-a-half hours each day.

The only way you will be able to take care of your responsibility to send out the proposals would be to schedule two-and-a-half hours each day for doing the work. How else will you do it?

Now look at that from your colleagues’s perspective? If they know you are consistent and are getting the proposals out on time, how likely will they be chasing and interrupting you?

That’s what consistency does. It builds trust with your colleagues. They know once they send you a proposal to write, it will be done. So, they don’t bother you asking if you’ve done it, yet.

My favourite all-time rugby player is Ellery Hanley. He was the greatest player of his generation. What made him so special? You could guarantee that if you made a break, he would always be right next to you, backing you up. This is what made him so good.

Sure he was tough, as all rugby players generally are. He was also fit and strong. But what made him so good was he consistently backed up his players. You knew if you broke your opponent’s line, Ellery Hanley would be right there with you to take the ball and score.

Let’s say you are that person responsible for writing proposals. You need two-and-a-half hours each day for proposal writing and an hour for your communications. That’s just three-and-a-half hours you need to protect each day for your important work.

That still leaves you with four to five hours for anything else you may be required for. Is that impossible?

The final part to this is to plan your week and your day.

Planning the week is about looking at what you have to do and deciding what you will work on the following week. This will be influenced by your deadlines and what you have promised to others.

It will also be influenced by your personal life and your commitments there. If you have kids, they will have a big influence on your weekly plans too.

On a daily level, how many and when are your appointments for the day? what are your must do tasks? Must do tasks are non-negotiable. They must be done. Now, this means you do not want to have too many of these. I generally advise people to have no more than two.

By not allowing more than two must do tasks for the day, you are forced to prioritise. Prioritising is a learned skill. The more you practice it, the better, and faster, you will get at it.

I would also advise using a simple set of tools. A calendar, naturally, and a task manager. If you don’t have a task manager now, choose one that’s built into the devices you use. That would mean Apple Reminders if you use Apple tools, or Microsoft ToDo if you use a Windows system.

Once you have these tools—a calendar and a task manager, learn to use the tools. I see a lot of people regularly switching their tools in an erroneous belief that they will find the “perfect” tool. They won’t the “perfect tool” does not exist.

The real secret is not the tools. It’s how you run your day.

Make sure you plan each day, you are consistent doing the work you are employed to do and you get enough sleep.

Just those simple basic practices will improve your overall productivity. I can promise you it works every time.

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

How to Build A Productive Team

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 11:49:57 +0900

This week, how to manage your team (and your boss) productively

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Script | 365

Hello, and welcome to episode 365 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

I work a lot with managers and business leaders, where a part of their job is to manage teams of people. This kind of work can be quite different from a self-employed graphic designer, for example, whose main work each day is designing.

There’s an interesting interplay going on in a team environment. Managers need information from their people. To get that information, they need to stop their team from doing their work. Then there is the team who need less distraction in order to get their work done to the highest quality and on time.

In my experience, the most productive teams are the ones who have found a happy balance between the manager’s need for information and the team’s need to work undisturbed.

So, the question is, how do you find that balance and if you are a member of a team with a boss who is interrupting you a little too much how do you retrain your boss?

Two questions from one wonderful listener who has sent in a question.

And with that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Sam. Sam asks, hi Carl, do you have any tips and ideas for managing a team productively (I manage a team of eight) and how to manage a boss who is disorganised and never remembers what she’s asked us to do. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Hi Sam, thank you for your question.

It sounds like you’re caught in the middle of a productivity nightmare. A boss who has no idea how to get the most out of their team and as a consequence you are unable to help your team work productively.

Let’s start with the easier of the two. Managing a team.

To help you get to the right place, we need to step back a little. A manager’s role is to support their team. To provide them with clear instructions and the right tools, and then to keep out of the way and let them get on and do what they were employed to do.

At a strategic level that means clear communication—what do you want, how do you want it and when do you want it delivered?

And then to step back and let them get on and do it.

Let me give you an example of this in play.

I record my YouTube videos on a Wednesday. I then create the timeline of the video in Adobe Premiere Pro and send everything to my video editor to do the animations, clean things up and get it ready for publication.

In a Google Doc, I write out what I want—where I want split screen effects and other animations. I also add the date I need the finished video for.

That’s communication part.

I then step back and let my video editor get on and do her thing. I don’t care how she does the animations or what tools she uses—she likes to use something called CapCut, for example. Once I hand it over to my video editor, the task is in her hands and as long as she gets the edited video back to me by the deadline. I’m happy.

If she has any questions, we use a messaging service called Twist—similar to Microsoft Teams and Slack but a lot less distracting—she will message me.

And that’s the support part.

It’s simple, effective and allows my video editor the time and space to get on and do the work without me constantly chasing her.

Now there is another element going on here. I trust my video editor. She’s never let me down and on those rare occasions when she thinks she will be late, she will message me immediately and inform me.

If you don’t trust your team, who’s at fault?

If you want to build a productive team, you must trust your team. It’s that trust that enables you to leave your team alone to get on and do the work you employ them to do. Constantly interrupting them for updates destroys their productivity.

It’s the same if you ask them to fill out activity reports and update statuses on complex software systems.

I’ve worked with companies that required their sales teams to maintain a Salesforce CRM system. This meant many of them stop selling on Friday afternoons to update these complex systems which often took them two or three hours.

When I was in sales, I found the best time to sell was Friday afternoons. People are more willing to close out a sale before the end of the week. Yet, in that company, they were missing out on so much business because management wanted their sales teams to update overly complex information management systems.

Every person you work with is a different person. Trying to shoehorn people into your system can be counterproductive to the overall productivity of the team.

As a manager, it’s your responsibility to find out the best way to support you team members so they can work in the most effective and efficient way. That way you avoid stress building up in the team which will undermine any efforts to improve the team’s productivity.

I recently heard Toto Wolf—the CEO and Team Principal of Mercedes Benz’s Formula 1 team talking about how he manages his team. He implemented a policy of no meetings before 10:00 am.

What this does is allows all people to have at least an hour of undisturbed quiet time each day for doing important work.

Now, he’s the leader—the CEO—yet he understands that the managers reporting to him still need time to do their work before spending most of their days in meetings.

I like another leader from the Formula 1’s world, Red Bull’s Christian Horner’s approach. He doesn’t have an engineering degree or understand the complexities of aerodynamics. He has a team of people who are brilliant at that stuff.

He sees his roll as the barrier remover. While he’s the boss, and needs to know what’s going on, he knows he must protect his team from the board of directors’ demands and if any department requires something, it’s his job to find a way to provide it for them.

Productive teams are built from the top. That means the manager must communicate clearly what they want, how they want it and by when. Then step back and let the team get on and do the work.

I remember another company I once worked for. The director was a highly intelligent person in her field. Yet, she had somehow developed a managerial arrogance where she believed she did not need to learn how to use the company’s database because her project managers could tell her what she needed to know when she needed to know something.

This led to her project managers dropping everything to find the information she wanted whenever she asked for it. It created a horrible atmosphere in the company and the team was very unproductive.

She would hold five hour team meetings every Friday, where everyone was expected to attend. This further undermined the teams productivity and they were often late in completing projects which meant project managers had to work late and into the weekend to catch up.

This director’s staff turnover rate was the highest in the company, worldwide, and it was all created by this one individual who did nothing to support her team.

The solution was to go back to the basics. Communicate what you want, clearly and concisely—you don’t need weekly five hour meetings to do that—and then to step back and let your team get on and do their work. The work they were employed to do.

Never, as a manager, believe that your team is there to support you. It’s not. You are there to support them.

Now, if you are not the manager but have a manager who is destroying your productivity what can you do?

This goes to managing expectations.

It’s very easy to fall into line and say yes to your boss whenever they ask you to do something. Yet, doing so is distorting expectations. Saying “yes I will get this task done today as you ask, boss,” will do nothing for your productivity if on the same day you have six hours of meetings and a proposal to get out before 4:30 pm.

You have to stand your ground and inform your boss of your schedule for the day and explain that you will not be able to do it today.

I understand, if you have always said yes to your boss, doing this will be difficult at first, but how will you change anything if you do not challenge your boss’s instructions when you already know what they are asking you to do will be practically impossible?

In effect you need to retrain your boss and set more realistic expectations.

One tip I often share is to challenge deadlines. If your boss asks you to send them something, reply and tell them you will get it to them by the end of the week (or early next week).

The worst thing that will happen is your boss will push back and tell you they need it right now. That’s great because they’ve saved you a decision. You need to do it right now. So do it.

However, in the majority of cases, your boss will accept your timeline. They’re busy too, after all.

However, the critical part of this is you follow through and deliver what they asked for when you said you will do it. If you don’t, you lose trust. You want your boss to trust you. And if, for whatever reason, you find you cannot do what you said you would do, when you said you would do it, you must inform them as soon as you know—something my video editor will do.

And incidentally, you should be doing this with your customers and clients too. This can be another area where some preconceived ideas about customers and clients can lead to productivity issues.

Be clear when you are communicating with your customers and clients. Set realistic expectations—and telling them that you will always be available if they ever need you is not a realistic expectation. What happens if you’re giving birth when they call (as happened to one of my clients), or you’re in a meeting with another client?

Tell your customers how best to get in touch with you and that if you cannot respond immediately you will get back to them as soon as you can.

I hope that has helped, Sam. Thank you for your question and thank you for listening.

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

The Fundamental Basics of a Productive Day

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 12:22:56 +0900

Podcast 364

What are the solid basics of becoming more productive that anyone can use today? That’s the question I’m answering this week.

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Script | 364

Hello, and welcome to episode 364 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

When I was little, a police officer lived in our village. The police service provided his home, and his job was to look after the local community. Sargeant Morris was my first introduction to the police, and he taught me some valuable lessons—not least about the importance of being a law-abiding citizen.

Yet, a lesson he taught me that I never realised how important it was until later was the power of daily routines. Each morning at 8:00 am, Sergeant Morris would walk up and down the main street in our village, ensuring that the schoolchildren got to school safely.

He was also there when we returned from school at the end of the day. I’m sure there were days he was unable to be there, but all I remember is his presence on the street when I went and came back from school.

He would wear his hi-viz jacket, chat with the parents and children, and make sure we crossed the road at the pedestrian crossing and that the traffic didn’t drive too fast down the street.

I also remember because of his presence, seemingly day and night, crime was almost non-existent in our village.

It was the simple things—things that did not require a lot of effort or knowledge—that made Sergeant Morris a part of my childhood I will never forget.

And that is the same for you and me today. It’s the little things repeated that make the biggest difference to our productivity.

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

This week’s question comes from Mike. Mike asks, hi Carl. What would you say are the basics of becoming more productive?

Hi Mike, thank you for your question.

It’s funny you’ve asked this question as it’s something I have been thinking a lot about recently. What are the absolute basics of being productive?

I would first start with something I wrote extensively about in Your Time, Your Way, and those are the three foundations:

Sleep, exercise, and diet.

How do you feel when you’ve had a bad night’s sleep? Perhaps you only get two or three hours of sleep. How does your day go?

Probably not very well at all. You may be able to get through the morning, but when the afternoon comes around, you’re going to slump.

If that poor sleep continues for a few days, and you’re going to get sick.

Now let’s flip that. How do you feel when you get a solid night’s sleep? What does that do to your productivity?

The difference between the two is huge. On the days you get enough sleep, you’ll focus better and for longer. You’ll make less mistakes and, something rarely talked about, you’ll make better decisions.

That helps you as it ensures that when you decide what to work on next it will more likely be the right thing. When you’re sleep deprived, your decision making abilities sink. You’ll pick up the easy, low-value tasks—because you feel you’re doing something—but it will have little value and the important work will be left until another day.

And then you have a backlog of important stuff to do, stuff that’s probably going To have deadlines which means you put yourself under pressure and a low level of anxiety sets in, distracting you and leaving you feeling exhausted at the end of the day.

Exercise, or as I prefer to call it “movement” is another of those simple productivity enhancers often overlooked.

Sitting at a table staring at a screen all day is not good for you. You know that don’t you? You’re a living, breathing organism that was designed to move.

We know that exercise, and when I say exercise I don’t mean going to a gym or out for a run, I mean some walking, chores around the house or some light stretching in your home or office, helps your thinking and creativity. It also helps to reduce stress and resets your brain after a hard session of focused work.

One of the best things you can do if you’re working from home is to do some of your chores in-between sessions of sit-down work.

For example, do two hours of project work, then stop, and take your laundry to the washing machine or vacuum your living room. Then sit down and do another session of deep work.

You’ll be amazed at how much work you get done with that little tip.

You don’t need to buy expensive standing desks. Just make sure you get up every ninety-minutes to two hours and walk around. Make the bed, tidy up the kids’ toys, wash the dishes, or water your plants.

Firstly you’re getting away from the screen and secondly you’re stirring your energy tanks, elevating your blood flow and engaging your lymph glands, which work to clear your body of harmful bacteria and toxins—which build up alarmingly if you’re not moving.

But the most important part of that movement is it resets your brain so you come back to your work refreshed and focused.

And then there is diet.

I’m sure I don’t have to remind you how you feel after your Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. You eat all that food, then sit down on the sofa and within a few minutes you’re falling asleep.

All those carbohydrates causes your pancreas to go into overdrive producing vast amounts of insulin which in the short term (say twenty-minutes) is a good thing. It’s what comes next that depresses your energy levels—what we call the afternoon slump.

Yet it can be avoided if you keep the carbs to a minimum and choose a healthier option.

The Japanese have a wonderful eating culture called “Hara hachi bu” which translates to “eat until 80% full”. By not over-eating, the Japanese have learned that their energy levels remain reasonably consistent throughout the day, and of course another benefit is you are less likely to gain weight.

And while we’re on the topic of food, I’m not a fan of pre-preparing your meals for the week. You may think this saves you time, but the act of cooking each evening is a great way to give you some movement, and take your mind away from the work you left behind.

That meal break is a great way to reset your brain and if you’re doing it in the evening, you can use it to draw a line under your work for the day and prepare you for family or friends time.

So, Mike, if I was asked to give advice on how to improve productivity, those three things would be first piece of advice. Get these three things right, and your productivity will improve massively.

Yet, there are a few other little things you could do, all of which are simple and anyone can do.

The first would be to plan the day the day before. In other words before you finish your work day, you stop for five to ten minutes and decide what the most important things you need to do tomorrow are.

We’re not talking about reviewing all your projects and going through all your tasks on your to-do list.

If you’re reasonably engaged with your work, you will know what’s important. Write these down somewhere where you will see them when you start the next day and start with the item at the top of your list.

You can do this digitally or use a pen and piece of paper. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is the list is short—no more than five or six things and that it’s the first thing you see when you start your day.

This does three things for you. The first is it prevents you from procrastinating by giving you a list of tasks to get on with that need to be done. It also avoids you wasting your most focused time trying to decide what to work on and then getting pulled into other people’s urgencies and emergencies.

Thirdly, it allows your subconscious brain to do what it’s good at—mixing your education and experience together to come up with the most effective way to do something.

There is also the fourth benefit, which is you will find you relax more in the evening knowing there’s not likely to be any unwelcome emergencies when you begin the day.

Another one I’ve found helpful is to protect time each day for your communications. Now, this one comes from my life-long love of history—particularly 20th century history.

When I read about some the 20th century’s most iconic people, whether that be Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, Agatha Christie, General Eisenhower or Charles De Gaulle, you’’ find that we know so much about what they thought and felt about things because they wrote letters.

It was a habit in the early to mid 20th century for people to spend some time each day writing letters. It’s true they didn’t have the distractions we have today—no TV (or very limited channels), internet or social media so there was time to write.

Today, we don’t protect time for communications, and that’s lead to overwhelming backlogs of emails and messages to respond to. If you were to protect some time each day for your communications, while you may not be able to eliminate your message backlog entirely, you will prevent it from growing out of control.

And we don’t want to be fooling ourselves in to believing people received less communications in those days. That’s not true. They received more. There were telegrams arriving where a telegram boy would wait for you to read the message and then take your reply back to the telegram office.

And on top of that, we had to handwrite our responses, put the letter in an envelope, stick a stamp on it and take it to the post box. It was far more time consuming, yet people did it without complaint.

Sp there you go, Mike. I hope that has given you some ideas. I would strongly recommend focusing on your sleep, movement and diet—it’s there where you’ll find some quick results. The daily planning, and protecting time for communications and admin, will give you results, but will take a little longer to feel the benefits.

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

Happy 5th Anniversary to The Time Sector System

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 14:03:29 +0900

How flexible are you? That’s what we’re looking at this week.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 363

Hello, and welcome to episode 363 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

You may have heard this week that my Time Sector System is five years old. And to celebrate, I updated the whole course.

Now, before I start to update a course, I go into Evernote and review all the comments I have collected from students and see if there are any common issues or difficulties that I could improve or explain better.

The Time Sector System works. It’s based on timeless principles that have been used by some of the most productive people who have ever lived. As with all solid principles, there needs to be a degree of flexibility to accommodate the different ways we all work and the type of work we do.

The way authors, for example, will protect three to four hours a day for writing might not be practical for a customer support assistant or a manager managing a team of twenty salespeople. Similarly, an architect will work differently from a doctor in an emergency room.

Yet, there are still some timeless principles that work no matter what role you have.

For example, it doesn’t matter how much you have to do if you don’t have the time to do it. Makes sense, right?

I could decide to write my next book today. That’s the easy part. The difficult part is finding the time to write the book. I’m not sure how many hours I spent writing Your Time, Your Way, but from the first day I sat down to begin writing the first draft to when it was published in May last year, it was three years and I know every week, I spend at least ten hours on it— so roughly 2,000 hours.

Given that each week only has 168 hours, it would not be possible to write a book in a week.

One of the most productive companies I worked for was an advertising agency in Korea. The manager, Patrick, was smart. He realised that for his team to get the campaigns completed on time, he had to protect the time of his copywriters and graphic designers. They needed quiet, undisturbed time to do their work.

Yet the account managers and social media planners needed to be talking with each other and external companies to arrange space for the billboards, and media companies.

The account managers and planners generally had a meeting with each other each day.

The creative team only had two meetings per week. The Monday planning meeting where they planned out the work to be completed that week and the Friday morning team meeting where everything was discussed.

This meant the creatives (as they were called) had the quiet time to focus on their work.

In the four years I worked with that team, I never recall a time where they missed a deadline or even felt under pressure to complete a campaign. I’m sure there were occasions when they were under pressure—clients can be very demanding—but it was never noticeable.

What made this team so productive was that each person knew the objectives for the week. They knew what needed to be finished and ensured that they had the space and time to get on and complete the work. Patrick, as the boss, protected the time of his team.

He knew if he was constantly asking his creatives for updates, he would be slowing them down. He trusted his team and they trusted him. If they had a difficulty, or discovered that a piece of work would take longer to complete than initially anticipated, they could go to Patrick and tell him.

This comes back to something I learned from Brian Tracy—one of the world’s best self-development teachers—that if you want to be successful at anything, you first need to establish what you need to do to be successful at it.

Once you know that, you can dedicate enough time to doing that and eliminating everything else.

There’s the famous advice that Warren Buffett gives about managing your work. Write down the twenty-five things you feel you should do, then put a star next to the five most important, delete the rest and focus all your time and effort on completing those five.

So, where does flexibility come into this?

Well, if you have an overflowing inbox with emails and messages piling up by the hour, you are constantly interrupted by people asking you questions about this and that, and you have no idea what needs to be completed this week, you lose all flexibility.

There’s too much for your brain to decide what to work on next. You’re overloaded and stress and anxiety will freeze you—slowing you down even further.

Take a copywriter working for Patrick. She knew what needed to be completed that week—it was agreed at the Monday meeting—and she had the freedom and flexibility to get on and do the work in her own way.

And that all came down to knowing from the beginning of the week what was required. Next week wasn’t important. That could be discussed at the Friday meeting.

And that’s one of the strongest concepts of the Time Sector System. Only focus on what needs to be done this week and not worry about next week until you do your weekly planning session at the end of the week.

We need to be flexible enough to modify things for the way we work. One aspect of the Time Sector System I recommend is working with projects.

Task managers, or todo lists, are not the best places to manage projects. Projects are information hubs. There’s likely to be emails, plans, meetings, deadlines and what is called conditional tasks—where something cannot be completed until something else is completed first.

Then there’s likely to be files and documents being worked on which need to be accessed from time to time.

Projects are best managed in your notes apps. Notes apps have greater flexibility to store all this information. You can also create checklists which do not remove completed tasks which makes it easier to quickly see what has been completed and what remains to be done.

I recommend that you add a single task in your task manager saying “Work on project X” and connect that task to your project note. Some people mentioned that this seems cumbersome if the task is simply to follow up with someone.

I agree, and in these situations, I would suggest adding the follow-up task to your task manager.

Be flexible.

Similarly, some projects are simple and easy to do. I have a project right now to get the terrace outside the office ready for the spring. When I come to do that project, the most effective way to complete it would be to schedule an afternoon on my calendar to go outside with the jet washer and get on and do it.

I do not need to create a project note for this. I just need to find some time on my calendar. This “project” doesn’t even need to be on my task list. It’s two or three hours protected on my calendar when it’s not raining.

The principle to work from, is if something needs doing, then it will require time. So the questions is when will you do it?

Once you know what needs to be done, and are clear about what the desired outcome is, and you know when you will do it, the how will largely take care of itself. And it’s how flexibility is your best friend.

Another area where I found people struggle is with the daily planning session. Daily planning is a critical part of being more focused and productive. When you have a plan for the day, you more likely to get the right things done. With no plan, you’ll end up drifting through the day doing this and that and getting caught up in everyone else’s crises and urgencies.

But not accomplishing very much.

Daily planning is five to ten minutes at the end of the day, deciding what you need to do the next day. Doing it the evening before allows you to let go of the day so you can relax and enjoy the evening.

Sounds simple, right?

So why do so many people struggle to do it? Exhaustion. They are exhausted at the end of the day and cannot bring themselves to do it, so it doesn’t get done.

And guess what happens the next day? They drift and get caught up in everyone else’s work. And what does that do to them? It leaves them exhausted at the end of the day.

However, some people are early birds and like to wake up early. If you are an early bird, planning in the morning before the day begins works perfectly well.

This is another example of being flexible. Work to the way you work.

I remember when I used to wake up at 5:00 am (I did that for 18 months), and I would plan my day as part of my morning routine. It was only when waking up at 5:00 am became unsustainable after my coaching programme grew and I needed to be doing coaching sessions late into the evening that I stopped and started doing my daily planning in the evening after I finished my coaching sessions.

Different circumstances require different approaches, yet the principles remain. Plan your week so you know what’s important at a higher level, then give yourself five to ten minutes to adjust your plan each day to allow for the unknowns that will inevitably have come in as the week progresses.

Protect time for doing your important work. If you need to prepare a proposal for an important client and you know it will require three to four hours to complete, then protect that time on your calendar and don’t let anyone steal it from you.

If you allow someone steal that time from you and you find yourself under enormous time pressure at the end of the week, whose fault is that?

There was something I once heard Brian Tracy say and that was “take responsibility”. He was talking in terms of your life—take responsibility for your life. You can easily adopt that same approach for your time. Take responsibility for it. Be ruthless, yet flexible when you need to be so you can get your important work done.

I’m reminded of the East Asian saying: “be like bamboo”. It’s strong, yet flexible enough to adapt to the wind, the snow and the rain and still not break. That should be your approach to your management of time. Be strong—say no when necessary—yet be flexible enough to adapt to the conditions.

I hope you found this helpful. Thank you for listening.

Don’t forget, if you want to build a time management system like bamboo, then the new Time Sector System course is now available. The link is in the show notes. And if you are already enrolled, this is a free update for you and it’s waiting for you in your Learning Centre dashboard.

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

"Inbox Freedom: Breaking the Chains of Digital Overwhelm

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 12:09:29 +0900

This week, I’m exploring where much of our overwhelm comes from and how to sharpen up your inbox processing.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 362

Hello, and welcome to episode 362 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

How often do you feel overwhelmed? It’s a good question to ask because some of that overwhelm is caused by what has been called “open loops” or in other words stuff to do that has not been looked at to see what is involved.

A lot of this will come from your inboxes. We throw all sorts of things in there without much thought about what needs to be done. With our email and messaging inboxes, we don’t have any control over what arrives in there—that’s out of our control.

The issue here is we have it collected, and that’s often a weight off our minds, but there’s a sense of anxiety because we don’t know for sure what needs to be done and how long it will take us to do it.

If we are not processing what we collected frequently and correctly, then there is a gaping hole in the system that needs filling in. If not, there will be a lot of things that need to be done that gets missed. And that then leads to a distrust in your system which creates its own set of issues.

This week’s question is how to develop the right habits and processes to make sure that our inboxes are cleared and what gets into our system is clear, actionable and with realistic timelines.

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

This week’s question comes from Stephen. Stephen asks, Hi Carl, could you walk us through how to best clear a task manager’s inbox as well as some “best practices” for clearing email and other inboxes?

Hi Stephen, yes I can and thank you for your question.

This is a place that I feel I must tread very carefully. On the one hand I want to encourage you to stop trying to remember everything in your head and to externalise it so you reduce the stress of trying to remember everything.

On the other hand, I also want to encourage you to maintain a clean and tight task management system. By that I mean that your task manager only contains genuine things you either must or should do and anything you think you’d like to do can be put into your notes app.

Email and messaging services are reasonably straightforward.

There’s a two step process. The first is to clear the inboxes. This part is about speed. The faster you can do that the better.

When processing your inboxes here you want to get into the habit of asking the questions: What is it and what do I need to do about it?

An email rom a customer asking for some information about their account, for example, would give you the answers; it’s an email from a customer that requires me to answer a question.

So, it’s actionable and you would then send it to your Action This Day folder for action later in the day.

The temptation is to deal with it immediately. It’s from a customer! I must reply immediately. I get it. I know there’s a sense that anything from a customer must be dealt with instantly.

Unfortunately, doing so will create challenges for you in the long-term. The first is you set an expectation. Instantly replying to a customer means they expect you to reply instantly next time too. And next time may not be as convenient as it is now. You might be at your son’s sports day, or having a romantic lunch with your partner.

It’s not very romantic if you have to pause the conversation while you respond to your customer is it?

The second challenge is it rarely ever is just one. It’s often several emails or messages like that. Each one will likely take you five to ten minutes. Just six of those and you’ve eaten up forty-five minutes of your processing time. What about the six other emails you need to clear from your inbox.

This is how inboxes fill up and become overwhelming. If you have sixty to seventy emails in your inbox you should be able to clear those in around twenty to twenty-five minutes. Stopping and dealing with individual emails because you think it will only take a few minutes to deal with them lengthens the processing time, which means you won’t have time to clear it.

Your customers are in the same place as you. Swamped with stuff to do with a shortage of time to do it. The chances are they’re going to hate you for responding instantly. Now you’ve given them more work to do.

And let’s get real here, if something’s genuinely urgent, they’re not going to email you are they? They’ll call you.

The second part of this process is to set aside time each day for dealing with your actionable messages.

This is where you open up your email’s Action This Day folder and begin with the oldest one and work you way down the list. It’s at this point you will thank yourself for not responding to all those quick and easy emails.

If all you have in your Action This Day folder are emails that require a lot of thinking and work, it’ll be a painful experience. If instead you have a wide variety of emails to deal with you build momentum and and plough through them quickly.

And that’s it. A two step process. Through out the day, between sessions of work, clear your inbox by asking two simple questions: What is it, what do I need to do with it. If you need to reply, read or review something, throw it into your action this day folder.

Then later in the day, settle down and go through your Action This Day folder and clear as many as you can. As long as you are starting with the oldest first, you’ll never be very far behind.

Next up is your tasks inbox.

This is a little different from your messages or email inbox because you control what’s put there. Unlike emails and messages where you have no control. You cannot control who is sending messages to you.

The challenge here is to be ruthless about what gets into your system.

Throughout the day, it’s easy to throw all sorts of things into this inbox. You may have heard someone recommend a book that sounded interesting, so you throw that in there. You may have seen someone with a colourful umbrella and you decide it’s time for you to get yourself one.

Then there are all those ideas about redesigning your kitchen, or cleaning up your notes app or a thought about getting some Christmas cards printed with your name on them--I’m not sure if that’s still a thing.

Your inbox is the gateway to your system, so it’s perfectly fine to throw anything and everything in there. Where you want to be ruthless is what you allow into your system.

Processing your task manager’s inbox again has a few questions.

The first is: what is it? Then, what do you need to do with it?

For example, you may have realised that your passport expires in the next ten months. So you have a task in there that says “renew passport”.

That’s good. But is it enough. I know if I come to a task that says renew passport I’m going to ignore it. Why? Because behind that simple “renew passport” is a lot of stuff I don’t know about.

The last time I renewed my passport was ten years ago. The passport office will undoubtedly changed the system since then. So what’s the real task here?

It’s to find out what I need to renew my passport.

So, I would change the task to “find out what I need to renew my passport” and then decide when I will do that. Do I need to do it this week? Next week? Or perhaps next month?

And that’s the third question, when will I do it?

Once decided, I drop it into its appropriate folder.

You will often have some obvious tasks in there too. It could be something like sending a quote to a prospective customer. So you add a task “send quote to Drax Enterprises into your inbox.

Yet, is it that simple?

This might be a potential big multi-million dollar contract. One you need to discuss with your boss first. So, what is the task? It’s to talk with your boss about what discounts to offer. So you can change the task to “Discuss with boss Drax Enterprises quotation”, add a date you will do it—perhaps tomorrow—and place the task into your This Week folder.

The danger of not rewriting tasks with the real next step is you will ignore the task because you are unclear about what really needs to happen next. When you process your inbox, you have an opportunity to get clear about what needs to happen next.

Once you know that, you will be less likely to skip it.

I know this all sounds complex, but if you step back and look what you are doing, you are asking yourself three simple questions.

What is it? What do I need to do with it? And when will I do it?

I’ve found that if you apply these questions every time you are in an inbox, it quickly becomes natural.

You also get better at triaging your task manager’s inbox. This helps you to keep your task manager clean and tight. The less you allow in there, the more focused you will be and much less susceptible to picking the easy tasks leaving yourself with only the more time consuming ones later in the day. (Something you want to reverse—remember “Eat The Frog”)

And that’s it, Stephen. Keep things simple, run through the questions and be ruthless about what gets into your task management system.

Thank you for your question and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me no to wish you all a very very productive week.

The Philosophy Behind The Ground Breaking Time Sector System.

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 13:31:04 +0900

This year, the Time Sector System is five years old! For thousands of people it has changed their relationship with tasks and time in so many positive ways. Today’s question concerns the basics of the Time Sector System and its philosophy.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 361

Hello, and welcome to episode 361 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

I still remember the day that the Time Sector concept came to me. I was walking to the gym one sunny afternoon and was reflecting on my overwhelming task list waiting for me at home. I remember thinking to myself that all these tasks hitting me day after day was not sustainable.

I was organised and knew where everything was, but I felt trapped in a cycle of never-ending tasks and emails. Whenever I feel this way about anything I always tell myself that there must be a better way.

And then it hit me.

I think it was the word “unsustainable”. The number of emails I was getting was never going to reduce. It was going to increase. The amount of work I had to do was equally never going to reduce. At some point I would reach breaking point.

It wasn’t the work itself. It was time. I just didn’t have enough time. That was the clue.

You cannot control the number of tasks, messages, and emails you receive. It’s a random number. Yet, the one constant—a constant not controlled by you or me, but by science, and in particular physics, is time. Time is our constraint.

If I could allocate time for doing the different categories of work I had to do and decide when to do the tasks in those categories, it would not matter how much work I had coming in. Everything would get done in due course.

And that was the seed that sprouted into the Time Sector System five years ago.

So, with the history told, it’s time now to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Elaine. Elaine asks, “Hi Carl, I recently came across one of your videos where you talk about the Time Sector System. Could you explain its philosophy and how it differs from other time management systems?”

Hi Elaine,

Thank you for your question.

The thinking behind the Time Sector System is that we are limited not by what we can do—we can do a lot—but by how much time we have to do things.

We need to eat, sleep and move (exercise), at our basic level. On top of that we likely have family commitments, school runs, doctor appointments and friends that need seeing. Then we have our work to do.

The limiting factor is time. It’s fixed. We only get 24 hours a day.

Now you can manipulate time by hiring people to do stuff for you. For example, you may be fortunate to be able to afford a nanny to take care of your kids when you are at work. Or, you may be able to hire an assistant. But no matter how you manipulate time, it’s still only 24 hours.

So the philosophy behind the Time Sector System is, it’s not about what you have to do, it’s about when you will do it. After all, that’s the only thing you have control over.

At a wider level, that means organising your tasks into tasks that need to be done this week, next week, this month, next month or long-term or on hold.

When you divide your tasks up into when you will do them you narrow down the decisions you need to make on a day to day basis. When a new task comes in, you only need three questions:

What is it?

What do I need to do to complete it?

When will I do it?

So, for example, imagine I get a notification from my health insurance provider informing me I need to book myself in for a medical check-up.

What is it? It’s a request for me to make an appointment with the doctor.

What do I need to do? I need to make an appointment with the doctor.

When am I going to do it? That depends.

It depends, in my case, on when is convenient for my wife. We go together to the clinic for our annual check-up. In Korea it’s a six-hour ordeal, some turn it into a family outing. So, before I can make the appointment I need to consult with my wife.

So, back to question 2. What do I need to do? Consult with my wife. So, there’s the task. When do I need to do it? This week would be good because if I don’t it will sink to the bottom of my list/ So. I choose today when I see my wife.

When you are processing your inbox, that’s the process. What is it? What do I need to do? When am I going to do it?

Another example might be I have a project that is due for completion at the end of the month. As I am looking at the project, I know what it is—it’s a project. What do I need to do? I need to talk with my colleague about how she is getting on with the graphics for the landing page. That will give me an estimate on when I can finish the landing page. So, when am I going to do it? I’ll send her a message on Monday, so I can add that task to my This week folder.

It could be that as I return from a business trip, I notice my passport will expire in eight month’s time. Now, I know the government won’t be reminding me that my passport needs renewing, so it’s something I need to do.

What is it: It’s a passport renewal.

What do I need to do? I’m not sure. The last time I renewed my passport was nine years ago. The system’s probably changed since then. What can I do about that? Go to the government’s website and find out the process.

Okay, I need to do some research. When will I do it? I’m busy this week, so I can drop the task: find out how to renew my passport into my next week folder.

I don’t need to add a date to it at this stage because I will be doing a weekly planning session on Saturday and I decide then.

It’s brilliantly simple, and takes next to no time to develop the habit of asking these three questions.

There are a few other little things you can do to make this seamless.

For instance, have separate folders for your routines and critical recurring tasks. Routines are those little things that just need to be done. Watering the house plants, cleaning actionable emails, and basic admin tasks.

Your Recurring Critical tasks are those tasks that come from your Areas of Focus and your core work. I won’t go into the Areas of Focus here. These are your life level tasks such as planning your exercise, staying in touch with family and friends and self improvement.

Your core work tasks are the tasks you are employed to do. At a basic level, these would be things like talking with customers if you’re a salesperson, preparing materials and teaching if you are a teacher, etc.

What you do is pull out the tasks you need to perform each day, week or month, and se them to recur as frequently as they need to.

Another one is when you first adopt the Time Sector System, the temptation will be to throw everything into your This Week and Next Week folders. This results in them filling up which causes overwhelm.

When you first begin using the Time Sector System, you want to be learning what is realistic and what is not. This involves monitoring what you can and cannot get done each week.

For example, I know my limit, when I begin the week, is thirty tasks in my This Week folder. Any more than that and I won’t be completing the excess. This does not include my routines and Recurring Critical Tasks.

If I am to get my most important work done each week, anything more than thirty tasks in my This Week folder and something will break.

It will take you a few weeks to find your limit.

And then it all comes down to your daily planning.

While you can plan the week, you will find that you are picking up tasks that need to be done in the week you are in. Before you end your day, you should look at your calendar for the next day. Look to see how much time you have available to do your tasks.

You’re going to have a very challenging day if you have seven hours of meetings and thirty tasks to complete. Something’s not going to get done.

It’s during the daily Planning Sequence that you plan out a realistic day. Perhaps you can move some meetings, or reduce your task list.

And to finish, you select your two most important tasks, flag them and make sure they are your must-do tasks.

And that’s it.

As I go through this, it sounds complex, but when you are doing it, it is not.

New tasks go through the three questions—what is it? What do I need to do? When will I do it? And you can then move those tasks from your inbox to their appropriate folder.

Then, on a daily basis, you check to see how much time you have for tasks, based on how many meetings you have, and create a prioritised, realistic list.

At the end of the week, you get to look at your other folders—next week, this month, next month and long-term and on hold to see what can be brought forward to your this week folder.

The good news is, this approach, helps you to delete tasks that no longer need to be done.

Now what about projects? If they are not in your task manager, where are they?

You manage your projects from your notes app. That could be Apple Notes, Evernote, Notion, OneNote or any kind of notes app that allows you to create links to documents, articles, images and emails.

You notes is a natural place to manage your projects. After all, a project is a big hairy thing that needs managing. You will likely have documents and meeting notes to keep together.

So, keep them together in a notes app. That way, when you’re working on a project you’re not distracted by all the little, easy tasks you could be doing. You can get yourself focused on the project and work from your project notes.

All you then need is a single task in your task manager telling you to work on a specific project. Depending on what tools you are using, you will also likely be able to create a link directly from the task to the project note.

Now the good news. If you are curious about the Time Sector System, I am in the process of updating the online course. It’s the fifth anniversary and it’s a big update. We are in the final editing stage and I hope to get launch the update in the next ten to fourteen days.

I’ve also done a lot of YouTube videos on this—you can see the playlist on my YouTube channel.

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

Self-Discipline: Is it overrated?

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 12:19:25 +0900

Is self-discipline overrated? That’s what we’re looking at this week.

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Script | 360

Hello, and welcome to episode 360 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

We hear a lot about self-discipline and how we should develop our discipline to achieve our goals or become more productive. But is this true?

Self-discipline is hard—more so these days with all the instant gratification distractions—and anything that is hard is going to be tough to do consistently. Whether you are trying to accomplish a goal or become better organised, if you rely on self-discipline to get you through there’s going to be a good chance you will fail.

There are some people who thrive on self-discipline. The most famous being David Goggins—he’s a tough cookie. Pain, discipline and a never die mindset are what he appears to live for. But, people with that mindset are rare and you don’t need it.

There is a better way. It’s not easy—nothing worthwhile ever is—but with practice, a little determination, persistence, and consistency, you soon find you don’t need discipline to achieve these things.

Now, before we get to the question, Here’s a little reminder about this week’s Ultimate Productivity Workshop.

If you have not yet registered, you can still do so, there’s a link in the show notes or you can visit my website—carlpullein.com— to register.

The workshop will cover how to transition from an unsustainable task-based productivity system to a more sustainable time-based one. I will show you how to manage your work, how to time block effectively and how to prioritise your work so you know you are always working on the right things at the right time.

For those of you already registered, I will be sending out the first workbook in the next day or two so keep an eye out for that. I will also include the joining instructions.

If you want a less hectic and overwhelming life, then this workshop is a must. It’s your chance to create a time management and productivity system that works for you.

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

This week’s question comes from Ryan. Ryan asks, hi Carl, do you have any tips on getting better with self-discipline? I’ve never been very good at being disciplined but as I get older, I feel I need to do better at this.

Hi Ryan, Thank you for your question.

I’ve always found the concept of “living a disciplined life” interesting. You see, the word discipline suggests “punishment” of some kind. When we’re at school if we do something wrong, we are “disciplined”. That was my first introduction to the word. (Or perhaps my parents disciplining me for whatever reason.)

And yet, when we talk about living a “disciplined life” it’s often spoken of in positive terms. Yet, there’s that underlying sense that it’s bad.

I recently wrote about Charles Aznavour, the prolific French singer/songwriter. Aznavour wrote over a 1,000 songs and recorded many more. He lived until he was 94, exercised every day and was still touring when he passed away in 2018.

In interviews he was frequently asked about his productivity and how he created such a disciplined life. Yet Aznavour never thought he was disciplined.

He woke early every day, and spent his mornings writing songs. For him it wasn’t discipline, it was his passion, his purpose. He couldn’t wait to get started each day. And on those rare days he wasn’t in the mood to write, he still wrote.

Why? He didn’t need to. He wrote because that was what he did. It was a habit.

Have you ever tried starting your day without your morning coffee or not brushing your teeth? How did you feel? Probably uncomfortable and little self-conscious.

You don’t need discipline to brush your teeth or make your coffee in the morning do you? It’s just what you do.

And there is where you will find the answer to living with a little more discipline. Don’t think of it as discipline. It isn’t. It’s just what you do.

Take planning your day at the end of the day.

Last night, I spent three hours in a recording studio recording the audiobook of Your Time Your Way. That was after a full day recording and editing videos. I was exhausted. My voice was ragged. Yet, after getting home, I got my Franklin Planner (Yes, I’m still using it), sat on the sofa and planned today.

There was no discipline involved. I also had a great excuse. I’d been on the go since 8:30 am and it was 11:45 pm. I could easily have skipped it. Yet I didn’t.

Why? Because that is what I do in the evening. I give myself five to ten minutes to plan the day.

I love the quote from Jim Rohn: “each day you get to choose between two pains. The pain of regret or the pain of discipline”.

I know what happens if I don’t plan the day—the next day starts out of control. I have no focus and anything loud and “urgent” becomes the priority—even when it isn’t a priority.

Most people’s problems with time management and productivity is because they skip the five to ten minutes planning the day. If you don’t have a plan for the day, you will end up on someone else’s plan and they don’t care about how you feel—a bit harsh, I know, but it’s true.

For most things you don’t need discipline. It’s a choice. Do you scroll social media or read a book? Do you sit on the sofa watching TV or go out for a walk? Do you eat a chocolate bar or a banana? That’s nothing to do with discipline. It’s a choice.

Reading a book is easy. Get a physical book, not an ebook, and place it on the coffee table near your favourite armchair or sofa. Then give yourself ten minutes each day to sit and read it. If you place a bookmark in the book, you can see the bookmark gradually falling to the bottom (the end of the book).

And as the book is on your coffee table, you will see it every time you sit down.

More often than not, you will read more than ten minutes.

Ultimately, those people you think are living a “disciplined life” just have certain habits. Getting up early and writing a journal is a habit. It doesn’t need discipline if it’s a habit.

My wife writes her journal every evening before she goes to bed. She uses Day One, the digital journal, and writes on her laptop. She sits on the sofa, opens her laptop and writes. Some days she’ll only write for five minutes. Other days she’ll write of over an hour. For her she sees it as winding down at the end of the day. Absolutely no discipline is involved.

It would be strange not seeing her on the sofa writing a journal.

Yet for many sitting down to write a journal requires discipline. Ask my wife if writing her journal requires discipline and she’ll laugh at you.

You don’t need discipline if you have the right habits.

How do you develop habits. Well, firstly I would recommend you read James Clear’s Atomic Habits. It’s a brilliant book.

Secondly, identify the habit you want to develop. I always suggest your morning routines are a good place to e to start. These are the easiest kind of habits to develop. What would you like to do first thing in the morning?

You may want to read, meditate, exercise or write a journal. Pick one thing.

For example, if you choose to write a journal, start by making yourself your favourite morning drink, then sit down somewhere comfortable and begin writing. Give yourself five to ten minutes to write.

You can help yourself by putting your journal next to your kettle or coffee maker before you go to bed. That way when you wake up, turn on the kettle you see your journal there waiting for you.

Something James Clear mentions in Atomic Habits is to reduce the friction. This is akin to those who wish to exercise in the morning, putting out their exercise clothes next to their bed before going to bed. It reduces the friction of choosing what to wear. I think of this as minimising the risk of finding an excuse.

These are all great tips. Yet, the disciplined life that Charles Aznavour lived didn’t need tricks. It appeared disciplined, yet it was just how he lived his life. And that’s the goal here; to build daily habits that are effortless because that is what you do.

Most people eat their breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same time? Why? It’s because that’s what they do. When I commuted to the office, I would catch the 8:05 bus each morning. I knew what time to leave the house because I knew how long it would take to walk to the bus stop. It was simply what I did.

I should give you one little tip I’ve used in the past. If, say, I want to read a book each evening but find myself watching TV instead, what I will do is tell myself I must read for ten minutes before rewarding myself with turning on the TV.

The advantage of this little trick is you still get to do the thing you want to do—watch TV—but you also get to do the other thing you struggle doing. Eventually, it just becomes a habit. Watching TV without reading becomes uncomfortable.

So there you go, Ryan. It’s not really about being disciplined. It’s more about choosing what you want to do and carrying it through.

Your calendar can help you there. Remember the saying, what goes on your calendar gets done. With this, the key is if you don’t or cannot do something you must remove it from your calendar. That act of moving it from your calendar reminds you about you haven’t done. It acts a good incentive.

If, for example, you schedule going for a walk after lunch, but keep skipping it, because you are removing it every day, you will begin asking yourself what’s wrong and re-assess things. Perhaps you will be more consistent if you go for your walk in the morning or evening.

I hope that has helped, Ryan. Think about what you want to do, when you want to do it and do it. Sooner rather later it will be just what you do.

Don’t forget to get yourself registered for the Ultimate Productivity Workshop. The first session is on Friday evening, it will be something you will never regret.

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

Beyond Project Thinking: How to Get Things Done

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 13:01:53 +0900

In this week’s episode, what’s the best way to manage projects?

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Script | 359

Hello, and welcome to episode 359 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

From time to time, something comes along that sounds great when first described but then turns nasty.

In the productivity world, that something is Getting Things Done and in particular the definition of what a project is.

This is not the fault of David Allen, Getting Things Done’s author; this is how his description of a project has been horribly misinterpreted.

At its essence, Getting Things Done is about categorising your work into contexts. That could be work you can do on your computer or phone. In your office or at home. It is, and never was about “projects”. Projects, at best, are a sideshow. A simple way to organise your work. Nothing more.

Yet for some reason, a few early readers misunderstood GTD, wrote about it and now there’s a whole generation of people believing anything that involves two steps or more is a project and must be organised as such.

And there, is the source of overwhelm, time wasted to organising stuff instead of doing stuff and huge backlogs of things to do.

Before we get to the heart of today’s podcast, it’s important that I clear this misunderstanding up.

If you ever bought one the fantastic GTD setup guides that was, and may still be, sold on the GTD website, you will notice that whatever task manager you are using, you set up the lists, folders or projects (depending on which task manager you are using) as contexts. Those contexts usually related to people, places or things. For example, your home, or office. Your computer, printer or car. Or your partner, boss or colleagues.

You then dropped any task related to these contexts into its appropriate context.

Your projects were organised in a file folder system that you kept in a filing cabinet. Current projects—the things you were working on this week or month—were kept on or near your desk for quick access.

In those folders you kept all the details of the project. Notes, documents, outlines, etc. Perhaps you also had a checklist of what needed to happen next.

Today, you can use your digital note app for that purpose.

The key thing about GTD was it was task context driven—ie, you could only do something if you were in the right place, with the right tool and with the right people. It was never about projects.

So, now you have the background, I think it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Benjamin. Benjamin asks, How do you best manage projects using your task manager, notes app, and calendar together?

Hi Benjamin, thank you for your question.

I think the first place to start is to avoid looking for a way to treat any new input as a project. Most things are not.

Theoretically, this podcast is a project. I need to choose the question, write the script, set up the studio, record the podcast, edit it, then publish it and hand it over to the my marketing manager for sharing on social media.

That’s seven steps. Well within the definition of a GTD project. Yet, if I were to treat each podcast episode as a project, I’d waste hours just organising it.

A podcast episode is something I do every week. It’s not a project. It’s just part of my work.

Usually, on Thursday I will write the script. That means I go into my list of questions which is in a single note in Evernote, select a question, then begin writing the script.

Then on Sunday morning, after my coaching calls have finished, I set up my little studio, and record the podcast. Once recorded, I edit it and then publish it.

The only tasks on my task manager are a task on Thursday that reminds me I need to write my script and a task on Sunday that reminds me to record the podcast. Two tasks. That’s it.

I don’t need a project folder for any of this.

There is one other thing I do that relates to your question, Benjamin. I have a two hour writing block on my calendar on a Thursday for writing the script and a two hour block on Sunday for recording it.

So, there in essence you have all three tools working together.

I have a single note in my notes app with the title “podcast questions”. That makes it easy to search for.
My task manager reminds me when I need to write the script and record the podcast.
My calendar protects enough time each week to ensure I get each part of the process completed.

If you want to simplify things I would suggest looking at how you define a project.

In my eyes, a project is something unique, something you either have not done before or rarely ever do. Typical projects would be:

Moving house

Buying a new car

Planning a vacation

Setting up a new payroll system

Starting a business

Finding a new job

Doing the work you are employed to do is not a project—well not unless you are a project manager.

An advertising agency isn’t going to treat each new client as a “project”. An advertising agency creates advertising campaigns every day.

The graphic designer has a list of designs they are working on and when they begin their day they only need to choose which campaign they will work on that day.

Designing is their job.

The same goes for the copywriter. When they begin their day they choose which campaign to work on and that is dictated by when the next client meeting is.

What is the work you are employed to do?

A teacher doesn’t treat each new class as a project. They have a process or system for preparing their materials and when the teaching time begins they teach.

It’s possible that a lot of your work does require a place to keep meeting notes, plans and links to documents you may be working on. That’s what your notes app is for.

Your notes app has replaced the filing cabinet today. Filing cabinets were static—they never moved. Your digital notes app can go with you wherever you go.

If you do have any projects, that is where the information and resources go.

All your task manager needs to do is tell you what you should be working on today.

You may have tasks like:

Work on new payroll system project

Finish proposal for Universal Exports

Follow up Mr Oddjob at Auric Enterprises

Clear Action This Day folder

Your calendar tells you if your task list for the day is realistic. If you have six hours of meetings today and you plan to work on your payroll project and finish the proposal for Universal Exports, you’re likely being a little ambitious.

You calendar tells you if you have time to do the things you’d like to do that day.

You can go further, though and use your calendar to protect time for doing your key work.

If, for example, you want to (or need to) spend two hours working on the Universal Exports proposal, then you can block time on your calendar for doing that work. There might be some time sensitivity involved there. Getting the proposal to Universal Exports might be the most important thing you need to do that day. That would be flagged in your task manager as a non-negotiable task that day.

The daily and weekly planning is where I would decide what I will be working on that day or week.

The planning sessions are where you can step back and look at the bigger landscape of what you have to do and decide where you will put your time that day.

Right now, I do have a project. I am in the process of recording the audiobook version of Your Time Your Way. This is not something I can sit down a real off as a single task.

I need to book the recording studio and sound engineer and my voice will only last for around 3 hours before I begin sounding like an out of tune frog.

The only thing I need in my system each week is when I need to be at the recording studio. Currently that is Wednesday nights at 7:30. We record until 10:30 pm. I don’t need a task for any of that. That’s on my calendar.

The next day, the sound engineer sends me the recordings and I go through them to make sure everything sounds right. I have a task in my task manager that pops up each Thursday reminding me to review that previous day’s recordings.

I have a project folder for the Your Time, Your Way book. That contains all my notes, meeting notes and any information I may need. Right now, though, I don’t need to reference that. I just need to turn up at the recording studio on Wednesday nights, record the audiobook and review the recordings the next day.

The important thing is not to confuse your core work with projects. Core work is the work you are employed to do. Designers design, teachers teach, managers manage, truck drivers drive a truck.

All you need is a list of tasks you want to complete each day and get on and complete as many as you can. The majority of those tasks will be related to your core work.

A project, on the other hand, is something unique, often outside of your core work, that needs additional time for doing. You may need to utilise your unique skills to complete that project, you may only have a small say in the project. Either way, on a day to day basis, the only thing you need to decide is what your next task is and do that.

This year is the fifth anniversary of the Time Sector System course. I am currently in the process of re-recording and updating that course.

Is it a project or just part of my core work.

I know from experience that if I treat it as a project things will get complicated.

Yet, I’ve create many courses over the years. I know the process.

For an update, it’s to review and update the course outline. Then schedule time on my calendar for recording and editing it. There will be some additional tasks related to marketing, but I am not there yet. I’m recording, so the driver is my calendar.

Hopefully that has helped, Benjamin. The key is to simplify things as much as possible. Try to avoid creating projects and instead ask if there is a process you can follow. Most things you frequently do has a process.

Processes speed everything up.

As the Formula 1 season is about to start, I’m reminded of one of the sports best leaders, Ross Brawn’s comment on running a team.

The new car for the new season is never considered a project. It’s a process. There’s a time to begin work on the new car, there’s a time to test the new car, etc. Yet none of that is considered a project. Aerodynamicists do the aerodynamics. Engineers work on the chassis and engine and the logistics people work on the logistics. It’s what they do every day.

Yet, building a new wind tunnel, or engineering factory, that would be a project. These “projects” are rare and need specialist inputs.

Don’t forget, we’re two weeks away from the first Ultimate Productivity Workshop of 2025. This is your opportunity to take a live workshop with me where I help you to create and build your very own productivity system, A system that works for you.

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

Where Are You Spending Your Time?

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 12:18:54 +0900

Where are you spending most of your time? Are you planning or doing? That’s what we are looking at this week.

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Script | 358

Hello, and welcome to episode 358 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Podcaster Chris Williamson has recently caused a bit of a stir in the productivity world with the phrase “the productivity rain dance”. Cal Newport picked this up and it’s something I’ve written and spoken about for many years.

If you are obsessing about productivity tools—apps, techniques and systems—you’re not doing the work. You’re doing the productivity rain dance. It’s organising, planning and searching for new tools in the hope that somehow the work will get done.

It won’t. And while you are wasting all that time planning, and playing, the work continues to pile up.

This week’s question is linked to this in that it’s about tools and organising work and I hope, my answer will help you find the balance between collecting, organising and doing.

Before I hand you over to the Mystery Podcast voice for this week’s question, I’d like to mention that the first Ultimate Productivity Workshop of 2025 is coming.

On Fridays 14th and 21st March I invite you to spend two hours with me learning how to create a time management and productivity system that’s focused on doing the work so you have time for the things you want time for.

In the workshop, we will cover getting control of your calendar and task manager . Then in week two, I will show you some simple techniques to get control of, and more importantly, stay in control of your communications—email, Slack/Teams messages AND the all important daily and weekly planning sessions.

Places are limited so, if you would like to develop a personal productivity system that is focused on doing rather than organising and planning, get yourself registered today. The link to register is in the show notes.

Okay, back to this episode. Let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Alastair. Alastair asks, hi Carl. I recently came across your work and wonder how you avoid getting caught up in the wonderful world of productivity apps. I never seem to able to stick to anything and I know I am wasting time.

Hi Alastair, thank you for sending in your question.

I’m not sure you are necessarily wasting time looking for the right tools. If you are at the start of your productivity journey, finding the right tools is inevitable and yes, it can be confusing. There are so many.

However, there comes a point when you need to stop and settle down with a set of tools.

Those tools are: A calendar, a notes app and a task manager.

The good news is the built in tools that comes with your computer will do. You don’t need expensive subscriptions to so called AI enabled tools or collaborative project management tools.

What are you trying to do when you decide it’s time to get organised and be “productive”?

It’s not about getting more work done. That’s a bit of a misnomer about productivity. It’s about getting the important stuff done and eliminating the less important.

Getting your kids up, dressed, fed and ready for school each morning is important at 7:30 am. Checking email and messages is not. There’s a time and place for those messages, but 7:30 am is not the time.

The world we live in today has made communication incredible fast and easy. Forty years ago, the only forms of communication were letters and telephone calls. (Although some offices had fax machines too).

If you were not next to a telephone, no one could contact you. And if you were not in the office, you didn’t know what surprises were contained in the correspondence waiting for you.

It was therefore easier to compartmentalise your days. Today, it’s much more difficult because you can be alerted to problems instantly, and those problems can derail your day very quickly.

The challenge therefore is to be able to quickly sift through all the stuff coming at us and to decide what is important and what is not.

When things are coming at us all day, they appear loud and urgent. But urgent is not necessarily important.

If you have a thousand emails backlogged in your email system and your boss is demanding you send in your employee evaluations by the end of the week, your employee evaluations are the more important task. The backlog will have to wait.

And let’s be honest, if someone’s been waiting three months for you to reply to their email they’re not going to be bothered if they have to wait a further week.

If you consider that scenario for a moment, your productivity tools are not going to help you.

The only thing you need to know is that writing your employee evaluations must be done. Shuffling that task around your productivity tools won’t do that for you. You are, in effect, procrastinating.

I like the analogy to the rain dance here. A rain dance is performed to persuade God or the gods to bring rain to water the crops. Yet, the dance doesn’t produce the rain. You can dance as much as you like, you can wear elaborate costumes and involve other people. None of that will give you what you want—water to feed the crops.

You can download as many productivity tools as you like. You can organise your notes in such a way that finding stuff is quick and easy and you can spend hours curating your notes and tasks so they look pretty. Yet, none of that gets the work done.

Doing the work is the only way the work will get done.

So, all you need each day is a list of things you have decided are important and you get done and do them.

For that, you don’t need expensive apps. A single sheet of paper would do that.

I’ve always found it interesting how productive people get their work done. The common thread is they do the work, not organise it.

If you Google Albert Einstein’s desk you will see a mess. Papers and books strewn all over the place. If you search for Jeff Bezos’ desk from the early days of Amazon, you’ll see something very similar.

These guys got a tremendous amount of work done without the need for clean and tidy systems. They got on with doing the work that mattered and cleaned up when they were finished.

Sadly, unproductive people don’t achieve very much so we cannot see their workspaces, but I’ll bet they were beautifully neat and tidy with bookshelves of neatly organised books and papers lined up perfectly on their desks.

A few years ago I got into watching YouTube videos of minimalist desk set ups. (Weirdly, these videos are still popular!). I remember at the time wondering how they ever got any work done. It must have taken hours to keep their workspace so clean.

The key to all of this is knowing what is important and what is not. This is why I recommend doing two exercises before you begin developing any kind of system.

The first is to establish what your areas of focus are. These eight areas around your family and relationships, career, finances, health and fitness, lifestyle and personal development are important because they define what is important to you as an individual.

The next is to get clear what your core work is. This is the work you are employed to do and directly effects your promotional prospects and ultimately your income.

Being quick to answer your phone, respond to a message or email or being on time to every meeting is not your core work. Well, not unless you work in customer support.

Once you know what your areas of focus are and your core work is, you have a pre-defined set of priorities on which to base your decisions about what you should be doing each day.

For example, one of my areas of focus related to my work (career) is to help as many people as I can become more productive and less stressed. To do that, I produce several pieces of content each week.

Creating and publishing that content is always a priority for me.

I don’t need a lot of tools to to do that.

A calendar protects time each week for creating that content—I have twelve hours a week protected for this.

I have a very disorganised list of content ideas in a single note in Evernote—a notes app I’ve been using for almost 16 years now.

And, of course, I have an app for writing and producing that content.

Are there better calendars, notes apps and writing tools out there? Possibly, but how much faster would I be able to create content with those new tools? Probably no faster because using them would be unfamiliar to me.

The tools I use I’ve used for over ten years. I know them inside out and they are boring. And that’s good because I’m not tempted to organise them, or even look for new apps. They do the job I need them to do and I can focus on creating the content.

If you want to become more productive and get the important things done on time every time, the only way you will do that is to do the work. There are no shortcuts and no productivity tool will do it for you. Only you can do that.

If you need to write a report, open up Microsoft Work or Google Docs and write the first paragraph.
If you need to prepare a presentation, open up PowerPoint or Keynote and create the first slide.
If you need to wash your car, go to the car wash centre and wash your car.
If you need to do your taxes, download the documents and write in your name and national insurance number.

Funny how none of those things requires you to add a task into a task manager. You just need to decide when you will do them and do them.

So there you go, Alastair. Focus less on the tools and more on what you need to do to get the job done. You really don’t need elaborate apps, complex organisational structures or a minimalist desk.

You just need time protected to get the work done.

Thank you, Alastair for your question and thank you for listening. Don’t forget to get yourself registered for the Ultimate Productivity Workshop where will cover many of these concepts (and much more).

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

Manage Your Time, Not Tasks.

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 12:41:02 +0900

This week, why managing your time is better than managing tasks.

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Script | 357

Hello, and welcome to episode 356 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

There is a scene in the movie Apollo 13 where astronaut Ken Mattingley, played by Gary Sinese, is trying to find a way to power up the Command Service Module to bring the three in danger astronauts through the earth’s atmosphere and safely back to earth.

All they had to play with was 16 amps; that’s it. Sixteen amps isn’t enough to boil a kettle. And we’re talking about life support systems and navigation that was critical to bring Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise back to earth safely.

In the scene, we see Ken Mattingley testing every switch in every possible combination so they do not exceed 16 amps . It’s painstaking; it takes a lot of time, but eventually, they devise a sequence that the astronauts can use to power up the command service module within the 16-amp limit.

We know that Apollo 13 landed, or splashed down, safely to earth after five days.

Each day, you, too, are dealing with a similar situation. You have a limited resource—time—and that’s it. You get the same 24 hours every day that everybody else gets. How you use that time is entirely up to you.

The problem is you don’t have 24 hours because some critical life support measures require some of that time, including sleep. If you don’t get enough sleep, that will have a subsequent effect on your performance that day; you won’t be operating at your most productive.

This is one of the reasons why it is crucial to have a plan. No flight ever takes off without a flight plan. They know precisely how much weight they are carrying. They can estimate to some degree of accuracy the weight of the passengers, and they know precisely where they’re going and what weather conditions to expect.

Yet many people start their day without a plan; they turn up at work and email messages. Bosses, customers, and colleagues dictate what they do all day, and they end up exhausted, having felt they’ve done nothing important at all. And that will be very true. Well, not important to them.

This week’s question is about getting control of your time. So, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Tina. Tina asks, Hi Carl, I am swamped with all the stuff I have to do at work and home. It’s never-ending and I don’t have time to do it all. Do you have any tips on getting control of everything?

Hi Tina, thank you for your question.

There’s an issue when we focus on everything that we have to do. We forget that ultimately, whether we can or cannot do something will come back to time. Time is the limiting factor.

There are other resources—money, ability, energy, etc but if you have all those resources, and you don’t have time, it’s not going to get done.

Things get even more messy when we consider that as humans we are terrible at estimating how long something will take to do. There are too many variables.

For instance, as I am writing this script, my wife is messaging me and Louis, my little dog, is looking at me expectantly, hoping I will give him his evening chewy stick early.

When I began writing, I thought it would take me a couple of hours, I’ve already spent an hour on it and I am nowhere near finishing it.

One place to start is to allocate what you have to do by when you will do it. This helps to reduce your daily lists which in turn reduces that sense of overwhelm.

I recommend starting with a simple folder structure of:

This Week

Next Week

This Month

Next Month

Long-Term and on Hold.

When something new comes in, ask yourself: What is it? What do I need to do and when can I do it?

The questions what is it and what do I need to do will help you to classify the task.

Classifying a task is helpful because it will allow you to group similar tasks together.

For example, if you walk into your living room and notice the windows are looking dirty, you may decide to create a task to clean the windows.

The next question is when will you do it? The best time to do this kind of task is when you do your other cleaning.

Grouping similar tasks together work to prevent procrastination.

When I was growing up, my grandmothers and my mother all had what they called “cleaning days”. This was a day, once a week when they did the big clean. Vacuuming, dusting and laundry. It was a non-negotiable part of their week.

And if you think about it, you don’t pop out to the supermarket to buy food individually. It’s not like you run out of broccoli and go to the supermarket to buy only broccoli. You would add broccoli to your shopping list and buy it when you do your grocery shopping.

Well, we can adopt the same principle here.

Like most people, I get email every day. The problem is, you and I have no idea how many emails we will get. It’s a random number. This makes it practically impossible to know before the day starts what you will need to do.

However, what you can do is have a set amount of time to deal with your actionable email each day.

I have a process. Before the day starts I clear my inbox, filtering out the stuff I don’t need and archiving things I may need. The actionable email goes into an Action This Day folder in my email app and later in the day I dedicate an hour for clearing that folder.

I have my Action This Day folder set up so the oldest email is at the top of the list and I start there. It doesn’t matter if I have fifty or eighty actionable emails. I give myself an hour work on it and once the hour is up I stop.

I repeat this every day, so my emails are not backlogging. Most days I can clear them all, some days I cannot. But as I always begin with the oldest email, nobody will be waiting more than 24 hours for a reply.

This means it really doesn’t matter how many messages I get each day. While I can’t predict how many I will get each day, I have been able to pin down how long I spend on it each day (around an hour and twenty minutes) and that’s it.

Another thing you can do is to default all new tasks to next week, not this week. It’s tempting to throw everything into this week, but if everything goes into this week, you’re going to be swamped.

Much of what we are asked to do doesn’t need to be done straight away. It can wait. The advantage of waiting is many things end up sorting themselves out.

There’s a story about former Israel Prime Minister Yikzak Shamir, who would take every letter, memo and document he received and put it on a pile on a side table. He wouldn’t look at it for a week or ten days.

When he did go through the pile, he found 90% of what he was being asked to sort out had sorted itself out and the remaining 10% needed his attention.

Of course, today not touching something for a week to ten days might not be practical, but it does highlight another issue we find ourselves in—rushing to do something that if left alone will sort itself out.

The final piece of this puzzle, is how you organise your day. This is where your calendar takes priority and where the time limit comes to play.

We have twenty-four hours. From that we need to sleep, eat and take care of our personal hygiene. That’s going to take up around nine to ten hours of your day. So, in reality you have around fourteen hours to play with.

Where will you do your most important work? This is where your calendar comes in.

Most of us have meetings and often we have no control over when those will be. However, what you can do is block your calendar for doing your most important work.

For example, you could protect two hours in the morning for doing your critical work. And then an hour in the afternoon for dealing with your communications—the action this day folder.

That’s only three hours. If you’re working a typical eight hour day, that still leaves you with five hours for meetings snd other stuff that may need to be done.

If you can consistently follow that practice, you’ll soon see a lot of that work that’s piling up getting done.

One thing to keep in mind is the work will never stop.

There’s a story that on Queen Elizabeth’s final day, she still had to deal with her official documents and messages. It’s likely you will too. Stuff to do will never stop coming.

All you have are your resources and of those time is the most limited. The question is—how much time are you will to give to those tasks?

So, Tina, the best advice I can give you is to sort your tasks by when you will do them. This week, next week, later this month or next month.

From there, categorise your tasks into the type of work involved. That could be Writing time, communications, admin, chores etc.

Then. Look at your calendar and see where you can protect time for doing that work.

And that’s it. If you are consistent in following your calendar, you will find the right things are getting done on time and you’ll feel a lot less frazzled and overwhelmed.

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

Achieving Your Goals With Dr Kourosh Dini

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 13:18:56 +0900

This week, Dr. Kourosh Dini returns to the podcast to discuss how we can ensure that the goals we set are achieved.

Here's how you can learn more about Dr Dini's work.

Newsletter:
https://wavesoffocus.com/Your-First-Step-to-Breaking-Free-from-Force-Based%20Work/

Waves of Focus
https://wavesoffocus.com/

on SMART goals
https://www.kouroshdini.com/lay-off-the-goals-a-bit-would-you/

Does Journaling Help You Be More Productive?

Sun, 02 Feb 2025 13:54:08 +0900

Should you take up journaling, and if you do, will it help you with your time management and productivity? That’s what we’re exploring this week.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 355

Hello, and welcome to episode 355 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

This year is the 10th anniversary since I took up consistent journaling. And it’s been one of the best things I’ve ever taken up.

Not only is it one of the most therapeutic things you can do, it’s also one of the best ways to organise your thoughts, work your way through problems and vent your anger towards those who really wind you up.

Over the years, I’ve also found that journaling has helped me to achieve my goals because each day I am writing about how I am doing and if I find myself making excusing, the act of writing out my excuses exposes them for what they really are—excuses.

So, this week, I’ve chosen a question related to journaling and I hope it will inspire you to invest in a quality notebook and pen and start doing it yourself. And if I can inspire just one of you to take it up and become a Samuel Pepys, I’ll be very happy.

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

This week’s question comes from Tom. Tom asks, hi Carl, I’ve heard you talk about your journaling habit numerous times. Do you think writing a journal has helped or hindered your productivity?

Hi Tom, thank you for your question.

To answer your question directly, I can say with certainty that journaling has contributed to my overall productivity.

To explain further, I write in my journal every morning, no matter where I am. And one of the things I always write down is my two objective tasks for the day. Those objectives are the two non-negotiable tasks for the day and by writing them down at the top of my journal entry, I have a way of ensuring I did them when I write my journal the next day,

But more powerfully, writing them down each morning focuses my mind on what needs to be done and how and when I will do them.

Those tasks are also in my task manager, but it’s the act of writing them out by hand that gives me the focus.

Writing a journal is much more than being an aid to productivity. It’s also a form of therapy.

Like most people, I feel frustrated, overwhelmed and stressed at times. Those feelings need an outlet. A negative way to do that is to get angry, shout, and scream. Sure, that blows off steam, but it also transfers your negative feelings to others—your colleagues and family. Not great.

Instead, if you have a way to write about these things, you start to find ways to solve whatever the underlying issues are. Writing slows down your thinking, and if you were to step back and analyse why you sometimes feel stressed, frustrated and overwhelmed, it is because you feel—incorrectly—everything has to be done right now.

That slowing down helps to bring back some perspective and you can decide when you will do something and what can be left until another day.

When it comes to achieving your goals, a journal is perhaps the best way to track progress. It can also help you establish new, positive habits.

When I developed my morning routines around eight years ago, I chose to track them in my journal. I always draw a margin on left of the page, and I list out the six items I do as part of my morning routine: make coffee, wash face and teeth, drink lemon water, write my journal, clear my email inbox and do my shoulder stretches.

I write them down at the top of my journal entry for the day in the margin. And, for the dopamine hit, I check them off too.

I exercise in the late afternoon and, again, I will write out what I did in the margin of my journal.

Now, I could spend a lot of money on habit-tracking apps, but with my journal, I’ve found no need. I have my record and can review it at any time.

Over the years, I’ve been asked what I write about and if I use any prompts.

The answer is no. Well, apart from writing out my objectives for the day.

Now, prompts can be helpful when you first start—you can think about them as those little stabilisers we put on kids’ bikes to help them learn to ride. Sooner or later you want to take them off so you can experience the freedom of riding freely.

I write whatever’s on my mind that morning. If everything’s going great I write about that. If things are not so great I write about it and why I think things are not going as well as I want them to. I often find as I am writing about an issue, a solution begins to form in my mind and I will continue writing.

If a task comes from that solution, I can put that in its appropriate place later.

As a general rule, I will write for around fifteen minutes. However, if I don’t have much to write about, I will give it ten minutes. The weather’s a good subject to write about when you have little to write.

If there’s a lot on my mind, I’ll keep going until I’ve emptied my thoughts. That’s very rarely more than thirty minutes, though.

Over the years, I’ve tried both analogue journaling—with pen and paper and digital journaling using an app called Day One.

On balance, I’ve found that pen and paper journaling works best.

I spend most of my working time in front of a screen. I type a lot. So, opening up a nice notebook and picking up a fountain pen is a lovely break from the constant screen time. It also feels a lot less rushed and more relaxing.

One thing I noticed when I was writing my journal in Day One—a popular digital journal—was I never went back to my old entries. I read enough typed documents on screen all day. I have no desire to read through more, even if it’s my journal.

I keep my old paper journals on my bookshelf and often skim through pages when waiting for a call to start. It’s incredibly nostalgic and leaves you realising you have accomplished a lot.

I was recently asked if I am worried about people reading my journals. Hahaha, that’s the point.

One of the inspirations for me to start writing a journal was how the journals of people like Samuel Pepys, Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton are still around.

These journals were written hundreds of years ago and, in the case of Samuel Pepys, are a snapshot of how we lived in the 17th Century.

Pepys was very open about what he did. Some good things and a lot of bad things. But does he care we are reading them today? Of course not. He’s been dead for 320 years.

I have the same attitude. I’ve nothing to hide from my wife, and the journals are kept in my study—home office. If I lost my journal when travelling, so be it. There’s nothing scandalous in there—well, not yet anyway hahaha.

There are a few tips I would share with you if you are thinking about journaling. Start on paper. Buy yourself a nice notebook. You’ll find bound notebooks with a hard cover are best. Choose A5 or B5 size. You’ll find an A4 notebook a little daunting at first.

Hardback notebooks will last a long time, and the hardcover will protect the pages better than a soft cover.

I would also suggest investing in a fountain pen. You can pick up a refillable one for less than $20 these days. Lamy Safaris are excellent pens, and so are the Pilot Metropolitans and Platinum Preppys.

If you invest in a fountain pen, ensure the paper you buy is fountain pen-friendly. Rhodia Web-books and Clairefontaine notebooks are good choices, as are many Japanese notebooks such as Midori’s MD notebooks.

When you start journaling, think of it as if you were meeting a stranger for the first time. You will naturally be a little reserved at first. You might only write about the weather and perhaps what you did yesterday.

As long as you remain consistent with it, you will soon open up. You’ll start writing a few thoughts and feelings after a few weeks. Let it roll and don’t hold back.

I would also recommend writing in the morning. You will likely be much more consistent that way. Evening times can be difficult because you will sometimes be tired. You may even have had a few too many G’nTs, and you won’t write.

Tie writing your journal to your morning routines. You don’t have to write for long. Give yourself ten minutes.

And if you want to be more focused, after writing the date at the top, write out your two must-do tasks for the day. That way, you have a method to hold yourself accountable. If, for whatever reason, you didn’t do your must-do tasks, dedicate a sentence or two to writing about why you didn’t do them.

This helps you because over time you may see a pattern developing. You might discover that afternoons are terrible for doing your focused work because your boss always wants to have meetings then. You can then use that information to change your structure.

If you draw a margin on the page, you can use the margin to track other data such as a food log, exercise and even your energy levels. I track my weight there. Each Wednesday, I weigh myself and write my weight in the margin (in a different coloured ink).

And there you go, Tom. Yes, journaling has helped me to be more productive. It slows me down and gets me to think better, leading to better focus on the day ahead. It also gives me a place to consider new ideas and play around with possible solutions.

I hope this episode has inspired some of you to start journaling. It’s a fantastic way to bring perspective on chaotic days and weeks. It also slows you down—always a good thing in a fast-paced world, and gives you a place to express your thoughts.

And who knows, you may be the next Samuel Pepys or Leonardo Da Vinci in three-hundred years or so.

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

What's the Rush? Slow Down and be More Productive.

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 12:23:05 +0900

Do you feel you are rushing from one task to another while not getting anything important done? Well, this week, I’m going to share with you a few ways to change that.

You can subscribe to this podcast on:

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Links:

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Script | 353

Hello, and welcome to episode 354 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

What’s the rush? This is one of those powerful questions you can ask yourself when processing the things you have collected in your inboxes.

It’s easy today to feel that everything you are asked to do must be done immediately. While there is a category of tasks that require quick action, most of what comes across your desk (or pops up on your screen) does not fall into that category.

The trick, of course, is knowing which is which. This is where developing confidence in your judgement and abilities helps. But that can only come from establishing some “rules”. In a way, automating your decision-making.

I recently heard an interview with President J F Kennedy, in which he said as president, the kind of decisions you make are always high-level. Anything smaller will be dealt with at a lower level and rarely reach your desk.

That’s an example of government in action. The president or Prime Minister cannot decide everything. Lower-level, less urgent things can and should be handled at a department level.

That’s the same for you. Most of your decisions should be automated. What kind of emails are actionable, and what can be archived or deleted, for example.

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 Edward. Edward asks, Hi Carl, I recently read your newsletter in which you wrote about slowing down. Could you explain a little more how to slow down and still be productive?

Hi Richard, thank you for your question.

One of the disadvantages of technology and how it has advanced over the last twenty years is the speed at which tasks can now be done.

While technology has speeded up incredibly, our human brains have not. That causes us many issues.

The biggest issue is because everyone knows how quickly we can reply to an email, they expect almost instant replies which ignores the fact we might being doing something else.

For example, when I am driving or in a meeting or on a call, I cannot reply to an “urgent” email or message. I am doing something else.

In the days before email, there was a natural delay. I remember when I was working in a law firm, email was very new and lawyers didn’t trust it. So, we continued writing letters. This meant, if we received a letter in the morning, we had until 4 pm to reply—that was when the mail went to the post office.

If we missed the post, that was okay, we could blame the post office. And that was accepted.

Other lawyers knew this as did our clients and the clients of the other lawyers.

This also meant we had time to think about our response, talk to a colleague if necessary or escalate to our boss if the issue was complex.

Today, we often don’t feel we have that time. The truth is you do.

One thing I’ve learned is when someone sends you something they are secretly hoping you do not respond quickly. They’re snowed under with work too. If you reply quickly, you’ve just given them more work to do today. You’re not going to be their favourite person.

One of the easiest ways to reduce some of this anxiety is to put in place some rules.

Let me give you an example. I receive around 100 to 150 emails a day. Most of the mail I receive comes through the night. I therefore process my inbox each morning before I start my work. The goal of processing my inbox is to clear it as fast as possible.

There’s no time for applying the legendary two-minute rule (where anything that can be done in two minutes or less should be done). All I need is ten emails where I could apply the two-minute rule and I’ve lost twenty minutes.

No thank you. I want a cleared inbox as quickly as possible. I’ve applied this rule for over ten years now and can clear 150 emails in less than twenty minutes. My record is 380 (ish) emails cleared in 36 minutes.

Then around 4 pm, I will go to my email’s Action This Day folder. Begin with the oldest email and work my way through that for an hour. I aim to respond to any actionable email within 24 hours. And I would say I have a 95% success rate with that “rule”.

It’s a process I repeat every day, and it’s ensured I never have an overwhelming backlog in email at any time.

Now, I do have some rules. For example, anything involving money, whether that is issuing a refund, or sorting out a discount code, I will deal with as soon as I see the issue—people are sensitive when it comes to money.

Also, questions from my Membership Community have priority as well as people who may have forgotten their password or are experiencing other difficulties getting into their learning centre dashboard.

Fortunately, these instances are rare. Perhaps three or four a month.

You can also apply rules for your core work—the work you are employed to do. Because your core work is work you have to do regularly, it’s easy to set up processes to do the work.

Once you have a process set up, you can protect the time on your calendar to ensure you have the time to do the work.

Because a process is something you repeat, you soon get fast at doing it. It’s a human form of automation. If you can fix it for the same time and day, it gets even better because you can start to accurately predict how long it will take you. And your colleagues learn your routines and will leave you alone.

My wife knows that between 9:30 and 11:30 every morning, I am doing my creative work and to leave me alone. That took a lot of training hahaha.

There is a trick I learned from former Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Shamir was Prime Minister between 1986 and 1992, so before the proliferation of email and instant messages.

Whenever a letter or memo came into his office, he would move it to the side and leave it there for a week or ten days. What he discovered was that 90% of what had come in had resolved itself. The ten percent that was left was where he needed to apply his attention.

Rushing to respond or complete a piece of work often leads to unnecessary work. How many times have you responded to an email a few days after receiving it, only to be told the issue has been resolved?

Now you may not be able to sit on something today for a week, but it is possible to pause for 24 hours. All you need is a little confidence in yourself.

Slowing down is a great way to reduce the amount of work you have.

I remember when I used to pounce on an email from a student asking for help logging into their account, only to find a subsequent email come in telling me they had resolved their issue.

Now I wait an hour before responding. That way if a student does resolve their issue I am not wasting precious time resetting passwords that don’t need to be done.

I’m reminded of this question: What the rush? With 2025 goals.

It doesn’t matter what you have done on the 31st January. A 2025 goal is about what you have accomplished on the 31st December. The start will always be messy and inconsistent.

It’s likely you original ideas don’t work, but with a little patience and a few adjustments you will find the right strategy. The result you want will come on 31st December, not 31 January. You have plenty of time.

This idea of slowing down is at the heart of the Time Sector System. In the course, I recommend you default all new inputs to your Next Week folder. Something would have to be genuinely urgent to go into the This Week folder.

By applying the default to your Next Week folder, when you do the weekly planning it’s fantastic to discover that thirty to forty percent of what’s in there no longer needs to be done.

My wife is a get it done now person. Everything is urgent, even when it’s not. Out accountant in Korea is the opposite. Our accountant will ask us for the bank and credit card statements around six weeks before she needs them. When my wife receives that message, everything stops, and she rushes around trying to collect everything together in one afternoon.

It leaves her exhausted, and inevitably, something’s missed, and she then has to repeat the stress the following week.

You want to be like our accountant. Work from your calendar, and ensure that you give yourself sufficient time to collect information. You don’t need to rush around panicking then.

Slow down, protect sufficient time for the bigger tasks and default all new tasks to next week. You will find you have less to do, and what you do have to do can be done slowly, more meticulously and with fewer mistakes.

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

MPP - Maximum Procratination Protection

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 11:45:01 +0900

This week, how to reduce procrastination and why you don’t want to completely remove it.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 353

Hello, and welcome to episode 353 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

We recently asked what’s the biggest thing that ruins your productivity on my YouTube community page. 58% of participants said procrastination.

In a way, that doesn’t surprise me. When you see the statistics on how many people spend time planning their days and weeks, I am actually surprised that the number isn’t higher. I’ll explain shortly.

Now, procrastination has been around for a very long time. Leonardo Da Vinci only managed to finish a small number of paintings. Of the twenty paintings attributed to him, around five were finished.

Leonardo was a serial procrastinator. Yet, it was that procrastination that led to many of his inventions. If he had not procrastinated as much as he did, we would have many more of his paintings but very few of his notebooks full of drawings and diagrams.

The good news is, there are a few practices you can do that will reduce procrastination and enable you to be more internal about your days.

To get us started, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Carlos. Carlos asks, Hi Carl, what advice do you have for overcoming procrastination?

Hi Carlos, thank you for your question.

As I alluded to, procrastination and daily and weekly planning are linked. When you are clear about what needs to be accomplished you will procrastinate less.

The problem when you have no plan is you waste a lot of time trying to decide what needs to be done. And then, it’s likely you will pick the easiest thing to do in the hope it will get you started.

It’s true, you will get started, but you will be doing low value tasks leaving behind the higher value ones. The ones you don’t know what needs to be done or what the first action is because you don’t have a plan.

And that leaves you at the end of the day looking at a list of important, high value things you didn’t do.

One way to overcome this is to be very clear about what the next action is. In my next YouTube video, coming out on Thursday, I explain why “think about” tasks are not really tasks and will be the ones you will sacrifice the moment your day becomes busy.

The reason why these get put off is because it’s not clear what the real action is. For example, if I had a task like “think about what to buy mum for her birthday”, I would procrastinate. It’s too much effort and is not the real task.

The real task might be to talk to my brother and sister about what they re getting my mum. Or I could talk to my father and ask him what he thinks she would like.

Which task would you most likely do:

Think about what to buy mum for her birthday, or, call my brother and ask him what he’s getting mum for her birthday?

One is actionable the other is wishy washy. The wishy washy task is the one you will procrastinate on.

You will procrastinate because it’s not clear what needs to be done.

This is where planning comes in. When you have a plan for the day and are clear about what needs to be done, you will be less likely to procrastinate because your brain is subconsciously planning ahead for you. You’re doing one task and your brain is thinking, subconsciously, about what you will do next and how to complete the task.

This prevents your brain from going offline and procrastinating.

However, when you don’t have a plan for the day, none of that happens. Instead, you procrastinate. You are always on the lookout for something interesting to do, and anything that does not fit the mood you’re in will be skipped for something more interesting.

So, the first practice to develop is to plan your day.

This does not take a long time. It can be done in five minutes. And the ideal time for maximum procrastination protection is to do it before you finish the day.

There’s something more intentional about starting your day knowing exactly what it is you want to get accomplished.

Now, there is a caveat here. If you are an early riser, you can do your planning for the day as part of your morning routine. After all, it’s only five minutes.

So how do you effectively plan your day?

Step one. Look at your appointments for the day. How much time do you have left after your meetings and meal breaks?

Step two is to look at your task list and choose actionable tasks that you can do in the time you have available.

Step three is to prioritise those tasks. Which ones are your non-negotiables? The ones that must be done today?

And that’s it.

To give you an example, Today, I have six hours of meetings. I also need to take Louis to his groomers for his haircut. In total, I have around seven and a half hours of commitments today.

That leaves me with around two hours for everything else. This means, the only task I can confidently complete today is this podcast script. So that’s what I have on my list of tasks.

There’s no point in me having twenty tasks on my to-do list. It would be impossible to do them all in two hours.

Now if I began the day with twenty tasks and seven and half hours of commitments, I would waste so much time trying to decide what to do—ie procrastinate. No! The only thing that matters is getting this script completed.

So, that’s my plan for the day.

Now there are other factors involved in procrastination. If you are sleep deprived, for example, you’re not going to be focused and you will procrastinate. All those shiny objects, social media feeds and click bait news will be attractive. Your brain’s tired and it won’t want to be doing anything that requires thought or creativity.

Similarly, if you eat a high carbohydrate lunch, you’re going to find staying on task in the afternoon challenging. The insulin spike that results in you feeling groggy and tired will cause you to procrastinate.

I would also add that if you are not moving enough you will catch yourself procrastinating. A good tip here is to get up after each session of work or meeting and go for a walk around your workplace for ten minutes.

While you’re walking, think about your next task and how you will do it. You will find when you settle down to get back to work, you are more focused and ready to go.

None of these reasons mean you are a serial procrastinator. It just means you’re tired. Fix that issue first. Get enough sleep, be careful what you eat at lunch time and make sure you move for ten minutes between sessions of work.

Do those four things: plan you day, get enough sleep, avoid carbs for lunch and move and you will see a significant reduction in the procrastination.

Now when talking about procrastination, we do have to be careful. Sometimes procrastination can be a good thing.

I mentioned Leonardo Da Vinci earlier. His procrastination is what led him to invent things hundreds of years before anyone else thought about them.

You see procrastination is really all about exploring ideas. The trouble today is there are far too many things we can procrastinate on.

You’re thinking about your summer holidays and remember you need to buy a new suitcase. So, you head online and search luggage. Yet, it’s eight months before you go on your holiday. You don’t need to buy or research new luggage now. Yet, that’s more interesting than whatever else you should be doing.

And because it’s so easy to do a Google search, you do that.

Now, had you added a task to research new luggage and added it to your long-term and on hold folder, it’s unlikely you would be thinking about luggage today. It collected, processed and in your system.

There’s a time for procrastination—the exploration of ideas, but it needs to be controlled.

A tip here is to keep a part of your day as free as you can. For instance, you could try to keep your afternoons as free as possible so if you do slip into procrastination, you’ve got your most important work done in the morning and your procrastination can be made useful.

This means when you plan your day, you make sure your most important work gets done in the morning.

Which comes back to ensuring you have a plan for your day.

So you don’t want to be eliminating procrastination completely. It’s your creative brain wanting to explore. It’s more a case of controlling it.

Which means it’s a good idea to monitor when you procrastinate. When I’ve done this, I find I procrastinate most in the early afternoons. Knowing this, I have designed my schedule to allow me time to take Louis for his walk. I know my brain wants to explore ideas at that time. What better way to do it than to be walking in nature and thinking about all these distractions and ideas?

What it comes down to is having a realistic plan for the day. If you find yourself staring at an impossible day, you will inevitably procrastinate. Then you will get annoyed with yourself. Yet, you can fix it. Be very clear about what your non-negotiable tasks for the day are.

Your brain will then take over and give you that sense of urgency to get the non-negotiable tasks done.

I’ve never been a fan of website blockers or forcing yourself to turn off your devices. I find those become a distraction in themselves because you are now worried about what you are missing.

What I’ve found works for my clients is to have that plan, be aware of how tired you are and if you are tired, take a nap, if you can, or get up and go for a walk. That way you softly remove the temptation to procrastinate and once back you can get on with your high-value work.

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

The Lessons I Learned From My Minimalist Project

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 12:31:17 +0900

What happened to my 2020/21 minimalist project, and where am I today? That’s the question I am answering today.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 352

Hello, and welcome to episode 352 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Towards the end of 2019, I decided that in 2020, I would go all in on a minimalist project. I had played around with it for a number of years, but it wasn’t until 2020 that I formally turned it into a project and began the process of clearing out a lot of stuff I had collected that was no longer benefiting me.

And yes, four or five years ago, minimalism was a thing. Everyone was talking about it, and there were thousands of videos of people showcasing how bare and minimal their workspaces were.

It was a trend, and while that trend appears to be forgotten, I learned many things that I still practice today.

So, it was a nice surprise to find a question about it in my inbox a few weeks ago. I realised it was a good time to tell you about what I learned and what I am still practising today.

So, without further ado, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question… Which I realise I’ve already told you.

This week’s question comes from Milos. Milos asks, hi Carl, I remember a few years ago, you mentioned that you were about to start a minimalist project. How did it go, and are you still a minimalist?

Hi Milos, thank you for your wonderful question.

Like most projects, or goals, designed to change how you do things, once you complete them, it’s easy to forget you ever did them. My minimalist project was such a project.

I changed a lot of things that I do automatically today, so your question caused me to reminisce on how things used to be.

I should point out that I wasn’t into extreme consumerism. I would replace my phone, iPads and computers when they stopped functioning in a way I needed them to do.

For example, my old Intel computer became very slow over a year when Apple switched from Intel chips to their M series. So much so that it took up to an hour to render a fifteen-minute YouTube video. When I changed my computer to an M series one, that time came down to around six minutes.

However, I think I am a bit of a hoarder, and I had boxes of old papers from my teaching days I no longer needed. I was always reluctant to throw away old clothes, believing one day I might regain the weight I had lost and would require those bigger sizes again.

My wardrobe, drawers and other cupboards were full of stuff I no longer needed and would never need again.

So that was where the project began. Clearing out old clothes and papers I no longer needed.

As with all endeavours like this, I did go a little extreme. My desk, for instance, was stripped of its soul—well, it felt like it. All I had on there was my computer, keyboard and trackpad. I found it became an uninspiring place to work.

So, gradually, I added some things back. An analogue clock—a tool I use to prevent time blindness when I get into a focused zone and a few little mementoes to bring some character back.

The biggest part of the project was clearing out drawers, cupboards and my wardrobe. That was liberating and I was surprised how much space I had once everything was cleared and either thrown away or taken to the recycling.

I moved house at the end of 2021, and that was an opportunity to complete the project—well, the clearing out of the old part of the project.

However, the biggest change was in the way I approached purchasing.

I stopped buying electronic gadgets. I am in the Apple ecosystem and Apple’s products, on the whole, last a long time. For example, I have an iPad mini for reading ebooks, magazines and the newspaper. I’ve had the same iPad mini for the last five years. And I have no intention of replacing it any time soon.

Another change was to apply some rules to my purchasing. This was inspired from how the British gentry in the early 1900s approached buying clothes and personal consumption items.

In the 1920s (and 30s), aristocrats bought clothes and necessities once. For instance, a young aristocrat would purchase a set of luggage that would last a lifetime.

If something broke or the leather tore, they would fix it. A new suitcase was not necessary.

These repairs added character and gave these items a unique look.

It was also a much more environmentally friendly way to treat possessions than we do today—throwing away items once they are either out of date or have a minor problem and buying new ones.

It’s easy to tell ourselves that life was much simpler in those days. It wasn’t. People had just as many problems as we do today. They did not have the conveniences we have: no food delivery services, no Google or ChatGTP to find something out instantly, and no technology to make doing our work better and faster.

The clothing rule I applied was built around the principle of less is better. This translated into buying better quality and less of it. It also allowed me to apply a rule of only buying natural fibres. So that meant mainly cotton and wool.

I do have some un-natural fibre clothing. My exercise gear and a heavy winter coat, for example—it gets very cold in Korea. But apart from that, I stick to natural fibres.

Much of what I do today is inspired by the pre-consumerism days. Only buy what you need and buy the best quality you can afford.

I also learned something from Winston Churchill. Choose your suppliers. What this means is you use the same stores to buy your clothes and anything else you may need.

Winston Churchill, for instance bought all his suits from H W Poole—a London tailor in Savile Row. His shirts were bought at Turnbull and Asser, and his iconic cigars came from James Fox.

If you think about that for a moment, if you use the same suppliers for all your clothing and other things, you know your sizes and precisely what you want, which means you don’t need to research or waste a lot of time trying to find what you want. You reduce the paradox of choice and get back to living life.

Now, I cannot afford to buy suits from H W Poole or shirts from Turnbull and Asser, but I do have my own favourite suppliers.

I buy socks from Peper Harow, my sweaters from N Peal and Cordings of Piccadilly and coats from Barbour. Yes, they are expensive, but the clothing last a very long time and are all made from either cotton or wool.

Another lesson I learned from my minimalist project was the importance of rules and routines.

If you’ve read Around The World In Eighty Days or the books by P G Wodehouse and his characters Jeeves and Wooster, you may have noticed the main characters had strict rules and routines. Wake up times and when they expected their morning cup of tea. Dinner time was a social occasion with pre-dinner drinks and formal clothing.

Perhaps part of the reason for the increase in mental health issues today is because we no longer have these important daily rituals. It’s all go go go. No time to stop and appreciate sitting around a table with family and friends or going out for a daily walk, or even doing what in Around The World in Eighty days is called your “toilet”—which means washing and bathing.

These were deliberate activities, not rushed or forced. It was just what you naturally did each day.

There was a time for everything.

Another area of this period that has fascinated me was the way people approached writing and replying to letters. This was considered a joy and most people spent time each day doing it.

And there was a mix of personal and business letters that needed to be done and the volume was comparable to what we receive in emails and messages today.

The biggest difference was rather feeling they had to reply to everything each day, they focused on the amount of time they had available to write. I have adopted this approach myself. I don’t look at how many emails I need to reply to, I look at how much time I have and once that time is up, I stop.

If you do that every day, you will remain on top of your communications reasonably consistently.

I often hear about people doing a digital detox. One change I made, was to again take inspiration from the 1920s and 30s. In those days people bought their favourite newspaper and read the whole paper.

Now, many successful people still do this today. Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase Bank and Warren Buffett for instance. They subscribe to their favourite newspapers and allocate time each day to read them.

This stops you from getting caught up in clip bait headlines and being “triggered” by low quality reporting.

So now I read the same newspaper every day and only look through my social media later in the evening when I have finished my day.

So the lessons I learned was to buy less stuff but better quality. That’s ensured my wardrobe is clean and not over-stuffed with clothes I won’t wear.

I have also structured my days better. There’s a time for doing my communications, eating with family and friends, and my favourite of all, going out for what we call our family walk. That’s with my wife and little Louis. He loves it, and my wife and I get some quality time most days.

All of this was inspired from reading history books and biographies and realising that minimalism isn’t about stripping everything out of your life so all you are left with is a soulless screen. It’s about removing things that no longer serve you, and leaving the things that mean something to you and living life by a set of rules you set yourself.

I hope that has answered your question, Milos. Thank you for asking it and thank you for listening. It just remains for me to wish you all very very productive week.

The Only Time Management Strategy That Works

Sun, 05 Jan 2025 12:46:05 +0900

What one thing could you do this month that would transform your productivity? That’s what I’m answering this week.

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Script | 351

Hello, and welcome to episode 351 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

It’s one of the strange quirks of human nature to overcomplicate things. This is particularly so when things start to go wrong.

In my favourite sport, rugby league—as in most team-based ball sports—the basics of winning a game are possession of the ball and territory. If you can consistently complete your sets in your opponent’s half of the field, you will likely win the game.

Drop the ball or give away silly penalties by overcomplicating moves, and you’ll make it very difficult to win the game.

Teams that lack confidence are particularly guilty of these mistakes. Watch any winning team, and you will see they stick to the basics and never panic when they go a try or goal behind.

You can see this in any workplace, too. Those people who rarely appear stressed or overwhelmed stick to the basics. They have processes for getting their core work done—the work they are employed to do.

Top salespeople dedicate time daily to prospecting and following up with their customers. CEOs ensure they have time for meeting with their leadership team weekly so they are aware of what’s going on and know where the potential issues are.

So, what can you do to ensure you stick to the basics each day to avoid those pernicious backlogs?

Well, before I answer that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from George. George asks, hi Carl, are there any strategies you know of that guarantees someone will always be on top of their work?

Hi George, thank you for your question.

I’ve always found it fascinating to look at occupations where mistakes can lead to a loss of life—airline pilots and surgeons, for example.

Before any flight, a pilot goes through a checklist to ensure the plane is in working order. They check the weather and the weight of the cargo—both of which can affect how the aircraft will fly.

They calculate the speed they need to reach before taking off and plot their flight path to avoid storms or dangerous weather fronts.

No pilot would ever consider not doing these checks. Indeed, not doing them would be an act of gross negligence and could potentially be career-ending.

Similarly, surgeons follow a checklist. They check the patient’s name, the type of surgery being carried out, and, if necessary, which side they will be operating on. They also check the patient’s blood pressure and other measurements.

Again, failure to do so would be considered gross negligence, and a doctor could be fired for not doing them.

Now, perhaps lives do not depend on you doing your job correctly, but approaching your work in the same way a pilot or surgeon does can ensure that your work gets done without missing essential tasks.

The first step is to identify your core work. The work you are employed to do at a micro-level. For example, if you manage a team of people, what do you need to do at a task level to manage your team?

That could be to prepare for and hold a weekly team meeting. It may involve setting aside time each month for a thirty-minute one-to-one session with each team member. That would translate into weekly tasks for preparing for the team meeting and scheduling appointments with your team.

A journalist’s core work may be to research a story and then write the story before the deadline. Imagine their deadline is 1 pm on Thursday; then the journalist could ensure sufficient time is protected before Thursday to get the story written and submitted before the deadline.

What are your core work tasks?

Next comes the all important communications and admin tasks. We all have them. The problem with these tasks is we cannot accurately estimate how much will come in.

Each morning, when I start my day, I have no idea how many emails I will have. Some days, it’s 80; other days, it can be as high as 150. Yet, one thing I can guarantee is that I will have email to deal with.

So, I protect an hour a day for dealing with communications. This way, I know that no backlogs will ever build, and nobody is waiting longer than 24 hours for my response.

Somedays, I need the whole hour; I may only need thirty minutes on other days. Yet I still protect an hour.

It’s no good “hoping” you will find the time to respond to your communications. You won’t find the time, and if you do not have a consistent amount of time to do it, backlogs will soon build.

You mentioned strategies, George, and the strategy is ensuring you have enough time protected for the key work you need to do.

This may mean you need to cap your meetings each week. Now, I know whenever I mention this, people recoil in fear. Yet, if you work an average of forty hours a week and spend thirty hours in meetings, how will you ever get your work done? How will you prevent backlogs?

Let me give you an example how being strategic with your time.

I limit my coaching hours to twenty each week. Think of my coaching sessions as meetings. Following each session, I write feedback, which takes an average of twenty minutes to write.

I know I can dedicate an hour each day to writing feedback, so my limit is three feedbacks per day. That works out at twenty-one per week.

If I allow more than twenty hours for coaching sessions in a week, I will either have to reduce my other work or work longer hours. It would not be sustainable. While the money would be good, my health and effectiveness would suffer. So, it would only be a short-term benefit.

I’ve learned over the years that the only thing you control is what you do in the time you have each day. You cannot control time itself. That is fixed. When you realise that you see that you can only build strategies around what you do, that means getting comfortable saying no.

You cannot say no to your boss and your customers, right? Well, yes and no.

You see, it comes back to that time issue. Twenty-four hours. That’s it. Now, if you are happy using all twenty-four hours running around for your boss and customers, that’s fine. But if you accept that, I would suggest you gain some self-respect.

I know that might be a bit harsh. But you are a valuable person. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, has the right to demand all twenty-four hours of your time.

Sometimes, you do need to say no. You cannot do everything because everything takes time. The question then becomes how much time are you willing to to give to your boss and customers?

Let me give you an example. I protect two hours each day doing my focused work. Work that ultimately benefits my clients and customers. I also protect an hour for communications and thirty minutes for admin. In total, I protect three-and-a-half hours a day for meaningful work.

If I were working a typical eight-hour day, that means I still have four-and-a-half hours available for my boss, customers and clients.

Would four and a half hours be enough for you?

The “guarantee” that puts you on top of your work is consistency with your strategy.

Over the last few days, I’ve travelled back to Korea from Ireland. Door to door, it’s a thirty-hour trip. We set off at 2:00 am on Sunday from the west coast of Ireland and arrived back at our home around 30 hours later.

Between checking in, waiting for flights and flying, I stayed on top of my email and admin. The last thing I wanted when I got back home was a backlog of stuff to do.

Then, after some sleep, I went into my office and spent around three hours catching up with everything else.

Had I ignored my messages and admin, I could have lost a whole day trying to catch up. No, thank you. I’ll take advantage of the downtime when travelling to stay consistent.

By the way, a quick tip David Allen (author of Getting Things Done) gave me a few years ago is to block the whole of your first day back to catch up. If it’s a short trip, you can get away with half a day, but a whole day is always better.

Whatever work you do, there will always be tasks that are core to what you do. Those tasks need to be embedded into your days and weeks as must-do tasks. Must-do tasks are non-negotiable. Because they are non-negotiable, you allow no one—not your boss or customers—to steal that time from you.

Offer alternative times and days, but never negotiate on your core work times.

That’s the only strategy that’s ever worked and will be the only one that will work in the future.

Whatever industry you look at, the top performers know this and stick to it. It’s not just industries either. Top athletes, elite soldiers, and entertainers remain at the top of their field by being consistent with the basics—their core work.

So, spend a little time establishing your core work—the micro-level tasks you need to perform to stay on top of your work. Then, protect time for doing that work. Fix it in your calendar, and never ever let anyone steal that time away from you.

I hope that helps, George. Thank you for your question, and thank you for listening.

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

Getting Ready for 2025

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 13:20:00 +0900

This week, I've delved into my archive to bring you an episode first published on the 1st of January this year. This will help you prepare yourself for an outstanding 2025.

----more----

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The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Script | 305

Welcome to episode 305 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show.

So, 2024 is here. A New Year with a lot of potential new opportunities and plans. The challenge you will face (because we all face this challenge) is executing on all the ideas and plans you have for this year without a loss of enthusiasm or energy.

And that will happen because no matter how well you have planned the year, things will not work out as you imagine. Some things will go exactly how you expect them to, but most will not. And that’s the same for everyone. If you deliver all your plans and projects exactly as conceived, you are not ambitious enough to move forward. You’re making things too easy.

So how do you avoid the loss of enthusiasm and energy that you will need to see you through the year? Well, that’s the topic of this week’s question, so let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for the question.

This week’s question comes from Carrie. Carrie asks, hi Carl, every year I get excited about all the things I want to do, and when it gets to February or March, I lose all my enthusiasm because I haven’t done anything I had planned to do. Do you have any advice on avoiding this?

Hi Carrie, thank you for your question and Happy New Year to you too.

One thing I can tell you straight up is you are not alone. It turns out 92% of those who set New Year goals or resolutions have given up by 16th February. Only 8% manage to achieve some of their goals.

This means we need to learn what those eight percent do that is different from the 92%.

The first thing I discovered about the 8% is they have no more than three goals for the year. And those three are very specific. For example, they may have a financial, a physical and perhaps a career goal. And that’s it.

If we use these as an example, the financial goal is possibly the easiest. Imagine your financial goal is to save $5,000 this year. You can break that down into twelve months and send $417.00 per month to your savings account. On the 31st of December, you will have a little over $5,000 in it.

On a task level, this is a 30-second task once a month where you send the $417.00 to your account.

Now, if your finances are tight, you may have to review what you are spending money on and make some changes to what you spend, but the action to take is just thirty seconds per month.

Physical goals can be a little more complex. Not everyone does exercise to lose weight. Some just want to improve their overall health; others would like to challenge themselves physically by running a marathon or climbing a big mountain. However, whatever the purpose or “what” the goal is, physical goals mean you need to find time for regular exercise. The essence of the goal is to find the time and do the exercise, and that will almost certainly achieve your goal.

The difficulty with these types of goals is the starting point. If you have not exercised for a number of years and are not in great shape, it is going to be hard. This is like pulling a large truck. The hardest part of pulling a truck is the start. When the rope you are attached to takes the strain to get the truck moving, it takes an inordinate amount of strength. However, once the truck begins to move, it gets easier and easier. The difficulty then becomes stopping the truck.

Starting an exercise programme is the same. It’s incredibly hard to begin with. The first session’s never that bad until you wake up the following morning. When you step out of bed, your muscles scream out in pain, and you’ll wonder how on earth you will be able to repeat your exercise again today.

The thing is, getting fit and staying fit is the same. It’s all about turning up and doing the exercise. But it doesn’t have to be the same exercise each day. Jog one day, walk the next. Then perhaps go for a swim or do some light weights in the gym on other days. Fitness is all about movement, so find time each day for movement.

What I’ve discovered about fitness is that it’s all about routine. It needs to be built into your day, and the time of day you do it needs to work for you. Once it becomes a routine and you get through the first fourteen days, it becomes much easier, and there’s rarely any muscle soreness (and when you do get sore, you feel a sense of achievement because you know you had a good session the day before).

What about a career goal? This is likely to be the most complex of goals. There are likely to be multiple different parts to it. Skills acquisition, experience and time are all involved. So, finding out what skills you need to move up the corporate ladder would be one task. Arranging a meeting with your boss or HR to discuss your goal would be a first step.

Once you know what you need to do, you can then formulate a plan to make it happen. If you need to go back to school, then you can research how best to do that. Then you will need to find the time to study. Again, like exercise, this needs to be scheduled. You won’t achieve educational goals by winging it. You need to set aside dedicated time for studying.

A number of my coaching clients have dedicated days for learning. Two of my clients use the weekends for studying and taking courses or having coaching sessions. Saturday mornings seem to be the most common time for this, but it will depend on your own schedule.

Just one piece of advice here, avoid Sunday nights. These are not the best times for studying. You’ll be distracted by what you have to do next week and likely be tired from all your social activities. The thought of sitting down to study after an eventful weekend would be off-putting for most.

Ultimately, if you want to successfully achieve your goals in 2024, then you will need to establish some habits and routines. This does not need to be overwhelming. You can do as much or as little as you feel capable of. For example, if you plan to read twenty-five books in 2024, that’s one book every two weeks. If you spent an average of forty-five minutes reading each day, you would easily accomplish that goal. This means the only question you need to answer is, when? When will you do your reading?

Perhaps you could include this as part of your morning routine, or instead of watching TV late at night, you read a book.

I will confess that in the last six months, I have spent far too much time watching TV in the evenings. In 2024, instead of watching TV, I intend to read. I have already prepared a comfortable corner to read. It’s a place Louis, my little dog, likes to cuddle up to me in the evenings, and I’m already looking forward to it.

I will still watch TV. However, I have created a list of TV shows and YouTube videos to watch, and I have allocated Saturday evenings to TV watching. If I find I have the urge to watch something, I will add it to the list, and then on Saturday, I can open the list and choose from that list.

What about daily and weekly planning? This is something that will bring you so many rewards. Having a plan for the week is a no-brainer for me. I know what happens when I don’t have a plan. The week goes south very quickly and then I am in overwhelm territory just trying to keep up with silly little things.

When I have a plan for the week, I am more focused. The right things get done, and I have the mental space to deal with the unknowns and urgencies of others without losing focus.

This is something I would recommend to everyone. Make it a habit in 2024 to do both the weekly and daily planning sessions. This one habit will do so much for you when it comes to achieving your goals in 2024.

One thing I must stress, though, is to keep your list of goals as short as you can. Two or three goals is about the right number. Any more than that, and you will be overwhelmed and unable to stay focused on what needs to be done.

Remember, we are all a work in progress. You do not have to change everything in twelve months. Pick the two or three things that are most on your mind right now.

I neglected my fitness in 2023, and regaining my fitness is my number one goal in 2024. Today, I will be heading out for a run, no matter what the weather is. It’s the first day of the year, and it’s not about how well or far I run; it’s about re-establishing the habit of exercising each day. Get the 1st of January in the bag, and tomorrow I can do a few push-ups or go for a long walk.

My goal in January is to do some form of exercise every day. I’m not worried about February right now. If I get through January having done exercise on 25 or more days, that’s a result I will accept. It’s not perfect, but it’s 25 days of exercise—that’s something to celebrate! I can then decide what I will do in February to maintain my momentum.

And that’s what setting and achieving goals is all about. You are not going to be perfect every day or week. But that does not mean you failed. It just means you had a bad day. You can pick it back up the next day or week. It’s not what you achieve in one day; it’s what you have accomplished over 365 days. (Or 366 days this year)

So there you go, Carrie. Keep your list of goals short, and look for habits and routines you can build so that the action you need to take becomes automatic. And remember, just because you had a bad day or week doesn’t mean you failed. You can pick yourself up at any time and get moving again.

Thank you for your question and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive 2024.

How To Work With Your Strengths.

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 13:20:15 +0900

This week, why it’s important to know what kind of person you are.

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Script | 350

Hello, and welcome to episode 350 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

WOW! 350 episodes. I never thought this podcast would still be going strong after six years. Thank you to all of you for following me and this podcast and to everyone who has sent in questions. Please keep them coming in—they are the fuel of this podcast.

So, back to this episode.

One way to destroy your efforts to become better organised and more productive is to fight against yourself. This can manifest itself when you are a deadline-driven person trying to be a carefully planned out person.

Let me give you an example: if you struggle to find the motivation to begin a project because the deadline is six months away, yet you pressure yourself to start now. You’ll likely find yourself losing interest and giving up after a few weeks.

Then you beat yourself up.

But, perhaps you’re not doing anything wrong; you’re just trying to do something you are not wired to do.

That’s why it’s important to know what kind of person you are and to figure and what works and what doesn’t.

Okay, before we go further, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Matthew. Matthew asks, Hi Carl, What do you recommend to someone who finds it difficult to get motivated unless there the deadline is right on top of them?

Ho Matthew. Thank you for your question.

I’ve witnessed something like this very close to home.

My wife struggles to start work on a project or a task until the deadline is right in front of her. She then pulls out all the stops pulling all nighters if necessary. Yet, she always meets her deadlines.

In the twenty + years I’ve known her, I cannot recall a time she missed a deadline. Ever.

My mother, on the other-hand is the complete opposite. She will begin getting her holiday items together sever months before she travels. I know, when we travel to visit my family over the Christmas holidays, he will be wanting to plan her next trip to Korea with me. Six months before she’s likely to travel. She even gets her suitcase ready.

It would be fruitless to encourage my wife to be more like my mother or vice versa.

My mother hates stress—it gives her a headache. My wife doesn’t see the point in over preparing.

Yet, we shouldn’t be looking at the methods, instead look at the results. Neither my wife nor my mother miss deadlines. They have different approaches, but still achieve the same results.

Some of my coaching clients wake up very early 4:30 - 5:30 am and like to plan their day before they finish their morning routines end. Others find it more beneficial to plan the day the evening before. Yet, as long as you begin your day with a clear idea of what needs to be accomplished that day, does it really matter when you do your daily planning?

I recommend if you are an early bird, do your planning in the morning. If you are more of a night owl, do it the evening before. What matters is you plan the day. The benefits of having a clear idea of what you want to get accomplished that day, far outweighs the timing of your planning.

I have clients who see Ali Abdaal’s productivity recommendations and wonder how he gets any work done with so many tools being used to organise something as simple as what to do and when. Yet, I have other clients who love using the tools Ali recommends.

There’s no right or wrong way to do this as long as you are getting the results you want.

In your case, Matthew, the productivity tool that you should master is your calendar. If you are motivated by deadlines, you will need to be very clear about when you deadlines are. Having your deadlines on your calendar in the all-day section and in a colour you cannot fail to see will ensure you know when your deadlines are.

All my project deadlines are in my calendar in red. These are hard deadlines and when I am planning my week, all I need to do is look ahead two or three weeks to see what’s coming up.

You may also find it helpful to have a Master Projects list in your notes app so when you are planning the week you have a central place where all the information you need is. On your Master Projects list you can have the deadlines, and what needs to happen next. That way you can judge how much work is still required to meet your deadline.

That’s something I’ve learned from my wife. While on the surface she looks a disorganised mess, underneath that disguise is someone who’s looking at the calendar on her phone every evening to see what’s coming up over the next few days.

Last Monday, while we were sitting on the sofa, my wife reminded me that Louis had a grooming appointment on Thursday and she wanted to check I was sill okay to take him.

And there I was thinking she was scrolling social media, yet, she was looking at her calendar for the week to see if she needed to to do something.

Did she need to know about that last week? No.

I did, though. My system’s different from hers. Yet both our systems produced the same result. Louis arrived for his grooming appointment on time.

However despite having very different methods for getting our work done, there are some principles that will never change. Writing your commitments down somewhere you trust is critical.

While my wife does not use any kind of task manager, she does use, and trusts, her calendar. And I’ve seen this with many other people who don’t use a task manager—they still use something they trust.

A former boss of mine, would have his secretary print out his Outlook calendar for the week each Monday morning. He would then fold that calendar up into his pocket diary.

Throughout the week, he would add to-dos and appointments to that printed calendar as required and on Friday afternoon update his Outlook calendar so the up-to-date version would be ready for him the following Monday morning.

Again, he never forgot anything as far as I could tell. It was an unorthodox system, but it worked.

This is why it can be dangerous to copy other people’s systems. They are not you.

Earlier, I published my latest Todoist setup on YouTube. I do this twice a year, and I suspect I do it more for me than for anyone else. I have been doing this since around 2019, so now I have five years of set-ups I can refer back to and see my evolution.

The biggest change came in May 2020 when I launched the Time Sector System. That was a result of struggling to make Getting Things Done work for me in the digital age. I remember walking to the gym one day and being hit be a sudden realisation that really the only thing that mattered was “when” I would do a task, not what I needed to do.

It doesn’t matter how much you have to do if you don’t have time to do it. What matters is what you do when you do have time.

This realisation solved so many struggles for me. It caused me to limit the number of meetings I was available for each week, and if I could not restrict my meetings, then I had to restrict the number of tasks I was trying to do.

Perhaps I am more aware of the limits time imposes on us than others, or others knew all this before I became aware of it. Either way, it helped me to begin working to my strengths rather than fighting against them.

This also applies to when you are at your most focused. Most people will find they are at their most focused in the mornings but not everyone is.

Some people will find they are at their best in the evenings. This is one reason why flexible working times work for some and not for others.

If you are more a night owl, working for a company that allows you to work to your own schedule will help you thrive. Working for a company that keeps strict 9 till 5 hours will create all sorts of difficulties for you.

Doist, the parent company of Todoist, works flexible hours. Because they are a 100% remote company, their team is spread throughout the world. They have people on the west coast of America, and people here in Korea. That’s a seventeen hour time difference. Insisting everyone worked a 9 till 5 day would not work.

Doist has an unenviable staff turnover level. I believe over the last ten years only four or five people have left the company. That’s incredible for a company that employs over one hundred people.

I’ve discovered more on this with my pen and paper experiment this year—well, it began as an experiment. It’s hard to call it an experiment now.

Returning to pen and paper has helped me to rediscover the art of thinking and the importance of slowing down from time to time.

Digital tools are great, they make storing and finding documents easy. They all help manage quick notes and ideas. Paper, though is different, there’s no batteries and if you grab an A4 pad of paper, and a Bic ball pen, and disappear to a cafe, you could spend all day there and never have to worry about recharging your device. That bit ball pen will draw a 3 kilometre (about 2 miles) line before it runs out. And of course, there’s no notifications or beeps and buzzes.

Yet, pen and paper doesn’t work for everyone. There’s a lot of people who do love them, there’s also a lot of people who hate them. And that’s fine.

So, Matthew, look at how you prefer to work. If you need deadlines to motivate you, the only thing that matters is you meet your deadlines. If that causes you to have to work later than you want to, perhaps you could create a false deadline. You could say this piece of work must be finished tomorrow by 5PM so I can hand it in the next day.

False deadlines are great. I generally have most of my projects finish at the end of the month, so my “fake” end of the month is the 25th. This gives me around a week before the real deadline hits and ensures I am not scrambling to finish things late into the night.

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

How To Plan The Week in 45 Minutes or Less

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 12:36:38 +0900

This week, the question is on how to reduce the time it takes to complete a solid weekly planning session.

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Script | 349

Hello, and welcome to episode 349 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

One issue that frequently comes up in my YouTube video comments and email messages is the subject of weekly planning and it taking too long.

It’s taken me a while to see how this might be happening, but a recent coaching call pointed me in the right direction.

The issue is the difference between what David Allen calls the Weekly Review and planning a week.

The Getting Things Done Weekly Review is, about looking backwards. You spend a lot of time looking at what you have done on individual projects.

Given that in GTD, anything requiring two or more steps is a project and that by following that definition, you are going to have between, and I quote from the Getting Things Done book, thirty and hundred and fifty projects at any one time, is it any wonder weekly reviews take so long.

This is why I do not call my planning session a weekly review. Instead, I am planning the week, not reviewing my work. The word “review”, at least to me, suggests looking at something that happened in the past.

Yet, planning is about looking ahead. What’s happened has happened. What matters is what you do in the following seven days, and that will be contingent on appointments and commitments you have in those seven days.

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

This week’s question comes from Greg. Greg asks, hi Carl, I’m struggling with doing my weekly plan. I’ve taken your advice to do it on a Saturday morning, but it still takes me almost two hours. Are there any secrets to getting it down to less than an hour?

Hi Greg, thank you for your question.

The question I would start with is, “Are you planning the week or looking back at the week just gone?

If you are following the Time Sector System, one routine task I recommend is to give yourself ten minutes before you close out the day to process your task manager’s inbox.

Processing your inbox is about asking three questions:

What is it?

What do I need to do?

When will I do it?

The second question, What do I need to do? May give you the answer, nothing. In that case, you can delete the task altogether.

When you do a task, will depend on its urgency. It may be something that doesn’t need to be done this week, in which case you can move it directly to your next week, this month or next month folder.

If it does need to be done this week, when will you do it this week? You then add the date.

Doing this routine task everyday, means when you sit down to do your weekly planning on Saturday morning, you only need look at your next week and this month folders and move anything to your This Week folder if you must or want to do it in the next seven days.

In my experience, that only takes ten minutes.

Now what about all those projects?

Well, if you are still trying to manage you projects in a task manager, good luck. Weekly planning is going to take a long time. You will have to go through each project and make sure nothing has been missed. That’s going to take a long time if you have between thirty and 150 projects.

However, if you manage your projects in your notes app, then these won’t need reviewing. Every time you touch a project you update the project note. You can, if you wish, move the next task to your task manager, although if you create tasks that tell you to work on a given project, you should not need to do that.

I don’t define a project in the same way as David Allen does. A project for me is something that will take at least three months to complete and will have a lot of tasks to complete.

In the Getting Things Done world. My upcoming trip to Europe is a project. Yet, for me, it’s a single task. Book flights. Once that task has been done, I will know exactly what needs to happen next. Do I need to book a hotel? This year, no, but I will need to book bus tickets once I arrive in Dublin. So the next action is to book the bus tickets.

The thing is, I didn’t know if I needed to book a hotel or a bus ticket because that depended on what time we arrived at Dublin airport. And I didn’t know that until I had booked the flights.

I do have a note in my notes app called “Ireland 2024” and in there, I have my packing list and a list of things I want to purchase while there. I also save my flight tickets and anything else I may need.

Another way to look at it is if you were a HR manager, and a colleague asked you to hire a new team member, that would not necessarily be a project. As a HR manager, hiring people is a part of what you do. It’s probable you will be hiring many different team members, and managing the process of hiring is just a part of your core work.

Yet if you were tasked to overhaul the payroll system or to organise the seamless move of all employees to a new location, given that you wouldn’t ordinarily do that kind of work, they would be projects.

When would you review those projects? Perhaps when you know you have a management meeting coming up, or you have a one to one with your boss.

But, reviewing is not planning. Reviewing is a task by itself.

Planning is about deciding what you will do. A weekly plan is about setting yourself objectives for the week. Daily planning is setting objectives for the day.

Last night, as I planned today, I made writing this script an objective. Once I knew that I would be writing this script, I checked my calendar for my committed events for today, and mentally decided when I would write it.

It did not mean I had to go through all my previous scripts or review the list of questions I keep. That was a task I set on for Saturday afternoon—decide what topics I will create content around next week.

When I was writing Your Time, Your Way, it was obvious what needed to be done each week—set aside one or two hours a day to write the book. How much reviewing was needed for that? Zilch, nada, zero. To complete that project required me to sit down and write the book five days a week.

Every two weeks I had a meeting with my publisher. These were usually Friday evenings for me. This meant I had a task on Friday to review what I had written over the previous two weeks and to add any questions I had for the publisher.

Often my publisher would ask me to do something. Perhaps he wanted me to send him a profile picture, approve the cover designs, or update the chapter list. During the meeting I added those tasks to the meeting note and afterwards, transferred the tasks to my task list.

This meant, when I did my weekly planning, I did not need to go and review the whole project. What needed to be done was already in my Next Week list. All I needed to do was to decide when I would get the information requested together and send it.

The reason planning the week takes so long is likely because you are not planning, you’re reviewing and cleaning up.

Cleaning up your task list, your notes or anything else is not planning. It’s cleaning up. That’s a completely different category of task.

If you’re spending five or ten minutes at the end of the day clearing your task manager’s inbox, deciding what something is, what you need to do, and when you will do it, you won’t have very much cleaning up to do at the end of the week.

When the special forces plan a mission, they start with the objective—take that hill—they then set about working out how they will get to the top of the hill. They don’t waste time looking at what they did or didn’t do this week or how they got to where they are.

They focus their attention on getting from where they are now to where they need to be.

And that’s the approach you want to take when planning your week. You have seven days to accomplish a set number of objectives. The question is what do you need to do to get there?

And just like the special forces, your plan will break—it always does. It’s at that point you pause, look at where you are, and figure out what needs to happen for you to reach your target.

And for us, that’s what we do when we do the daily planning.

I should have written half of that report by now, but I haven’t started yet. What do I need to do in the remaining 48 hours to complete the report by the deadline. Perhaps I need to cancel two meetings tomorrow, so I can use that time to write and get myself back on track?

It’s not going through the project again, and finding excuses for not accomplishing your task. You’re behind, what do you need to do to get back on track? That’s planning.

If you are putting deadlines on your calendar in the all-day section, when you are planning the week, you can quickly see what deadlines you have coming up over the next two or three weeks and that can guide you towards what you should be working on.

If you use task start and due dates in your task manager, then, of course your weekly planning is going to take you longer. You will need to review all your tasks to ensure you haven’t missed anything. Good luck with that approach.

So, when do you review you projects? Personally, I review my projects when I work on them. I have a master projects list table on my notes app that shows me all my projects, their deadlines and what needs to happen next.

Every time I finish working on a project, I update that table with what I did and what I need to do next.

Going back to writing Your Time, Your Way, there was very little updating required. I had five two-hour writing blocks in my calendar each week for writing the book. The next action was easy—continue writing my book.

Now, if a project becomes a complete mess and you don’t know where you are or what needs to happen next, the task is to review the project. That will then help you to get it back on track. But that’s not part of the weekly planning. That’s just a task you need to do, and you may add it as a task to do next week.

Another question, I get asked is what about follow-ups and waiting for’s?

Again, that’s not part of your weekly planning. That’s a separate task. Personally, I check my follow-ups folders once a week or when I am working on a project and I can see I am waiting for something. It’s certainly not part of my weekly planning.

So, if when you sit down to set out your weekly plan, you are also reviewing all your tasks and projects, yes, it’s going to take you a long time. But you are not planning. You’re reviewing.

If you’ve read Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People or any time management book prior to 2001, none of them had you reviewing “open loops” and “projects”. That’s regressive and means you waste a lot of time focused on the past.

These books—books that helped millions of people—focused planning on what you will do next week, this month, quarter or year. They were forward thinking. That’s what planning the day and week is all about.

What will you accomplish next week? What needs to be done? And when will you do it? That’s it.

And if you are consistent with this, you will find weekly planning will take you between thirty and forty minutes.

I hope that helps, Greg. Thank you for your question.

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

Yes, You Can Design A Perfect Week.

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 11:05:05 +0900

This week, I’m going to show you how to design your “perfect” day.

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Script | 348

Hello, and welcome to episode 348 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

What would a perfect day look like for you? I’m not talking about drinking sangria in a park, feeding animals in the zoo, and later, a movie.

I’m talking about how a typical day would go.

What time would you like to wake up?
What would you enjoy doing for the first hour of your day?
What would you like to do in the evenings?
And what time would you like to go to bed?

These questions are all part of what I call designing your perfect week. It’s an exercise that helps you to bring some structure into your day. Once implemented, this reduces the number of decisions you need to make each day and makes planning less demanding and a lot faster.

Not taking control of your calendar means others will take control of it. If not your boss or customers, it’ll be your family and friends. This leaves you being pushed and pulled all over the place.

When you wake up in the morning, you have no idea what will happen or where you will end up. More dangerously, you will have no idea whether you can get your work done, and inevitably, you’ll find yourself with huge backlogs and a lot of accumulated stress.

Not a great place to be if you want to be better organised and more productive.

So, let me show you how you can regain control of your calendar and start putting what you want first.

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

This week’s question comes from Megan. Megan asks, hi Carl, I’ve tried designing a “perfect” week but found I don’t have enough time to do everything I need to do. Do you have any tips to fit everything in?

Hi Megan, thank you for your question.

That you have discovered you don’t have enough time for everything you want to do is part of why I recommend people do the Perfect Week calendar exercise. The purpose is to help you see what you do and don’t have time for.

But first, how do you set up the Perfect Week calendar?

First, open up your calendar—it doesn’t matter whether it’s a Google, Outlook or Apple Calendar. What you are going to do is create a new calendar and call it “Perfect Week”.

I recommend you do this on a larger screen. It is possible to do it on a phone, but you won’t see the bigger picture of the week. A laptop or tablet works better when you do this.

Now, begin with your personal life. How much sleep do you want? What time will you go to bed? Block those times in first. For instance, if, in your perfect world, you go to bed at 11:00 pm and want seven hours of sleep, then you would block 11:00 pm to 6:30 am. (Allow yourself thirty minutes to fall asleep).

Now, how long do you want for your morning routine? Perhaps you want the first hour of your day dedicated to you. To exercise, read, plan, meditate and/or write a journal. All you need to do in your perfect week calendar is block the time you want for these activities on your calendar. Call it your Morning routine time. (The details of what you do in that time can be added as a checklist in your notes later.)

Next look at the evening. What would you like to do?

Be careful here; you may wish to block time out for family and friends. When you do this, you are involving other people, and they will have a different agenda to you.

You could, for instance, protect 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm for family time, but be flexible. Your teenage daughter will unlikely want to spend much time with you. Your partner, on the other hand, may wish you to sit with them and talk or watch their favourite TV show.

Consider “family time” as being flexible. If no one wants to spend time with you, be available. Perhaps you could read in the same room as your family or do some chores around the house.

Next, what would you like to do later in the evening before you go to bed? Put that on your calendar.

Many of my clients enjoy playing a musical instrument, others use that time for self-study and some go out for an evening walk. Whatever you want to do, put it on your calendar.

Now, your work.

A couple of questions you can ask here are: how much time do you need to do focused work? Work that if you are consistent with will prevent backlogs and ensure you meet your deadlines.

And how much time will you allow per week for meetings?

Limiting your available meeting time is a great way to control time.

Imagine you work a forty-hour week and you want three hours a day for focused work; that would leave you with twenty-five hours each week for everything else.

If you were to limit the time you were available for meetings to fifteen hours a week, that would leave you with ten hours for all the unexpected demands that inevitably pop up. Would that be sufficient time?

Play around with these numbers and see if you can find a happy balance.

With the meeting limit once you have filled the limit for that week, you only offer meeting times for the following week.

As this is your perfect week, you can fix times when you are available and when you are not.

Once you have completed your perfect week, does that look like a week you would be happy living?

One adjustment I made to mine was on a Monday. My calls begin early—well, early for me—meaning I need to wake up at 6:15. That’s much earlier than usual. I discovered I was not able to work effectively after around 11:00 am. So, I added a ninety-minute nap window from 11:00 am. That worked perfectly for me.

Now, once you have created your perfect week, turn on your other calendars. Where do things align? You will probably find some activities already aligned, but some will be wildly out

Your mission now—should you choose to accept it—is to align your real calendar with your perfect week one.

This mission will not happen instantly; aligning things may take several months, but it gives you a purpose and goal.

What happens if, after doing this exercise, you discover there are not enough hours in the week to do everything you want to do?

Most people find this after completing this exercise.

It is worth remembering you do not have to do everything all at once.

You could take a course on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and go to your Pilates class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings. Perhaps you could do your weekly planning on a Saturday morning instead of a Sunday evening.

This is about completing a puzzle. How do you fit everything into your 168 hours a week?

You can also consider making things seasonal. In the winter months, you do one activity, and in the summer, you do another type of activity. After all, the weather is generally nicer in the summer, and the days are longer.

You may even wish to use the Spring as the cleaning-up season. I do.

Designing the perfect week calendar is not about locking you into a strict structure every week. Its purpose is to help you become realistic about what you can and cannot do each day. It’s from here that you can design the kind of life you want to live.

Over the five or six years since I first did the Perfect Week exercise, I have modified it many times. For example, when I did it the first time, I had this rather ambitious idea: I would go to bed at 11:00 pm and wake up at 6:00.

That didn’t last very long. Many of my coaching calls happen late at night, and I often don’t finish until after midnight. Now, I go to bed at 1:30 am and wake up at 8:30 am (except for Mondays). That has worked for me for over a year now.

I’ve also learned that while I’ve always believed that I am a night owl, I am more focused and creative in the mornings. This led to me protecting 9:30 to 11:30 am five days a week for my focused work.

One thing you don’t want to do, Megan, is to try and squeeze everything in. That will leave you feeling exhausted. Always remember you are a living, breathing human being, not a machine.

You need breaks, you do need to stop and enjoy nature and the environment you live in. It gives your mind a rest, and it elevates your creativity and fulfilment by giving you something different to look at other than a screen.

While I am very structured, I like it that way—I still keep my afternoons free for activities I want to do in the moment. Taking my dog, Louis for his walk, doing the grocery shopping and reading, for example. Whatever needs my attention, the afternoons are when I can do it.

Learning those things was a result of doing the Perfect Week exercise.

David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, often says, “You can do anything, but you cannot do everything”, and I’ve found that’s true. That means the question becomes, what will you do?

I would also say that the end of the year is a perfect time to do this exercise. The start of a new year gives you a motivation to try things and develop the kind of week you want to live.

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

Don't Copy. Find Your Own Style.

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 20:46:28 +0900

This week, why you should not be copying other people’s systems.

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Script | 347

Hello, and welcome to episode 347 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

There is a lot of advice on managing your to-dos, organising your notes and controlling your calendar. And it can be tempting to copy whatever you have seen, believing if it worked for someone else, it must work for you.

Well, not so fast.

One thing I’ve learned from coaching hundreds of people is that no individual is the same. We think differently, have different jobs, and have different family lives and interests.

One example is Tiago Forte’s PARA method. It’s a great way to organise your notes, and many people swear by it. However, it never worked for me. I’m a goal-orientated person. Goals motivate me. I also define Areas of Focus differently from how Tiago defines an area.

This is why I settled on GAPRA (Goals, Areas of Focus, Projects, Resources and Archive.)

This does not mean that PARA does not work. It works, for some people. Similarly, I have coaching clients who find GAPRA works better. It all depends on how you think, like to organise things and do your work.

So, what can you do with so much conflicting advice? How can you find the methods for you? Well, before I get to that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Frank. Frank asks, hi Carl. I’ve been a life-long follower of productivity systems and have struggled to find a system that works for me. How would you advise someone to find a way that works for them?

Hi Frank, thank you for your question.

Around 20 years ago, I began my career as an English teacher in Korea.

I had come from working a typical 9 til 5 office job and suddenly I was on the other side of the world, working from 6:30 am to 12:00 pm and 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm. It was tough.

I’m not a natural morning person—never have been—so waking up at 5:00 am was a shock to my system.

It wasn’t long before I began taking naps. I would get home at 12:30, and go straight back to bed for two hours.

For the next ten years, that’s what I continued to do.

I had learned about the power of taking naps from none other than Winston Churchill. He believed that if you took a solid 90 minute nap every afternoon you would be able to get at least a day and half’s worth of work done in a day.

He wasn’t wrong. By taking an afternoon nap I found I was full of energy when teaching in the evening and was able to spend an hour preparing for my next day’s classes when I got home in the evening.

Yet, I knew Churchill took his naps between 3:30 pm and 5:00 pm. That didn’t work for me. So I adapted it to work better for me.

Likewise, back in 2016 or so, I read Robin Sharma’s brilliant 5 AM Club book. I was sold. I thought, okay, let’s give this a try.

For those of you not familiar with the 5 AM Club, this is where you wake up at 5:00 AM and do twenty minutes of exercise, then 20 minutes planning and finally 20 minutes of learning. It’s solid way to begin your day.

Yet, I had a problem. I’ve never been comfortable exercising in the morning. So, I adapted it. I did twenty minutes journal writing, then ten minutes planning the day and finally studied Korean for thirty minutes.

And it worked. I was consistent for around eighteen months and I loved it.

But then I hit a problem. My coaching business began taking off and I was doing coaching calls late at night—sometimes not finishing until midnight. This meant I was trying to survive on four or five hours of sleep. Not a good thing if you want to be productive.

It then occurred to me, the “secret” to the 5 am club is not waking up at 5 am. It’s what you do immediately on waking up that matters.

Today, I wake up around 8:00 am, and start my day with a solid set of morning routines that include journal writing, some stretches and learning my email inbox. It works perfect for me. It sets me up for mostly productive days.

And that’s the key point. Whatever you learn about productivity, time management and living life doesn’t have to be followed exactly as described. We all live different lives and it can be modified to better work for you.

However, there are a few caveats here.

The first is you will not be able to break basic principles.

For instance, if you want a solid way to manage your life, you will need to collect stuff into a trusted place and not rely on your head to remember things. You will then need to spend a little time organising what you collected and finally, you need to do the work.

Yet, how you collect things and where you collect them is entirely up to you. You could use a pencil and notebook, or a sophisticated task management system. Both work.

Another principle I see people trying to break is scheduling far more than the number of hours in the day will allow.

You get 24 hours a day. That’s not going to change. The only variable you have is what you do in the time you have.

This is not as simple as you may think. Sure, it’s easy to schedule seven hours of sleep, an hour for a gym session, four hours for deep work, another three hours for spending with your family and an hour for dealing with your communications and further hour for learning.

All that looks great on a calendar. But what if you didn’t sleep well, you woke up with the start of a heavy cold and had a fight with your teenage daughter?

Yep, that’s real life hitting you in the face.

Now, hopefully that’s not going to happen to you every day, but events will always get in the way of your perfectly planned day.

It’s rare to see any kind of time management or productivity system building in buffer time. Yet, buffer time—time you keep free for the unexpected—is critical if you are to avoid becoming overwhelmed.

One way you can approach the day is to treat it as a puzzle:

Here are the twenty-four hours you have. That’s your constraint. Here’s a list of things you need to do or attend in those twenty-fours hours, now how are you going to fit everything in?

Now, it could be that I am weird, but I love solving this puzzle every day. I love it so much I do it the day before.

First, I look at my confirmed appointments—these are the fixed stakes in the ground. They help to give my day a little structure.

Then, I look at my tasks for that day. Where can I fit these in?

It’s important to know your own natural biorhythms here. When are most likely to be focused? Perhaps you find focusing on deep work in the morning easier than trying to do in the afternoon. If that’s the case, then try to protect two hours in the morning for dedicated focused work.

I should say at this point, every productive person I’ve come across does this. They protect time each day for their most important work. Authors, CEOs, top salespeople, the most successful lawyers and Olympic athletes.

The difference is no matter where they are in the command chain, they are ruthless about protecting time each day for their critical work.

Unproductive, stressed out and exhausted people don’t do this. They don’t protect time. Instead, they have a false belief that they have to be available all the time for their customers and bosses. Well, good luck with that approach. It doesn’t work, never has, and never will.

I remember a sales training session I was on, and the trainer was a former top salesperson—I believe he was formerly the number one car salesperson in the country.

He told us, we could call him at any time if we needed help. But, not before 11 am. He would not answer his phone before 11 am.

When asked why, he explained he needed those two hours in the morning to do his follow ups, and contact his customers who were due to change their car in the next three months and make sure he had appointments scheduled for the rest of the day.

I suspect this was why he was the number one salesperson. He understood how to solve the daily puzzle.

Another area that can disrupt you overall productivity is the tools you use.

There are a lot of fantastic time management and productivity tools available to us today. Many promise the impossible, but ultimately, it will always come down to how you solve the daily puzzle. In that respect, no tool will help you beyond a calendar and a list of tasks that need to be done.

I get questions every day from people asking me if it’s possible to do this or that thing. What they are really asking me is “how do I complicate things?”

Let’s be clear, all you need to know each day is what appointments you have and when and what your critical must do tasks for the day are.

Once you know this and you know you have sufficient time to complete everything, you’re good to go.

The more organising you do, the more lists you create and the more tools you use, the less time you have to get on and do the work.

I mentioned Tiago Forte’s PARA method earlier, and I remember the popularity of this when Tiago launched his book on the subject. There was a frenzy and YouTube lit u with people doing videos on how to set up this notes app or that one with the PARA method.

I could see immediately why it was so popular. It was another way to reorganise things. It gave people something to play with. In other words it gave people an excuse not to do their work.

PARA is great, but it’s not going to make you more productive or better at managing time. I use Evernote and it’s a complete mess. When I need something, I use Evernote’s powerful search.

Whether I’m looking for a client note, a reference to an idea I had several years ago or my book notes from a book I’ve read on Kindle, all I need do is type a keyword, a date range or person’s name and in less than a second I have the information in front of me.

I could spend hours each week keeping my notes up to date, summarised and organised, or I can rely on search and give me those hours to get my work done. I know what I choose.

Over the last three or four months, Todoist has introduced a calendar and start and due dates. I use neither. They don’t help me get my work done and both of those features just add more complexity to what should be a simple list.

You don’t need to use all the features an app has. Use the ones that help you to focus on your work and leave alone the ones that add more organising work.

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

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

Deep Dive With Dr Kourosh Dini

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 11:27:52 +0900

This week, I have a special episode for you.

A second interview with Dr Kourosh Dini.

In this episode, we talk about rationalisation and how to change our approach to many of the false beliefs that come from it.

We also discussed pens and paper and a little more about managing ADHD.

Here's how you can learn more about Dr Dini's work.

How To Find Time.

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 16:06:08 +0900

Is it possible to expand time? Literally, no. But there is a way to find more time if you’re willing to use these techniques.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 345

Hello, and welcome to episode 345 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Common phrases you will hear are “I don’t have time” or “I wish I had more time”, and yet you already have all the time you need.

The problem is not time, the problem is often the amount of things we want to do in the time we have.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, life was simple. Find food and water, make babies and stay safe. Neglecting either of those three things would result in some serious issues—the biggest of which would be death.

Given that human evolution is slow, we are not best suited to deal with hundreds of emails and messages, requests from bosses, finding child care, commuting to and from work and all the other modern-day accessories we’ve chosen to add to our lives.

We cannot expand time, yet if we are unwilling to reduce what we want to do, we will feel overwhelmed and that more modern ailment, the fear of missing out, or FOMO.

However, there are a few techniques you can use that will give you enough time for the things you want to do if you are willing to try them.

But before I get to how, allow me to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Giles. Giles asks, Hi Carl, I’ve done your “perfect week” exercise and realise that my problem is I want to do too much. There isn’t enough time in the day. Do you have any tips on fitting in hobbies and still get enough sleep?

Hi Giles, thank you for your question.

The good thing is you’ve discovered that no matter what you want to do or feel you must do, you will always be limited by the amount of time available.

And, now that you’ve done the Perfect Week calendar exercise, you can see what you have left after taking care of your work and family obligations.

One of the first realisations about finding time was when I learned of Ian Fleming’s writing routine.

Ian Fleming wrote a new book each year from 1952 to his death in 1964. He never missed a year, even in the year he had his first heart attack in 1961.

In the early years, Fleming worked For The Sunday Times as their foreign editor, yet he negotiated a two-month vacation each January and February. During those two months, he would fly off to his Jamaican home, Goldeneye and almost from the first day, would begin writing the next book from 9:30 to 12:30.

After lunch, he would nap, and then the day’s socialising would begin.

Around 4 pm, he would go back to his writing desk for an hour to review what he had written that morning, and that would be it.

Four hours a day for six weeks. That produced the first draft of his next book.

For the rest of the year, he worked his regular job in London. Dealt with any rewrites and began marketing the book that was being published that year.

If you were to analyse how Ian Fleming managed his time, he wasn’t looking at the day-to-day. He looked at the year as a whole.

He knew he needed six weeks to write a new novel each year, so he made sure those six weeks were blocked out in his diary before the new year began.

That’s just six weeks out of fifty-two.

This is similar to blocking time out for your core work. If you know you need ten hours a week to do your core work, hoping you will find the time is not a sustainable strategy. You won’t, so it will be more a case of hoping you will find the time.

Those ten hours need to be locked in each week.

Ian Fleming would never have written fourteen James Bond novels if he had “hoped” to find the time to do so. He had to find the time and then protect it.

You have 168 hours a week and twenty-four each day. Squeezing everything into those twenty-four hours will be tough—almost impossible. Yet, if you were to schedule for the week, where you have 168 hours, things become possible.

I see many people anxiously trying to find family time every day. It would be nice if you could do that, but you are dealing with other people and your 6 to 9 pm might not be convenient for them.

Instead, you could agree with your family that certain days or evenings are for family time. For instance, my wife and I ensure that Wednesday afternoons and Saturday evenings are protected for family time.

It’s lovely because while it is flexible, there’s no need for us to be trying to schedule time. It’s already protected.

This is all about expanding time. Looking at an individual day is tough; there are a lot of emergencies and unknowns that pop up. However, if you were to establish what you want time for each week (or month), block the time out so you know you have the time to do it, you will always have the flexibility to move things around if things change.

For example, this week, my wife had an exam to do on Wednesday afternoon, so we rescheduled our family day out to Thursday. All I needed to do was to move a few of my other commitments around so I could still get all my work done that week.

You can apply the same principles to your work commitments. If you require ten hours a week to get your core work done—the work you are employed to do, not the work you volunteer to do—you can pre-protect that time on your calendar.

Now, I know many people will object and say they cannot do this because they have to attend meetings.

That’s fine. Let me ask you a question. What will do more to get the project completed? Having a meeting about the project or working on the project?

If the project objectives have been communicated clearly and roles defined, meetings should not be needed.

One of the best ways to regain time is to become less accessible. Most people’s time management problems start by being too accessible. Of course, this will depend on the type of work you do. A salesperson, for instance, should be accessible to their customers. But perhaps not necessarily be as accessible to their admin departments or even their sales manager. If you’re producing the results, I can promise you your sales manager will leave you alone.

When I first began teaching time management and productivity, I was available on all social media channels. I was on Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and email. Just to stay on top of all those channels was taking me three hours a day. I don’t have three hours a day to manage all those channels.

So, now I push everyone towards email. I have a process for dealing with email. Over the years, I have refined it to a point where I can handle over a hundred emails in less than an hour.

And the final point to make here, Giles, is you don’t have to do everything now.

Imagine If there’s a period each year when things go a little quiet at work. Perhaps in the summer, it’s quieter than at other times of the year. Maybe July and August is a good time for you to do some of the bigger projects. Then, when you enter the busy times of the year, you can work on the smaller projects.

One way you can do this is to use a tool such as Todoist, Asana, or Trello that allows you to create boards. You can then create four columns and spread out the activities you want to do.

For example, in quarter 1, I focus on my biggest projects of the year; I like to kick off the year with a bang. Q2 is focused more on processes and making them more effective and efficient.

Seeing everything I want to accomplish over the year organised in quarters stops me from becoming anxious about all the things I want to do.

This also gives you a plan for the year, which in turn helps you to be more focused.

Again, you can be flexible here. Feel free to move projects around the year so you are working on the right projects at the right time.

Time can be your friend or enemy. If you don’t harness it, it will be your enemy. If you take control of it, you will find you do have sufficient time for the things you want to do. Perhaps not this week or next, but when you look at things over a quarter or a year, many things become possible.

I know some of you would like to build an exercise programme into your life. Yet the thought of joining a gym, or yoga class puts you off because you have go to the gym, spend an hour exercising, then shower. After all that it will have eaten up two hours of your time.

You don’t have to do all that—certainly not initially. You could do some bodyweight exercises at home or go out for a walk. That won’t take up much of your time. I do twenty minutes every day at home.

As your fitness improves, then you may wish to add a few gym sessions. But that’s not a requirement of being fit and healthy.

I hope that has helped Giles. Thank you for your question, and thank you to you, too. It just remains for me to wish you a very very productive week.

How To Clear Your Backlogs.

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 13:14:41 +0900

Backlogs… A rather bigger part of life that we probably wish wasn’t. Did you know that there are three types of backlog, two of which you don’t really need to worry too much about? Let me explain.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 344

Hello, and welcome to episode 344 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Let’s be honest: somewhere in our carefully organised lives, backlogs will build. It could be email, the ever-increasing list of house repairs, or the daily admin life generates.

With everything going on in our lives, it would be easy to believe that finding the time to stop these backlogs from growing is impossible.

Yet, when you understand the three types of backlogs, you can develop a process that stops the backlog from growing.

The three types are the growing backlog, the stalled backlog and the shrinking one.

You don’t need to worry about the shrinking backlog. It’s doing what you want it to do—shrinking. That could be getting your receipts together in preparation for doing your taxes. You’re gathering and sorting them, so the backlog is shrinking. This generally happens when the tax submission season is almost upon us.

The stalled backlog is also a little less urgent. It’s not growing, but you need to watch it carefully because this kind of backlog can start snowballing—house or car repairs, for example, often do this.

The most dangerous backlog is the growing one. This often happens with email and admin tasks and can occur when you try to expand your business too fast without adding resources.

Before we go any further, let me first hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Janice. Janice asks, hi Carl, I’m trying to get my life organised but don’t have time because I have so many things to do. My email’s a mess, and every weekend, I spend all day cleaning up my home. How do you get on top of things when you are far behind?

Hi Janine, thank you for sending in your question.

This is a tough one. It can feel like we are stuck between wanting to get ourselves organised and realising that we have such a big backlog of stuff to do that it would take several months to break even—so to speak.

The strategy here is to first determine what kind of backlog you’re dealing with. Is it growing, stalled, or shrinking?

If it’s shrinking, keep doing what you are already doing. It’s shrinking, so it’s doing what you want it to do. Don’t stop.

The one that needs immediate attention is the growing one.

Imagine that you have over a few thousand emails in your inbox. It’s making finding important emails slow and cumbersome, and you want to get it cleared.

The challenge is that more emails appear every day, and that number is not fixed. Some days, you may receive 150+ new emails, while other days, perhaps it’s eighty. Either way, until you can achieve a net gain—i.e., processing and clearing more emails than come in—the backlog will continue to grow.

With email, I would first clear out the older emails. There will be a point where you’ve ignored an email for so long that it would be embarrassing to respond to it now. Where is that point?

For me, that’s two weeks. It would be embarrassing for me to respond to any email that’s been sitting around for two weeks or more. You may be more tolerant than I am. You may be happy responding to emails older than a month or two. Where is your limit?

Once you know your limit, take any email older than your limit and move it to a new folder in your email program called “Old inbox”. This way, nothing has been lost, and you can go through that list when you have time. That list will no longer be growing. You’ve put a stop to it.

Now, to prevent the backlog from growing, you will need to clear whatever emails remain in your inbox first, so you start from zero.

Now, here’s where you will need to be cautious of FOMO—the fear of missing out. This can paralyse you because you are fearful that you might be deleting something important. Fear not. Always remember with email if you have been sent something there will be a copy of it somewhere.

If for whatever reason you do need something you’ve deleted, you can reach out to a colleague and get a copy.

One of disadvantages of digitalization is we no longer see things piling up. Back in the day when most of what came across our desks was paper, it was very easy to see backlogs growing. The pile was physical and you could see it. With digital, it’s very easy to go into Ostrich mode. (Although ostriches don’t really bury their heads in the sand)—this is the out of sight, out of mind theory.

When I was working in a law firm in the late 90s, the majority of communications were through letters. Each day I would get in the region of a hundred to hundred and fifty pieces of mail. That needed processing. The advantage was I could see it all in my physical inbox and my goal was the clear that by the end of the day.

With email, the only way to see it is to open my inbox. That makes it easy to ignore it—which surprise surprise creates backlogs.

Admin is another area where backlogs can grow. Like communications, admin will grow each day if you are not dealing with it consistently.

This can be keeping your receipts organised, maintaining your company’s CRM system or, in the medical profession, keeping patient notes up-to-date.

If you are not protecting time for these each day, backlogs will grow.

If you’ve watched the brilliant film, Apollo 13, or read about that incredible story, one thing that will strike you is the astronauts followed checklists and routines to ensure everything was working as it should be.

The cause of the catastrophic explosion on board Apollo 13 was a simple routine task of stirring the oxygen tasks.

Astronauts are highly intelligent people. Yet, they know they cannot rely on remembering to do important routine tasks. They use checklists.

The same goes for pilots, surgeons and the military.

Each have checklists for daily mundane tasks that if not done will result in backlogs or something much worse.

You too can do something similar. Think of a shift at work as having a few key parts to it. Meetings, focused work and then routine work. Your routine work will likely be responding to actionable emails and messages, updating any internal customer management systems and your own admin.

This means estimating how much time you need for each of these activities.

The good thing here is you already have the data. How long, on average does it take you to update your company’s internal client relationship management system? How much time do you need to stay on top of your communications?

You can only work with averages here, but averages are enough. Some days you will get more than your average, yet other days you will get less.

If you’ve never measured how long it takes you, give yourself a week to track how much time you need in these areas. Again, you can only work with averages but that will give you an indication of how much time to protect each day for getting your work done.

One area I find people resisting this change is work they perceive as being more important. Meetings for example, seem to have a disproportionate level of importance. Sure, if you have a meeting with an important client, that will likely be more important than staying on top of your admin. But what about all those internal meetings? Are they really important or are you just showing up to show your face?

I cannot imagine a pilot or surgeon skipping their pre-flight or pre-operation checklist because they have an internal meeting. That would be a firing offense. So why do you do it?

We all will be different here, but I find if I spend an hour a day on my communications and thirty minutes on admin, I will, on the whole, end the week with no backlogs—certainly nothing overwhelming. That’s just ninety minutes a day. Ninety minutes that prevents stress, anxiety and missing something important.

Now, there will be some days when that will not be possible. Days when I am travelling, for instance, often mean it’s difficult to sit down and deal with my communications and admin. However, it’s worth working on the principle that one is greater than zero, so spending twenty minutes on communications and perhaps ten minutes on admin helps to keep things from spiralling out of control.

Yet, perhaps the most important thing is to identify where backlogs occur in your life. That would be the first step.

One area I never thought of was household chores. It’s easy to ignore that pile of washing in the corner of the bathroom until you find you have no clean underwear. Then it becomes an issue.

Now, on Tuesday’s and Saturdays, I do the laundry. It’s only fifteen minutes, but ensures I have a supply of clean clothes at all times. Plus, I can do it in between sessions of work. It gets me away from the screen and is far better for my eyes.

And I hate coming into the office and not having a clean coffee mug. Now, before I leave the office for the day, I will ensure the cups and tea pot are washed and ready for the next day. That’s less than five minutes a day.

One tip on dealing with the stalled backlog. Because it’s stalled you don’t have the same sense of urgency. Yet, it still needs to be dealt with. What you may find works is to identify it when you do your weekly planning and allocate a little extra time the following week to deal with it.

For example, if you have a pile of documents that need to be processed from last month, give yourself thirty minutes or so around you lunch time or mid-afternoon to work on it. Depending on how big it is, you will find that within a week or two that backlog has gone.

I hope that has helped Janine.Thank you for your question.

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

How To Keep Things Simple.

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 12:40:47 +0900

What can you do to simplify your productivity system to keep you focused on what’s important each day? That’s what we’re looking at this week.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 343

Hello, and welcome to episode 343 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Oh dear, I seem to have opened up a storm with some people with one of my recent YouTube videos on managing a task manager.

That also resulted in a few questions about keeping a system simple.

The question is, what is a time management and productivity system meant to do for you?

The answer is easy—to inform you of what needs to be done and ensure you are prepared and in the right place at the right time.

When you strip productivity systems down to their basics, as long as your calendar is accurate and tells you where you need to be and when, and you have a way to see what tasks you should be working on today, you have a system that works.

Yet, it can be tempting to want more. A way to organise tasks by your energy levels or to know how many days are left until the deadline is reached, for example.

The problem here is that you have no idea what your energy levels will be, and deadlines change… A lot… and for the most part, they are arbitrarily added, which means you know they are not real deadlines—ah, more fiddling.

While all these extras are nice, there is a danger of becoming dependent on them. That’s when it becomes a slippery slope. They pull you into fiddling with your tools, which prevents you from doing the work you need to do.

Which ultimately means you don’t have time for the things you want time for.

So, this week, a very simple question and for that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Martha. Martha asks, Hi Carl, how would you make productivity simpler?

Hi Martha, thank you for your question.

The first place I would start is to clean up and organise my calendar. It’s your calendar you refer to when you need to know where to be and what you are committed to doing.

This involves removing conflicts. Conflicts occur when your calendar shows two meetings at the same time or your next meeting begins before a previous meeting ends.

You cannot be in two places at once, so pick one. If you have a meeting start before you are able to get there, inform the meeting organiser so they can either accept your late arrival or move the meeting to a more convenient time.

The sooner you do this, the better it is for everyone concerned.

I use a scheduling service for my coaching client appointments. That service will not allow any conflicts to occur and automatically puts in a ten-minute buffer between meetings.

That’s always a good practice to follow. Make sure you have buffer time between meetings. Meetings occasionally overrun, and you need to reset yourself before the next meeting.

The next step is hard for many people. Throughout our working lives we’ve become conditioned to be available at all times for our customers and bosses. And while you should not ignore these people, you are employed to do a specific job.

I know it’s become common for companies to create job titles and job descriptions in the vaguest possible ways but underneath that vagueness, there will be a set of core work activities we are expected to do—what was once called “our duties”.

What are your duties? What do you need to ensure is done on time each day or week? That’s your core work. What does doing your core work look like at a task level?

For example, if you were employed as a construction worker (a vague job title) and were given the responsibility to build the perimeter wall. At a task level, laying bricks would be your core work.

Now within that, they may be other tasks such as ensuring you have a sufficient supply of bricks and cement and that you laid the guide lines to ensure the bricks were laid straight. What do those activities look like at a task level. What do you need to do (and how frequently) to order bricks and cement?

By looking at things from a task level, you put yourself in a better position to estimate how much time you need to complete your work.

For instance, if you find you need to place an order for bricks and cement every Monday morning and it takes you thirty minutes to do that task, you can create a thirty-minute block of time for admin every Monday morning.

If you must place the order before 10:00 AM, then you may decide to create a time block every Monday morning called “ordering” and use that time to order any other supplies you may need that week at that time.

What you need to order can then be held in a note you add to throughout the week so you have everything fully complete the task on Monday morning.

That then leaves you free to focus on building the wall.

Taking the time to establish your core work gives you a way to automate prioritising. Core work always takes priority. It’s what you will be evaluated on if you are employed, and it’s how you earn your living if you are self-employed.

Where your calendar comes in to all this is once you have established your core work, make sure you have time protected for doing that work each week. Core work rarely changes, after all, it’s what you are employed to do. The details will change—I don’t write the same blog post or make the same YouTube video each week—but the work doesn’t change unless your job changes.

And I use the word “protected” deliberately here. If you give up that time for another meeting, or something that’s fleetingly urgent, you will still need to catch up somewhere.

To give you a benchmark, through my coaching programme and when I analyze my own core work, in total most people require between fifteen and twenty-hours a week for their core work.

If you are working an average thirty-five hour week, that still leaves you with fifteen to twenty hours for meetings and voluntary work.

There will be other “duties”. Managing your communications and daily admin, for example. If you were to protect ninety-minutes a day for these activities, that still leaves you with seven to fourteen hours a week for all the unknowns.

This is why your calendar is the most powerful tool in your productivity toolbox.

What about task lists? These are still helpful. Apple probably called their to-do list the best way—Reminders. Ultimately, if you have established what your core work is, and protected sufficient time on your calendar to get that work done, your task list is there to remind you of the things you want to complete that day.

You tasks will fall into three categories. The must dos. These must be done at some point in the day. If you promised to call a customer back today, then you must do it. You promised.

Then there are the should do tasks. These are the tasks that while don’t necessarily need to be done today, getting them done will ease the pressure on the rest of the week. Most tasks fall into this category.

If you were to give yourself twenty must do tasks today, and you are already committed to five hours of meetings, you won’t be going to bed tonight. You “must do” those tasks. So when you choose your must dos make sure you limit them to two or three tops.

And finally there are the could do tasks. These are context based tasks. For instance if you have to visit a customer in the east of the city and that’s where the pet supermarket is, you could call in after you meeting to buy dog food for your dog. Buying the dog food would be a category three task—it’s context based.

Now all this only works if you are consistently doing your daily and weekly planning sessions. Failure to do these will mean you miss opportunities to do your category three tasks and you will be unclear when deadlines are due.

The weekly planning session gives you an opportunity to stop and look at the bigger picture of what’s going on in your life. Perhaps you’re attending your cousin’s wedding next month and you need to buy an outfit. If you’re not doing a weekly planning session it would be easy to miss that commitment and that will leave you rushing to buy something a few days before.

The weekly planning session gives you an opportunity to reset and ensure you are doing the right things at the right time.

The daily planning session is simply checking your calendar for your appointments and comparing that with your scheduled tasks for tomorrow. Do you have a doable day? If you have five or six hours of meetings or are scheduled to attend a training session, having twenty to thirty tasks on your task list for the day would mean you have an impossible day.

It’s better to learn that when you can do something about it. You could reduce your task list or if you need to do something important, you may need to reschedule a meeting. The person you’re meeting will appreciate that and it demonstrates how organised you are. Win win in my view.

And that’s it. Focus on making sure your calendar is up to date and accurate—that’s the driver of your day.

Your core work and appointments Come first, then tasks. If you need time to complete a particularly important or urgent task, make sure you protect the time on your calendar.

And to make sure it all works, do your daily and weekly planning sessions consistently. And on the daily planning, I don’t know how anyone could start their day not know what they want to accomplish that day. Knowing gives you energy and a determination to get it done.

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

The Most Powerful Productivity Tool Ever Invented. (and how to use it)

Sun, 20 Oct 2024 14:21:17 +0900

Did you know that your calendar is the only productivity tool that can protect you from burning out and overcommitting yourself and, if used correctly, help you bring balance into your life? No? Well, let me explain in this week’s podcast.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 342

Hello, and welcome to episode 342 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

In his book, The Paradox of Choice, Professor Barry Schwartz explains how too many choices can slow us down, create confusion and reduce sales.

You can see this in recent times with the explosion in new productivity apps. Thirty years ago, the only tools you had to manage your time and your work were diaries.

There was a lot of different styles to choose from, but the price point of these diaries helped to make choosing a diary reasonably simple.

Many companies gave away diaries as gifts to customers, some issued all their staff with one, while some people would go out an buy their own—I was one of those.

Yet because a diary can only show you the same thing—your twenty-four hours or seven days—people were much more focused on the doing part, and less on collecting and organising. And let’s be honest, if all you have is a diary, there not a lot of organising you can do.

While we now have digital calendars, task managers and notes apps, really only two things have changed. The speed at which we can collect information and the increase in the number of potential tools we can use to help our productivity.

Unfortunately, that increase in productivity tools has caused a lot of confusion. Many people confuse events—something that happens at a specific time on a given date—and tasks—something that can be done at any time.

When that happens, the only outcome is going to be overwhelm and a lot of rescheduling. Not a very productive way to go about your day.

This week’s question goes to the heart of this issue. So, without further a do, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this weeks’ question.

This week’s question comes from Jeff. Jeff asks, hi Carl, I’m very interested in your ideas around how to use a calendar versus using a to-do list. Could you explain your thinking around this?

Hi Jeff, I certainly can.

In Your Time, Your Way, I mentioned when I visit companies I notice that those people who began their careers in the early to mid 1990s are generally more organised than their younger colleagues.

Of course that’s not a scientific observation, but I wonder if that’s down to how large corporations in the 1990s often sent their staff on time management training courses. You don’t hear of those courses much today.

It’s also likely that those who began in the 1990s developed solid time management practices and have not changed their approach much over the years. I’m sure they’ve switched over the a digital calendar, but a lot still carry round note books.

I remember seeing an interview with Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, in around 2015. He was interviewed in his then office, and while there was an iMac on his desk and a MacBook Pro on a table behind him, there was also a notebook and pen. This was after the Apple Pencil had come out, which, in theory, meant he no longer needed to carry a notebook and pen.

Tim Cook will have begun his career in the mid to late 80s, and while at IBM, he will have been sent on a time management course—I do believe, IBM worked with the Franklin Quest organisation back then—which meant he will have gone through his career with a solid knowledge of time management principles.

So, that’s a little background. Now, how do we use our calendars today so we are operating at our most productive each day?

Well, first we need to know to difference between a task or to-do and an event.

A task or to-do is something you can do at anytime. For example, if you need to respond to a question from a client via email, you could do that at 9:15 am or 2:35 pm. There’s no fixed time. Similarly, if you want to finish off a report for your boss, you could do that at 10:00 am or 3:20 pm.

As long as you finish the report today—your plan, it doesn’t really matter when in the day you finish the report.

And event on the other hand is time specific. If you have a meeting with your boss at 10:00 am in your boss’s office. You’d better be there at 10:00 am.

If it takes you thirty-five minutes to get to your office, that means you will need to leave your home around 9:15 am to be sure you will be at your boss’s office by 10:00 am.

A wise person would block 9:15 am 10:00 am for travel time as well as the meeting time on their calendar.

That’s basics.

Now, given that your calendar is about specifics, and your task manager is about options, we can better manage all the stuff coming at us.

Your calendar can be used as a very powerful tool if you trust it. By trusting your calendar, I mean that you don’t ignore it. That you check it each morning to see what you are committed to and if you cannot do something, you will reschedule it.

One way to get the most out of your calendar is to use a method called time blocking. Time blocking does not mean you block every hour of your day, what it means is if you need two hours to work on that report, you would block the time out on your calendar.

You can become very tactical here too.

One way is to establish when you are at your most focused. Most people will either be early birds or night owls. According to author Daniel Pink, only around 3% of the population are at the most focused in the afternoons.

If say you are more focused in the morning, you can block two-hours out between 9:30 and 11:30 am for “focused work”.

This means, that each morning between 9:30 and 11:30, nobody can schedule appointments with you. Your calendar is blocked for doing your most important tasks.

Knowing that you have this time protected does a lot for your stress levels. You know you have two uninterrupted hours for getting on with your work.

And often, having two uninterrupted hours for doing critical work is all you need to stay on top of your projects.

Unless you are nomadic, it’s likely that being able to block the same time each day for focused work will be difficult. There will always be a need for flexibility. Yet, if you were only able to protect two-hours three times a week, you would still have six hours of uninterrupted time each week.

Imagine what you could do in those six hours.

I protect two hours each morning for writing on a Monday and Tuesday, and the four hours is enough for me to get all my writing done for the week. Occasionally, I will need to move things around, but for the most part, those times are fixed and that gives me the confidence that I have sufficient time each week to get my committed writing projects complete.

What all this means is your calendar is the hub for everything you do. It will tell you if you have enough time for doing your work, and where you need to be on any given day.

If you need to collect your daughter from School on Thursday at 4:00 pm, that will be on your calendar. If it takes you thirty minutes to get to your daughter’s school, you would block time from 3:30 pm to collect her.

This also means you would be unwise to schedule a meeting after 3:00 pm (meetings have a habit of overrunning). You would not be focused in the meeting, you’ll be clock watching and stressed.

Instead, you could use the thirty-minutes to respond to your communications, or even plan the next day.

You calendar should also be the first thing you look at when you plan your day. Whatever’s on your calendar is fixed. You’re committed to it.

If you see you have six or seven hours of meetings today, how much time will you have for your tasks? Not much.

If you begin the day, with six hours of meetings and a task list of thirty or more tasks, your day’s broken before it’s begun. You won’t be able to do everything on your task list and attend all those meetings.

Either you cancel meetings or your remove some of the tasks, leaving only the critical ones.

Today, for example, I have five hours of meetings and my to-do list has five tasks. It’s still going to be a busy day, but it’s doable… Just. I suspect already, that one or two of those tasks will be pushed off to another day.

I don’t care. The most important parts of my day are the confirmed appointments.

If I find myself with some critical tasks that must be done, then I will have to find time on my calendar to do them. I’m comfortable rescheduling meetings if necessary to complete an important piece of work. You should be too.

Your calendar is never going to lie to you. It only shows the 24 hours you get each day. How you use those hours is largely up to you. If you open up your calendar to everyone, there’s no point in complaining you don’t have time. You do have time. By allowing other people to schedule meetings with you without first consulting you, you are allowing g them to steal your time.

If you need time for exercise, to be at your son’s school concert or to finish any important piece of work, it’s on you to protect that time on your calendar.

Your task manager and notes app will not help you here. You can throw a hundred tasks into your task manager and date them for tomorrow And tomorrow you will have a hundred tasks to complete.

You task manager will never tell you that you don’t have time to do all those tasks. Only you calendar will do that.

So there you go, Jeff. That’s how to use a calendar. It’s your connection with the real world. It never lies to you and it’s a tool you need to be in control of.

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

What Do You Want And How To Prioritise It.

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 14:24:03 +0900

Is there a gulf between what you want and where you are? That’s what we are looking at today.

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Script | 341

Hello, and welcome to episode 341 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Many time management and pro ductivity problems result from a disconnect between one’s goals and what one is prepared to sacrifice to achieve them.

If you want to spend more time with your family yet are not prepared to say no to working beyond your regular working hours, there is a disconnect.

If you want to lose twenty pounds yet are not willing to cut back on sugary treats and exercise a little, there is a disconnect.

And, if you want to be more productive yet are unwilling to protect time on your calendar for doing the work you want to productively do, there is a disconnect.

It is sad to watch people desperately scramble for any excuse for not doing the things they say they want to do. It’s easy to find excuses, but much harder to be honest with yourself and accept that whatever you say is important to you is not important at all.

As the saying goes, “If it’s important enough, you’ll find the time. If it’s not, you’ll find an excuse”.

Worthwhile goals take time. Often, you will need to learn new skills, gain experience and build endurance. There will be setbacks and sacrifices to be made. And, of course, time to be found.

That’s all part of what makes achieving goals exciting. If it were easy to achieve your goals, you would feel empty and unfulfilled and likely not bother trying to improve yourself.

It’s an interesting topic, so let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Suzie. Suzie asks, Hi Carl, I struggle to find the time to do everything I want to do. I’ve done your Perfect Week exercise but never seem to be able to fit everything into my week. My Perfect week looks great; my real week is a mess. Is there anything else I can do to fit more into my week?

Hi Suzie,

Thank you for your question.

This is something I come across a lot in my coaching programme. An ambitious person discovers there are not enough hours in the day to do everything they want to do.

Often, it’s someone who works a full-time job from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, who wants to exercise for an hour every day and start their own side business in the evening.

Now, all of that is possible, but it won’t be if you also want to spend time with your family, go out every weekend with your friends and watch episodes of your favourite TV show each evening.

As David Allen says, you can do anything you want, but you cannot do everything.

One of the first things you can do is to begin with the basics. How much time do you need to sleep and eat? Typically, people require between six and eight hours of sleep each day.

If you sacrifice sleeping time, what’s going to happen? You’ll first become tired and easily distracted; if you continue not getting enough sleep, you will become sick. How will that help you do the things you want to do?

So, get the basics right first. For any human to operate at their optimum level, they need the right amount of sleep, healthy food and some exercise each day.

Lack of sleep, poor-quality food, and sitting around all day will destroy your energy levels, mess with your emotions, and result in you not getting very much done. Get those three things right first.

The next step is to look at your calendar. Where can you protect time for doing what is most important to you? This will depend on what it is you want to do.

For instance, if you want to start building your own business, you may only be able to do this in the evenings after work. Perhaps, if you are more of a morning person, the only time available might be early in the morning.

Author John Grisham used to write his books before going to work in the morning. He’d wake up at 4:30 and write for two hours before getting ready for work.

However, it comes down to how much you are willing to sacrifice to pursue your goals. If waking up at 4:30 AM is not something you are willing to do to work on your business dream, that’s fine. Nobody will judge you. That’s simply a choice you have made.

There’s very little I would wake up at 4:30 AM for.

This isn’t just about our dreams and goals. Perhaps you want to be a great parent—who doesn’t? What does being a great parent look like?

Maybe you decide to have a family meal every evening at 7:00 pm, where you talk with your kids about their day and what they learned is important. Doing this is not impossible.

Yet, if you also value your career and rarely make it home before 7:00 PM, what are you elevating above being a great parent?

These are hard truths we are often afraid to address. Yet, if you want to live the life you want, you need to face them. What is more important, your relationship with your children or your career?

Again, there’s no judgment here, and the choices you make are entirely yours to make. But some choices need to be made to have that feeling of fulfilment.

The work vs family dilemma has always been fascinating to me.

Often, when you look deeply at it, it’s not really about the work itself; it’s the fear of being unpopular at work. Saying no to colleagues asking for help with their work so you can finish a project you’re working on risks being unpopular.

We worry about what our colleagues will think of us if we refuse to help them with their work. So we say yes to helping them, which means we need more time to finish our work.

And because time is fixed, that means the extra time we need to finish our work must come from the time we would ordinarily spend with our family. And after all, our family will understand, won’t they? Won’t they?

Another one is the importance of taking care of your health today to live an active and healthy retirement. When we’re in our thirties and forties, most people don’t worry about this at all. We prioritise our careers and social life above our long-term health.

Yet, if you were to visit a doctor and they told you that if you don’t change your diet and get some exercise, you will be dead in six months, the chances are you will make significant changes. Suddenly, your career and social life become less important than your health.

If you were to think about it for a few minutes, getting a little exercise and being more mindful about your diet is not difficult. It’s a choice you can make today.

All of this is why spending some time looking at your areas of focus and deciding what is important to you as a person is critical. Without knowing what is important to you, you will drift from one thing to the next.

This means defining what family and relationships mean to you. How does that fit with your career goals, finances, lifestyle, life experiences, and purpose?

These are important questions, and if you were to spend time defining what they mean to you, knowing where to spend your time will naturally follow.

What are you willing to sacrifice to live life on your terms?

Is the risk of upsetting your boss by not responding to her text message immediately worth it to spend undisturbed time with your family? Or is serving your customer professionally worth risking being late to a meeting with your colleagues and becoming unpopular?

When you know what your areas of focus mean to you, these choices are easy to make. You, in effect, make the decisions before they need to be made.

The upside to this is you gain respect. Not just respect for you and your values but also for your time.

The real danger is wanting more than you are willing to sacrifice for.

Building a business takes a lot of time and effort - are you willing to sacrifice time with your friends and family to build that business?

To stay organized and on top of your work, you have to say no to many people. Are you willing to say no to new things to keep up with the work you are paid to do?

To spend more time with your family, you need to reduce your work time. Is that a sacrifice you are willing to make?

Being more productive is never about doing more. It’s about knowing what is important to you and spending the appropriate time needed there. It means you must be comfortable saying no and not worrying about being unpopular or occasionally upsetting people.

After all, “you can’t please all of the people all of the time. You can only please some of the people some of the time.”

So, Suzie, before you go back to your “perfect week” calendar, spend some time with your areas of focus and prioritise what is important to you right now. Define what each of those areas means to you.

Once you have done that, return to your perfect week calendar and ensure you have enough time for the things you most value in your life.

I promise you that if you do that, you will feel more fulfilled, more focused, and much more productive.

I hope that has helped. Thank you so much for sending in your question and thank you to you too for listening.

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

The Importance of Keeping Things Organised

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 11:27:39 +0900

One of the biggest drains on your time (and productivity) is a disorganized workspace. This week, I’m sharing some ideas for getting organised so you can find what you need when you need it.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 340

Hello, and welcome to episode 340 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

I remember watching videos by David Allen—author of Getting Things Done—where he explains the importance of having an organised workspace.

These videos were recorded before the digital takeover, yet the principles remain the same whether we deal with paper or digital documents.

If your stuff is all over the place, you will waste a lot of time trying to find what you need, and it’s surprising how much time you lose.

This week’s question caught my attention, as getting and keeping your workspace organised is an overlooked part of the modern productivity movement. It won’t matter how clever your digital tools are if you don’t know where everything is or how to organise your notes so you can find what you need when you need it in seconds. You’ll still waste much time doing stuff you shouldn’t need to do.

As I researched this, I could only find advice on keeping desks and physical files, notes, and documents organised. There is little advice on keeping a digital workspace clean and organised. Well, that is apart from some older articles about how an untidy computer desktop slows down your computer and makes finding anything slow and cumbersome.

Now before I go further, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Alice. Alice asks, Hi Carl, How do you keep all your files, notes and other digital things organised? I’m really struggling here and would love some advice.

Hi Alice, thank you for your question.

One of the first things you will need to do is allocate a single place for your digital documents. Today, most people are comfortable storing all their personal files in a cloud storage system, such as Google Docs, Microsoft OneDrive, or Apple’s iCloud.

If you are concerned about security, an external hard drive also works.

Now, just as before the 2000s, you will likely have two places: one for work and one for your personal stuff. Your company will probably dictate your work storage system.

The important thing about storing documents and files you may need is accessibility—i.e., how fast you can access the files.

In the past, if we wanted a file for a client named Rogers, we would go to the filing cabinet, locate the letter R, and find the file for Rogers there. If it wasn’t there, one of our colleagues probably had it. (And how frustrating was that)

Today, all you need to do is open iCloud, One Drive or Google Drive and type in the name of the client you are looking for. You will then be presented with a list of all the documents related to that client.

And perhaps you may already be seeing a problem.

In the past, everything was kept together in a single file folder; today, client notes can be found everywhere. We have CRM systems (Customer Relationship Management software) that track communications with customers and clients. However, these are only as good as those who enter the data.

We receive phone calls, emails, perhaps text messages, and all the documentation generated by orders, invoices, and quotes. If the people entering the data are not timely and perfect, time can be wasted just looking for all that stuff.

Those CRM systems may track documents related to that client, which makes things a little easier. But do you trust them?

So, how can you keep your workspace organised and in order?

First, choose your tools. Your calendar and email will likely already be selected for you in your professional environment. Fortunately, you should have freedom over your task manager and notes app.

Rule number one. Use only one.

By this, I mean one task manager, one notes app and one calendar.

Now, it is okay to use a separate calendar for your work events; after all, you may only be able to access your work calendar through selected devices. I would always advise you to try to connect your work calendar to your personal one where possible.

By this, I mean that if you use a Google or Apple calendar for your personal life, you can subscribe to your work calendar. Not all companies allow this, but I’ve found that most do.

This way, you have all your events viewable in one place. (Wasn’t life easier when we all carried our own diaries? No interference from outsiders)

Your to-do list and notes, however, are entirely within your realm. Avoid the temptation of using your work’s Microsoft To-Do or Trello. You want to have your complete life together, not scattered everywhere.

You may need to call a client early in the morning, and if all the details are separated on your work’s system, that call could easily be missed. Similarly, you may need to contact your bank. If that task is on a personal system, unless you look at that system in your lunch break, you’re going to miss it.

Now here’s a quick tip. Use a daily note.

A daily note is a note you create each day to capture meeting notes, ideas, things to look up, and other useful bits of information. Each note’s title is today’s date.

As you create a new note each day, you have a reference—the date. If you number each item you add to the daily note, you now have a transferable reference to link to tasks and calendar events.

For example, imagine I captured an idea for a YouTube video, added it to my daily note, and assigned it the number 1.

That means the reference number for that idea is today’s date plus 1. I can use that reference for any task or project from that idea. You can go one step further by adding a link to the note for your task, so all you need to do is click the link and boom, you are right where you need to be.

I would also advise you to keep your digital notes separate from work. I once had a client who was a university professor. She used her university’s OneNote to organise all her research notes.

She then left that university, and within two or three hours of leaving, the system’s organiser deleted all her notes. Seven years of research gone in seconds.

Of course, you should keep confidential information off your personal devices, but a large part of what we keep in notes is not confidential and is usually meeting notes, ideas, and possible solutions to difficult problems.

Once you have your tools and storage places sorted, it comes down to making sure what you need when you need it is quickly accessible.

To do that, learn how to search your computer. On Apple devices, this means learning to use Spotlight. It’s a powerful tool that means I can find coaching client feedback simply by typing their name into the search box. I can also find digital copies of my passport, car insurance, residency permits and my address in Korean (I find it’s faster to copy/paste than to type in Korean)

Everything I need frequently is instantly to hand.

And that’s another reference to the pre-2000s. An optimised workspace meant that you had the files you were working on and anything else you needed quick access to within arms reach of your desk.

Anything you didn’t need was stored in filing cabinets a few steps away from you.

There’s the famous picture of Rose-Mary Woods, President Nixon’s secretary, demonstrating how she accidentally erased 18 minutes of the tape recordings during the Watergate investigation. If you Google the picture, you can see that everything a secretary would need was on her desk or next to it (or rather coincidently, within arms reach)

For Windows computers, look up Universal Search. That will explain how you can search for everything on your computer from a single place.

The final part of the puzzle is file naming.

For years, I’ve used a file name system that includes the date, the file type, and the name. For example, if I had a client named Bill Tanner and wrote a proposal for him, the proposal title would be 2024-09-25-proposal-Bill Tanner.

If I need to amend the proposal, I would change the date. This way, when I search Bill Tanner, I will see all the proposals I have written grouped together.

I’ve found that adding version numbers to the title doesn’t work either, and it’s not as easy to get to the latest document. Searching by date puts the very latest version on top every time.

And I do still recommend keeping your desktop clean. A cluttered desktop causes distraction. A clean desktop helps maintain focus.

Now, before I finish, I should mention your phone. This can be a complete mess. I was in the bank the other day, and some twenty-somethings were opening an account. All they had with them was their phones, yet when the bank clerk asked them for different documents, they took ages to find the information on their phones.

Rather amusingly, an elderly gentleman, armed with a plastic wallet of essential documents, completed his business at the bank far faster than those twenty-somethings.

When the clerk asked him for a document, he pulled it out and handed it over instantly. It was a real eye-opener for me. Perhaps paper is faster than digital… Sometimes.

What I’ve learned is to keep all your frequently used apps on your Home Screen. Learn how to use widgets—they can be a real-time saver when you need them.

Oh, and one more: when flying, use your airline’s app. Place it on your Home Screen. It’s incredible how often you need that at the airport or in a taxi when they ask you which terminal you need to go to.

And there you go, Alice. I hope that has helped.

It comes down to doing a little cleaning up and getting your important files and apps where you need them. Remember, it’s all about accessibility.

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

How To Prioritize Your Work (And Estimate Task Time)

Sun, 22 Sep 2024 13:33:00 +0900

Podcast 339

How do you prioritise your tasks and estimate how long something will take to do? That’s what we’re looking at this week.

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Script | 339

Hello, and welcome to episode 339 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

This week, I have two common questions to answer: The first is how do I prioritise when everything’s urgent, and the second is how do you know how long a task will take?

Your areas of focus and core work determine one, and the other is impossible.

Before I answer the question, I’d like to let you know that I am now on Substack. There will be a link in the show notes for you to subscribe.

I have a crazy plan to write on Substack every week and, over a year, complete a book. The book will tackle the time management and productivity problems we face today and use subscriber comments and questions to enhance the book. If it’s any good at the end of the year, I will publish the book.

So, please help and become a subscriber. You can become part of something very special. Okay, on with the episode.

Let me deal with the impossible issue first. How do you determine how long a task will take?

The problem here is you are human and not a machine. This means you are affected by how much sleep you got last night, your mood, and whether you are excited by the task or not.

You will also be affected by things like jet lag, whether a close family member is sick or if you had a fight with your spouse or partner that morning.

This is why I don’t recommend task-based productivity systems. They are not sustainable. Sure, some days you can do all your tasks and have oodles of energy left in the evening. On most days, you’ll struggle to do two or three of them.

I usually write my blog posts on a Monday morning. I’ve been doing this for eight years. I write roughly the same length each time—around a thousand words. Yet, some days, I can write the first draft in forty-five minutes; others, it takes me ninety minutes to write 750 words.

I cannot predict what type of day I will have. Yet, what I do know is that if I sit down and start, I’m going to get something done. And that’s good enough.

This means I know I have two hours to write, and something will get done as long as I write in those two hours. I want to finish everything, but if I can’t, as long as I’ve got something written when I return to finish later, it will be much easier than if I had not started.

However, that said, sometimes time constraints can help. If you know you have a deadline on Friday, and you also know you still have a lot to do, putting yourself under a bit of pressure to get moving on the project can help tap into your energy reserves. The trouble is that this is not sustainable or productive in the long run.

Doing that means you will neglect other parts of your work. Emails will pile up, your admin will become backlogged, and you will neglect other things you should be doing, meaning you will need to tap into those reserves repeatedly.

And that becomes a vicious circle.

What works is to allocate time for your important work each day. Instead of focusing on how much you have to do, you focus on your available time.

Imagine you are in sales, and you have follow-ups to do each day. If, on average, you need an hour to do your follow-up, that would be the time you protect each day for doing your follow-ups. Some days, you will complete them in less than an hour; others, you won’t. But it doesn’t matter. As long as you do your follow-ups daily, you will always be on top or thereabouts each week.

And let’s be honest: When dealing with phone calls, nobody knows how long they will take. It’s just not something you can predict.

Now, on to the question of prioritising your day.

This comes back to knowing what is important to you and your core work—the work you are paid to do (not the work you volunteer to do).

All the classic books on time management start with you thinking about what you want before you dive headfirst into sorting out the mountain of work you think you must do.

You see if you do not know what is important to you, everything that seems remotely urgent will be important to you. And that is not true at all.

It could be argued that not knowing what is important is just plain laziness. You’re delegating an essential aspect of your life to everyone else because you cannot be bothered to decide. If you don’t determine what’s critical, then everything becomes critical. That’s the easy way out—although the consequences are never pleasant.

I remember when I was a trainee hotel manager. I did two years in night management. When I joined the night team, I inherited three night porters. One of them was aggressive and would speak his mind if he didn’t like something or felt it was a waste of time. One was a stickler for doing only what his job description said, and the third one was gentle and willing to do anything asked of him.

As their manager, guess who I got to do the little things that popped up randomly during the shift? The third one.

As a manager, I didn’t have time to argue with the two other night porters about whether something needed doing or was part of their job description. So, I dumped everything onto Martin. (Sorry, Martin)

If you don’t know what is important to you and what your core work is, you will be dumped on. And that is often the main cause of why you have far too much to do.

To overcome this at work, know what your core work is. Then, prioritise that work. For instance, if you are a photographer, you are paid to take photos. So, taking and processing those photos will be your most important work. Nothing should ever pull you away from doing that work.

Similarly, finding new clients will also be an essential part of your work if you are a freelance photographer. That may involve curating an Instagram account and perhaps some other social media.

Any activity or task involving those parts of your work should always take priority over everything else. Researching new lighting, redesigning your website or helping a family member find a good photographer (assuming you cannot do it yourself) are not your priorities.

What I find helps is to list your core work tasks—the tasks you need to do each day or week and then ensure you protect time in your calendar for doing that work.

Once it’s protected, nothing but an emergency will move it.

This work is your core work and, therefore, your priority. It’s where your income comes from and what you will be judged on for promotion. Screw this area up by doing low-value stuff for other people may make you liked and popular, but you will be swamped, stressed out and exhausted at the end of the day.

You need to set boundaries.

Setting boundaries does not mean you become unpleasant towards your colleagues. It means there’s a time and a place for work and a time and place for socialising. Don’t mix the two up.

Here’s an exercise you could do. List out your core work—the work you are paid to do. Then, calculate how long you need, on average, to do that work. As this is your core work you should have some data—it’s likely to be on your calendar.

If you don’t have the data, monitor it for a week or two. That will give you sufficient information to make the calculation.

Remember, you won’t necessarily be perfectly accurate. You’re human, after all. But all you need is an average.

Let me give you an example. I know if I protect twelve hours each week for doing my core work, I will be able to get it all done. This means if I were working a regular forty-hour week, I would still have twenty-eight hours available for meetings, dealing with emergencies and anything else unexpected. Surely, that’s enough time?

You, too, will likely find you don’t need much time for your core work. However, until you know what that work is and have calculated how much time, on average, you need to complete the work, you are flying blind. And your brain will tell you you don’t have enough time.

Externalise it, write it down, get it into your task manager and calendar and protect the time.

Over the last 100 years or so, many books have been written on time management and productivity. Professors, senior executives, and business titans have studied the subject relentlessly, and in almost all cases, they have come to the same conclusions.

To be on top of your work and live a balanced life, you must know what you want time for. If you don’t know that, you will quickly find yourself wasting that precious resource. (And, of course, building huge backlogs of stuff you’ve neglected)

So, there you go. First, you will never be able to accurately calculate how long a task will take. You are not a machine; you’re a living, breathing human being susceptible to emotions, low energy, and sickness. Stop trying. Instead, allocate time for your work, get as much done as possible within that time, then take a break and move on.

Getting started is the most critical thing. It’s better to do 25% of the task and only have 75% left. At least you’ve started and will know how to finish.

And secondly, be very clear about the work you are paid to do. That’s your prioritised work. The work you volunteer to do should never be prioritised over your core work.

I hope that helps.

Thank you for listening, and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.

How To Use The Eisenhower Matrix to Prioritise Your Life.

Sun, 15 Sep 2024 13:52:10 +0900

What is the Eisenhower Matrix and how can you use it to help you focus on the important things in life.

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Script | 338

Hello, and welcome to episode 338 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

You may have heard of the Eisenhower Matrix, or as Stephen Covey called it in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the Productivity Matrix. It’s a matrix of four squares divided up between Important and urgent (called quadrant 1), Important and not urgent (quadrant 2), urgent and not important (quadrant 3) and not urgent and not important (quadrant 4).

It’s one of those methods that gets a lot of attention after a book has been launched. Yet, this matrix was first introduced to us by President Eisenhower in the 1950s after President Eisenhower mentioned in an interview that "I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.

This “quote” was first spoken by Dr J Roscoe Miller, president of the North Western University at that time.

So, it’s questionable if Eisenhower ever applied this method to his work, but whether he did or he didn’t, it is an excellent framework to help you prioritise your work and help you to get focused on your important work and aspects of your life.

This week’s question is all about this matrix and how you can apply it to your life so you are not neglecting the important, but not urgent things that so many of us neglect because they are not screaming at us and because they need an element of discipline which so many people find difficult today.

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 Michele. Michele asks, hi Carl, I recently read your book and saw that you wrote about the Eisenhower Matrix. I’ve always been fascinated by this matrix but have never been able to use it in my daily life. How do you use it to get things done?

Hi Michele, thank you for your question.

This matrix is one of those things that once you’ve learned and begin to apply it to your daily life, you soon forget you are using it.

Let me explain. Much of what comes our way is “urgent”, or it is to the person asking us to do something. That could be your boss, a client, your spouse or partner or your kids. Whatever they want, they want it now, and only you can give it to them.

Then, there are quite a few things that are important but not urgent. These include taking care of your health, planning your week and day, sitting down for a family meal at least once a day, and self-development—whether that is through reading books, going to night school, or taking courses.

These are often neglected because the urgent and important drown them out.

Ironically, if you consistently take care of the important and not urgent things, you will spend less time dealing with the urgent and important. Yet, most people cannot get to these quadrant 2 tasks because the quadrant 1 tasks are swamping them.

It becomes a vicious circle.

The bottom part of the matrix—the not important things—is what you want to avoid. these are the urgent and not important and the not important and not urgent things. (What’s called quadrants 3 and 4).

The urgent and not important things (quadrant 3) are the deceptive things. These are unimportant emails dressed up to look important. Most emails and messages will come under this quadrant.

One of the things I’ve noticed when I begin working with a new client is the kind of tasks they have in their digital task manager. 80% of the tasks there are not important tasks. It’s these tasks that are drowning out the quadrant 1 and 2 tasks (the important ones).

I am starting an experiment to see if using a paper Franklin Planner for three months can still be done in 2024. One thing I’ve already noticed is because I have to write out the tasks I need to or want to do today, I am much more aware of the kind of tasks I am writing. My daily task list is much shorter than when I do this digitally.

As a consequence, tasks that are not important (urgent or otherwise) rarely get onto my list.

This paper-based task list has reversed the type of tasks on my list—now, 80% are important.

So, what kind of tasks fall into these different categories?

Let’s begin with the easiest one: Quadrant 4. These are the tasks that are not important and not urgent.

These tasks include watching TV, scrolling social media, reading political news, and anything else that triggers you in some way.

While checking social media or watching TV may be beneficial sometimes, these activities should be undertaken only after you have completed your important work for the day.

What about quadrant 3–the urgent and not important. What kind of tasks are these? Well, quite a few emails are. These could be something you want to buy, but you are not ready to do so yet. However, a last-minute offer might expire at midnight (urgency), so you feel you have to act.

No, you don’t.

I don’t need to buy my winter sweaters in September—the temperature is 28 degrees outside (around 85 degrees Fahrenheit), and it’s still quite humid; I can wait until the end of October. Yet the email is urging me to act now. It’s not important.

You’ll also find many requests from colleagues that fall into this category. “I need it now!” “I have to have it immediately!” only for you to find a few minutes later that it’s unimportant and they don’t need it now.

Busy work also falls into this quadrant. When I was teaching at a university, the admin department was always sending reminders to teachers to send the attendance record for that day’s class. It was framed as urgent, yet in the grand scheme of things, attendance records were not important to me as a teacher.

As a teacher, ensuring my students learned was important. Not some box ticking exercise to keep the administration team happy.

I was never late in sending my attendance sheets, but I did find it annoying that almost immediately after the class finished, there was a message asking me to send the attendance sheet.

I soon got to ignoring those messages—they were sent out to all professors.

This is the bottom part of the matrix—the place you want to stay away from as much as possible. Likely, you will never be able to remain entirely out of it. After all, there’s a new season of Taskmaster starting this week, and your favourite sports team could be heading towards the finals, and every game is on TV.

(Although watching a favourite TV show or sports team could arguably be placed in the quadrant 2 area—after all, it’s a form of relaxation—well, perhaps not if you support the Leeds Rhinos rugby team)

Now, the top part of the matrix, the important area, is where you want to spend as much time as possible. You can think of this area as the proactive area.

The urgent and important quadrant—quadrant 1—includes your core work tasks, customer requests, and some requests from your boss and colleagues (the important project/process-driven requests).

These tasks are often deadline-driven—hence their importance.

Then there is quadrant 2—the important but not urgent quadrant. This is possibly the most important quadrant because, as I mentioned, the more time you spend here, the less time you will spend in the urgent areas.

Your areas of focus drive quadrant 2. It also includes planning, thinking and self-development.

For example, exercise, reading, weekly and daily planning are all quadrant 2 tasks. As is spending time with your family, learning and reading.

All healthy pursuits will come here.

The problem is that there’s no sense of urgency. These important tasks are often sacrificed for the important and urgent tasks of Quadrant 1. Spend too much time in Quadrant 1, and it will grow and grow.

If you pull yourself away and try to move towards your quadrant 2 area, your quadrant 1 area will shrink—a good thing.

So, how can you implement this matrix into your own life?

Identify what each quadrant looks like in your life. Where do the urgent and not important (Quadrant 3) tasks come from, and why? Ask the same question about Quadrant 1—urgent and important, why are they urgent?

What is the underlying reason these tasks become urgent?

You will likely find that you are not doing something from Quadrant 2. For example, not doing a weekly planning session will always cause things to become urgent because you never get a chance to see the overview of what you have going on.

That’s how deadlines creep up on you.

Not giving yourself ten minutes at the end of the day (or first thing in the morning if you are an early bird) to plan the day will leave you at the mercy of events (quadrants 1 and 3).

Creating an Eisenhower Matrix on paper and writing out the different activities you do in each category can help you prioritise. And that’s not just related to work. It’s a life-changing prioritisation exercise for your whole life.

You can see what you should be doing and what needs to change so you have more time for what you want to do in your life.

It will also show you what needs to be eliminated to find that time. Anything in the bottom half of the matrix should eliminated (although that may not be possible 100% of the time)

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

Three Absolute Principles of Time Management And Productivity.

Sun, 08 Sep 2024 12:10:02 +0900

What are the time-tested principles of better time management and productivity? That’s what I’m exploring in this week’s episode.

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Script | 337

Hello, and welcome to episode 337 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

If you have read books on time management and productivity, you may have picked up that there are a few basic principles that never seem to change.

Things like writing everything down, not relying on your head to remember things, planning your day and week, and writing out what is important to you.

These are solid principles that have remained unchanged for hundreds of years. The tools we use may have changed, but these principles have not and never will.

What is surprising are the attempts to reinvent time management. New apps and systems seem to come out every month claiming to be “game-changing”—I hate that phrase—or more ways to defy the laws of time and physics and somehow create more time in the day than is possible.

Hyrum Smith, the creator of the Franklin Planner, an icon of time management and productivity, always said that time management principles have not changed in over 6,000 years. What has changed is the speed at which we try to do things.

Technology hasn’t changed these time management principles; all technology has done is make doing things faster.

Today, I can send an email to the other side of the world, and it will arrive instantly. Two hundred years ago, I would have had to write a letter, go to the post office to purchase a stamp, and send it. It would arrive two or three months later.

Funnily enough, I read a book called The Man With The Golden Typewriter. It’s a book of letters Ian Fleming sent to his readers and publisher. He often began his letters with the words “Thank you for your letter of the 14th of February,” yet the date of his reply was in April.

Not only were things slower fifty years ago, people were more patient.

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

This week’s question comes from Lisa. Lisa asks, Hi Carl, I’ve noticed you’ve been talking about basic principles of productivity recently. Are there any principles you follow that have not changed?

Hi Lisa, thank you for your question.

The answer is yes, there are. Yet, it took me a long time to realise the importance of these principles.

The first one, which many people try to avoid, is establishing what is important to you. This is what I call doing the backend work.

You see, if you don’t know what is important to you, your days will be driven by the latest urgent thing. That’s likely to come from other people and not from you.

Stephen Covey wrote about this in his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, with his Time Management Matrix, also called the Eisenhower Matrix. This matrix is divided into Important and urgent, important and not urgent, urgent and not important, and not urgent and not important.

The goal of this matrix is to spend as much time as possible in the second quadrant—the important but not urgent. This area includes things like getting enough sleep, planning, exercising, and taking preventative action.

The more time you spend here, the less time you will spend in the urgent and important and urgent and not important areas.

Yet, unless you know what is important to you, the only thing driving your day will be the things that are important to others. That includes your company, your friends and family. They will be making demands on you, and as you have no barriers, their crises will become yours. You, in effect, become part of the problem instead of being part of the solution.

When you have your life together, you can offer calm, considered solutions to those you care about. You also know when to get involved and when to stay well away.

Yet, you can only do that when you know what is important to you.

Many authors and time management specialists refer to establishing what is important to you in different ways; Hyrum Smith calls this establishing your governing values, Stephen Covey calls it knowing your roles, and I call them your areas of focus.

These are just names for essentially the same thing. Get to know what is important to you as an individual. Then, write them down in a place where you can refer back to them regularly so you know that your days, weeks, and months are living according to the principles that are important to you.

It’s these that give you the power to say no to things that conflict with your values.

Without knowing what they are, you will say yes to many things you don’t enjoy or want to do.

The next principle is to plan your week and day. Again, this is another area so many people avoid. I remember hearing a statistic that less than 5% of Getting Things Done practitioners do any weekly review.

If you’ve read Getting Things Done by David Allen, you’ll know that he stresses the importance of the weekly review in almost every chapter.

People who don’t plan are often driven by the fear of what they might learn, such as a forgotten project deadline, an important meeting that needs a lot of preparation, or a lost opportunity.

Yet, these are the results of not planning. If you were to give yourself thirty minutes at the end of the week to plan the next week and five to ten minutes each evening to plan the next day, many of the things you fear will never happen. You will be alerted to the issues well before you need to act.

For me, consistently planning my week and day has been life-changing. This simple activity has ensured I am working on the right things, dealing with the most important things, and ending the week knowing that the right things were completed.

Prior to becoming consistent with my planning, I was all over the place. I spent far too much time on the unimportant and saying yes to many things I didn’t want to do. I was also procrastinating A LOT.

A huge benefit of planning is that you get to see data. In other words, you learn very quickly what is possible and what is not. When you begin planning the week, you will be overambitious and try to do too much. The more you plan, the more you learn what can be done.

No, you won’t be able to attend six hours of meetings, write a report, reply to 150 emails, go to the gym and spend quality time with your family.

When you know what is important, you will ensure you have time for it because you plan for it (can you see the connection?). You will start to say no to some meetings (and yes, you can say no by offering an alternative day and time for the meeting) and renegotiate report deadlines.

A third principle is to manage your time ruthlessly. By that, I mean being very strict about what goes on your calendar. Never, ever let anyone else schedule meetings or appointments for you.

Your calendar is the one tool you have that gives you control over your day. Allowing other people to control it essentially turns you into a puppet. No, never ever let that happen.

Now, before Google Calendar, Outlook and Apple Calendar, we carried our own diaries around with us. No one else could have control of it. If you were fortunate enough to have a secretary (now called an “executive assistant”), you would meet with her (secretaries were largely female in the 60s, 70s and 80s) each week and explain when you were and were not available.

Your secretary would then gate keep your calendar. The best secretaries were pretty much impossible to get past. They protected their boss’s time.

People knew that time was important and for anyone to do their work, they needed undisturbed time. Your calendar was respected.

A person’s diary was so important that the courts would accept it as evidence they were in a particular location. I doubt very much they would do that today.

A mistake is to say yes to a time commitment too quickly. This is how we get conflicts in our calendars. You cannot be in two places at the same time—that’s another law of physics—so you either say no and offer an alternative date, or you have to waste time renegotiating with someone later.

I am shocked at how often I see conflicts on people’s calendars. Clearing these up should be the first thing you do during your weekly planning.

Information you need to know about the day should go in the all-day section of your calendar, not in the timed area. Only committed timed events go in the time area of your calendar.

When your calendar truly reflects your commitments, you can then set about planning a realistic day. If you have six hours of meetings and thirty tasks to complete, you will know instantly that you have an impossible day, and you can either move some of your appointments or reduce your task list.

Ignoring it only diminishes the power of your calendar, leaving you again at the mercy of other people’s crises and issues.

This is about being strict about your time. Wake up and go to bed at the same time each day so you have solid bookends to your day. Ensure you protect time for your important work and your family and friends. And never let other people steal your time.

The final principle is the tool you use won’t make you more productive or better at time management. Tools come and go. In the 1980s, it was the Filofax. In the 90s, it was the Franklin Planner. Today is the latest fashionable app. It doesn’t matter. None of them will ever make you more productive.

What will make you more productive is knowing what is important to you. Having a plan for the day and week so you know what must be accomplished that day, and week. And being in complete control of your calendar.

Get those three things right, and you will feel less stressed, more in control of your life and have a sense of purpose each day. Isn’t that what we all want?

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

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

A Simple 3 Step Inbox Process To Make Clearing Your Tasks Fast.

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 11:48:45 +0900

This week, how to process your task manager’s inbox quickly and effectively so you can get focused on what needs to be done.

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Script | 336

Hello, and welcome to episode 336 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

One issue that pops up regularly in my coaching programme is an overwhelming inbox. There are too many unclear items left to fester and fill up space, with no clear pathway to dealing with whatever needs to be done.

Now, it’s true that you need to collect things. If you’re not collecting your commitments and ideas, you soon find yourself forgetting to do the important things you have committed to. However, collecting is just the first part of a three-part process. You also need to organise what you collect and then do the work.

There are no shortcuts around this. These are the three principles of task management. Collect whatever needs to be collected, organise what you collect and then do the work.

This is something I have learned the hard way. I’ve collected thousands of items over the years, and in my early days, before I had learned the basic principles, that meant my inbox filled up and just became an overwhelming mess. It was a place I never wanted to visit because it just reminded me of how unproductive and disorganised I was.

I know those basic principles now: I collect stuff, regularly organise what I collect, and then do the work.

Today’s podcast is about organising what you collected. I will tell you how to quickly clear your inbox, sort out the important from the unimportant, and, more importantly, get comfortable deleting stuff that is low in importance.

Oh, and before I forget, Friday this week—that’s the 6th of September— sees the opening session of my Ultimate Productivity Workshop.

This is your chance to learn the fundamental principles and put them into practice so you can become a master of time management and productivity.

There are just a few places left, so if you want to become better organised, more productive, and in control of your time, join the workshop today. Details for the event are in the show notes and on my website, Carl Pullein.com.

Okay, on with the show, which means it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Jeff. Jeff asks, “Hi Carl, I am really struggling with my inbox. I put a lot of stuff in there, from ideas to things my wife asks me to do and emails that need a response.

Each day, I feel I am collecting thirty or more things, and then it takes forever to clear the inbox. I hate doing it, so I don’t. And, of course, that just makes things worse. What can I do to make keeping my inbox manageable.

Hi Jeff,

Thank you for your question.

The good news is there are a few changes you can make that will help to reduce the overwhelm caused by an overloaded inbox.

Let’s first deal with the three questions to ask when you process your inbox. These three questions will clarify what you have and help you to determine if you really need to do them or not.

The first question is, “Do I need to do it?”

This is designed to clear tasks that have already been done or are no longer relevant because events have moved on.

You will often add a task like “Find out if Margo has all the documents she needs.” Later that day, Margo may ask you a question about the documents. You now know she has them. The task can be deleted or modified if the question requires you to do something.

Or you may have been asked by someone to do something only for them to tell you later that the task no longer needs to be done.

These can all be deleted.

Similarly, you may have added tasks to look up something or find out more about something, only to look at the task later and wonder what you were thinking. You are no longer interested in the idea. Again, delete these.

If the task still needs to be done, then move on to the next question, which is:

What do I need to do?

This question concerns properly defining the task. It’s not good to have a task that simply says, “Tony script.”

That might have meant something to you when you added it to your inbox, but if you do not need to do the task for a week or two, when the task comes back you’ll be unsure what needs to be done. Make it clear.

Rewrite the task as something like, “Send Tony the amended voice-over script.” This makes sense. If you are sending Tony many different scripts, you would add the name of the amended script to send so there is no confusion.

Another type of task to watch out for is the “follow-up” or “chase” task. These are often not tasks. They may be vehicles for completing a task. For example, if you asked Roger for a copy of the script to send to Tony, the task is not really to chase Roger.

The task is to get a copy of the script to send to Tony. Until you have that script in your procession the task is not complete. Adding another task to chase Roger duplicates the original task.

Instead, after asking Roger for the task, make a note that you asked Roger for it, add a date you asked, and then reschedule the task.

Every task in your task manager needs an action verb attached to it, such as call, write, read, review, design, sketch, reply, etc. If a task does not have an action verb, it has not been properly defined.

You will find that adding a verb helps you to estimate how long something will take.

For those tasks that are difficult to estimate the time it will take, you can use the “start, continue, finish” method.

I use this method for a lot of project tasks. For example, when I was writing Your Time Your Way, every Monday to Friday, I had a repeating task that said, “Continue writing book”. This meant I could decide how much time I had available to write the book and not worry about the task itself.

I knew I was never going to finish writing the book in one day, it was the kind of task that jut needed to done little by little. So, I allocated ninety-minutes a day, five days a week and repeated that for six months. That got the book done.

The third question is: When am I going to do it?

This is where most other time management and productivity systems go wrong. Establishing whether you need to do the task and defining what needs to be done is pretty universal in the productivity world. Yet, it doesn’t matter how well you define a task if you don’t have time to do it.

Once you commit yourself to a task, you need to know you have time to do it. That means asking, when are you going to do it?

How do you do that? Open up your calendar and your task manager and have them side by side. Some task managers can show you your calendar at the same time. Todoist, Tick Tick, and in a couple of weeks, Apple Reminders will do that for you.

What you are doing is looking to see where you have gaps in your schedule for doing the work.

Now, the task could be grouped with other similar tasks. Doing your expenses, for instance would be an admin task. Responding to an email would come under your communications.

But, some tasks may be too big and require a few hours to do. The question then becomes will you do in one go or split it up?

Your calendar will guide you. You will be able to see where you have time; if not, you can decide whether something else needs to be rescheduled for you to do the task by the date it’s due.

Now, when you start going through your inbox and asking these questions, you will be slow. Remember when you learned to ride a bicycle? You didn’t jump on the bike and go. There was a slow process of learning and building muscle memory.

The same will happen when processing your inbox. It will be slow at first as you’re building your mental muscle memory.

I’ve been asking these three questions for years. It takes me very little time now, yet it was a slow process when I first began. The only option you have is to stick with it. As time goes on, you will get faster and faster.

You will also pick up the patterns. The different requests you get will fall into similar groups, which helps you quickly decide what something is and how long it will take.

Be patient and follow the process.

And… Do not be afraid to delete stuff. If it’s important, it will come back.

If you are using the Time Sector System, you have a bit of an advantage. With the Time Sector System, the only tasks that matter are the ones you need to do this week. Anything else can be moved to your Next Week, This Month, Next Month or Long-term and on Hold folders. You can decide when you will do those tasks when you next do a weekly planning session.

So there you go, Jeff.

This is a process game. The more you follow the process, the faster you become. You also get comfortable deleting and delegating tasks. The goal is not to accumulate tasks; it’s the reverse. The goal is always to eliminate. The less you have to do this week, the more focused you will be and the more flexibility you have for dealing with the unknowns that will inevitably come in.

I hope that has helped answer your question. Thank you so much for sending it.

Don’t forget Friday is the start of September’s ULTIMATE PRODUCTIVITY WORKSHOP. You can register by going to my website. If you are already registered, I will be sending you the workbook in the next day or two.

Thank you for listening and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.

How To Start Writing A Journal

Sun, 25 Aug 2024 12:55:26 +0900

One of the most productive things you could do is to start writing a daily journal. In this week’s episode, I answer a question about how to get started journaling.

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Script | 335

Hello, and welcome to episode 335 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Possibly the most productive thing I have done over the last ten years is to write a journal. This habit has taught me many things. For one, it has taught me the value of consistency. The act of spending ten to fifteen minutes every morning before I start the day has given me something deliberate—I sit down and write—which has led to me building out a solid set of morning routines that start my day in a way that’s healthy (mentally) and productive.

It is productive because it gives me a few minutes to think about the day ahead and review my objective tasks—the things I want to or must complete that day. This is far better than rolling out of bed at the last minute, rushing around to get dressed and out the door only to realise I left something important at home.

Writing a journal every day has also given me a space to analyse where I am doing well and where there is room for improvement. It allows me to write how I am feeling and what I am worrying about and consider future directions.

It’s almost as if I have a close friend I can confess all to.

Now, if you search YouTube for journaling, you will find thousands of videos advising how to start. Yet, it can be difficult. What do you write about? Do you use a digital tool like Day One or Apple’s Journaling app, or an old-fashioned paper notebook?

There’s a lot of questions.

This week, I received a question about starting and what I suggest you use. So, I decided to share all the tips I’ve learned over the years so you, too, can begin this fantastic habit.

Before I get to the question, there are just under two weeks until the start of September’s Ultimate Productivity Workshop.

This workshop will teach you how to build your own productivity and time management system from the ground up.

We begin with your calendar and task manager, and I show you how to connect the two so that they work in harmony. This removes the overwhelm we face when tasks swamp our days.

In the second week, I show you how to do an effective weekly planning session and how to get, and more importantly, stay on top of your communications—those hundreds of emails and messages that must be dealt with daily.

By the end of this workshop, you will have a perfectly balanced system that works for you and your work style. What you will learn will eliminate backlogs, help you identify what is important (and what is not), and establish your core work and areas of focus.

You will learn a lot in this workshop. Plus, your package includes four courses, which gives you lifetime access to the four key elements of maintaining your system.

There are only a limited number of places, so if you haven’t registered yet, you can do so with the link in the show notes.

I hope to see you there on the 6th of September.

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

This week’s question comes from Naomi. Naomi asks, Hi Carl, I saw your recent video on how to get started with journaling. Could you talk a little more about what to write and your recommendations about the best way to write it?

Hi Naomi, thank you for your question.

Let me first deal with digital Vs paper journals.

There are many advantages to writing your journal digitally. For one, you can add a photo each day and set the journal to collect data such as your exercise, the weather, and, if you wish, what you posted on social media automatically.

I spent three years writing my journal in Day One. It was easy. I could write on my phone, my computer or my iPad. I preferred my iPad, but occasionally I would write on my phone.

What stopped me was the realisation that technology was gradually taking over my life. I was no longer doing anything manually and was always on the lookout for more convenience.

Sure, convenience is nice. In theory, anyway, it frees up time for other pursuits. Yet, I found those other pursuits were not productive or healthy. It invariably meant more time on social media and TV watching.

So, back in January, I switched back to handwriting my journals.

I’ve discovered that handwriting my journal has slowed me down. It’s helped me to be more thoughtful and to express myself better in my journal.

It’s also rekindled my love of fountain pens and good-quality paper, which can be a very dangerous hobby—fountain pens and notebooks can get very expensive.

Yet the key here was slowing me down.

Why would you want to rush to get the day started? There will likely be plenty of drama—you don’t want to rush into all that.

The other reason I stopped journaling digitally was that I realised I was spending far too much time in front of a screen. Giving myself ten to twenty minutes every morning with a good old-fashioned pen and paper felt far better than sitting in front of another screen.

If you decide to go down the pen-and-paper route, my advice is to get yourself a good-quality notebook, preferably hardbound.

A hardbound notebook can travel with you, and if you don’t have a table to write on, its binding will give you enough support.

I’d also recommend investing in a nice pen. A fountain pen may not suit you, but that nice pen investment will give you extra pleasure when writing in your journal.

Okay, those are the tools dealt with. Now, what do you write about?

If you’ve never written a journal before, when you start, you may be afraid to share your deeper thoughts and feelings.

I always think of this like when you meet a stranger for the first time. You don’t open up and tell them what you feel or what your opinions are about other people. You are reserved and generally stick to topics such as the weather or the traffic conditions.

So start there. Write down what the weather was like and what you did that day (or the day before).

When I started, I wrote down all the important, meaningful tasks I had completed the day before. And, of course, the weather.

You can even write what you ate and how much activity/exercise you did.

You will soon begin opening up and writing about how you feel. Again, this is very much like when you meet a stranger. As you get to know them, you open up.

Now as you progress and develop the habit of writing your journal every day, you may want to create a few recurring areas.

For example, I have five items in my morning routine. After writing the date at the top of the page, I list these five items (make coffee, drink my lemon water, do my stretches, write my journal and clean my email inbox) in the margin and check them off. This tells me how consistent I am with my morning routines.

I also write in the margin what exercise I did that day.

This year, I have a 366-day challenge to do at least ten push-ups each day, so I write down the number of push-ups I’ve done that day. (So far the year, I’ve done just over 8,000 push-ups)

That gives me a start and some structure to my journal.

After that, I write whatever’s on my mind. This morning, for example, I wrote how much better I feel. This week, I’ve been suffering from a heavy cold, and I felt a lot better this morning. So, that was my opening paragraph.

I also wrote about the weather. It’s been hot and sticky over the last two weeks. Last night, we had quite a lot of rain, and that cleared the humidity a little.

So you don’t have to write anything too deep.

When starting, your goal should be to get into the habit and let nature take its course. After a few weeks, you will naturally open up and write about more deeply meaningful things.

You’ll likely begin writing negatively about your colleagues—we all do that occasionally—don’t worry. No one else is going to read your journal. And writing about your feelings about anything is how journaling can be very therapeutic.

And that’s the whole point of writing a journal. It’s therapy and it helps you to focus on what’s important.

I find the act of writing what’s on my mind helps me to organise my thoughts, put things into perspective and then focus on the essential things. That could be my relationships, finances, spirituality or how my business is growing.

It also helps me see where I can improve my life. I track my weight each week, and it becomes very clear when my weight is rising, which tells me what needs to be done to get back to where I should be.

And finally, journaling gives you a record of your life. After all, you are documenting your life. And that’s a beautiful thing to do. If nothing else, you leave something for your kids and grandchildren.

One of my family’s most prized possessions is my great-grandmother’s recipe book. It was started in the 1890s and has been handed down from daughter to daughter. It’s incredible to look at. It is tatty and torn, and the pages are stained. Yet, the handwriting is still legible; there are pen and pencil marks.

Your journal could potentially become the same thing. A treasured family possession. Who knows how technology will progress in the future? Perhaps the text files you create today won’t be accessible in ten or twenty years. But a handwritten journal will always be accessible.

We still have 7,000 pages of Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks—written 500 years ago. Wouldn’t it be nice for your own life to be celebrated in 500 years?

So there you go, Naomi. I hope that has helped and motivated you to start writing your life. You’ll never regret it.

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

How To Get Everything Back Under Control.

Sun, 18 Aug 2024 14:44:39 +0900

You have an overflowing inbox, you’re behind on projects and your calendar for the next ten days is full of meetings and other commitments. What can you do to get things under control and meeting your commitments? That’s what we’re looking at this week.

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Script | 334

Hello, and welcome to episode 334 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

I know it can be easy for productive people to say all you need to do is this or that, and you, too, will be productive. The reality is it’s not that simple.

It’s not just about getting organised, reestablishing control of your calendar, and learning to use a to-do list properly; there’s also a mindset shift involved.

Many people I work with individually have been told and come to believe that they are disorganised and sloppy with their time management. If you’re told this too often and your actions support it, you begin to believe it. Being poor at time management and productivity becomes an identity.

Once you believe you are bad at these things, it becomes a self-fulfilling habit. Every attempt to become better organised and more productive will fail because you will sabotage your successes.

Your brain has an incredible capacity to reorganise and adapt. Just look at how people adapted to the lockdowns in 2020. There was resistance at first, then the adoption of new ways of doing things. Those who enjoyed exercise found ways to adapt their exercise programmes and work from home—something many people believed was impossible for them- but they soon discovered it was possible.

Your brain can adapt and remodel itself using “neuroplasticity”. All you need is a stimulus—such as a determination to get organised and be better at managing your time—like muscles in response to exercise.

Sadly, most people don’t try. They accept these negative patterns as just who they are. Yet it’s not true. Your mindset and habits are not set at birth. You learn them. And that means you can unlearn them and develop better beliefs and habits.

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

This week’s question comes from Wim. Wim asks, hi Carl, for years, I have tried to get myself organised and failed every time. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve read all the books, watched thousands of YouTube videos, and learned all the tricks. But for some reason, I can never do anything I learn. How would you help someone like me?

Hi Wim, Thank you for your question.

Part of the problem for people who struggle to get themselves organised is trying to do too much at once.

While we are good at changing things, we are not very good at changing everything. This is why it’s often said that moving house is one of the most stressful things a person can do. Moving house is exciting, yet it also involves a lot of change.

That makes it uncomfortable. There’s a new home, a new way to get to the supermarket, a different drive to work and new people to get to know in the neighbourhood.

Yet, after a few weeks, our new home becomes normal. We feel comfortable and safe, and the stress of the move disappears.

All change requires an initial period of discomfort. We make mistakes and forget to do something we should have done, and going through the actions feels like a huge effort for a small gain.

But we discovered during the pandemic that we can do it. We can adapt to change and do it quite quickly.

So, where do you begin?

As always, the best place to begin is with the basics. To get organised means learning and implementing the principles of COD—Collect, Organise and do.

When it comes to collecting, how will you gather together all the stuff you either have to do, would like to do or have a passing interest in?

For some, that may mean setting up their phones as their universal collection tool (UCT) or perhaps a pocket notebook.

If you choose to use your phone—possibly the best UCT as we carry these things with us everywhere we go (including the bathroom!) what application will you use?

The application you use for collecting is important because it needs to fulfil two requirements. First, it must be quick and easy to use. Too many buttons to press, and you won’t collect everything. Second, you need to trust that what you collect will be saved and not lost.

A lack of either of those functions and it will fail.

Once you have your collection tool set up, the next area to work on is the habit of processing and organising what you collect. Done frequently, and this won’t take a lot of time. Done infrequently, and it will take too long, which then means you won’t do it.

I generally advise people to clear their inboxes every twenty-four to forty-eight hours. This depends on how much you are collecting. I find people just starting out with a system collect a lot more than seasoned people do.

That’s actually a good thing because for the first few weeks, it’s about building the habit. The old habit of trying to remember things in your head doesn’t work, but it’s an ingrained habit—“oh, I won’t forget that”.

You will. Write it down.

If you are collecting a lot of stuff, clear your inbox daily. If you’re collecting less than ten things a day, you can clear your inbox less frequently. (Although I do advise you to scan your inbox daily to ensure you haven’t missed anything important).

Now, when it comes to organising what you collected is a little more difficult. This requires some thought.

The goal is to find what you need as quickly as possible when you need it.

One thing that will hinder you here is if you have stuff all over the place. I have a policy of using tools for the purpose they were designed. This means I use one task manager, Todoist, for all my tasks.

This stops me from having to find stuff in multiple different places. When I start the day, I know all my tasks will be in one place.

This also helps with trust. I can trust that what needs to be done today will be on my Todoist Today list.

Yet, this didn’t happen overnight. It took many months of learning Todoist and building trust.

When I see people announcing on YouTube or social media that they have switched to another app, my eyes roll. I’ve seen it time and time again. If you constantly switch apps, you never build trust in your system. You’re always learning a new tool, and things slip through the cracks.

Let me say this: you will never become better at managing time or more productive if you cannot settle on a set of tools and stick with them.

You are not missing out if a new app appears and promises to fix your productivity woes. That’s just marketing. Stop falling for it.

The question is, how will you organise your stuff?

I use the Time Sector System to organise my tasks, and my notes are organised using a methodology called GAPRA (Goals, Areas, Projects, Resources and Archive).

I have a lot of resources on these organisation methods on my website, so if you want to learn more about them, head over to Carl Pullein.com.

The final part is to do the work.

This involves getting control of your calendar.

Now, here’s the thing. If you do not control your calendar or are ignoring it, you will always have difficulty managing your time. While your calendar is the simplest tool in your productivity toolbox, it’s also the most powerful.

We all begin each day with the same amount of time. Yet we have different priorities and things we want time for. However, time is fixed. And that’s a good thing. It means you have one constant you can work with.

The number of tasks coming at you is not something you can control. You have no idea what will happen today. You don’t know how many emails and messages you will get; you don’t know what your customers or boss will ask you to do. That side of the equation is not within your control.

Yet, I see so many people trying to control the uncontrollable. That’s often where problems begin.

Instead, take some time and look at the different categories of things you need time for. Communications and admin will be two things. It’s also likely you will need time for chores and planning. On top of that will be the work you are employed to do.

A lawyer will need time to read and write contracts, prepare cases for court and talk to clients. All this requires time. The question becomes how much time do you want to allocate to these activities each day?

For example, I know that if I dedicate two hours a day to content creation, an hour to communications, and thirty minutes to admin, I will never have any backlogs or be very far behind on my commitments. That’s just three and a half hours a day to get important work done.

That means I have just over twenty hours for everything else each day. Take Louis, my dog, for his walk, eat, do chores, sleep and exercise, and, of course, spend time with my family and friends.

We are all different, and we will all have different priorities. Yet, if you control your calendar and are strict with how you allocate your time, you will find you do have time to get everything done. Perhaps not today or tomorrow, but you will have time over the next few weeks.

Doing what I call the backend work matters. That’s deciding your priorities and using those to guide your days. If spending time with your family is important, you need to protect time to spend with your family. Hoping you will find time in the future is not a good strategy.

If you’re sick and tired of seeing hundreds if not thousands of unread emails in your inbox, they won’t disappear because you hope they will. You have to deliberately set aside time to deal with them and then protect time each day to ensure the backlogs don’t reappear.

Similarly, if you have projects that are behind schedule, they will not miraculously get back on schedule if all you are applying is hope. You have to set aside time to do the work intentionally.

It’s worth pointing out that no new, brilliant AI-inspired calendar or productivity tool will ever do the work for you either. You do the work. It’s your time, and only you know what is critical and what is not.

This all comes back to the basic principles. Know what is important to you—develop your areas of focus. You can download my free Areas of Focus workbook from my website.

Make sure you collect and organise your stuff, set aside time to do the work, and then do the work.

It will take time to develop these habits. But it’s not impossible if you really want to do it. Allow yourself that time, and within a few weeks you will begin to see notable improvements in your time management and productivity.

Thank you, Win, for your question, and thank you to you too for listening.

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

The Difference Between A Project and a Goal.

Sun, 11 Aug 2024 11:51:51 +0900

What’s the difference between a project and a goal? That’s what we’re exploring this week.

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Script | 333

Hello, and welcome to episode 333 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

One of the benefits of becoming more organised is that you begin to analyse what you do and why you do it in a little more detail. You start seeing what is important and what is not, what you need to do, what you can pass off to others, and what you can ignore.

And, most importantly, you understand what your areas of focus mean to you.

However, one area I’ve seen people struggle with is how to define a project and a goal and what the differences are. This week. I hope to clarify that so you know how to use each one.

Before we get to the question, I just wanted to give you a heads-up that September’s Ultimate Productivity Workshop is coming up. Registration is open now, and places, as usual, are going fast.

I know there are no quick fixes or that the road from disorganised to organised is easy and problem-free. But if you follow a few core principles, you can build a system that works for the way you work. That is what you will learn in this workshop.

I’d love to see you there. The dates are September 6th and 13th. Both days start at 8:30 pm Eastern Standard Time (that’s 5:30 pm if you are on the West Coast of the US).

Full details can be found on my website or in the show notes below.

Okay, on with the show. Which means handing you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Janine. Janine asks, Hi Carl, would you explain the difference between a goal and a project? I find the distinction very confusing.

Hi Janine, thank you for your question. You are not alone in this question. I get asked it a lot.

Let’s start with the basics. A project is a desired outcome that requires time and a series of connected tasks to be completed by a given deadline. A simple example of this would be clearing out your garage. This would be a project in that there will be a number of things that need organising, such as a skip (a British word for a large container that you throw large items away in).

You may need to go to the hardware store to buy cleaning materials and storage containers etc.

For this project, you’d set a date for when you would like to do it—say a weekend—and block your calendar so that’s what gets all your attention on the given day.

The project is complete once you have achieved the desired result.

Now, a goal also has a desired outcome, and it may also have a timeline in that you want to achieve the desired result by a given date.

However, a goal differs in that once the goal is achieved, you will want to maintain it.

A simple example would be if you set a goal to lose twenty pounds by the end of the year. As I am recording this in August, that would give you four months to lose twenty pounds or five pounds a month.

Once you have achieved your goal, though, you are unlikely to want to put those twenty pounds back on. So, a goal’s objective is to take you from where you are today to where you want to be in the future.

I like to think of a goal like acting as a course correction engine burn. If you’ve seen the film Apollo 13 (a brilliant film if you’re interested in project management and dealing with crises).

When a spacecraft goes to the moon, it is dealing with a moving object. The moon travels around the earth. Therefore, you need to anticipate where the moon will be when you arrive at its atmosphere. Get that wrong, and you are in trouble. Too shallow, and you would bounce off into outer space. Too steep, and you would burn up in the moon’s atmosphere.

This means, from time to time, you need to adjust your course, and that’s where the engine burn comes in. You turn on the engines for a few seconds to push you back on course.

That’s how goals work in your life.

If you have established what your areas of focus are—these are the eight areas of life we all share that are important to us. For example, family and relationships, your career, health and fitness and finances. If any of these falls out of balance, you can set a goal to push you back on track.

A simple example would be if, as part of your financial area of focus, you save a minimum of $5,000 per year, and currently, you have only saved $1,000 for the year, you would set a goal to get that back in balance. You could increase the amount you save per month by reducing your spending, or you may decide that this year is proving difficult financially, so you choose to increase the amount you save next year—that would become the goal.

In many ways, goals are a series of repetitive tasks you perform in order to achieve a specific outcome that improves your life.

A project is rarely repetitive. For instance, I have a project at the moment to record the audiobook version of Your Time Your Way. Sitting down to record the chapters is repetitive, but the content I record is different each time, and I need to share the recorded files with my publisher each week.

The deadline for the project is the end of September. Once done, that’s it. My publisher will fine-tune things and add the audiobook to the list of formats available. I no longer have anything to do. The project is complete.

If we return to the weight loss goal, imagine I achieve my goal of losing those twenty pounds; it’s not finished. Now, the goal becomes to maintain my weight and avoid anything that would risk putting those twenty pounds back on. That means changing eating and exercise habits.

Similarly, with the financial goal, once everything is back to where it should be, I need to change or add habits to ensure I don’t fall behind again.

That’s the real purpose of setting goals. To initiate a change that endures.

A project doesn’t do that. Once done, it’s finished. Often forgotten about.

A project could be your next vacation. Before you arrive at your vacation destination, you have a series of tasks to complete. Research hotels, flights, and car hire, for example. Then, book your hotel, flights and car rental. Pack your clothes and get to the airport on time.

When you return home. The project is complete. Yes, you will hopefully have some nice memories and pictures, but for all intents and purposes, the project is complete.

Now here’s the interesting part of goals and projects. Sometimes, a goal can become a project.

Let me explain.

One of my goals is to spend a week at the Goldeneye Resort in Jamaica. It’’s not just a goal for me, it’s been a dream since I was a teenager. Goldeneye is where Ian Fleming wrote all the James Bond books. And, if you don’t know, Ian Fleming is my writing hero.

Today, though, it’s just a goal.

To achieve this goal, I will need to save a lot of money. Goldeneye is not a cheap place to stay, and I’m sure the flights will not be cheap either.

So, if I decide I want to go to Goldeneye in twelve months’ time—let’s say September 2025, I have twelve months to save the money. I would set a goal to save X amount of dollars per month. That goal may involve reducing my expenditure—no more expensive pens, inks and paper (oh no!) and instead putting that money away.

However, the habit I form here is to become more of a saver than a spender, getting into the habit of saving money each month.

Now, once we get to April next year, I would need to book a villa at the resort—that would require a little research. This goal has now become a project. There are a series of tasks involved to ensure my wife and I are on the plane flying to Jamaica in September next year.

In other words, the goal is to save money so I can achieve a dream. Once the money is saved, it becomes a project so we arrive at Goldeneye on the right date.

I can see why understanding the difference between a goal and a project is difficult. Although they have many similarities, their functions are quite different.

Think of a goal as something you use to change a habit. A way to move you towards living to the standards you set for yourself in your Areas of Focus. A project is a tool you use to organise a group of tasks that achieve a specific outcome by a given deadline.

As Tony Robbins says: “The reason we set goals is to give our lives focus and to move us in the direction we would like to go.”

And that is the essence of a goal.

One more distinction here is the number of projects and goals you may have. Often, you won’t have any control over the number of projects you have. They could be given to you by your work or family.

Goals are personal. You get to decide what they are. It’s also important not to try and accomplish too many goals at once. That dilutes your focus and attention.

By their very nature, goals are hard. You are changing habits and moving outside of your comfort zone. If you have too many goals at once, making that change becomes almost impossible. Be patient. Change one thing at a time.

We are all works In progress.

In 2009, I was an overweight, smoking binge drinker. I chose to change that lifestyle and become a healthy, non-smoking runner by the end of the decade.

That involved numerous changes, but the goal was to end the decade healthier, fitter, and stronger than I began it.

I achieved it. Yet, I didn’t quit everything on January 1 2010. I took my time. I began by reducing drinking to almost zero. I also started running again.

By 2014, I had completed two marathons and numerous half-marathons and chose to tackle smoking. By 2016, I had quit smoking, and the final part of the goal was to quit sugar—I managed to do that in 2019.

It took ten years to turn my health and lifestyle around. But it was fun. There were challenges—quitting smoking was the hardest, but as I went through the decade, I developed resilience, a stronger mindset and as I saw the results, I maintained my enthusiasm throughout.

So, there you go, Janine. I hope that has helped. Thank you for your question, and thank you to you, too, for listening.

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

How to Focus In A Distracting World With Dr Kourosh Dini MD

Sun, 04 Aug 2024 11:26:54 +0900

This week is a very special episode.

Earlier, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr Kourosh Dini, a clinical psychiatrist who is also very prominent in the productivity world with his Waves of Focus programme and his fantastic weekly Wind Down newsletter (which I highly recommend you subscribe to)

I first encountered Kourosh in 2012 when he spoke at the OmniFocus event at MacWorld. I then began following his work.

In this chat, we discuss focus, ADHD, and much more. There’s so much in this episode, so get your pens and paper ready—you’re going to need them.

Links

Learn more about Kourosh’s work:

Kourosh’s website →

Waves of Focus →

Kourosh’s newsletter →

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

The Impossible Day And How To Fix It.

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 10:00:00 +0900

Do you feel you never have enough time to do everything on your to-do list? Well, you’re not alone.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 331

Hello, and welcome to episode 331 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

How often do you begin the day with a to-do list that you know will be impossible to complete? What does that do to your motivation? If you are like most people, your motivation will sink, and the day becomes another stressful horror show.

Why is that? Why do we find ourselves with a to-do list longer than any reasonable person could complete in a single day? Is it because we are over-ambitious and over-optimistic about our abilities or because we have too much to do?

Well, this week, we will examine some of the causes of this problem and discuss potential solutions. While not necessarily easy to implement, these solutions will give you the necessary breathing room to create realistic, doable days and leave you with enough energy to enjoy your evenings doing what you want.

Now, before I hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice, may I ask a favour? If you have been kind enough to buy a copy of my book Your Time, Your Way, could you leave a review? Reviews help other people discover the book, learn better ways to manage their time and their lives and reduce stress, which will ultimately help all of us.

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

This week’s question comes from Heather. Heather asks, Hi Carl, I have tried for years to use a to-do list, yet after a few days, the list becomes enormous, and I stop looking at it (which makes the list even longer). I’ve tried all sorts of digital to-do lists and even pen and paper, but nothing works.

How does anyone keep their to-do list manageable so it doesn’t become useless?

Hi Heather, thank you for sending in your question.

To get to the bottom of this, we need to go back to some basics. That is to understand the relationship between time and activity.

To start, can we all agree that doing anything requires time? Whether taking your dog for a walk, cooking dinner, or meeting up with friends, all activities require some time.

Can we also agree that each day has twenty-four hours?

As long as we accept these two facts—that anything we do requires time and that there are twenty-four hours in a day—we have a solid anchor on which to build a reliable time management system.

When I accepted these two facts, everything changed for the better. It didn’t matter how much was on my to-do list if I didn’t have the time to complete the tasks.

I remember the days before I accepted this. I used to commute to the university I was teaching at—ninety minutes each way—and then teach for six hours. I had a to-do list with over thirty tasks on it, and I needed to stay two or three hours after my classes to talk with my students.

In effect, my day was doomed the moment I woke up. There was no way I could drive for three hours, teach for six, do two hours of tutorials, and complete thirty tasks. Yet that was what my day looked like each day.

That had nothing to do with time management or productivity. It had everything to do with me being unrealistic about what could be done in a single twenty-four-hour period.

And that is where most of our problems start—being unrealistic about what can be done in a single day.

If you are familiar with my Time Sector System—a way to manage your work and time more realistically—you will know about something I call your “core work”.

Your core work is the work you are employed to do. It does not include work you have “volunteered” to do—those little favours you do for a colleague or looking something up for your boss. It’s just the work you were employed to do.

As a university lecturer, I was employed to teach. My core work involved preparing for and delivering my lectures. There was some additional work, such as setting and grading exam papers, but for the most part, my core work was teaching my students.

Sending attendance records and dealing with class time conflicts for my students was not a part of my core work. I did do those tasks, but they were never at the expense of doing my core work.

Establishing what your core work is gives you some advantages. The first is you know what to prioritise each day. As your core work is what you are employed to do, it naturally follows that it will be your top priority for the day.

The second is you learn how long it takes to do your core work. This helps you see what is possible and not possible regarding the work you set for yourself each day.

Let me give you an example. Today, I run a coaching programme. After each coaching call with a client, I write feedback summarising what we discussed and include a little homework for them to do before our next call.

Writing one piece of feedback takes me, on average, twenty minutes. This means I can write around three pieces of feedback per hour. I didn’t know this when I first started writing feedback; I only learned this by repeating the same task over and over.

This is an average. Sometimes, it may take me thirty minutes to write one; other times, it may take ten minutes. I am human, and so are you—I hope—which means the time it takes you to do something will vary depending on how much sleep you’ve had, whether you are stressed or anxious about something. You could be distracted by a colleague, family member, or anything else from a long list of potential factors.

If you try to strictly limit yourself to a precise timeline, you will become stressed out. It’s not possible. With your activities, you can only work with averages. Time and the number of tasks you have may be fixed and easily identifiable; however, how long it takes you to do the tasks is not. There are too many variables involved to be able to do that.

But averages are fine. Over a week, those things do average out, and you will find that your critical core work is consistently getting done.

However, this goes a step further. Because I know I need one hour a day to write feedback, I can only allow up to three coaching calls a day. If I were to allow four or five calls a day, I would require more time to write the feedback.

Requiring more time to write my feedback would mean I would need to reduce something else. Perhaps I could stop writing my blog posts or newsletters or reduce the number of episodes of this podcast.

Remember, time is fixed—that part of the equation cannot be changed. The only thing that can be changed is the number of tasks you do—i.e. your activity.

Another factor here is that repeating the same task over and over leads to better efficiency, which reduces the time it takes to complete the tasks. If I were to take three of you listeners to a Formula 1 pit lane and we attempted to change the tires on an F1 car as they came in it would take us a long time.

While the tools would be given would be state of the art, and each tyre only has one bolt to undo, our unfamiliarity with the task would slow us down. The pit crews tasked with changing the tyres can do so in less than two seconds. That comes about because they practice. They’ve done it over a thousand times before.

What you can do is look at your core work and calculate how long it takes you to do that work each week. You may need to monitor this for a week or two, but the exercise will give you some valuable data. Data you can use to plan out your week.

For instance, I discovered that if I dedicated an hour a day to dealing with my actionable emails and messages, I would never have a situation where anyone was waiting longer than 24 hours for a response. There are some days where I cannot reply to all of them, but on the whole, I can stay on top of it all (and that’s based on 150 emails on average per day, although not all of them will be actionable).

Responding to my actionable email for an hour daily means I have developed the most efficient method possible. I group all my actionable emails in a single folder. When I process my inbox, I can quickly identify anything that needs action and move it to my actionable folder in seconds. I’ve been following this process for over ten years, and now I can clear around 350 emails from my inbox in less than thirty minutes.

Ten years ago, that would have taken me more than two hours. Repetition is not just the mother of mastery; it’s also the secret to getting faster at doing anything.

Last week, in one of my newsletters, I wrote that hope is a terrible time management strategy. Hoping you will find time to do your work is never going to work. The only thing that works is to get realistic about what you have to do and how much time you have available.

I’ve seen so many people tie themselves in knots, trying to perform impossible mental gymnastics to circumvent this fact.

It’s only when you stop trying to do the impossible and get real about what you can and cannot do in a day that you start to get control over your time.

So far, I’ve talked about the constants—your core work—which is known to you. But what about all the unknowns? The agitated client who needs your help urgently or your boss who forgot an important presentation she is due to deliver this afternoon and needs your help to prepare.

One thing you likely will have discovered is that these unknowns are going to happen. Perhaps not every day, but more often than you would like. How do you manage these?

This comes back to controlling your calendar. Filling your calendar with appointments and time to do your tasks leaves you vulnerable to all these inevitable unknowns. You will need to create space for these.

Again, this is about being realistic. How many meetings do you have scheduled today? When are they? How much time do you have between them?

Perhaps an additional question is: Do you really have to attend all these meetings? Are there some you could excuse yourself from? Maybe not, but it’s worth asking.

I love to ask people if they could guarantee two hours a day where they are undisturbed so they can get on and do their most important work for the day. Would they become more productive? Of course, the answer would be yes.

Why not try that? When you plan the week, find two hours a day for undisturbed, focused work. If you were to look at your calendar next month, could you pre-block those two hours out now? I suspect most of you listening to this could do that. Why not do it now? At least try and see what happens.

There will be days when you cannot do that, and that’s fine. If you could do three days out of five where you could, though, you’ll soon find yourself becoming more productive.

And that’s what it’s all about, Heather. Understanding your relationship with time. Time is fixed; you cannot change that. You only have control over what you say yes to and the number of tasks you complete each day. Focus your attention on that part of the equation. Learn what you can realistically complete each day and then get more efficient at doing that work.

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

Forget Discipline. Instead Focus On Your Standards.

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 11:42:00 +0900

This week, is it possible to stay disciplined, or is there a better way to ensure you are consistently doing the things you want to do?

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Script | 330

Hello, and welcome to episode 330 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

When I hear people discussing discipline, I am always interested in hearing about their struggles.

Life is always a struggle. We are often torn between what we want to do and what we must do. I would love to watch my rugby team play live, yet the kick-off time is usually around 2 AM in my time zone, and I know I must be asleep at that time.

I’ve discussed the importance of daily and weekly planning many times. If you’re listening to this podcast, you probably know how valuable a solid weekly planning session is to your overall productivity. The question is, how consistent are you?

It’s easy to skip the weekly planning because there’s no immediate penalty. You could go through the whole week without any plan and get stuff done. Unfortunately, this approach leads to doing the work of others and never being able to do what you should be doing.

Whether you do or you don’t do the right things will always come down to discipline. But is that true? Perhaps not. There is another way, and I will show you that by answering this week’s question.

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

This week’s question comes from Clyde. Clyde asks, hi Carl, I’ve loved following you and other people who teach time management and productivity skills. I know the concepts and what to do but never do it. I think I am too lazy or lack discipline. Do you have any strategies to help someone like me who lacks discipline?

Great question, Clyde.

Very few people are able to be determinedly disciplined every day. I can think of only one person—David Goggins—who has mastered this. Yet David Goggins was not always like that. If you know his story, it took him many years to develop the resolve and mental strength, and even after all those years, he admits that each day is a struggle.

This means that being consistently disciplined will be an uphill battle for us everyday folk—one we will likely lose.

So, what can we do instead?

I’ve found that we can develop a set of standards by which to live our lives. This can begin with simple things like going to bed and waking up at a consistent time.

You are likely already doing this; if you are, it will be much easier to set that standard.

The great thing about standards is your mindset changes. Instead of thinking, “I have to wake up at 7:30 every morning”, it becomes something you do. It goes from “I have to wake up at 7:30 to “I wake up at 7:30” because that is who you are.

It took me years to become consistent in writing my journal. During those years, I used to think, “I should write a journal.” The problem with that statement is the word “should.” That single word makes it optional. Remove that word, and now it becomes a standard.

I cannot imagine a day not spending ten minutes writing in my journal after making my coffee. I look forward to sitting down with my favourite pen and journal and writing my thoughts, ideas, and fears on a page. I am a journal writer. It’s part of my identity.

Yet I also remember the years of thinking, “I should write a journal”, and never writing one. I began to believe there was a problem with my discipline. The truth was it had nothing to do with my discipline. It was because writing a journal every morning was not a standard I followed.

When I was in my final year of high school, my first part-time job was working in a hotel. I was very fortunate because, in the late 1980s, hotels were still focused on quality and personalised service instead of the standardised, automated service most hotels offer today. This meant that everything had to be pristine and in perfect order from the moment a guest walked into reception.

I remember my induction training focused on little things like placing the pencils and notepads on the conference room tables in the exact same way and how the handles of the tea cups should always be placed, with the handle pointing to the right and the teaspoon placed on the left.

Even how the decoration of the plates must always be pointing in the same direction.

I learned those things thirty-five years ago and still follow the same standards today when laying the table for a family meal.

It doesn’t feel hard to do that. I have set these standards for myself, and I follow them daily without thought or difficulty. There certainly is no discipline involved.

You may have heard the phrase, “We are creatures of habits”. Well, that’s true. We are creatures of habit. If you are not doing a weekly plan, it is because it is your habit not to plan the week. If you are not exercising regularly, it’s because you are in the habit of not exercising. It has nothing to do with discipline. But it does have everything to do with the choices we make.

You can choose not to plan the week, or you can choose to plan the week. The question then is, what is your standard? Are you the kind of person who plans the week consistently or not?

Another way I have seen this manifest is through exercise. When I was a teenager, I was a competitive middle-distance runner. I was a sub-four minute 1,500-metre runner at the age of 16.

When I was training, doing a 10-mile run every Sunday was the standard. It didn’t matter if it was pouring with rain, snowing, or a gale was howling. It was 10 am Sunday morning, and I’d put my running shoes on and head out the door to begin my ten miler.

I rarely enjoyed it, but it was just something I did. I did it because I saw the benefit every summer when racing on the track.

Today, I am no longer a competitive runner, yet I still do my longer runs on a Sunday. Doing them on any other day seems weird. It breaks my standard.

So, Clyde, it has nothing to do with being lazy. We are all lazy. We inherited that from our ancestors when food was scarce in the winter months, and we needed to conserve energy to survive. The least active people survived the winters. All animals are designed to be lazy.

Yet, because we are naturally lazy, our brains will fight us when we try to change something about the way we live our lives. Change requires a lot of energy and focus; our brain’s natural instinct is to stop us from doing that. Routines and habits are safe, and so if you are not currently planning your week or blocking time out for doing your important work, your brain will fight you. And it will continue to fight you until your new habits are embedded.

This is why you will fail if you try and change too much at once. That involves far too much mental energy to remember your new standards. Instead, you pick one thing at a time.

I find changing one thing each quarter works best. This gives you three months to focus your efforts on one thing. That allows you enough time to adjust to your new habit or routine.

At the start of this year, I began a challenge to do at least ten daily push-ups. I knew ten would be easy to do when I was squeezed for time or travelling. I have tracked the number of push-ups I have been doing and noticed that the first week was a struggle. I was doing the minimum.

By the second week, I was doing between twelve and fifteen daily. Six months later, I am consistently doing between fifty and sixty a day, and it doesn’t feel any more difficult than when I was doing ten in early January.

Today, doing push-ups before I take my evening shower is something I just do. I don’t think about it. I get down on the floor and do them.

So, where would you begin if everything is not working? I suggest weekly planning. It’s giving yourself a plan for the week that lays the groundwork for better time management and productivity.

Planning the week gives you time each week to step back and examine your life as a whole, refocusing you on what is important to you.

Weekly planning highlights things you may be missing. For instance, you may realise you have not spoken with your brother or sister for a few weeks or have not thought about what you will do for the holidays later in the year.

And it also allows you to look ahead and make sure nothing significant has been missed and, more importantly, to plan out your week so it is balanced between your work and personal lives.

You will find that dedicating the same time each week to your weekly planning helps you become consistent. I’ve found Saturday mornings are usually the best time to do it. The week is still fresh in your mind, and once done, you can enjoy the weekend without worrying about the week ahead.

It’s much harder to be consistent and set a standard if you try to do the weekly planning at different times each week. You set the standard that you sit down and plan the week ahead at 8:00 a.m. every Saturday morning. That’s your standard.

This helps your family, too, because they know you do your weekly plan each Saturday morning. They will leave you alone and let you get on with it. (Hopefully)

This goes with anything you want to be more consistent with. Learning new things, for example, can be done in the evenings before bed. That hour before I go to bed has become one of my favourite times of the day. I get to sit down with my commonplace book and learn something new. Last week, I learned how to make the “perfect” cup of coffee and how to do a proper double-edged safety razor wet shave.

Learning something new each day has become a standard for me. Going to bed now without learning something feels strange. It doesn’t have to be something deep. It can be anything you might be interested in at that moment. The standard you set is about learning something new, not learning something specific.

So there you go, Clyde. Stop trying to be disciplined. That is very hard to do. Instead, set yourself standards. These are things that you just do because that is the person you are. You are the kind of person who clears their actionable email each day. The kind who plans their week and allocates one or two hours a day for doing the important things.

Thank you for your question, Clyde.

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

Chronic Illnesses And Productivity

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 10:00:00 +0900

What can you do to be productive when you have a chronic illness or a very unpredictable schedule? That’s what we’re looking at today.

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Script | 329

Hello, and welcome to episode 329 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

It’s a daily challenge to protect our time and stay focused enough to get our work done. It becomes even harder when we don’t get enough sleep or are worried about something in our personal life.

Yet, if you are suffering from a chronic illness or recovering from one, this challenge becomes exponentially more difficult. Not only are you trying to get work done, but you will also face unpredictable tiredness, low energy, difficulty consistently doing your work, or even knowing if you can do any work today.

This means planning the week is almost impossible, and you’ll find yourself frequently changing events and meetings on your calendar.

The good news is there are things you can do that don’t make you even more tired.

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 Mia. Mia asks, do you have any productivity tips or advice for those with chronic illness? Or just those who have incredibly unpredictable schedules? I'd love to find a way to be more productive that doesn't feel stressful, but obviously, time management is difficult for me.

Hi Mia, thank you for your question.

With illness, the priority is always to avoid making things worse. This means prioritising rest above everything else. Naturally, this can be difficult as an employee because of your company’s demands. Hopefully, you have an understanding boss.

It’s also tricky if you are self-employed, as your work may be your only source of income.

So, given that you must prioritise rest and recovery, the place to start is with your calendar. Don’t start with your task manager—that will never help you. All that will do is remind you that you have a lot of things to do. It will never tell you if you have the time to do it. Only your calendar can do that.

Before opening your calendar, though, ask yourself when you will most likely be focused and have some energy. That could be in the morning if you are a morning person or perhaps in the evening if you are a night owl. It’s this time you want to be protecting.

However, there’s an important factor to consider. According to recent research, and as Andrew Huberman points out, we focus in ninety-minute cycles.

In other words, we can focus for about ninety minutes before needing a rest. However, that time will reduce if you are ill or recovering from an illness. Depending on the severity of your illness, the amount of time you can focus on before needing a rest could be very short.

A couple of years ago, I worked with a client who was suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and her focus time was around twenty minutes before requiring a four-hour rest. Fortunately, she was on long-term sick leave, but being an ambitious person, she wanted to readjust her lifestyle so she could better cope when her condition improved.

When you know your focus time ability, you can better plan a schedule that allows you to get at least some things done.

For instance, if you know you focus better early in the morning, plan your focus block of time then. You want to work with your natural rhythms rather than fighting against them. It’s tough when you’re not sick to fight your natural rhythms; when you are sick or recovering from an illness, it will work against you and leave you more tired.

When planning the week, try to book meetings and appointments when you are not at your most focused. There’s something about human interaction that produces its own natural energy.

This means that if you are a morning person, you would schedule a block of time in the morning for doing your most important work for the day, then give yourself a sufficient break before allowing one or two meetings in the afternoon.

The good thing about this approach is if you feel strong and can go a little longer with your focus time, you have the flexibility to do so. Although, be careful here.

I usually need to wake up early Monday and Tuesday morning for calls. I only get three or four hours of sleep on Sunday and Monday nights. I find that on Tuesday afternoons and evenings, I am exhausted. Knowing this, I don’t schedule much work but keep things as free as possible, so I am not trying to push myself too hard.

If I push through on a Tuesday, I am also tired on Wednesday. If I back off a little on a Tuesday afternoon, it will give me time to recover, and I can be back on point on Wednesday.

If you schedule this during a weekly planning session, you can protect time for focused work before anyone tries to schedule more meetings with you.

Okay, so that’s the weekly planning taken care of. Now, how do you deal with the unpredictability of suffering from a chronic illness?

This is where having a weekly objective comes in.

Whether you are suffering from a chronic illness or not, one thing you will likely have discovered is that, being human, your energy and motivation ebbs and flows. Some days, you’re on fire and in the zone; others, everything is a struggle. The trouble is, it’s impossible to predict when this will happen.

The mistake we all make is thinking tomorrow will be the same as today or better, yet that’s not guaranteed. When you set objectives for the week rather than the day, if you do have a bad day or two, you can still recover and get what needs to be done, done.

Another thing to work on is establishing your daily non-negotiables. In my case, they are walking Louis, my little Yorkshire Terrier, getting a minimum of twenty minutes of exercise and spending at least thirty minutes responding to my actionable emails and other messages.

What are your daily non-negotiables beyond getting enough sleep and the right nutrition?

Whatever they are, they need scheduling, so you protect time for them.

I would also recommend scheduling your rest times too. Rest and recovery are a big part of your rehabilitation when you are ill. This becomes a hard must-do each day—whether you want to or not. Not getting sufficient rest will delay your recovery, which is never good.

Scheduling your rest time also brings some predictability to your days and week. If you know you will rest between 10:30 am and 2:30 pm, you can better schedule your tasks and appointments in the day. You have a hard block for four hours in the middle of your day, and whether you need the rest or not, at least you know you have it in reserve.

Now, what about the people with unpredictable schedules? I was thinking about what types of work this would be and thought of firefighters and emergency room medical professionals. No day will be the same; some days could be very quiet, others extremely busy and stressful.

In these situations, you will find that this type of work involves shifts. You’re either on shift or not. When I was working in hotels, we worked shifts, and there was no way I could expect to do any focused work while I was on shift. It was impossible to predict when things would be chaotic or quiet.

To do focused work, you need protected time. If you are not confident you will get the peace and quiet needed, you will be on edge, waiting for the next interruption. This is not a great place to be mentally when trying to do your most important work.

The only real option is to structure your days so that when you are on shift, you allow yourself the freedom to do light, easy tasks such as admin and communications. These rarely need a lot of focus and can usually be done little by little.

You can save the tasks you need to concentrate on for an hour or two when you are not on shift. Once you structure your weeks in this way, if you are asked to produce a piece of work by a given date, you can check your calendar to ensure you have enough non-shift days to do the work you are asked to do.

It’s worth remembering that we are all limited by the hours we get each day. We can leverage this by hiring assistants and other people to do some of our work, but that option is not available for all of us. And you cannot delegate important things such as rest, family time, and working on your health to other people.

When you work shifts, much of the decision-making is taken away from you. You’re on shift, and your job is to help people. For those hours you are working your shift, that’s what you do. If there is downtime, take advantage by doing the little things that have a bad habit of accumulating, but never schedule something important when you are working. Leave those tasks for when you are off shift.

The key, Mia, is to get very strict with your calendar and trust that it will do its job for you. This does involve you not ignoring your calendar. You can reschedule or delete things but not ignore them. You need to trust something, and your calendar serves you. You can trust it.

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

Before I go, my book, Your Time Your Way, is now available in Kindle, soft back, and hardback versions. The links are in the description below.

Thank you for listening. It is now my turn to wish you all a very productive week.

BACK TO BASICS | Time Management

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 10:00:00 +0900

This week, what are the basics of time management?

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Get Your Time Your Way | Time Well Managed. Life Well Lived.

Script | 327

Hello, and welcome to episode 327 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

A lot has been spoken and written about time management over the years. This has made the whole space of time management confusing when, in reality, time management is simple—or it should be.

Today’s question concerns all this and, more importantly, how to return to the basics of time management so you can regain control and not feel guilty about not doing things when more important things need doing.

Now, before we get to the question, just a quick reminder that Your Time, Your Way is now out in Kindle, Soft and hardback formats. You can get it right now and start building the foundations to live the life you want to live.

Your Time, Your Way is a book, yet to me, it’s much more than that. It’a also a manual to build a resilient time management system that will work in the background for you.

If you have already bought the book, thank you so much. Could you do me a little favour and leave a review? That really helps to get the book in more people’s hands, which can only benefit all of us. The more people who operate using these principles, the easier it will be to manage meetings and requests.

Anyway, back to this episode, and that means it’s time for me to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Robert. Robert asks, hi Carl, what do you suggest I do when, no matter how hard I try, I just cannot get control of my calendar? I try to block time out for my core work, but then I get so many meeting requests I have to either delete them or reschedule. It’s driving me crazy!

Thank you, Robert, for your question.

A good place to start is to look back at your calendar for the last two or three weeks and see where your time is going. How many internal meetings did you attend?

There’s a difference between internal and external meetings. Hopefully, your external meetings—with customers, for instance—are important. However, you should look more closely at your internal meetings. Were they valuable? Did you really need to attend them?

One important metric to consider is how many hours each week you spend in internal meetings.

Internal meetings are, by their very nature, places where you talk about the work. Work rarely gets done. The biggest waste of time for people is those team update meetings. These benefit no one and just drag people away from doing their work. A good manager sets up systems and processes so that their team maximise their work time and minimises their meeting time.

One thing you can do is set a limit on the number of hours you attend each week. For instance, you may choose to limit your internal meeting time to ten hours per week. Once that time is taken, you accept no more meeting requests that week.

This approach has two benefits. The first is you can confidently create time blocks for your core work around these ten hours. The second benefit is if anyone in authority challenges you about declined meetings, you have evidence to show you are being asked to attend too many meetings.

If your manager objects to this limit, you can increase the limit, but you do so in a way that they are fully aware of the time involved and how that will reduce your available work time.

There is always a conflict within a corporation between the managers, whose job is to fill their calendars with meetings, training sessions, and one-on-ones, and the producers—the people who produce the work—whose goal is to minimise events on their calendars so they can get on and do their work.

However, some compromise is needed here. Managers can only do their jobs if they know what’s going on and can give guidance and instruction when necessary. To do that, they need meetings. Equally, producers need to communicate what is being done, where there may be areas of difficulty and to ensure what they are working on is the right work.

One thing that will always destroy any attempts to become better at managing time is to treat everything that comes your way as urgent. That’s never likely to be the case. Most things are not urgent and are tasks that are being passed off to buy the sender some time.

Here’s something you can try when you are asked to do something. Default to doing it next week. This means if you receive a message asking you to do something, you respond with a reply, saying you will do it and get it to them next week. Avoid giving a specific date. Just say I will get it to you next week.

This tests how urgent something really is. The worst that can happen is the receiver replies, telling you it is needed sooner than next week. Okay, now you know it is urgent.

I do this all the time, and I can say that 90% of the time, I get the response thanking me, and that will be fine. The remaining 10% or so usually reply with something along the lines of “Could you do it sooner?”—which still gives me a choice.

Of all the things in the productivity world, the only thing you have that is constant is time. You are not really managing time. Instead, you are managing your activities within that time. This is great because you have at least one constant and that means you can do something with it.

Sadly, the second part of this equation is never fixed and will never stop. That is stuff to do. There will always be something to do. The trouble is because time is fixed; you have to solve a puzzle each day. How to fit in the right pieces of activity into your limited time.

If you do not know what your areas of focus are—the things that are important to you as an individual—and your core work—the work that is important in your job, you never have a reference to decide what should go on your calendar each day. Your areas of focus and core work give you your priorities, which means you can better choose what needs to be done each day. Without knowing them, everything will be important and urgent; in other words, nothing is important and urgent.

This means it’s important to step back and think about what is important—a way to pre-decide what will get your attention and what will not. This avoids having to make too many decisions each day—something that will inevitably leave you feeling exhausted and worn out.

That’s one of the reasons why I stress the importance of establishing your areas of focus and core work. It might take you a few weeks or months even to work these out, but the time it will save you in the long term makes this essential.

If you really want to get control of your calendar, Robert, then begin with what you want time for and fix it in your calendar when you do your weekly planning. If you would like forty-five minutes a day for exercise, then get it on your calendar and treat it as a non-negotiable part of your day.

Taking Louis out for a walk each day is non-negotiable for me. Not only is it important for Louis to get outside, but it’s also important for me as it gets me away from a screen. It also means I am moving—something we humans are designed to do. It’s one hour out of 24. It’s not much to ask.

Also, be aware of how much time you are spending on the hidden task admin. That’s the emails, messages and additional check-ins required when you accept tasks from other people. It’s never as simple as preparing a presentation. There are likely to be additional time commitments such as more emails, requests to add things from other people and, of course, the inevitable meetings.

If you’ve ever been asked to join a committee, you will have discovered that the one or two hours a week you were promised is never one or two hours. You’ll be expected to read reports, agendas, and meeting minutes and submit ideas. Those one or two hours very quickly become six or eight hours a week.

A couple of years ago, I agreed to do a series of interviews for an organisation. I thought a one-hour interview every month would be easy. All I would need would be an hour of research and preparation for each interview and the interview itself—two hours a month at most.

Hahaha, that’s not what happened. The research often took three or four hours; then there was submitting the proposed questions to the organisation, the back-and-forth trying to set up the interview time, and the requests for changes in the questions I proposed. In total, I found that those expected two hours a month turned into ten hours.

This goes back to one of the most basic laws of time management. Things will always take longer to do than you initially anticipate.

If you really want to master your time, getting control of your calendar is the most important part. This means you have to be strict and ruthless. That said, what you will find if you do is people will start respecting your time much more. If you are tow available, you lose that respect. It’ll always be, “Oh, ask Robert; he’ll do it for you”, and boom, you have more work to do.

Saying no every so often is one of the best ways to get your time back. Sadly, so few people have the courage to do it. Instead of finding solutions, they find excuses as to why they are different and must remain available to everyone. Good luck with that strategy. I’ve never found anyone who could make that work.

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

And if you have not got your copy of Your Time, Your Way yet, you can get it now. The link is in the show notes.

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

How To Write A Book (Or Do Any Big Project)

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 10:00:00 +0900

Three years ago, I began a journey that came to an end last Saturday. Today, I want to share that journey with you, what I learned and how my journey can help you become better at managing your time and ultimately be more productive.

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Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Script | 327

My book, Your Time, Your Way, Time Well Managed! Life Well Lived!, was published last Saturday. It is the end result of a three-year journey that began with the idea of putting everything I have learned about better managing time together so you have enough time to spend with your loved ones, enjoy the hobbies you have always wanted to participate in, and so much more without feeling drained, overwhelmed, and rushed.

The book is a manual for taking control of your time and making the things you want to do happen without stress or overwhelm. It gives you a complete roadmap for making time work for you instead of working against you. But more on the contents later.

From a productivity perspective, when you begin a project like writing a book, there is one critical starting point: getting started. What often happens, and is the reason so few people do any of their personal projects or achieve goals, is that too much time is wasted in the thinking and planning stage.

There’s a comfort in dreaming and thinking about landscaping your garden (backyard). That dreaming can be very seductive. It allows you to believe you are doing something about your project—‘I’m doing the planning’—yet nothing is happening. Your garden is not getting landscaped.

This book was two years in the planning stage (I am not immune to being seduced by the dream). I was even telling people, “I’m currently writing a book.” That was a lie. I wasn’t “writing” anything. I was dreaming of writing a book. I was stuck in the planning stage.

To get yourself out of that delusion—as that is what too much planning is, a delusion—you need to start doing something. Every project has a beginning. That could be visiting the local hardware store to purchase the tools you will need or, in my case, when writing a book, to write the introduction (this gives me a mini-outline of what I want to write about). Do that first step.

The next critical part of any project, whether professional or personal, is to decide how much time you are willing to give it each week. You are unlikely to be able to estimate how long a big project will take accurately. There are too many unknowns, and if you involve other people, there will inevitably be delays.

The only thing you have control over is your time. You don’t control other people’s time—even if you are a boss. So, how much time are you willing to or are able to give to the project each week?

Once you know how much time you are giving the project each week, schedule it.

Personal projects can be worked on in the evening and at weekends, while professional ones can be done during work hours.

One thing you will eventually learn about time management is hoping you will find the time to do something is not a good strategy. It never works. If you want time to work on something, anything, you need to protect the time. Whether that is going out for a family walk in the evenings, washing your car or writing a letter to your aunt in New Zealand.

Time management works when you are intentional about it. In other words, you must protect time for the things you want to do.

When the early version of Your Time, Your Way went out to a select group of readers, many commented that it took over fifty pages to get to talking about time. That was intentional.

Too often, books on productivity and time management are about showing you how to squeeze in more and more. That is not the purpose of this book. Not only is that approach unsustainable, it’s also unhealthy. Instead, my approach is to encourage you to start by thinking about your life as a whole. What do you want out of your life? What is important to you?

While we share eight areas—family and relationships, career/business, finances, health and fitness, self-development, lifestyle and life experiences, spirituality, and life’s purpose—how we define these are different for each of us. That means what we want out of these areas will also be different.

The order of priority is also different. As we go through life, the priority of these will change. When you are young, career/business and perhaps lifestyle and life experiences will be high on your list. As you age, health and finances may creep up towards the top. Again, we will all be different here.

Knowing what is important to you is the foundation of a well-lived life. It also shows you how to best use your limited resource of time so you spend more of it doing the things you want to do.

It was very tempting to begin the book with lists of tips and tricks for managing time, but I knew that would not help you in the long term. It’s a quick-fix approach that quickly leads to slipping back into old habits.

When you begin by identifying what is important to you, you give yourself a self-generating motive for getting out of bed with enthusiasm, and it naturally gives you a purpose each day. You are spending a large portion of your day on the things you know are important to you.

But more than that, knowing your areas of focus and what they mean to you gives you clarity that helps you make decisions. If you have identified your family and friends as being important to you and you work in a company that expects you to work late and at weekends, you may wish to consider looking for an alternative job. That could mean you need to change companies or perhaps your career.

Not identifying what is important to you will likely leave you stuck in a job or career that leaves you feeling deflated, unhappy and trapped. Showing you how to do more in less time is not going to help you in that situation. All it will do is leave you feeling more unhappy, trapped and lost.

Your Time, Your Way takes you through the key time management techniques of COD (Collect, Organise and Do) and the Time Sector System. It explains how to choose the right UCT (Universal Collection Tool) for you and how to plan your week and day using the Planning Matrix.

Yet, more than that, it also shows you how to develop a morning routine that will set you up for the day and give you some time for yourself—something often lost when we begin a career and a family and are trying to juggle getting kids ready for school, with ensuring you have saved the presentation file you need today to your OneDrive account.

I’ve also included a chapter on managing your email. I know so many people struggle to stay on top of emails and other messages. It can be a never-ending struggle. Yet, the process I teach you in the book will give you a framework you can adopt that will ensure you are never behind with your communications, and you will begin to enjoy communicating through email and other messaging services (no, really you will, I promise)

One of the chapters many of the pre-readers say they enjoyed most was the chapter on common pitfalls. This chapter lists the most common issues you will face as you develop your own system and shows you how you can avoid them or, if they are already embedded, how to get out of them so you unblock any problems quickly and effectively.

This chapter draws on my experience working with people from all walks of life and multiple different jobs, from senior executives to stay-at-home parents, all of whom face different challenges as well as some common ones.

Ultimately, though, no matter how much you have to do, you still only have twenty-four hours each day. Understanding that and knowing what you want time for will give you a huge advantage over your peers—well, the ones who don’t read this book.

It gives you a framework on which to create a structure that safeguards time for the things you want time for—not just in your personal life—which often gets sacrificed by our work life—but also for the critical things in your professional life, such as career development, having enough time each day to deal with communications, and your all-important core work—the work you were employed to do.

While writing this book, I quickly learned that many productivity best practices are not just best practices but laws. To write a book, you need to write. Wasting time trying out different writing tools does write a book. The only way to write a book is to write. That’s the same for anything you want to do. To landscape your garden, you need to get outside and dig, build and plant.

To do that, you will need to protect time. That means blocking out time on your calendar that is dedicated to doing the work.

And, the best law of all—it will always take you longer to do than you imagine. I expected this book to take around twelve to eighteen months. It took nearly forty. I laugh at myself now for being so optimistic. But now the book is available, I can honestly say that the journey has been incredible. Frustrating at times, yes, but that was always going to be part of the journey.

Whatever you want to do, please enjoy the journey. Find the time, protect it and just start. You will discover things about yourself you never knew. You’ll learn patience, how to deal with setbacks and frustration and, more importantly, how to overcome those setbacks. Each project, whether it is writing a book, landscaping your backyard or building a career, will teach you things that you can take with you into your next endeavour and give you skills and know-how for the next time you embark on a journey.

All that remains for me to do now is to ask you to buy Your Time Your Way: Time Well Managed! Life Well Lived! Get control of your time so you can live the life you want to live. The link to purchase the book is in the show notes.

Thank you for listening, and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.

Managing Competing Demands and Other Deadlines.

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 10:00:00 +0900

This week’s question is all about unpredictability and the struggle to find some kind of structure in your day.

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Script | 326

Hello, and welcome to episode 326 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

In an ideal world, we would be able to set our calendar for the week and allow it to flow from one event to another while getting all our work done in a timely and relaxed way.

Sadly, that ideal world does not exist and never will. Life is unpredictable, and for the most part, we are dealing with other people who likely do not share our priorities or long-term vision and, in some cases, expect you to drop everything to deal with their crisis or problem.

This week’s question goes to the heart of these issues: how do you cope when your carefully laid plans are destroyed by events and the urgencies of the people around you?

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

This week’s question comes from Max. Hi Carl, I work in a job with competing demands. I can plan most things ahead but occasionally get asked, often at the last minute, to complete tasks that require an immediate or 24-hour turnaround. How do I fit these into my planning schedule so my other work plans are not thrown into chaos?

Hi Max, thank you for your question.

When asked what was most likely to blow governments off course, former British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan replied, "Events, dear boy, events."

Well, the truth is, it’s not just governments that can be blown off course; we as individuals can also be blown off course by events, too.

Around three years ago, I carefully planned a day to record the update to my Apple Productivity course. I had set up the studio the night before, checked my notes, and went to bed comfortably with the knowledge that nothing could stop me from getting the recording done the next day.

Around 7:00 am, I woke up and noticed our beloved Yorkshire Terrier was looking very sick. He had thrown up his food and was unable to get up off the floor.

He was old and suffered from a heart condition, and I knew something was terribly wrong. My wife was 50 miles up the coast staying with a friend, so I called her immediately, put Barney into the car and set off to pick my wife up before going to the vet.

Barney passed away that day, and for the next two days, I was certainly not in the mood to record anything. The whole day was a nightmare.

Later that day, I looked at my appointments for the next day and cancelled them all. No one objected; everyone understood, and I was able to mourn the passing of my best friend (anyone who has a dog will understand that one) for a couple of days without the worry of work.

Whenever you are thrown off course by events, and your plans for the week get destroyed, it’s easy to think everything’s destroyed. Yet, is it? You see, we always have the power to renegotiate deadlines, put off a few things for a day or two, stop and review what has happened and reschedule a few of the lower-value things.

However, probably the most powerful thing you can do is to build some structure into your day. I learnt this from possibly the most productive and relaxed person I have ever worked with.

Andrew was one of the first bosses I ever had, and he would arrive at work at 8:30 am each day, walk into his office and close the door for 15 minutes. That was his sacred time, and everything could wait until he was finished.

What Andrew was doing was going through his mail (it was paper back then—no email in those days), reviewing his calendar (a beautiful A4 leather folio with a week to view) and writing down the five most important things that needed to be done that day.

He would then open his door, and he was available again.

Andrew would block time out on his calendar each day for doing those five or six tasks. Some would be lengthy, requiring an hour or two; others may be a simple follow-up call with one of his leadership team members.

On the occasions I saw Andrew’s diary, I saw that he always had at least thirty minutes between meetings and blocked time. The time blocks were written in pencil, and the meetings were in blue ink. As he completed his tasks, he would cross them out.

Those gaps in his diary were to deal with the unknowns that inevitably came up each day. The chairman may have called and demanded a change to the marketing plan for that week, or there may have been an accident in the workshop that needed dealing with. None of these were predictable and my guess is you also have a few unpredictable tasks and events occurring each day.

The best thing you can do is plan for them.

While you may not know the precise nature of these unknowns, what you do know is that there will always be a few each day. You will likely not know what the crisis will be, but if you work on the principle that there will be a crisis each day, you can at least leave sufficient time to deal with it.

What about the constants in your day? We all have communications to deal with—email, Teams or Slack messages—and admin.

These are what I call my constants, and as such, I know I will need some time each day to deal with them.

As I’m sure you’ve discovered already, skip responding to your messages for one day, and you have double the amount to do the next day—which means you need double the amount of time as well. If you are already squeezed, how will you find double the amount of time tomorrow? You won’t. And that leads to backlogs building up.

If, in an ideal world, you would like an hour a day for managing your communications, but owing to interruptions and emergencies, you only have thirty minutes one day, take it. Thirty minutes is better than nothing. Doing a little each day will keep the mountain from becoming impossible.

The key is consistency. Be consistent with your constants.

In my world, there’s always content to create. Blog posts, podcasts, YouTube videos, and newsletters don’t create themselves. Content creation is a daily constant, so I set aside two hours each day for it. For the most part, my content creation time is 9:30 to 11:30 am each weekday morning. However, owing to some unknown, there will always be one or two days when that will not be possible. Okay, so All I need do is look for another suitable time that day, and if that’s not possible, I will have to look for another day.

Every productive person I have met or learned about does this, and every unproductive, disorganised person I have met or learned about doesn’t.

The artist Picasso was available for anyone and everyone until after lunch. Once lunch was over, he’d disappear into his studio and paint for four or more hours without allowing anyone to disturb him. Maya Angelou hid herself away in a local motel bedroom from 7 am until 2 pm. It was only after she emerged from that room that she was available to other people.

You do not have to be that extreme, but the point is if you have work to do, Max, you need to protect time to do it. No one can escape that. Hoping time will miraculously appear is not a great strategy.

The only strategy that works is protecting time and respecting that time.

What I have discovered is that when someone asks you to do something by a certain time, the deadline they give you is based on their estimation of how long the task would take them to complete, given their current workload. It is not based on your current workload or ability to complete the task.

Recently, I was asked to record a two-minute video for a partner. The person asking me had never recorded and edited a video like this before and asked if I could send it over by the end of the week. Given that I was asked to do the task on Thursday evening, I instantly knew it would be a tall order to complete the task. Recording the video would take fifteen to twenty minutes, and the editing would likely take three or four hours.

I accepted the task but asked if I could send the edited video over the next week. The response was, “Great! Thank you so much for doing this for us.”

That was an easy negotiation. Yet, unless you try, you will never know.

I could have panicked, removed some of my planned work, and completed the video by the end of the week, but, as so often is the case, the deadline was not really a deadline; it was a guess and an attempt to make me treat the task as urgent.

You owe it to yourself to explore the potential for negotiation on deadlines.

Every one of us will be different. We do different jobs, and we have multiple responsibilities related to family, friends and our work. Just because I think you can do something by tomorrow doesn’t mean you can. Only you know if something is possible.

And always remember, if you are given 24 to 48 hours’ notice of a deadline, the problem is not yours. It’s the person who left it so late to ask you for help. You are always in a stronger negotiating position in these circumstances.

Now this is entirely different to being reminded of an impending deadline that you have known about for several weeks. That’s on you and is your mistake.

In these circumstances, that would be an indication that your weekly planning is failing and needs looking at.

Ultimately, Max, if the work you do involves frequent last-minute deadlines when you plan the week, these need to be taken into account. I have a flexible day on a Thursday to catch up. I don’t plan any content work on Thursdays. I try to schedule meetings and leave enough free space to catch up on anything that may be behind schedule for the week.

This week, I used that time to send my accountant the VAT receipts she’d asked for and finish this script. Next week? Who knows what I will need the time for?

I hope that has helped, Max. Thank you for your question, and thank you to you too for listening.

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

The Subtle Art Of Slowing Down

Mon, 03 Jun 2024 10:00:00 +0900

This week, it’s time to slow down.

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Script | 325

Hello, and welcome to episode 325 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

How often have you rushed to complete a task only to find you did it wrong or misunderstood what was required and wasted several hours doing something that wasn’t required? It happens to all of us, yet it can be one of the biggest drags on your overall productivity. But here’s the reassuring part: it has an easy fix. A simple change in approach can make a significant difference in your productivity and time management.

One of the advantages of the Time Sector System is it helps you to slow down by asking when you will do something rather than saying “yes” to everything and finding you have no time to do it. This then causes you to rush to complete urgent tasks (which may not be important tasks), leaving behind the important tasks.

Speed kills productivity, which may sound ironic, given that we think of productivity as doing things quickly and efficiently. And that is true, but speed ignores the “efficiency” part. Targeted speed is what you want, but to get fast at something takes practice and following a process. Without that practice and a process to follow, you leave yourself wide open to time-destroying mistakes that will need more time to rectify.

And this is what this week’s question is all about.

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

This week’s question comes from John. John asks, Hi Carl, I have so many tasks, and whenever I try to get them done, I end up having to redo them because I rushed and misunderstood the task or the request was unclear. How do you overcome these kinds of problems?

Hi John, thank you for your question.

This is a speed issue. Now, this might be part of your work culture, or it could be the expectations of your customers and bosses. The demands of others can create a sense that everything is urgent, and this leads to trying to do something that requires a little thought too fast. The result being mistakes are made or the wrong thing getting done.

One of the most important parts of becoming more productive and better at managing time is slowing down. I know that might sound contrary to what you think improving productivity is all about, but you will only improve your productivity if what you do each day is the right thing and at the highest quality you are capable of.

If Toyota wanted to increase the speed at which they produced a car, they could easily do it. Instead of screwing on the front bumper with twenty turns of the screw, they could reduce that to ten. On one car, that might save one or two seconds, yet over hundreds of thousands of cars, that adds up to hours saved.

Yet, it would be a false economy. Within a few weeks, many of those cars would be returning to their dealerships with hanging-off front bumpers. The impact on their dealership’s time and costs would be huge. Plus, it would destroy their reputation for quality. It would be disastrous for them in terms of costs, productivity and reputation.

Yet, so many people fall into this trap every day. They think if they rush and take shortcuts to get more things done, their productivity will improve. It won’t. What it will do is create a lot of unnecessary work fixing the mistakes that were made in haste.

So what can you do?

The first step is to look at the work you regularly do. Where are the processes? We all get email, Slack and Teams messages. What’s your process for handling these?

There are two approaches to your communications. You can react instantly each time a message comes in. We often think this looks good. It shows we are on the ball, quick and efficient. Yet are you? Sure, some messages may require a quick yes or no, but what about those messages asking for your thoughts on something? Do you ever stop and think about your response?

And then what happens to your other work? The work that is likely to be much more important? All this stopping to respond to a message and then starting again is slowing you down considerably. Of course, at the moment, you don’t notice that slow down. After all, you’re rushing from one thing to the next. You’re busy, and you’re moving fast.

But what’s happening to the important work in front of you? It’s not moving forward. You stop, respond to a message, then you come back to the work, and you have to refresh yourself—where were you, what were you writing, where are the reference materials? It’s so easy to lose an hour or two just getting back to where you were before you allowed yourself to be interrupted.

That is not being productive. It’s the reverse.

The biggest gain in productivity in car manufacturing plants was the introduction of robots. Robots don’t get interrupted. They do their job without the need to respond to emails, messages and questions from colleagues. They don’t need to attend meetings. As soon as you turn on the robot, it does its assigned job at the correct speed and in the correct order.

If you were to disrupt the assembly line by misaligning a chassis or not placing a wheel in the right place, that mistake would be catastrophic. Everything would come to a halt until the mistake was corrected.

For some reason, we rarely see that in ourselves. Stopping in the middle of doing focused work to respond to an email or message is disrupting your flow in the same way. It takes a disproportionate amount of time to recover and get back online.

The alternative approach is to develop a process for managing your communications. One way, for example, is to start your day by clearing your inboxes. Filter out the messages and emails you don’t need to respond to, delete the junk, and move your actionable messages to an Action This Day folder.

Then, assign thirty minutes to an hour later in the day to respond to those actionable messages. Fixing that time each day helps your reputation, as your colleagues and clients quickly learn your patterns. That may not always be possible, but each day, having an amount of time for managing your communications takes the pressure off having to respond instantly, and it improves your productivity because you can focus on doing your work to the level of quality expected of you.

This also has the advantage of giving you time to think. Because when you are responding to your actionable emails and messages, you’ve had time to think and respond in a clear, considered way. That improved communication means you receive fewer messages asking for clarification.

For the most part, our work does not need speed. Whether you reply to an email now or in a couple of hours is not going to create an issue (seriously, it’s not!) or responding to your boss’s Teams message this second or in twenty minutes.

We may have conditioned ourselves to believe these things need a speedy response, but they don’t. You will not lose a client because it took you two hours to respond to their email, and your boss will not fire you because it took you twenty minutes to reply to their message.

One thing that will happen if you slow down, though, is you won’t make as many mistakes, and the quality of your work will improve. On top of that, when you remove the sense of urgency, you instantly calm down and feel a lot less stressed.

One thing I urge all my coaching clients to do is set aside an hour or two each day for undisturbed focus work. If you work a typical eight—or nine-hour day, protecting two of those hours still leaves you with six to seven hours when you are available for everyone else. Surely that is more than enough time?

Knowing that you have two hours each day without being disturbed relieves a lot of pressure. However, this only works if you take control of your calendar. It means you plan your week—finding two hours a day and protecting them—and then decide what you will do with that time on a daily basis.

And that is a process: weekly planning to ensure you have sufficient time to complete your important work and daily planning to assign work based on the changing priorities that happen to all of us. If you can fix that to the same time each week and day, you will go a long way towards radically improving your productivity.

It doesn’t matter if you are an accountant in a busy accountancy firm, a lawyer or a salesperson. Everything you do on a regular basis can be turned into a process. I have CEOs in my coaching programme who begin preparing for their board meetings fourteen days before the meeting. The preparation time is blocked out in their calendar, and it’s given an appropriate priority. The steps they take to collect all the information and the document they set it out in are the same each time. They follow a process.

Processes reduce the thinking time required to do a task. This naturally speeds up your work performance without compromising quality. Because you follow the same steps each time, you know where you are with the work. It also helps you to identify areas where improvements can be made.

Whenever I watch Formula 1 racing, I’m amazed at the speed at which the pit crews can change four tyres. Two years ago, the McLaren team broke the record with a time of 1.82 seconds. In the last race in Monaco, almost every team was changing the tyres in under two seconds. That wasn’t an accident. That was a process.

The pit crews will have analysed in the minutest of detail how McLaren was able to do 1.82 seconds and changed their processes ever so minutely. That analysis has saved them, on average, three-tenths of a second. A tiny amount, yes, but in Formula 1, every tenth of a second counts.

If you watch the pit crews at work in a race, they are not panicking. Each person knows exactly what to do and in what order. It’s fast because it’s so smooth, and it’s repeated over and over again.

You are not going to be able to turn everything into a process. Many projects you work on are unique. However, if you look at your work as a whole, there will be multiple individual pieces of work you repeat each day. It’s that work you should be looking at for the potential to create a process.

In my work, I’ve turned writing books, blog posts, newsletters and client feedback into processes. I’ve eliminated unnecessary actions and slimmed everything down so that when I sit down to work on something, I can begin instantly without the need to waste time looking for tools and ideas.

That’s the approach you want to be taking, too, John. Begin with your communications—that’s something we all have to do. Where can you build a process?

I hope that helps. Thank you, John, for your question and thank you to you, too, for listening.

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

How To Easily Build Your Own Productivity System

Mon, 20 May 2024 10:00:00 +0900

So, you’ve decided to get yourself better organised. What would be the best way to start? That’s the question I am answering this week.

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Script | 324

Hello, and welcome to episode 324 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Whenever I begin working with a new coaching client, one of the first places we often need to start is unpicking the old system that is not working and transitioning into a system that does work.

Everyone is different. We have different times when we can focus, and we do different kinds of jobs. I recently watched an interview with J P Morgan Chase bank’s CEO Jamie Dimon, who wakes up at 4:30 to 5:00 am each morning so he can read the financial news, exercise and have breakfast before the day begins, which inevitably involves back-to-back meetings.

Waking up at 5:00 am may not work for you. You may prefer working late and waking up around 8:00 am.

But wherever you are in your productivity journey, if you want to develop a system that works for you, it will inevitably mean tweaking your old system at least somewhat. That being the case, where would you start?

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

This week’s question comes from Frank. Frank asks, Hi Carl, I’ve decided to get myself organised. I’ve tried everything over the years, and I have bits of all sorts of systems everywhere. If you were to start all over, what would you do first?

Hi Frank, thank you for your question.

I approach this by looking at the hierarchy of productivity tools first. There are three tools we can use to help us become more productive: your calendar, task manager, and notes. Of those three, your calendar is the top one. That’s the one tool that is never going to deceive you.

It shows you the twenty-four hours you have each day and tells you what you can realistically do given that time.

Your task manager is the most deceptive tool you have. You can load it up with hundreds of tasks, yet it never tells you if you have the time available to do those tasks. It doesn’t even tell you which tasks would be the right ones to do at any given time. Perhaps AI will help us in the future there, but I doubt it.

I doubt it because while AI could see everything and may know what deadlines you have and where your appointments are, it will not know how you feel. You may be coming down with a cold, might not have slept well, or had a fight with your significant other. Any one of those could derail your effectiveness, and they are things you cannot plan for.

So, when starting out, get your calendar fixed first.

What does that mean?

It means first letting go of all your double-booked times. You cannot be in two places at once, and if you do see a scheduling conflict on your calendar, these need fixing first. This may mean you need to renegotiate a meeting or move something to the all-day section.

I’ve seen people putting their daughter’s driving lesson on their calendars. This often leads to seeing an appointment with a client at the same time as the daughter’s lesson. If you need to know your daughter has a driving lesson at 3:00 pm, put it in your all-day section of your calendar with the time in brackets—preferably in a different colour. You will find this cleans up your calendar significantly.

The next thing I suggest you do, Frank, is to look at all the tasks you have to do and categorise them. It’s likely you will have tasks related to communications—emails, messages and follow-ups, admin, and chores. Beyond that, it will depend on the kind of work you do. A journalist will spend a lot of time writing, a designer will spend time designing, and a lawyer will likely spend a lot of time writing contracts or court documents.

Whether you’re writing, designing, or doing something else, you want to group similar tasks together.

In a task manager such as Todoist and Things 3, you can assign labels or tags to a task. You would use these labels or tags to assign a category to your tasks. This way, you can easily group all similar tasks together.

The next step is to look at your calendar and assign blocks of time for these categories. Some may not need specific time blocks, but I encourage people to allocate blocks of time for communications and admin. These will always need doing. The problem is that if you do not have time assigned for them, the next day, instead of requiring forty minutes or so, you will need double that time just to catch up. This is not a good time management strategy.

One question I often get is about dating tasks. I do recommend that you date tasks, but only for tasks you know need to be done this week.

There’s a lot that can change between this week and next, and what you may think needs to be done the following Thursday could quite easily change to either need to be on Monday or not at all. If a task does not need to be done this week, place it in your next-week folder and forget about it. You can come back to it when you do your weekly plan.

While we are on the subject of dating tasks, beware of the things that are not tasks that can end up in your task manager. Your bill payment dates, your son’s graduation and your next dental appointment are not tasks. These are events and should be on your calendar.

You may need to know day-specific information on a given day. This information should always be on your calendar. I have my wife’s exam week dates, when my parents-in-law are staying, and public holidays on my calendar. None of these would qualify as a task unless I needed to do something on them.

Most of these are simple tweaks anyone can make to their system without the need for a complete overhaul.

The biggest challenge I find people struggle with is stepping away from firefighting addiction. This is where a person is hooked on running around panicking about everything they have to do. This just does not work. It leads to only doing easy, so-called urgent tasks and never getting anything meaningful done.

The next thing to look out for is the dilemma of being able to do anything, just not all at the same time. There’s something inherently faulty with our brains. We believe we can do a lot more than we actually can. No, you cannot complete fifty tasks and attend seven hours of meetings in a day. Not only is it unrealistic, but it’s also a guaranteed way to burn out.

Part of the problem is we like to see twenty, thirty or more tasks on our daily to-do list. It makes us feel important and useful. Yet it’s a delusion. You cannot do that number of tasks with a high level of competency.

I find it interesting that people feel ashamed when all they have on their to-do list are three or four tasks. Yet, that is what you want to be trying to get to.

You can accomplish this by moving towards a time-based system and away from a task-based one. This means instead of counting the number of tasks you have to do, you instead allocate blocks of time to specific categories of tasks.

This then allows you to dedicate an hour to responding to your messages, for instance. Then, instead of having a lot of email tasks in your task manager, you have a single task telling you to clear your actionable email folder. Similarly, you can do this with projects. Rather than having fifteen or more tasks related to multiple different projects each day, you have a single task telling you which projects to work on that day.

You will finish more projects faster if you focus on one or two projects each day instead of diluting your effectiveness by trying to work five or six projects each day.

You can then use the third tool in your toolbox, your notes. This is by far the best place to manage your projects. You can keep project and meeting notes, links to documents and emails and checklists of things that may need doing. You then only need to link the project note to the relevant task in your task manager for a single click and in experience.

The advantage here is you avoid the possibility of being distracted by something else. You see a task telling you to work on the next board meeting presentation, and click the link that will take you straight to your project notes, where you will find links to the presentation file, your research and other relevant information.

The alternative is to be clicking around, looking at a long list of tasks which will only demotivate you and waste a considerable amount of time looking for something to do instead of being directed towards the exact task that needs doing next.

Now, what about all your old stuff?

The first thing to know is that the way everything is right now may not be as bad as it first looks. I strongly suggest you consolidate your tools into three—a calendar, task manager, and notes app. If you have multiple different apps, choose one for each and combine everything into one. You do not want to be wasting time trying to remember where everything is.

Then, go through your tasks in your task manager, deleting old tasks that are no longer relevant and cleaning up your calendar.

Your notes are less important. These can be kept as you don’t know which ones may be a source of inspiration in the future. You can move old notes to an archive. There, they will be out of the way but still searchable if you ever need them.

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

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

How To Stay Motivated When You're Not in The Mood.

Mon, 13 May 2024 10:00:00 +0900

How do you create and maintain your motivation once you have your new productivity system in place? That’s what I’m answering this week.

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Script | 323

Hello, and welcome to episode 323 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

One of the positive things about creating your productivity system is the excitement you get once you have your new tools and systems set up. We often cannot wait to get started using these tools and systems.

Then, after a few weeks or months, the “newness” wears off, and we are back where we were before—looking for new tools and systems and convincing ourselves that the tools and systems we currently use no longer work.

And if your tools and systems do work, it can be hard to stay motivated once the monotony of doing the same things at the same time each day beds in.

This week’s question goes to the heart of that—staying motivated to do the work we know we should do but just don’t want to do.

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

This week’s question comes from Keith. Keith asks, HI Carl, I feel like I’m doing something wrong. When it comes to the time of actually doing work allocated on my calendar, I often feel not bothered and I just simply reschedule it for the next time, I find myself doing that a lot, with both routine and areas of focus tasks and I find it strange that I am able to reschedule it all so easily… do you have any tips on what to do here?

Hi Keith, thank you for your question.

There are two distinct parts here. Your areas of focus should be self-motivating. These are tasks you have identified as important to you and for the life you want to live.

The second, routines, are less important—these are the tasks that just need to be done to maintain life. Things like taking the garbage out, washing the car, doing the laundry or, mowing the lawn, etc.

The more concerning part here is a lack of motivation in your areas of focus. Doing these tasks should be the things you look forward to doing the most. Well, mostly. I know it can be hard to head out for a 10-mile run when it’s pouring down outside and blowing a gale. (Although the way you feel when you get back is fantastic!)

Let’s step back a little first.

When you find yourself rescheduling calendar blocks, that’s not necessarily a bad sign. That’s just life. Emergencies happen, plans are changed, and occasionally, we get sick.

That said, having structure does help you to be consistent. For instance, I recommend you protect time each day for dealing with your actionable emails and messages. Rather than going in and out of your email every few minutes—which is disastrous for your cognitive ability to focus—having time set aside for dealing with these gives you the time and space to get on with your important work.

Similarly, you will likely find that if you can set aside an hour for admin and chores each day, the only thing you then need to decide is what admin tasks and chores you do in that time. Becoming consistent with this results in you rarely needing the full hour.

You may find that if you move these blocks around every day, consistency will be difficult to achieve. The goal of setting aside a little time each day for focused work, communications, and admin is to get them fixed in your calendar.

This is a using a little neuroscience to get your brain working for you. You are using neuroscience when you go to bed at the same time each day. It’s why you begin to feel sleepy at the same time each day. This is the same for meal times. Consistent meal times informs your brain when to tell you that you are hungry.

As an aside, if you take up intermittent fasting, you will find skipping breakfast early in the morning difficult at first. Yet if your eating window is between 11:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., after a few weeks, your brain learns when to tell you to eat. You will no longer be hungry in the morning.

Let’s examine the motivational aspect of this, beginning with your areas of focus.

These activities should be self-motivating. Your areas of focus are the things that are important to you. If you lack motivation here, it’s likely that the way you have defined what each one means to you is not quite right and needs a little refining.

Health and fitness can often be difficult if you find any form of exercise unpleasant. What may be happening if you skip exercise is you are trying to do too much. I have found if you set a minimum—a level you can do very easily will keep you motivated here. For example, you could set a minimum of 5,000 steps per day or 10 push-ups and 10 air squats. Doing that set would count as an exercise session.

Once you’ve completed your 5000 steps, you are likely to do a few more to exceed your minimum. Likewise, with pushups and squats, you are likely to do more than ten just to exceed your minimum.

You will probably have found that starting is the hardest part. Once you have started, you end up doing more, which is where another trick can be deployed.

I mentioned setting aside time each day for communications is a good habit to have. If you know at 4:00pm, you will spend an hour dealing with your actionable messages but are really not in the mood to do it, you can tell yourself I will just respond to the five oldest messages today.

In most cases, once you’ve done those five, you are going to continue for the full hour. And if you don’t continue, you’ve done five. Five is better than none. After all, one is always greater than zero.

Going back to the principle of blocking time out. Try not to be too specific here. Your time blocks should be for specific types of work. For instance, if you are a lawyer who is required to write contracts frequently, you could block two or three hours each week for “Writing”. This then gives you greater freedom on what you will write in that time. Perhaps one day, you need to write a will or an affidavit. By keeping the time block general, you have greater freedom about what you will work on.

This helps with motivation, as you have a greater choice of what to work on. If there is time pressure on a particular part of your work, you can choose to do the most time-sensitive part—which is usually the best motivator. Or, if there is no time pressure, you can choose something you feel like doing.

Another area to look at is timing. For most people, the late afternoon is not a great time to do focused work. You’re likely to get tired and possibly feel frazzled by all the stuff being thrown at you all day. That’s not a motivation issue; that’s just being tired—tired of looking at a screen all day, tired of dealing with other people’s problems, and tired of making decisions. It all adds up.

What I’ve discovered is that doing deeper, focused work in the morning is much easier than trying to do it in the afternoon. You’re fresher and will find it easier to focus. This does not work for everyone. Some people focus better in the afternoons. But as Daniel Pink found when writing his bestselling book When, the number of people who can focus better in the afternoons is less than 2%. The majority of us are either morning or night people.

If it’s possible, try to do your more meaningful work in your natural biorhythm rather than fighting it. Nobody wins the fight against nature.

Finally, look at your processes. Processes are a human form of automation. This is why when you begin your day with a consistent “you” focused morning routine, no matter what is thrown at you, on the whole, you get through the day without too much trouble.

If you wake up late, skip your morning routines, and run out the door to get to work on time, everything seems to go wrong.

Processes ensure that once you begin a piece of work, it’s almost automatic. My favourite routine is email management. You clear your inbox in the morning. This part of the process is all about speed—clearing it as fast as you can. You can add a little incentive here and time yourself to see how fast you can clear fifty or a hundred emails. The second part of the process is about slowing down and clearing your action this day folder.

Because the second part of the process is about slowing down and thinking about your responses, you can begin the process by making yourself a nice cup of tea, putting on some relaxing music and begin.

Rather than focusing on numbers, set yourself a time limit. For instance, if you give yourself forty-five minutes, start with the oldest email in your action this day folder and start. Because you are not focused on how many emails you respond to, you can see the “end of the tunnel” it’s forty-five minutes later.

Again, if you are consistent with this, you won’t lack motivation, particularly with email management. If you skip just one day, you’ve doubled the amount of time you will need tomorrow. Now, that would be demotivating.

I hope that helps, Keith. Thank you for your question. And thank you to you too for listening.

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

Task-Based -Vs- Time-Based Productivity

Mon, 06 May 2024 10:00:00 +0900

What is “Time-Based Productivity”, and how can you apply it to your daily work? That’s the question I am answering this week.

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Script | 322

Hello, and welcome to episode 322 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

One of the huge benefits of the Time Sector System is that it removes the tyranny of task-based productivity and replaces it with something more concrete: time.

You see, tasks will never stop coming at you. Your kids’ toys need to be picked up, the laundry needs to be done, your bed needs to be made, and you’d better check the refrigerator to see what you need to pick up from the supermarket. And that’s before you start your work day.

If you base your productivity system on the tasks you need to do, you will wear yourself out. It’s impossible because it’s never-ending. There are no barriers, and you will see this rather quickly if you use a task manager. Task managers fill up, and everything is screaming at you to be done.

But then you’re faced with the question: where am I going to find the time to do all these tasks?

It always comes back to time.

This week’s question asks how you can transition away from this tyranny of task-based productivity and bring a sense of control and calm into your world.

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

This week’s question comes from Jens. Jens asks, hi Carl, I am always overwhelmed with tasks and never able to get all my work done. I am also constantly interrupted by messages and emails and never seem to be able to get a quiet moment. How would you handle this situation?

Hi Jens, thank you for your question.

You describe a real problem today. Over the last fifteen years or so, technology has broken down the barrier between our work and personal lives. Long gone are the days where when we finished work for the day we really did finish work. If we needed to respond to a work email, it had to be done from our office computer. Once we had gone home, that was it. No more work email.

Sure, there were other issues—people staying late in the office for one, but at least when you left your place of work for the day, that was it. You left work at work. (Or it certainly felt like it.)

So, what can you do today to establish some barriers so you do not always feel pressure to do more?

A few years ago, I discovered that if you base your system on task management, you will lose. Tasks are never-ending, and there will always be more to do than time available to do them.

It was that phrase—“always more to do than time available” that gave me a clue towards the solution. If tasks were unlimited, then perhaps I could work on the one area that was limited—time.

Working with time gave me natural limits or constraints. There are only twenty-four hours in a day, and during that time, I need to eat and sleep at the very least. That then gave me a new number to work with. Given that I personally need around seven hours of sleep and, let’s say, ninety minutes for eating, then all I had left was fifteen and a half hours for everything else.

Once you work out how much time you need for sleep and eating, plus time for personal hygiene, you likely will have around fourteen hours a day to work with.

So the temptation is often how much work can you fit into fourteen hours, yet that’s probably not the best place to work from.

Work is just one part of your life. It’s an important part, but so is time spent with your family, getting a little exercise and perhaps some relaxation activities such as watching TV, reading a book or watching your favourite sports team.

When you add up all the time you need for these activities, your work day will likely be around eight to ten hours.

So, what can you do in, say, nine hours?

Well, let’s break things down a little further.

Email and Slack or Teams messages will probably be a big part of your work—particularly if you are a knowledge worker—i.e. you are employed for your brain rather than your physical strength. That being the case, how much time do you need to be able to stay on top of all these messages and emails?

In my case, I need about an hour a day to respond to my actionable emails. You will likely be around the same figure. Think of it this way: if you had one uninterrupted hour each day for responding to your actionable emails, would you be able to stay on top of it?

If that’s the case, then you need to protect an hour a day for managing your communications. If you accept you need an hour yet do not protect that hour, what’s likely to happen?

At the very least, you’ll need two hours the next day, three the day after that and so on. Where will you ever find two or three hours in a day for nothing but email and messages?

Not protecting time for these activities is not sustainable. That’s how backlogs build up, and that just drains you.

One of the first things I advise my coaching clients to do is protect some time each day for communications. This one positive action can bring huge benefits.

The first is that you stop worrying about what’s lurking in your inbox. You know you have time protected to deal with it. This means you are going to be much more focused on the work you want to get done. The second is that it starts to reduce the “addiction” of going in and out of your inbox “checking” to see if anything important has come in.

All that checking is creating havoc in your cognitive abilities to focus on what needs to be done. It’s hugely inefficient and drains your mental energies.

Try to think of it in terms of the gears in your car. If you are constantly changing gears, you are going to run out of fuel much faster than if you get into top gear and stay there. You may not be accelerating as fast, but you are running at a much more efficient rate, which conserves energy.

Constantly switching your attention to check email or messages does the same thing to your brain as if you were going up and down the gears. It’s highly inefficient and drains you of energy.

But we keep checking because we don’t feel confident that we have sufficient time at the end of the day to clear any actionable email.

The key to time-based productivity is to identify the types of work you are expected to do. For example, if you are a designer, how much time do you want to spend on design work each day?

Imagine you protected four hours each day for doing focused design work; this means you could focus all your efforts on doing the work you were employed to do. From 8:30 am to 12:30 pm, you would block that time on your calendar as focused design work.

Now, all you need is a list in your task manager called “design work”, and you can pick which you will work on that day.

Now, I know many of you will immediately tell me that’s impossible. Okay, it might be in your situation. But rather than dismiss this idea, perhaps you could play with it.

Perhaps instead of blocking the first four hours of your day for focused work, you could break it down into two-hour segments. You could do two hours of focused work and one hour of miscellaneous work, such as communicating with your clients and colleagues. Then do another two hours in the afternoon.

That would still leave you with four hours for meetings, returning calls and messages, and handling emails.

I promise you that one change will radically improve your productivity and leave you a lot less exhausted at the end of the day.

If this is so effective, why do so few people do it? Fear.

It’s the fear of saying no to someone who wants to interrupt your protected time. And that’s hard. There’s an element of FOMO—the fear of missing out, but also a deeper human instinct to be alert for danger. That danger today, is not some predatorial mammal but angry bosses, upset clients and people thinking you’re being lazy because you’ve disappeared.

However, when it comes to your evaluation as an employee, no one remembers whether you answered an email in thirty minutes or less. You will always be assessed on your results.

People will always remember when you failed to meet a deadline or didn’t deliver an order on time. Saying, “But I replied to your emails and messages within a few minutes,” isn’t going to wash.

The only way to get results is to do your work. If you’re wasting precious time allowing yourself to be interrupted and distracted, something is going to have to change.

So, yes, if you base your productivity on the number of tasks you have to do, you will feel overwhelmed and stressed out. There’s only one end result—burnout, and that’s not very pleasant.

Instead, make a list of your core work activities—the work you are employed to do and a list of the things you want to spend time doing—your non-work related activities.

Then, open up your calendar and find time for those activities.

With your core work, I recommend you fix it as repeating blocks on your calendar where possible. Find a time in the day when you are least likely to have meetings and block it out now.

You may find that a fixed time is not possible because of the dynamic nature of your work; in that case, block sufficient time out on a week-to-week basis for you to get your work done. It’s an extra planning task, but it’s worth it.

For the tasks you want to complete, place them in your task manager in folders designated by when you will do them: this week, next week, etc. Then, label or tag the task by the category of work it relates to.

Is the task related to communication or administration? Does it relate to your core work as a designer, salesperson, or manager? On your calendar, create blocks of time for each of these categories. When the time comes, the only list you need to look at is the list of tasks for that particular category. Then, do as many of them as you have time.

If you remain consistent with this process and don’t cherry-pick the easy tasks, your output will soon shift upwards. I know; I’ve seen it time and time again. It works, and very few people ever complain you are no longer as available. And the few that do, once you explain you need quiet time to get on and do your work effectively, they soon stop complaining.

Switching away from unsustainable task-based productivity is easier than you may think. It does take a positive effort, though. To start, decide how much time you need each day to fulfil your work commitments and go from there. Once you see it working, you will be encouraged to add more focused time blocks.

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

How To Get Your Notes Organised Once and For All.

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 10:00:00 +0900

If your notes are a disorganised mess, this episode is the one for you.

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Script | 321

Hello, and welcome to episode 321 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

This week, I have a special episode for you. No question; instead, I want to share a way to think about your productivity tools, particularly how your notes app fits into the whole scheme of things.

There is a trinity of productivity tools—your calendar, task manager, and notes app—that when connected, will enhance your overall effectiveness by reducing the friction between organising and doing work.

Today, I want to focus on the notes app because this is the tool that is most often neglected.

Within this Trinity of tools, your calendar is number 1. Everything flows from your calendar because that is the tool that will prevent you from being overly ambitious and give you the reality of the day. There are twenty-four boxes in your calendar, each representing an hour, and that’s all you get each day.

You cannot change that, for time is the fixed part of your productivity system.

Your task manager tells you what tasks you have committed to and when you will do those tasks. Its relationship with your calendar is critical because if you have seven hours of meetings, you’re committed to picking your kids up from school, and you have a hundred tasks to do; you will know instantly you have an impossible day. You can then either reschedule some meetings or reduce your task number.

So, where do your notes come into this trinity?

Your notes support your tasks. It’s here where you will manage your projects, interests, goals and areas of focus. It’s also where you can keep your archive, which, if used well, will become a rich resource of inspiration, ideas and creativity. But more on that later.

Of all the productivity tools you use, your notes app is the one where you can be a little relaxed. Your notes do not need to be perfectly curated and organised. Most notes apps today have powerful search built in, and I would argue that the ability to search within your notes is a critical part of your choice when choosing a notes app.

I suspect Evernote’s popularity over the years (despite its recent changes) is due to two factors: its search, which is arguably still the best in the field, and its brilliant web clipper.

The ability to search your notes means that as long as you give any note a sufficiently descriptive title, you will be able to find it quickly and effortlessly.

As a side note, I highly recommend that you learn all the different ways your notes app can search for your notes. Just Google your notes app of choice’s search functions. For instance, you can search “OneNote search” or “Notion search”. Learning this will save you a lot of time in the future.

Evernote has a keyboard shortcut on the Mac operating system that I’ve been using for years. However, for a brief period in 2019, this feature stopped working while Evernote was transitioning from the old “legacy” version to the new Evernote 10, which was very frustrating.

During that six-month period, I realised how important it was to be able to search your notes quickly in terms of overall productivity.

Your notes do not just support your projects. They can also support multiple parts of your life, from tracking your goals to keeping your eight areas of focus front and centre of your life.

Moreover, you can keep track of your hobbies, wish lists, book notes (if you read Kindle books), self-development topics, and interests. And all this information can be taken with you wherever you are through your mobile phone.

All this is great, but what if you have a notes app up and running, but it has become neglected and lacking in a little TLC (tender loving care)? Well, fear not. As you do not need to be as strict about how tidy your notes are, getting things back on track can be a little project you do over a few weeks or months.

Here’s how to get things started.

First, create five folders. What these are called in your own notes app will depend on the app you are using. If your preference is OneNote, this would be your notebooks, Evernote would be stacks and Apple Notes would be folders. To help you, this is the highest level you have in your notes app.

These five folders should be named as follows:

Goals, Areas of Focus, Projects, Resources, and finally, your Archive. Again, depending on what app you are using, you will also need an Inbox for collecting your notes.

To give you a quick summary of what goes in each folder, for your goals, this is where you put the goals you are currently working on. Really, this is a place where you keep track of your goals. For example, if you are saving money, you can track how much you are saving each month. Similarly, if you are losing weight, you can track your weight each week and add the numbers here.

Your areas of focus is where your eight areas go. If you are unaware of these, you can download my free areas of focus workbook from carlpullein.com. What you do with this folder is create a subfolder for each area and have a note in each defining what each area means to you and what you need to do to keep it in balance.

Next up, your projects folder. For each project you are currently working on, you would have a subfolder. There, you can keep notes on any meetings you attend, checklists, links to any files you need, copies of relevant emails and contact details for collaborators.

You can also keep a master projects list here, which will give you quick access to any of the projects you are working on.

Then, there is your resources folder. This is for your interests, hobbies, further education, and anything else you want to keep. Think of this as your commonplace notebook area. If you are not sure what a commonplace book is, here’s the Wikipedia definition:

“Commonplace books are a way to compile knowledge, usually in notebooks. They have been kept from antiquity and were kept particularly during the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century. Such books are similar to scrapbooks filled with items of many kinds: notes, proverbs, aphorisms, maxims, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, prayers, legal formulas, and recipes.”

Your resources folder is unique to you, and you don’t want to overthink it. I love all things related to James Bond, and I have a subfolder of articles, links, and videos related to all things James Bond. There’s stuff in there about the films and locations, clothing and props, and products the James Bond from the books used.

It’s a gold mine of information related to something I have a deep interest in and it’s unique to me.

And your archive. Contrary to popular belief, this is not one step away from the trash. Your archive is a rich resource of discarded ideas, old projects, and stuff you were once interested in. It’s here where you can potentially make connections only you could make. Your life experiences, knowledge, and way of thinking make you who you are, and many of the ideas and things you were once interested in may be the spark to something very special.

When Steve Jobs was at university, he took a calligraphy class. At that time, it was a passing interest, yet several years later, when they were designing the Mac User interface, many of the things he learned in that class came back to him. Today, whether you use a Mac or Windows machine, you can thank Steve Jobs that you have hundreds of fonts to choose from.

Nobody had made the connection that multiple fonts to choose from would allow people to use their computers to be creative. Perhaps nobody would have done had Steve Jobs not taken that calligraphy class.

That’s the power of your archive. Yes, I know Steve Jobs didn’t have the benefit of Apple Notes in the early 1980s, but that passing interest sparked an idea we all benefit from today.

It’s the randomness of your archive, built up over many years, that will become a place for you to, at the very least, reminisce. This is where you have the freedom to dump stuff. You never know when or if any of what you put in there will become useful again.

Once you have your folder structure set up, you can go through all your old notes and move them into your new structure. Now, I want to stress that you do not need to do this in one go. Take your time, enjoy the process and reminisce as you go through your old notes. This should never be a chore; it should be treated as a fun project.

Remember, because of the powerful search your notes app has, all your notes, new and old, are searchable. So there is no rush to do this. You could decide to do this while watching TV in the evening or perhaps while commuting to work if you use a bus or train. Maybe you have a long flight coming up; you could use some of that time to go through your notes.

One tip I can give you here is that as you go through your old notes, you should ensure that the titles of your notes mean something to you. If you come across notes with an image, for example, you may find that the title is something IMG6654. You want to change that title as it won’t be searchable in that format.

You can also add tags if you wish to. Be careful not to tag something with the same name as the name of your folder or subfolder. To give you an example from my James Bond subfolder, I use tags to denote whether something is related to a book, film prop or location. I use a coded tagging system. So, anything related to a location would be tagged JB Location. Anything related to a film would be tagged JB Films.

Likewise, I have a subfolder in my resources called Places to Visit. The tags I use here are the place names. So, I have tags for Paris, London, Seoul, Tokyo etc.

Your tags are there to aid search, so if you decide to use tags, make sure you use names that mean something to you. You do not want to be too clever here. A good adage to go by is, “When tagging, tag as if you were being your dumb self.”

Now, if you want to learn more and go into more detail, I have just published a brand new course called Mastering Digital Notes Organisation. In this course, I go into detail on setting up your notes, how to process new notes, and the importance of the three underlying foundations of provenance, categories, and series.

This course will also show you how to build a rich resource of information that you will want to revisit repeatedly. Details on how to join the course are in the show notes, or you can go directly to my website, and the links and everything you need to know will be right there.

Thank you for listening, and I wish you all a very, very productive week.

Overcoming The Fear Of Saying "No"

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 10:00:00 +0900

Setting up a structured day makes sense. It reduces decision-making and helps you prioritise your work. But how strict should you be with this structure? That’s the question I answer this week.

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Script | 320

Hello, and welcome to episode 320 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

The change that has given me the biggest productivity benefit over the years was giving my calendar priority over every other productivity tool. This means that if my calendar tells me it’s time to buckle down and do some focused work, I will do that. If a customer or boss asks for a meeting when I have scheduled time to work on a project, I will always suggest an alternative time.

This single change has meant I get all my work done (with time to spare), I can plan my days and weeks with a reasonable amount of confidence, and I rarely, if ever, get backlogs.

However, when you adopt this method, the temptation is to adhere to it rigidly. And that is where things begin to go wrong.

This week’s question is on this very question. How strict should you be with the plan you have for the week? So, with that said, literally, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Lucas. Lucas asks, hi Carl, I love your idea of blocking time out for your core work each week. The problem I have is I feel guilty now whenever I ignore a message or refuse to meet someone when I have a time block. What do you do to overcome this feeling of guilt?

Hi Lucas, thank you for your question.

Having structure in your day (and week) lets you know with a strong degree of confidence that you have sufficient time each day to do your work.

Let me give you an example. Pretty much all of us get email each day. It’s just one of those inevitable parts of life. Now, if you are a typical knowledge worker, you will be getting upwards of 80 emails each day. Let’s say, of those 80 emails, half of them are non-actionable, 10 of them are for reference, and the remaining emails (thirty) require a response of some sort from you.

How long will it take for you to respond to thirty emails? An hour? An hour-and-a-half? However, how long it will take you is rather less important. What matters is that at some point in the day, you will need to deal with those emails. If you don’t allocate some time, you will require double the amount of time tomorrow because you will have to deal with all the emails you didn’t deal with today.

That’s how backlogs build: by being unrealistic about the amount of time you need to protect to stay on top of things like email and your admin.

It would be easy for me to sit here and tell you to find an hour a day and dedicate it to responding to your emails. In theory, this sounds great. In practice, life will get in the way. It always does.

And even if life doesn’t get in the way, you may be exhausted, or something could be worrying you. All of which will conspire to slow you down and make you less efficient.

Instead of strictly sticking to a plan, you will find it better to work on the principle that one is greater than zero. In other words, while you may like to have an hour to manage your emails, on those days that you don’t, give yourself twenty or thirty minutes instead.

The goal is not necessarily to clear your actionable email each day. The goal is to stay on top of it. This means that if you are unable to clear all your actionable emails today when you come to deal with your email tomorrow, you begin with the oldest and work from there.

This way, no one will ever wait longer than twenty-four hours for a reply.

This approach gives you the flexibility to deal with requests as and when they come in—and they will come in. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of waking up with a clear plan of action for the day, only to begin your work day and be told some catastrophic mistake has happened and all hands are required to get things back under control.

That’s life for you. As the saying goes. “No plan survives the first shot being fired.”

Getting comfortable with this reality means you retain some degree of flexibility to deal with colleagues’ and friends’ requests in a way that doesn’t make you feel guilty.

But let’s look at this a little deeper.

Attending meetings and answering messages and emails is what Call Newport describes as the administrative tax you pay for agreeing to do a project. Unless you are working on your own project, there will always be some form of communication that, while important, will stop you from doing actual work on the project.

Your colleagues may be very happy to see you in the meeting or to receive your message responses in a timely manner, but how will they feel if you are unable to meet your deadlines?

Nobody will remember you skipped a meeting or two or were a little late responding to a message. But I can assure you they will remember if you cannot meet your deadlines. That will leave them feeling disappointed and tarnish your reputation as a productive and effective employee.

Time blocking does not mean you block out every day for specific types of work. Allocating two hours for focused work and an hour each for communications and admin would only take four hours out of a typical eight-hour working day.

That would ensure you are consistently on top of your work and still allow you four hours for meetings, responding to quick requests and answering your phone.

The only area where someone may feel put out is if they want to hold a meeting at 10:00 am and you tell them you cannot do so but will be happy to meet at 11:30 am instead. Yet, with that said, I’ve never come across anyone who got offended because I suggested an alternative time.

And remember, if they pull rank on you, so to speak—i.e. your boss tells you that you must attend the meeting at 10:00 am, okay, you have no choice so attend the meeting and readjust your focus time. Either you can reduce the time that day, or you reschedule it for another time in the day.

When you plan your core work for the week, you do so knowing that your plan will likely need to change. That does not mean you don’t plan the week.

Planning out when you will do your core work for the week means you know you begin the week with enough time to get that important work done. If, or rather, when something comes up that requires you to adjust your schedule, that’s fine. Look at your calendar and see where you can move a focused time block. If you cannot, look at reducing the time block.

If none of that is possible, delete the time block altogether. It’s one day, and you may create a small backlog for a day or two. But if you are consistent and you stay with your plan where possible, you will soon find yourself clearing any backlog.

It’s interesting that you assume there’s a feeling of “guilt”. I must admit I did feel uncomfortable when I began implementing these practices. I went from being always available for anyone to being selectively available. But I don’t remember ever feeling guilty.

The people demanding my time wanted me to do some work for them. The thing is, talking about work is not doing work. Sitting in a meeting delayed the work. It was easy to overcome any risk of guilt by telling myself that by making it difficult for me to be in a meeting with them, I was able to do what they wanted me to do better and faster.

Life is always going to be full of difficult choices. Do I take my dog for a walk now or later? When do I go to the supermarket? Do I work on this project or that one? It’s never-ending.

Yet, a plan for the week reassures you you have the time set aside. And once that plan is in place, you do whatever you can to protect it.

That does not mean you stubbornly stick to it. There will always be a need for flexibility. But, if you give yourself ten minutes or so before the end of the day, you can look at what you didn’t do and reschedule what you can.

The best special forces teams always begin a mission with a clear plan of action. Yet they know that once the mission begins, that plan will change. Part of their training is to learn how to adapt to the changing nature of the battlefield quickly. Intelligence may have been incorrect, a weapon may malfunction, or a team member may take a hit and be rendered out of action. The skill is in quickly evaluating the changing nature of the plan and adapting your actions to adapt to the new set of circumstances you face.

You will not be able to do that in a week or a month. It’s something you will always be working on. But with practice and focus, you will soon find yourself becoming more adaptable. Better at making decisions about where to apply your time and feeling less guilty about being less available than you used to be.

Good luck, Lucas and thank you for your question.

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

What Are Your Categories Of Work?

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 10:00:00 +0900

So, your calendar and task manager are organised, and you have enough time to complete your important work. But how do you define what your individual tasks are? That’s what I’m answering this week.

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Script | 319

Hello, and welcome to episode 319 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

One of the most powerful ways to improve your effectiveness is to ensure you have sufficient time each day protected for your important work. Some of these tasks will be obvious. If you’re a salesperson and one of your customers asks you to send them a quote for a new product you are selling, that will come under the general category of “customers”. As this is an important part of your work as a salesperson, your “customer” category will have time protected each day. Well, I hope it does.

Then there will be your general communications and admin to deal with. We all have these categories of tasks to do each day. There’s no point in sticking your head in the sand, as it were, and hoping they will go away. Emails demanding a reply do not disappear. Ignore these for one day, and you’ll have double the amount to do tomorrow. This means you will need double the amount of time, too—time you likely do not have.

What this all means is that if your task manager supports tags or labels (and most do), you can use these for your categories.

This week’s question is about how you choose which category for your tasks.

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

This week’s question comes from José. José asks, Hi Carl, I am struggling to define which tasks are admin, consulting, or sales-related. How do you go about choosing categories for your tasks?

Hi José, thank you for your question.

Let me first explain the different categories of work you may have.

The concept here is that every task you have will come under a particular category. Those categories could be communications or admin, but they could also be sales activity, writing, designing, or marketing. Your categories will depend on the kind of work you do.

Once you have established your categories, you protect time each day (or week) to work on those categories.

For example, I have a category for “projects.” I block Wednesday mornings for project work. This means that when I plan for the week, the majority of my project tasks will be scheduled for Wednesday.

The important thing is you do not add too many categories. The less, the better. To give you a benchmark, I have eight categories. Mine are:

Writing

Audio/visual

Clients

Projects

Communications

Admin

Planning

Chores

It can be difficult to establish your categories at first, and the temptation will be to add more categories than you need. This is a mistake because very soon, you will have too many categories, which slows down your processing.

If you’re familiar with COD (and if you are not, you can take the free course—the link is in the show notes), the purpose of Organising is to get everything in the right place as quickly as possible. If you have too many categories, it will slow you down and involve far too many choices. You may experience the paradox of choice, where too much choice paralyses your thinking.

So, what are your categories? Well, you will likely have communications and admin. We all have to communicate, and email and Teams/Slack are pernicious and never-ending. Having some time protected each day to deal with your communications will keep you on top of these and prevent you from being overwhelmed.

And there will always be bits of admin to deal with. Requests from HR, banking, filing, and expenses to process etc. You may not need a great deal of time for admin each day, but it’s worth protecting thirty minutes or so to stay on top of this.

However, aside from your communications and admin, what other categories do you need? This depends on your core work.

For instance, if you are a journalist, two categories spring to mind: research and writing. This is the core of your employed work and is what you are paid for. If you spend six hours out of an eight-hour working day in Teams or Zoom meetings, that leaves you with just two hours to manage your communications and admin AND do some writing.

No chance. It’s not going to happen. Something will have to change if you want to spend more time doing what you are employed to do.

One way to do that is to ensure before the week begins, you have enough time to meet your core work objectives. That comes first. After that, you will see how much time you have left for meetings.

Simple, yes. To put into practice, perhaps a lot more difficult. But it’s one of those important adjustments worth working on.

This means, if you were a journalist, you would have your writing and research categories blocked in your calendar before the week begins.

Now, in your case, José, you mentioned how to determine what type a task is. I would see any task that comes from a customer or client as something more than admin unless it was updating a customer relationship manager or a spreadsheet—which would be admin.

If a client requests a copy of an invoice or receipt, I would categorise that as client work. It’s important because it’s a request from a client. It might be small to you, but your client may need that invoice or receipt urgently. (Remember, not everyone is as efficient as you are.)

It’s also a quick win for you, as a task like this would be a quick task.

Consulting is an interesting category. That perhaps is something you do as part of your client work. For example, I don’t consider my coaching work a separate category. Coaching is relatively straightforward as I am with the client. It’s an appointment on my calendar. The resulting feedback I write for the client comes under the category “Writing” - As I have four or five coaching appointments per day, this means I have four or five feedback reports to write each day. Hence, I have a writing block on my calendar most days.

Similarly, with sales, is that a category of task, or is it an appointment with clients? Sales activity may be prospecting, writing proposals or following up with clients (although that could be under the category of communications)

Now, this leads me to an important aspect of this. You do not need to be absolute here. What matters is that the work gets done. Whether something is categorised as communications or sales activity doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the task gets done when you intend it to happen.

There inevitably will be some grey areas. You could say that writing feedback for my coaching clients is a communication task—after all, it involves writing to the client. However, I chose to categorise the task as a writing task.

And that’s important. I chose to categorise it that way, and I am consistent with it.

Perhaps in your consultancy work, José, you prepare reports for your clients. How would you categorise writing those reports? Is it writing, or is it client work? How you categorise it doesn’t really matter as long as you are consistent with your categorising.

Why go to the trouble of categorising your work in the first place?

Well, doing so helps you to prioritise your work more effectively. For instance, as a consultant, your top priority each day could be your client’s work. When you begin the day, and you see three tasks related to client work, you know, without any further planning, that those three tasks will be your priority for the day.

Likewise, chores could be low-priority tasks for you, in which case you can decide whether you will call the bank at lunchtime or leave it until later in the week.

Categorising your work is another way to automate the decision-making process. Having to decide what to do based on a long list of potential things to do overwhelms you and leaves you exhausted at the end of the day. By pre-determining what your core work is—the work that is important as opposed to work that feels important but, in reality, is disguised low-value busy work.

At the heart of this method is pre-determining what is important and what is not. Only experience will tell you this to any accurate degree, and there will always be some grey areas. Fortunately, with experience, these instances of grey areas will reduce.

If you are moving away from trying to decide what to do from a long list of tasks each day, moving to a categorised list will be uncomfortable at first. You will make mistakes and miscategorise tasks. That’s fine. It’s certainly nothing to worry about. It’s by making mistakes you will learn for the next time.

And, I should mention, you will never be perfect. There are too many different types of tasks coming at us each day that may defy a category. The important thing is not to worry too much about these. They will be rare, but will happen.

So, if you are new to the idea of categorising your tasks, the way to set this up is to create tags or labels in your task manager for the types of tasks you generally get. Try to avoid being too specific. Your tasks are specific—for instance, “call Jenny about next week’s board meeting” would come under your category communications. Likewise, your follow-ups would be communications too.

It’s also a good idea to keep these labels or tags to a minimum. The more you have, the slower you will be.

Once you have your tags set up, you then create time blocks in your calendar for working on those types of tasks. So, in my case, I have an hour each day set aside for communications. This means when my communication time comes up, I only need to see my list of communications for that day. Nothing else matters for the next hour. I know if I stick with this each day, I will never have a backlog or be overwhelmed, even if, on some days, I am unable to clear them all.

All this ultimately comes back to defining your role at work. Most of us are pretty clear about our roles in our personal lives (e.g., mother/father, son/daughter, community member, etc.). It’s our work roles that we struggle with.

Giving yourself some time to think about your roles will help you to develop the right categories for your work, and that, in turn, will help you to organise your task list so it works for you rather than be a source of stress and overwhelm.

I hope that has helped, José. Thank you for sending in your question.

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

How To Impliment COD Into Your System

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 10:00:00 +0900

This week, it’s COD week. In a special episode, I’ll walk you through the fundamentals of what all solid productivity and time management systems have.

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Script | 318

Hello, and welcome to episode 318 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Now, some of you may be wondering what COD means. Well, it’s not a type of fish. COD stands for Collect, Organise, and Do, and these three parts of a productivity system are the critical foundations you need to develop if you want your system to work effortlessly.

COD came about several years ago following a research project I did. In it, I went back to 1960 (not literally) and looked at all the time management and productivity systems I could find to see if there were any common denominators.

There were multiple systems and approaches, from Hyrum Smith’s Franklin Planner system to Stephen Covey’s First Things First and Jim Rohn’s notebook and planning method. And, of course, I didn’t neglect to look at GTD (Getting Things Done) and the multiple variations that came from that.

There were four standout features of all these systems. The first was to collect everything into a trusted place. The second was to organise or process what you collected. The third was to plan the day, and finally, there was doing the work.

When I developed COD, I wanted to give you a simple framework on which to build your own system. A system based on how you prefer to do your work. Many of you will like routine, others perhaps like flexibility. What COD does is give you a three-step process you can customise to work in the way you want to work.

Let me begin with collecting.

Nothing will work if you don’t collect whatever comes your way in a trusted place. Here, there are two key parts. Collect everything and put it somewhere you trust you will see later in the day.

Scribbling tasks and ideas onto PostIt notes can work, but I have observed that they often get stuck on computer monitors, whiteboards, and many other places, which means you don’t trust that you will see them later in the day.

What works best is having a central place for all these tasks, appointments, and ideas. That could be a task manager on your phone and computer or a pocket notebook you carry with you everywhere you go.

What matters is you use it consistently, and you trust it. This may mean you need to practice to develop the right habits. But this practice is well worth it.

The second thing about your collecting tool (or UCT, as I call it, Universal Collecting Tool) is that it should be fast. If there are too many buttons to press or you keep a notebook in your bag and you have to retrieve your bag to get your notebook, you will resist and start to believe you will remember whatever you were going to collect in your head. And that will never serve you. It will forget to remind you to add it to your inbox.

The second part of the process is organising what you collected. Here, you want to choose something that works for you. I recommend using the Time Sector System, but you may find organising things by project works better for you.

What matters when it comes to organising is that you can quickly organise what you collected that day into their appropriate places. For instance, a task would go into your task manager, an event would go to your calendar, and an idea would go into your notes app. Where you put them will depend on how you have each of these tools set up.

With your task manager, what matters is the things you need to do show up on the days they need to be done. Nothing else really matters.

A side issue is that if you are going in and out of your task manager looking for things to do in individual projects or lists, you will be less effective. When you are tired, you will just scroll through your lists of tasks, causing you to feel depressed about how much you have to do and how little time you have to do them.

This is why being clear about when something needs to be done prevents that scroll. You trust that what you have on your list of things to do today is the right thing to do today.

That’s why I recommend the Time Sector System as your organisational system. It focuses on when you will do something, not how much you have to do.

There are only twenty-four in a day, and you’re not going to be able to get everything done in a day. Be realistic about what you can and cannot do in a day.

And then there’s the doing.

And this is what it’s all about. You’ve collected all this stuff, and it’s organised, so you know where everything is, what appointments you have, and what tasks need to be done today. If you have ensured the first two parts—the collecting and organising—have been done, the doing part will largely take care of itself.

But what is important about doing? That’s doing the things that matter, and remaining focused on what you have decided is important.

When you don’t have any kind of system for collecting and organising, you will find you get pulled into doing things for other people at the expense of what you are meant to be doing. It can be easy to spend four or five hours helping someone else to get their work done, only to find yourself with precious little time left to do the work you are expected to do.

This is where you will find yourself building mountains of backlogs and with no time to get them under control.

It doesn’t mean that you cut yourself off from other people. What it means is you begin the day with a clear idea of what needs to be done.

If you do have everything organised and you are spending five or ten minutes each day planning the next, you will find that out of a typical eight-hour day, you will likely need three or four hours for your own work. That still leaves you with four or five hours where you are available for other people. If you are structured and disciplined, you will find managing your own work and the requests of others easily manageable.

Yet all this begins with the collecting and organising.

That is the most powerful part of COD. It’s essentially a process you follow that ensures the right work is getting done at the right time.

And that is the way to think about it—a process. Throughout the day, you collect. Then, at the end of the day, you spend ten minutes or so organising what you collected, and for the rest of the time, you do the work.

There are other parts to building a productivity system. Ensuring you have enough time protected each day for doing your important work, which means blocking time on your calendar.

I find it interesting that with the advancement of technology, we have focused on doing more rather than using technology to protect our time for the important things in life.

I remember years ago envying bosses who had secretaries. Secretaries protected their bosses’ calendars by making it difficult for people to make demands on their time. Technology can do this for you today. Services like Calendarly allow you to specify when you are available for meetings with other people, and they can choose a suitable time from a list of available times.

There are Do Not Disturb features on your phone and in internal messaging services that tell people you are busy. Technology can do all the things the best secretaries did twenty to thirty years ago. Use them. They will make your life a lot less stressful.

The final part of doing is the art of prioritisation. In the COD course, I have a section on the 2+8 Prioritisation Method. This is a simple method for choosing what to work on each day. The principle is that each day, you dedicate ten tasks to be done. These tasks do not include your routine tasks—the low-value maintenance tasks. These are bigger projects or goal-moving tasks.

Two of those tasks will be nominated as your must-do tasks for the day. These are the tasks you absolutely must do that day, and you will not stop until they are done. For instance, today, my two must-do tasks are recording this podcast and continuing my research into the profession of archiving.

When I did my planning last night, I highlighted these two tasks in my task manager and blocked time out on my calendar for getting them done.

There are other things I need to do today, but those two tasks are the must-dos.

This is how COD helps you. It gives you a framework and a process for doing your work and living your life.

If you adopt COD, you will find you have a system for managing your workload. However, beyond COD, there are a few other things you need to develop.

The first is how you will manage your tasks. As I mentioned before, I recommend the Time Sector System, which emphasises what needs to be done this week and pushes everything else off your list until it becomes relevant. This act alone significantly reduces that sense of overwhelm and encourages you to be realistic about what can be completed in a week.

Then there are the higher-level objectives in your life—your long-term vision and goals for getting to where you want to be.

However, without the basics in place, you do not have steps to get there. After all, a goal without a set of steps to achieve it is a delusion.

If you are struggling to get things working for you, I encourage you to take the COD course. Even if you already have a system, the course will give you ideas and methods that will help you make your system even better.

It’s a free course and will take less than an hour to complete. Plus, you get free downloadable guidance sheets and so much more.

The link to the course is in the show notes, and you can get further information from my website, carlpullein.com

Thank you for listening, and it just remains for me to wish you all a very, very productive week.

How To Organise Your Notes.

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 10:00:00 +0900

Do you feel your digital notes are not giving you what you want? And, is there a right and wrong way to manage all these notes? That’s what we are looking at today.

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The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Script | 317

Hello, and welcome to episode 317 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Over the last few years, there’s been a lot of discussion around how we manage our digital notes. There have been hundreds, if not thousands of new notes apps promising to do wonderful things for us and there have been numerous ways to organise all these notes from Tiago Forte’s PARA and the Second Brain to the Zettelkasten system.

The question is do any of these apps and systems work?

I feel qualified to answer this question as I have been down every rabbit hole possible when it comes to digital notes. I’ve tried Michael Hyatt’s Evernote tagging system, Tiago’s PARA and I even developed my own system, GAPRA. But, ultimately do any of these work ?

And asking that question; do any of these systems give you what you need? Perhaps is the right place to start. What do you want from a notes app? What do you want to see and how?

Before we get to the answers here, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Susan. Susan asks, Hi Carl, I’m having difficulties trying to understand how best to use Evernote. I just do not know how to organise my notes. I have thousands of notes in there going back at least five years and it’s a mess. Do you have any suggestions on how best to clean all these notes up?

Hi Susan, thank you for your question.

I don’t think you are alone. The popularity of books like Building A Second Brain and the number of YouTube videos on this subject suggests many people are struggling to know how best to organise their digital notes.

But, I wonder if what we are doing is over-complicating something that should be very simple.

I’ve recently been reading Walter Isaacson’s brilliant biography of Leonardo Da Vinci and on the chapter about his notebooks Isaacson points out that Leonardo Da Vinci instilled the habit of carrying around a notebook into all is students and apprentices. It was something Leonardo did himself and everything he collected, wrote and sketched was random in order.

We are very fortunate that many of these notebooks survive today and what we get to see is the complete randomness of what he collected. In these notebooks there are designs, sketches, thoughts and to-do lists all on the same page. It was this randomness that led to Leonardo discovering new ways to connect ideas to solve difficult problems and to paint in a way no one else had ever done.

And, I think, this is where we have gone wrong with our digital notes. It’s the randomness of your notes that will lead you to discover new ways of doing things. It will help you to be more creative and help you develop your ideas. If you try and strictly organise your notes—something a digital notes app will do—you lose those random connections. Everything will be organised by topic, thought or idea.

That does not mean that you want complete randomness. There will be projects, goals and areas of interest that you will want to keep together. A large project works best when all related notes, emails and thoughts are kept together. After all, they are connected by a common desired outcome. This is where your digital notes will excel—everything together in one place.

This is why having a project notebook or folder is a good idea. You can keep all these materials together and it gives you a central place to review your ongoing projects.

Then, there are what I would describe as critical information materials—things like your clothing and shoe sizes for the various places you buy things from. You may collect your receipts in organised months, and if you trust your digital notes, you may want to keep information such as your ID numbers, driving licence details, and health insurance certificates.

Again, digital notes are great for storing this kind of information as they make it easily retrievable whenever you need it.

What about everything else? The random thoughts and ideas you have. Well, if you want these to be useful to you at some future date, you will want to keep them random. Why is that?

Your brain works at a very high level of illogicality. This is the opposite of what a computer does. A computer operates on very strict logical lines. Even AI works logically. AI will look at data and information and give you answers that are already in existence. This often seems amazing because we had not thought of those ideas before, but someone did. That’s how AI found the answers.

And of course, as we recently discovered with Google’s AI models, there are the biases of the people programming the software—all based on existing thoughts and ideas.

It’s these notes that if you want to develop new, creative ideas that link uniquely together, they want to be maintained in a random way.

Paper notebooks make this easy. Each new thought or idea is added to a page in your notebook chronologically, and over time, your ideas will fill that notebook in the order you have them. There may be blocks of similar thoughts and ideas you collected around the same time, but on the whole, they will be completely random. Perhaps on one page, you have some ideas about how you will redesign your back garden and on another page, you have drafted out some ideas about where you and your family will go on their next holiday.

This becomes a little more difficult with digital notes because your computer and the apps you use will want to organise them logically. However, you can create randomness here, too, if you use an archive folder.

Many people think of their archive as being one step short of the trash. It’s where things you are not sure what to do with go. But stop a moment. Where would historians be without your country’s national archive? What are museums? Essentially, museums are archives of interesting things people may want to see. And there is the archive at the Vatican that holds so many treasures and documents.

An archive is not a glorified trash can. It’s a treasure trove of history. And if you create an archive notebook or folder in your digital notes you will be creating your own digital archive.

Now, because places like the National Archives in the US or UK or the archives at the Vatican City are always adding new stuff, it would be impossible to organise all these documents by theme. They may be tagged by theme, but they are organised by the date they entered the archive. If I wanted to find documents related to the Titanic, I would begin my search around April 1912. If I wanted to get a snapshot of life in 1964, I would just go to the section that housed documents from 1964.

You can do the same with your own archives. Once you have created a notebook or folder called archive, you can create sub-folders or sub-notebooks by year. Then, as you archive notes, you just add them to the year they were created.

This approach will give you the all-important randomness, yet you still have some organisation.

You can tag these notes if you wish; I do. But, and this is an important but, don’t try and be too clever here.

Imagine you were researching the Vietnam War and wanted to know how and why the war escalated in 1965. If you were at the US National Archives, you might begin your research in 1965, then Vietnam. So, the tag would be Vietnam. If you wanted to narrow down your research, you might look at the documents related to President Johnson’s decision-making, so perhaps there would be a tag for presidential papers. Beyond that, you would be trying to fine-tune things too much. You would likely see from the results you get which documents relate to meetings.

In your archive, you may have taken a trip to Paris in 2018, and while there, you came across a fantastic restaurant. Perhaps you took at picture of the menu and saved that into your notes. Now, you have two ways of retrieving that information today. If you remember the year you were in Paris, you could go straight to your 2018 archive, and as your notes will be in date order, you could scroll down to the date you were in Paris.

The alternative is if you tagged the note “Paris”, you could do a search for “Paris”. And within seconds you will have retrieved the information you wanted.

That’s how you want your notes to work. Keep them simple, so that if you want to retrieve information at a later date, you would be able to find things quickly.

What I’ve noticed is when we try and be too strict about how we organise our notes we are always fiddling and changing things. While this can be fun, at first, it becomes a drag on your productivity because the more time you spend organising, the less time you spend doing the work you need to do.

You could create separate notebooks for places and topics, but unless these are lifetime interests, keeping everything in their separate notebooks will not make retrieval any faster, and you lose that all-important randomness.

Another area where randomness really helps is with your ideas and thoughts. I’m sure you’ve had an idea about classes you may want to take or a business idea you want to investigate. You may have had ideas about starting a blog or podcast or writing a book. Many of these ideas will be passing ideas and you soon move on to the next idea. If you were intent on doing something about the idea you would begin. If you don’t begin, it’s likely a passing idea.

These passing ideas are the gold you do not want to delete. They could contain the seeds of something very special. However, on their own, they may seem redundant after a few weeks or months. It’s these notes you want to keep in your archive.

In a year or two, you may feel compelled to skim through one of your archive years, and you begin to see connections between all these ideas. Leonardo Da Vinci, sketched the mouth he eventually gave the Mona Lisa twelve years before he began painting the Mona Lisa.

Individually, these notes may mean nothing. But together, they could be your next great idea.

So, Susan, look at what you want to collect and save. Keep your projects together, these you will be working on frequently. And all those random notes you collect, store them in archives by year. As these build, you will be creating a gold mine of ideas and thoughts you will never regret keeping.

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

Is There A "Perfect" Productivity System?

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 10:00:00 +0900

This week, I’m answering a question about the basics of building your very own time management and productivity system.

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Script | 316

Hello, and welcome to episode 316 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Do you ever feel there is too much conflicting advice on productivity and time management? There are those who tell you never to look at your email first thing in the morning and others who do (me included). Then there are those who advocate time blocking and many who don’t. And there are the proponents of the Getting Things Done system or, as I discovered recently, people who swear by their Franklin Planners.

It’s a confusing landscape, yet if you look at almost any way of doing things, there will always be conflicting advice. That’s because humans have different ways of doing things and varied tastes. There are those who say a stick-shift car is better than an automatic; others will give you different advice on how to raise your children.

So, how do you navigate all the advice on time management and productivity? That’s what we’re looking at this week.

This week’s question comes from Meg. Meg asks, Hi Carl, I’m a recent convert to your YouTube channel, and I wanted to ask if you have any recommendations for time management systems. There’s a lot of different advice, and I just want something I can use and stick to.

Hi Meg, thank you for your question.

I’ve always felt when it comes to time management and, by extension, productivity, the best place to start is with what you want to know and when.

By this, I mean, what do you want to see on your calendar, and when do you want to see it? You can set up notifications on your calendar to alert you to upcoming events, and you can choose when those notifications appear. For instance, if you work from home, perhaps you may only need a fifteen-minute alert before a meeting. If you work in an office or travel to meet clients, you may prefer to see when your next appointment is thirty minutes or an hour before.

Getting fundamentals like this right for you would be a great place to begin.

Next would be how you manage your calendars. You will likely have a work and personal calendar. I know many people also have shared calendars with their families. The question here is how you want to be able to see all these calendars.

Separating them by keeping your work calendar only on your work devices and your personal calendars on your personal devices can give you a nice clean edge between your work and personal life but can also create conflicts.

If you were sent on a one-day training course, you may need to leave home a little early to arrive at the training site. If you were also committed to taking your kids to school on that day without seeing them all on the same calendar, it would be easy to double-book yourself.

Think of it this way: you live one life, not multiple. Yes, you may have different roles in your life—a parent, a brother or sister, a son or daughter and an employee, for instance, but all those roles are just a part of your one life. When thought of that way, would it not make sense to keep that one life on one calendar?

You could separate your roles by creating different calendars within your calendar app. Each role could be allocated a different colour on a single calendar. This way, you would see everything on one calendar and easily manage conflicts, such as attending a training course and taking your kids to school.

If you work with a company that is very strict about sharing company data, you may not be able to have all your different roles in one calendar. If that is you, you could block your work times out on your personal calendar so you can identify when you have work commitments. Your calendar only needs to show you where you are meant to be. You can always refer to your work device for the details.

This will mean a little extra work when you do your weekly planning, but checking your work calendar for any unusual start or finish times shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

How best to manage your notes can be confusing. There is a lot of conflicting advice in this area. There are thousands of different note apps and multiple ways to organise your notes.

But let’s step back a little and think about how YOU want to use your notes.

Some of you may want to store important project information in a single place, and many of you may want to keep your ideas centrally so you can access them when you need new ones. There’s something about seeing all your random ideas together that can create connections between them you never thought of.

Many parents like to keep their kids’ drawings in a digital archive, and a notes app is great for doing that. Imagine all those pictures collected over the years and being able to see them wherever you are, whenever you want. In years to come, you may use them to tease your kids.

The thing is, how do you organise all this stuff?

It’s likely you will be collecting work-related information as well as information you want to use personally. Do you keep these separate or in one place? Again, this will depend on what your employer allows you to access outside of your work devices. You will likely find having everything in one place is the most convenient. This avoids having to remember where you put something and will make finding what you are looking for seamless.

If you have no choice, keeping your work-related notes only on your work devices should not be a big inconvenience. As with having separate calendars, it does mean you will need to review multiple places to ensure you haven’t missed anything important.

Organising your notes can be a bit of a minefield. This is where there are still a lot of ideas and methods.

One way to look at this is how people organised their notes before the digital world. After all, the digital age is relatively new and we are still experimenting with methods. People used old grey filing cabinets for hundreds of years—they must have learned a thing or two about filing effectively.

With filing cabinets the most common way to organise was alphabetically. In his book Getting Things Done, David Allen also recommends organising files alphabetically. Perhaps a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach would work best for you here.

You can keep your folders or notebooks flexible; for example, you may wish to have a folder called “Insurance”, where you keep all documents related to your insurance policies. Remember, unlike filing cabinets, you can find the right document from a simple search using your keyboard so you do not need to create sub-folders for each type of insurance policy.

While there are frameworks such as Tiago Forte’s PARA (PARA stands for Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archive) and my GAPRA (GAPRA stands for Goals, Areas, Projects, Resources, and Archive), I’m coming around to believing these more complex structures are unnecessarily complex.

Today’s notes apps have excellent search features. You can add a note, and as long as you remember a title, keyword, or date range, you will be able to find it in seconds.

The biggest difference between the digital and analogue worlds is how the digital world connects. You can have your calendar, to-do list, and all your notes on a single device in your pocket, and anything you collect will be synchronised to all your digital devices. I still marvel at how I can save a blog post or news article for reading later from my phone and move it to my iPad, and the article I just saved is there waiting for me to read.

If I go back to what you want to see and when, you may want to see your calendar in the morning while you are drinking your morning brew. This means having your today’s calendar on your phone makes sense. A quick tap on your calendar app and today’s appointments are there.

What about the things you need to do today? When would you want to see those? Perhaps the first time you need to look at these is when you sit down to begin your work day. Seeing that on your computer before you begin makes sense. A bigger screen will make a list seem less overwhelming, and you can decide when these to-dos will best be done.

The most important thing, Meg, is not to overcomplicate things. When we complicate things, systems and frameworks break. You don’t need overly complex structures for your notes. All you need is a simple alphanumeric filing system that makes sense to you. Your to-do list only needs to show you what needs to be done today. Tomorrow, next week and next month’s to-dos are not relevant today.

The goal should be to begin the day knowing where you need to be and what needs to be done. Anything that supports that will always work. Anything that leaves you having to make too many decisions or think too much about what to do does not.

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

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

The Tools I Use To Be Productive.

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 10:00:00 +0900

This week’s question is all about how I use the technology I have to be more productive and better manage my time.

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Script | 315

Hello, and welcome to episode 315 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

There’s a lot of technology today that helps us be more productive. Our computers make producing work easy compared to twenty-five years ago. It’s also made producing some kinds of work a lot cheaper. Imagine the cost of studio time if you wanted to record an album in 1999. Today, all you need is a laptop and a microphone, and you are good to go.

However, with all that wonderful technology, it’s likely we have a lot of devices lying around gathering dust. I have a camera with four or five lenses sitting in a gorgeous canvas camera bag I haven’t used in over five years. Now, all I take with me when we go on a trip is my phone. I’m not a professional photographer; I don’t need all that equipment.

And don’t get me started on all the apps I find I need to purge every once in a while because I don’t use them anymore. Then, there are all the subscriptions you may be paying for that you are not using.

As an example, I recently discovered I had a Fantastical subscription. I used to use Fantastical. It was a cool calendar app that allowed me to have all my Todoist tasks and events in one place. Shortly after seeing what that did to my calendar, I stopped that integration (it was horrible. It made it look like I had no time at all for anything but work and meetings). Why was I paying for a service I was not using? I don’t know, but it did cause me to go through all my app subscriptions to see if there were any more. (I found four more services I was paying for I was no longer using).

This week’s question addresses the heart of this technology overwhelm, so let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice.

This week’s question comes from Mark. Mark asks, hi Carl, I was wondering what digital tools you use to get your work done. You seem to be using a lot of tools, and I thought it must be very confusing to decide what to use.

Hi Mark, thank you for your question.

I remember hearing an interview with Craig Federighi in which he explained Apple’s thinking on its products. He talked about how sometimes you work on your laptop, and other times, you may find the environment more suitable for an iPad. A good example of this would be when working at your desk, you may prefer the laptop, and if you attended a meeting, the form factor and mobility of an iPad might work better. It certainly did for me when I was teaching.

I would create all my teaching materials from my computer, but when I went to the classroom I took only my iPad. That was all I needed to teach with.

Today, I no longer teach in classrooms; I work from home. However, I do like to step away from my desk and work somewhere else occasionally, and when I do that, I will only take my iPad with me. It’s great for writing and fits nicely into a small shoulder bag I carry when I go out.

But let’s look at how I use each individual device, and I will explain why.

My phone is always with me, which means it’s the perfect UCT (Universal Collection Tool). I have my phone set up so I can quickly collect tasks, ideas and articles I would like to read later.

I use Drafts, an amazing little app that connects with Todoist and Evernote. With Evernote, I have it set up so that if I have a blog post or YouTube video idea, I can send it directly to my content ideas note without having to open Evernote. Drafts also allow me to dictate my ideas, which is essential as I have most of my ideas when I am walking my dog, Louis. I can then collect my ideas and keep an eye on Louis at the same time.

When I am out and about, I process emails from my phone, but I rarely respond from there. There are better tools for responding to actionable emails. I have a process for email management which involves clearing my inbox between sessions of work and then setting aside an hour later in the day for responding. I will respond usually from my computer, but if I am away from my office, I will use my iPad.

And, of course, I use my phone for instant messages and occasionally scrolling social media when waiting for my wife (A daily activity haha).

I also have an old iPad Mini. I love that iPad. It’s my content consumption device, and on there, I will read blogs and articles I have collected through Readwise (an app for collecting articles you want to read later) and books through the Kindle app.

This iPad mini is not connected to any messaging service (Except Apple Messages) or email. It’s purely for consumption.

I should say I am not into gaming—never have been, so I have no gaming devices or apps. My guilty pleasure is reading and watching historical documentaries—which YouTube provides me in abundance. I will watch these on the big TV at home late at night when I am winding down for the day.

My iPad Pro (I think the 3rd edition) has the Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil connected, and as I mentioned, I use that as my main mobile device. The keyboard is wonderful to type on, and the Pencil is great for highlighting sections in documents. Strangely, I don’t ever use it for writing. I’m a fountain pen user, and the Apple Pencil (or any stylus, for that matter) doesn’t feel right for me. Plastic on glass doesn’t work (in my humble opinion). The feel of a 14 carat gold nib on some fountain pen-friendly Japanese paper has got to be experienced to be believed.

I also use my iPad Pro to listen to music when I am working. The battery on that thing lasts forever. I have a Bluetooth speaker in my office that has incredible bass (I love deep house music when I am working; the bass really helps)

My computer is for the heavy lifting: recording this podcast, editing my YouTube videos, and creating workbooks and documents. I also do a fair amount of my writing on my computer too. I also prefer to clear my actionable emails on my computer. All my design work is done on my computer from creating thumbnails for YouTube videos to workshop banners and online course materials.

And that’s it for devices. Now apps.

My primary productivity apps are Apple Calendar, Todoist and Evernote. I have experimented in recent months with Apple Notes, and while Apple Notes is an excellent note-taking app, Evernote has some features that Apple Notes does not. Primarily the ability to create note links that can be pasted into Todoist. You can do this in Apple Notes, but it’s fiddly, and I hate things that are fiddly.

Todoist is where I keep my tasks. It has a beautiful and simple interface, and in the ten years I have used it, it has never let me down. Todoist is on all my devices, as is Evernote, but… This is where Evernote is currently weak; I find the mobile version of Evernote poor. The text is too small, and there are too many button presses to get to where I want to be. However, as I use Drafts to get notes into my system, that’s something I can live with.

And that’s a good point to make. I’ve used Todoist for over ten years, and Evernote has been my go-to notes app for almost fifteen years. This means I have learned how to use these apps properly, I’ve come to trust them, and I don’t have to waste time trying to figure out how to do a particular action. I’ve learned everything I need to learn to use these apps optimally.

Apple Calendar has been my calendar app of choice for pretty much the last twenty years. I did try Fantastical for a couple of years, but the additional features were not very useful to me. Certainly not worth a subscription.

Now for the miscellaneous apps.

I use Acuity for my coaching scheduling service. This means my coaching clients can book a call whenever they want to, and there’s no back-and-forth trying to find a mutually convenient time.

As mentioned earlier, I use Readwise for my book highlights and for collecting articles. This is a recent change as previously I used Instapaper, but they are doubling their prices in May, and they don’t offer anywhere near the service Readwise does. The great thing is as I read a book and highlight a section or add a note, those notes and highlights are synced to Evernote in a notebook called Readwise.

For all my writing, I use Ulysses. This is a fantastically minimal writing app that, in full-screen mode, is just a dark screen with white text. There are no distractions at all and I can focus all my attention on my writing. This is synced with iCloud so if I am out and about and only have my iPad with me, I can carry on writing where I left off.

I recently looked at the number of words I have in Ulysses, and it’s now approaching three million. That just blew me away—three million words in eight years. I wrote my book, Your Time, Your Way in Ulysses, as well as all my podcast scripts, blog posts and newsletter articles. It’s a treasure trove of all my writing, and it’s all archived in iCloud. That’s one of the best things about not app-switching. You begin to create an archive of all your work in one place.

There is an exception to my writing process. I send my coaching clients written feedback after each call, and for that, I use Apple’s Pages, which is Apple’s version of Microsoft Word. Pages allows me to use a saved template for all my feedback.

For my admin and financial tasks, I use Apple’s Numbers. I don’t need the complexity of Microsoft Excel; my spreadsheet needs are simple.

And that’s about it. The only other item I use to get my work done is paper. I use an A4 Rhodia notebook as my planning book. This is where all my projects, weekly planning and YouTube video ideas get developed. I also returned to writing my journal by hand after using Day One for five years. That was because I felt my life was beginning to be dominated by screens, and it’s nice to get more use out of my fountain pen collection.

The most important thing for me is to keep the tools I use to a minimum. I’ve been down the road of trying out a lot of apps. What I discovered is that it’s not the app that does the work. It’s me. And for me to do my work in the most efficient and effective way possible, I need as few distractions as possible. Simplicity is my keyword when it comes to apps. The longer I need to spend trying to learn to use something, the less time I spend doing work. Which in turn means I spend less time with my family and doing the things I want to do. Not a very good way to manage time or be more productive.

I hope that answers your question, Mark. Thank you for sending it in and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.

PRODUCTIVITY: Regain Control of Your Life.

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 10:00:00 +0900

What can you do when your calendar’s full, your task manager is bulging at the seams, and you find yourself stuck with nowhere to turn? That’s what we are looking at today.

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Script | 314

Hello, and welcome to episode 314 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Do you feel, or often feel, that no matter what you do, there is always too much to do? Hundreds of emails that need responding to, several projects all coming to a close at the same time, and a demanding personal life?

It’s a horrible feeling, isn’t it? It feels like there’s no room to move or do anything you want to do. Turn up each day, and the noise destroys your energy, willpower and sense of being human—the “rinse and repeat” approach to life. It leaves you exhausted at the end of the day, yet with a feeling you got nothing important done.

The good news is all is not lost, but you are going to have to do something that every instinct in your body will tell you can’t do. Yet, if you do not do anything, these miserable days will continue forever.

Those who have managed to drag themselves out of that pit of despair have had to do something that was uncomfortable yet brought them the organisation and calm they were looking for. The good news is the action you need to take is not so dramatic that you need to quit your job. In fact, once you commit to taking action it can be a lot of fun. (No, really!)

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

This week’s question comes from Anthony. Anthony asks, Hi Carl, Can you help? I am completely overwhelmed with emails and tasks. I have three deadlines coming up at the end of this month, and I am so far behind I know I will miss those deadlines. How does anyone stay on top of their work?

Hi Anthony, Thank you for your question, and I hope you had time to renegotiate your deadlines before the end of February.

Okay, where to start? When anyone finds themselves caught in a spiral of never-ending tasks, emails and projects, there is only one thing you can do, and that is to stop. And this is the part every instinct in your body will scream NO! I don’t have time.

You are right in one respect; you don’t have time, but then you don’t have time to do your work either, do you? So, really, there’s nothing to lose by stopping altogether.

Let me explain why stopping altogether, at least for a couple of days, is the best thing you can do.

A lot of what you have accumulated likely does not need doing, but it is swirling around in your head or in your task manager telling you it does need doing. It’s only when you stop, step back and look at everything as a whole that you begin to see what needs doing and what likely does not. You won’t see that unless you stop.

Let’s take email as an example. At what point will responding to an email become embarrassing for you? A week, two weeks, a month or three months? If you have not replied to an email after three weeks, do you think the person who sent the email to you is still waiting, or do they even remember sending you the email in the first place?

Where is your line?

You see, there is a professional consideration here. If you have not responded to an email for three weeks, what do you think the sender will feel about you if they get a reply now? Unprofessional? Disorganised? A mess?

The thing is, if you have failed to respond to an email for three or more weeks often the best thing you can do is to leave it. Archive the email and move on. If it is important or does need your attention it will come back at some point. I would say if it has been a few weeks, the chances are things have moved on already anyway, and you won’t need to worry about it.

In my email system, Inbox Zero 2.0, I advise you to pick one of two options. A hard or soft email bankruptcy. Most people choose the soft email bankruptcy; this is where you select all the emails you have not responded to that are older than two to three weeks and move them to a new folder called “Old Inbox”. Then clear off the remaining emails in your inbox.

For these older emails you can go through them at leisure over the next few weeks and decide what to do with them. The reality is most people end up deleting this folder after a few weeks because they realise nothing in there is worth keeping.

The hard email bankruptcy is more effective but scary. Do the same as you would do with the soft email bankruptcy, but instead of moving them off to a folder, you hit the delete key and delete them.

You don’t need to worry about any retention issues; if you received an email, there will be a copy of it. Someone sent you the email in the first place, and anything you delete will sit in your trash folder for at least 30 days unless you change the defaults.

Just this action will get you back on top of your email.

However, to prevent the problem from reoccurring, you will need to change your email management practices. The best advice I can give you here is to set aside an hour a day—every day—to deal with your communications. Staying on top of email requires time each day. Miss just one day, and you will require double the amount of time the next day. It’s just not worth it. If you want a future where you are in control of your mail, you will need to deal with it every day.

I’m reminded of Friedrich Nietzsche (that’s the philosopher with the amazing moustache) who, among other things, popularised the Stoics term Amor Fati - which loosely translated means “loving your fate”. We all have to live with instant messages and emails today which means either we learn to love dealing with it or allow it to become a burden.

I prefer to find ways to make dealing with email a pleasure. I set the environment. Some great music, a comfortable chair and a warm dog sat next to me while I plough through as quickly as I can the emails I need to respond to today. Oh, and don’t forget the obligatory cup of British tea. Perfect. Now, for me, email’s a joy!

Now for the tasks in your task manager. Again, this will require some time out. Whether you have a few hundred or a few thousand tasks in your task manager, the best thing you can do is to go through this one by one and delete those that are no longer necessary, or you feel you have no time to get to this year. Your goal here is to reduce this list by at least 50%.

Your task manager really needs to be only concerned with anything you need to do in the next three months. Anything beyond that is either going to change significantly or won’t get done. Anything that you think needs to be done beyond three months can be put on your calendar as an all-day event. Or if you are not sure when you will do it or even if you ever will, you can create a list in your notes app and dump them there.

Task managers only work if they are clean and tight. In other words, if anything on your task list is something you may like to do or sounds like a good idea today but doesn’t really need to be done it should be removed.

Only tasks you know need to be done should be there, and nothing else. Wishful tasks should be in a project note or a master would-like-to-do list—in your notes. Your notes app can be the dumping ground for these, never your task manager.

The problem with dumping everything in your task manager, whether they need doing or not, is your task manager will soak them up willingly but will also want to remind you of them at some point. So what do we do? We add a date or a tag or label so we don’t forget them. And now you’ve just created overwhelm for yourself. These tasks will come back on random dates, and you will be swamped. Now, you will either reschedule them or give up altogether with the task manager—a great tool if used properly.

So, clean up your task manager and make sure only things that need to be done are on there, and nothing else.

Finally, let’s look at your calendar. The chances are when you look at your calendar, you are going to see the underlying problem fairly clearly. It is here where you will see how you are managing your time. Which is, after all, the essence of everything.

I mentioned earlier about setting aside some time each day for dealing with your communications; the question now is, what else do you need time for each day?

It’s likely you will need time for dealing with administrative tasks—those little things that need to be dealt with. Things like managing your personal finances, expense reports, arranging your next vacation and such like. What about family time or time for exercise, etc? How much time do you want for these activities each week?

This is where your calendar becomes the master. You can allocate time for these activities and block them out on your calendar so you won’t be tempted to allow anything else to get in the way.

How many meetings do you have, on average, each week? Are you spending too much time in meetings? Do you need to attend all those meetings? Could you be excused from some of them? These are questions you can ask yourself when you go through your calendar.

Could you find two to three hours, three to four times per week for deep-focused work? If so, block the time out now. Create the space you need to do the things you want to or need to do. Only your calendar will tell you if you have the time.

You may look at your calendar and instantly see you have overcommitted yourself. If that’s the case, what can you do to remove some of those commitments? Who do you need to talk to?

To get in control of your time and work, there will likely be some difficult choices to make. The issue is, though, if you don’t make those difficult choices today, the problems you are trying to solve will come back again and again.

If you try and resolve these issues without stopping and stepping back, you’ll only find yourself putting it off. There has to be a break-point. Why not do it now and get things back under control today?

Alternatively, you could block out a weekend in the near future to get everything under control. Two days, where you are completely on your own to get everything sorted out, can be great for your mental well-being. You get to see where the problems are, and once you see them, you can spend time finding the solutions.

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

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

Is Productivity Technology Going Too Far?

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 10:00:00 +0900

Where does technology help, and where does it hinder your productivity? That’s what we’ll be exploring in this week’s episode.

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Script | 313

Hello, and welcome to episode 313 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show.

Over the last ten years or so, there’s been an explosion in the world of productivity technology. Prior to around 2010, most of our technology use was to create documents and presentations and send and reply to emails. We were in control, and technology served us.

Today, technology is creeping more and more into our lives. Now, you can use apps that will look at your task manager and your calendar and tell you when to work on what. Microsoft Outlook suggests times for focused work (not taking a walk or a rest, I notice), and many developers are promising more and more automation.

The thing is do we really need that?

When it comes to time management and productivity, I believe it’s important to retain control. My calendar or task manager telling me to work on the report when I feel exhausted is only going to leave me feeling guilty if I do what’s best for me—taking a rest.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. I think technology is great, and one of my favourite features of Spotify and Apple Music is how these apps use my listening history to create random playlists. I love playing those playlists. I like how YouTube serves up recommendations, again, based on my watch history. This is useful. I find documentaries I would otherwise have missed. However, I get to choose what to watch and when.

I was reminded of this recently with the sad death of BBC Radio 2’s DJ, Steve Wright. I was able to open YouTube and type in Steve’s name and was able to listen to some of his most iconic moments. I discovered long-lost recordings of him—stuff I would never have been able to find ten years ago.

These are some examples of where technology works and enhances our lives.

But (and there are many buts here) that nicely leads me to this week’s question. Which means, it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Scott. Scott asks, hi Carl, what do you think of apps like Motion and others that will organise your appointments and tasks for you so you no longer need to do any planning?

Hi Scott, thank you for your question.

Let’s look at where technology has an advantage. Communications. Digital communications are brilliant. They are instant, and because of that, the number of phone call interruptions has significantly reduced over the years.

Phone call interruptions are the worst, aren’t they? Your phone rings, and it’s like an alarm call that we feel obligated to answer. We have no idea what the caller is calling about or how long it will take, and that creates its own anxieties.

Today, I can see who’s calling and can decide whether to answer or not. I can also put my phone on silent so I don’t get that horrendous shock when the phone rings.

And I know a lot of you may have a downer on email, but compared to what we had thirty years ago, it’s far better. And, no, we are not getting more emails than letters. It’s about the same. The difference is with letters, we did not feel they had to be replied to instantly, and we could take our time.

Although, as an aside, in the past, large companies employed people to work in the mail room. These wonderful people’s job was to sort the mail, so you only got the correspondence that mattered. Sadly, these people are gone now, and we are left to sort our own mail. That’s where the problem is. A large proportion of people don’t set up rules in their email service to filter out the rubbish from the stuff that matters.

Give yourself a couple of hours to set up some rules, and in effect, you will have given yourself your own mail room staff.

Digital calendars are fantastic. Rather than having to carry around a large diary with all your appointments, you can now have your calendar on all your digital devices, which makes it so easy to see where you should be and with whom. It’s also a lot easier to make appointments with people with services such as Calendarly—where you send a link to the other person, and they can choose the best time for them based on your availability.

Now, things go wrong when you blindly accept meeting requests. When we had paper diaries, we had to manually enter the appointment, and we could see instantly we had already committed to something else. We either asked for another date or cancelled the previous appointment.

Today, I see so many people with conflicts in their calendars where they are double—and even triple-booked. I mean, come on. Your digital calendar makes it easy to see your conflicts. Sort them out. You cannot be in two meetings at the same time. Don’t let that happen.

The problem here, it’s far more difficult to rearrange a meeting or appointment after you have accepted it. When you get a meeting request, and it conflicts with another commitment, decline it. Or, if it’s more important than the commitment you currently have, give yourself a few minutes to sort out the conflict.

And, technology has really helped with creating reports, presentations, books and videos. Technology has brought previously prohibitively expensive tools to us all for less than $100 a year.

When I look back over the last ten years, I have been able to produce four books, over a thousand videos, 300 podcasts and millions of words in blog posts and articles. It’s mind-blowing what a computer and an internet connection give us the ability to do.

And yet, I suppose it’s human nature to go too far. It’s like discovering chocolate cake for the first time. That first experience leads to you wanting more and more and more. Forget vegetables, fruit and other healthy foods. I want cake!!!! And more of it.

Of course, only eating cake will have negative consequences, and I feel this is where time management and productivity technology is beginning to go. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

As I alluded to, allowing your calendar to schedule your day for you is not necessarily a good thing. Your calendar does not know if you have the flu or didn’t sleep well last night. It doesn’t know whether you had a fight with your partner over the breakfast table or had a car accident on the way to work. All it knows is you have a ton of work to do in your task manager, and you have eight meeting requests. It’s programmed to schedule all that for you.

Perhaps doing all that work and attending all those meetings is not the best thing you could do that day. Maybe the best thing you could do is go back to bed or take a walk to clear your head.

On planning, I think we need to be careful here. What makes humans different from other mammals is our ability to make choices. We can choose to do one thing over an alternative. Now, each choice has a consequence, and we have sufficient intelligence to weigh the consequences against each other. Louis, my little dog, does not have that ability. Sure, he can choose to attack his squeaky ball or not, but he has no concept of the consequences.

If we allow technology to make those choices for us and we blindly follow them, we lose the very essence of being human—our freedom to make decisions about what to do.

Doing your own planning allows you to choose what you will work on and when. For example, last night, I slept well, and I had two appointments cancel on me this morning. This gave me two extra hours I was not expecting and I chose to clean up my office and write this script in that time. I didn’t need to go to my task manager to make this decision. I looked around my office and realised things needed to be tidied up. That took me twenty minutes, and this script will take around ninety minutes.

I could have chosen to read, take Louis out for a walk or go back to bed. But I chose to do work. I wanted to work, and I loved it. If a computer was telling me to do this and then that, it would take the joy out of making decisions.

Task managers are great for collecting tasks and for having everything in a central place. Where task managers are less good is showing us what needs to be worked on and when. Only you know what’s important right now and how much energy you have to do your work.

For example, over the years, I’ve come to learn when I am at my most focused and when I struggle with focus. Afternoons are a struggle if I need to sit down and focus. Yet, I find focusing very easy in the morning and later at night. This means I can structure my days based on when I know I will likely be at my best for doing specific types of work. An app based on AI is going to be using data from all over the place and will likely be based on the average of other people. You are not the average of other people. You are you, and you are unique.

When it comes to digital note-taking and information storage, technology is fantastic! You can quickly grab an idea, a webpage or a document and save it into your notes. You can then later do a search for that idea or document on any device in any location, and within a second, you have it in front of you. That’s way better than how we used to do it with large, cumbersome filing cabinets that were in a static location. Finding something often took hours.

I also like the idea that AI is then able to summarise that information into bite-sized chunks. That helps us. We have the choice to be able to go into the document for a deeper read or read the summary.

However, with all that said, technology helps us when it can speed things up that don’t need us to make decisions or choices. Technology does not help us when it starts to make those decisions and choices for us. That is where we should push back.

This means your planning should always be done by you. You decide what to work on based on the information you have to hand. You can make it fun by pulling out your pens, highlighters, and a pad of paper and letting your brain think without technology influencing your decisions.

Great thinkers from the past scribbled their thoughts down on paper, and humanity is so much the better for it today. You don’t want to lose that ability—the ability to think, decide and make choices of your own. It’s what makes you special and unique.

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

Your Calendar | The most Powerful Tool In Your Toolbox

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 10:00:00 +0900

How important is your calendar in your productivity toolbox? I would argue that it’s the most important tool you have and the key to finally getting control of your time.

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Script | 312

Hello, and welcome to episode 312 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show.

Reading the comments on some of my YouTube videos, I see a lot of people trying to make their task manager their primary productivity tool. I would argue this is a mistake. A to-do list or task manager is, at its heart, a list of things you think you need to do. And no matter what you throw at it, your task manager will willingly accept it. And that is exactly what it should do. Make it fantastically easy to collect stuff.

However, after you have collected stuff, what next?

It doesn’t matter whether you have fifty, a hundred or a thousand tasks in your task manager. What matters is when you will do those tasks. There’s no limit on what you want or need to do; that’s infinite. Your limitation comes from time. You only get twenty-four hours a day to do all this stuff, and somewhere in those twenty-four hours, you’ll need to sleep, eat and wash.

Given that the limitation on what you can get done each day is time, that means that the primary tool in your productivity toolbox is always going to be your calendar.

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

This week’s question comes from Pablo. Pablo asks, hi Carl, I noticed that you seem to be very careful about what you put on your calendar. It looks so clean. How do you keep it looking like that?

Hi Pablo, thank you for your question.

Your observation is correct. I am very protective of my calendar. To me, knowing where my commitments are and where I have space is important each day. It allows me to control my day and to ensure I am not pushing myself beyond my healthy limits.

I have an unhealthy fascination with the routines of highly successful people. It’s always interested me to learn how immensely productive people manage to get their work done. I’ve learned about Winston Churchill’s afternoon naps and late-night writing. Of Leonardo Da Vinci’s polyphasic sleeping, Maya Angelou’s hotel writing room and Albert Einstein’s love of sleep.

One thing these incredible people had in common was their understanding that to get work done, you needed to protect time. Painter Picasso hated interruptions and would go to great lengths to protect his painting time. Maya Angelou would hide herself away in a hotel room between 7:00 am and 3:00 pm to do her writing and thinking. Ian Fleming screamed at anyone who dared to interrupt his 9:00 am to 12:00 pm writing time.

I find it strange that so many people want to become better at managing their time and get more work done yet refuse to take any action to achieve that goal. It’s not the tool that will do the work for you—only you can do that—it’s carving out the time you need to do it.

And that’s where your calendar becomes your most powerful tool. It’s the only productivity tool that will never lie to you. You get a new twenty-four-hour canvas each day, and you are given the freedom to create any kind of day you wish.

You could choose to call in sick and stay in bed all day if you wished. However, you will then need to deal with the feelings of guilt and FOMO that inevitably come when you do something like this. Every decision you make has consequences.

I recently did a video on getting control of your calendar, and in my example, I had meetings and blocks of time set aside for doing my important work. There were so many comments on how neat and tidy my calendar looked.

Yet, I see so many people with two or three meetings scheduled at the same time. Why? I mean, you cannot attend all three meetings, so why do you still have three meetings booked at the same time? I don’t think my calendar looks neat and tidy. The difference is I will never allow myself to become double (or triple) booked.

I know you are busy. However, surely, when you receive a calendar invite, the ten seconds it takes to check your calendar to see if you have anything else booked in at that time is not beyond the realms of possibility. Just clicking “accept” without checking will cause you so much damage. Check before you accept. That should be a non-negotiable rule.

Not checking is like driving through a crossroads without looking. Sooner or later, you’re going to get hit by a 40-tonne truck.

One question you will find helpful to ask each day is, “Where is my protected time?” Your protected time is the time you set aside for doing your most important work. That could be writing the proposal that is due at the end of the week, or it could be taking your kids to the park to play. Whatever needs to be done will always require time.

To make things easier for myself, I protect 9:30 am to 11:30 am each day for doing creative work. Usually, that involves writing, but once a week, it will be recording a YouTube video. I know that at the start of the week, I have the time to do all the creative work I want to do that week because I have protected that time. And I chose the word “protected” deliberately. It is protected from everything but a genuine emergency. This means I refuse meetings at that time. Even my wife knows not to schedule anything between 9:30 and 11:30 am. (And that took a lot of training!)

So far, out of twenty-four hours, I am protecting two hours. That leaves me a lot of time for other things, yet each day, something creative is being produced. This is one of the most powerful lessons I learned from people like Ian Fleming, Maya Angelou and Benjamin Franklin. Protecting time for the important things.

Now, I would also recommend you protect a further two hours in your work day for admin and communications. If you are one of those people who is always reacting to every message and email that comes your way, you will, at the very least, feel frazzled. It’s extremely tough on your brain. It’s like trying to drive economically while constantly stopping and starting. It’s not smooth, and your car’s engine (or battery) will be taking a pounding.

The most economical way to drive is smooth, and that’s the same with your brain. By blocking a little time each day for responding to your messages, you will be operating at your most efficient. So, schedule time for doing your admin and communications.

I like to do my communications around 4 pm. After dinner, I do my admin. By doing my email (and other messages) at four PM, I avoid email ping pong—that’s where you end up having to respond to the same email twice in a day because you give the other person time to reply. Do your communications at 4 pm, and you will significantly reduce the number of emails you get each day.

And admin time is for all those little things that you collect that just need to be done. Expenses, sales admin, filing, booking hotels or flights, etc. Anything that gets collected that sit around because they are neither urgent nor important.

Now, a quick tip here. Match your task manager’s tags or labels with your time blocks. This way, you can give yourself a focused view of the tasks that need doing. For instance, I have a label for admin tasks. When I do my admin at the end of the day, I open up a filtered view that shows me only the admin tasks that are due today. This way, I am not distracted by anything else.

If you follow this example, you will be allocating four hours a day for specific tasks. Your important work gets two hours, and you allocate an hour each for communications and admin. Four hours out of twenty-four will put you on top of your work and avoid the build-up of backlogs.

When I look at the daily routines of people like Winston Churchill and Ian Fleming, they spent around four to six hours a day doing focused work and managed to get an incredible amount of work done each day. Yet these two people were very social people. They were entertaining guests almost every day and writing hundreds of letters—what we did before electronic communications. The key to their productivity was their non-negotiable focus time.

Think of your task manager as support for your calendar, and let your calendar run your day. Protect it—it’s the only time you have.

There are other things I will do, too. There are some days when I need to wake up very early—well, very early for me. On those days, I know I will need to take a nap at some point. So, I will schedule nap time. This way, when I do find myself tired and unable to function properly, I can jump into bed for an hour or so. No guilt. Just complete rest. It’s as Churchill said: you get to do a day and a half’s worth of work in one. You get an energy boost and can work more effectively in the afternoon.

This is why I keep my calendar clean. The only things I am committed to get on there. AND… More importantly, if I am invited to a meeting I will always check before committing. I hate having to renegotiate meetings. It’s time-consuming and involves a lot of back and forth.

Here’s another quick tip for you. Use a scheduling service. These are great. You choose the times you are available for meetings, and if anyone requests a meeting with you, you can send them the link to schedule a meeting. There’s some human psychology going on here. The person requesting a meeting is unlikely to ask for a meeting outside of your allocated times because they also know it is time-consuming to do so. It’s far easier for them to pick a time from your availability. I can promise you this will save you a lot of time and also make structuring your day far easier.

And there you go, Pablo. That’s how to keep your calendar clean and tight. It’s the most powerful productivity tool you have, and it’s worth protecting.

Thank you for your question. And thank you to you, too, for listening. It just remains for me to wish you all a very, very productive week.

The Pen Really Is Mightier Than The Keyboard

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 22:10:00 +0900

Do pen and paper have any role in your productivity system these days? If not, you might be missing out on something very special.

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The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Script | 311

Hello, and welcome to episode 311 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show.

A few weeks ago, I posted a video on YouTube that demonstrated how I have gone back to using a pen—or rather, a few of my old fountain pens—and some paper to start planning a project. I’ve since added doing my weekly planning on paper too.

This video and a subsequent follow-up video garnered a lot of interest and some fantastic questions. It also goes back to a question I was asked on this podcast last year on whether it was possible to create an analogue version of the Time Sector System.

This week’s question is a follow-up to that question, and I hope my answer will encourage you to explore some of the unique ways the humble pen and paper can aid in your productivity journey.

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

This week’s question comes from Tom. Tom asks, hi, Carl, I recently saw your video on going back to pen and paper. What was your thinking behind that decision?

Hi Tom, thank you for your question.

In many ways, the reason for the “experiment” was something I tried when I was flying over to Ireland for the Christmas break. I decided to take a pen and notebook with me to see if my planning and thoughts would flow better on paper rather than how I usually do it through a keyboard.

The idea came from a video I had seen with Tim Ferriss, where he discussed how he finds his ideas flow better when he puts pen to paper. Plus, I have seen Robin Sharma, Tony Robbins, Andrew Huberman and read about many historical figures such as Presidents Kennedy and Nixon as well as Winston Churchill, Ian Fleming and Charles Darwin all take copious notes on paper.

I wondered if there was something in it.

When you think about it, the chances are you spend far too long in from of a screen these days. If it’s not your computer, it’s going to be your phone or TV. We just don’t seem to be able to get away from them. When you pick up a pen and a pad of paper, you are no longer looking at a screen. The whole effect on your eyesight is going to change.

This is certainly something I was beginning to feel. Pretty much everything I do involves a screen. There’s even a heads-up display in my car! I just don’t seem to be able to get away from them.

Then there’s the type. I was recently looking through some of my old planners from 2009 and 2010 and found myself being transported back fifteen years to what I was thinking back then. It was a wonderful, nostalgic journey. My handwriting was unique; I could tell which pen I used and even the ink I was using back then.

I can look at a digital document I created ten years ago, and it’s boring Helvetica in black. It pretty much looks the same as any document I create today. There’s nothing nostalgic.

There’s a wonderful video on YouTube by Adam Savage (yes, the Adam Savage formerly of Mythbusters) where he shows an exact copy of one of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Codecs. WOW! I was blown away. It looked gorgeous—even though Da Vinci wrote backwards. The aged paper, the diagrams, the pen strokes. Everything looked so beautiful.

So, as I was thinking about how I could bring pen and paper back into my system, I realised the one area where paper, for me, always works better than digital is in planning—well, certainly the initial planning stages. I also find despite Apple’s attempts at creating quick notes using the Apple Pencil, it’s still not faster than having a notebook next to you on your desk with a pen.

Now, one problem many people face with using pen and paper is you end up with a load of half-empty notebooks all over the place. I can assure you if you think there are too many productivity apps around, wait until you begin going down the notebook rabbit hole. There’s thousands of different styles, colours and papers. You’ll learn about the incredible quality of Japanese paper and what constitutes fountain pen-friendly papers. You’ll learn about dot grids, grids, graph and lined paper. Then there are the covers—leather bound, ring bound, sewn, bonded and WOW! So many decisions.

You’ve been warned.

And if you start investigating fountain pens, you’ll find yourself in serious trouble. YouTube is full of videos on what constitutes the best pens for all kinds of writers. You’ll learn about grail pens—pens everyone wants in their collection. I confess I have a soft spot for the Namiki Urushi and a Montblack 149.

Anyway, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Now, back to how I am utilising pen and paper in my system.

I have two notebooks. The main one is my planning book. This is an A4 lined notebook where I will begin any planning session. I write the title of what I am planning at the top and then brainstorm in one colour—usually blue.

Now, I find the best place to do this is at the dining table, not at my desk. There are no screens on the dining table. So all I have is my notebook and my blue inked fountain pen. This is what call my first pass.

Now, the trick here is to write whatever comes into your head and write anywhere on the page. Remember, this is the first pass. It doesn’t matter how good or bad any idea is. Just get it out of your head. Even the craziest ideas may contain a seed of something special.

Once you’ve finished and can think of nothing else, close your planning book and leave it for twenty-four hours. Let your subconscious brain do its thing.

After twenty-four hours or so, come back to your note and, with a different colour pen, expand your initial thoughts. You could also bring your highlighters to the table if you prefer.

One reason I use royal blue as an ink colour for my first session, is a simple pencil looks great next to royal blue. But I do like to use black, green colours too.

What you will find is you’ll begin adding more ideas, and the initial ideas you had will sprout new, better ideas.

This is what I call the first pass. If there is time pressure, I will move on to the next step now. However, I prefer to have time to run a second and third pass just to get all my ideas out.

So, what is the next step? This is where I scan the paper note into my notes app. From here, I can pull out the key points and ideas and begin developing the project or video idea. There’s often research to be done at this stage and also to decide what action steps I need to take. All of which will likely require a computer.

The second notebook I have is my scratch pad. Now, this could be down to my age, but even at school, I always had a pad of paper and pen next to me for jotting down quick notes and random thoughts. There’s something comforting about having it next to you. I could, for instance, be writing this script and suddenly have an idea, and I can quickly write it down on my scratch pad for later. Once it’s written down, it’s not going to be forgotten. I can deal with it later.

This notebook is an A5 ring-bound notebook. It’s a perfect size for scratching down ideas, and the ring binding allows me to lay the book flat on my desk.

At the end of the day, I will go through the captured notes to see if anything needs to be transferred to my task manager. Anything I have dealt with previously, I will simply cross out.

However, the most important thing here is stepping away from the screen, and all the distractions a computer will throw at you and just focusing on thinking about the project, goal or whatever you need to think about.

There’s something about the feel of a pen on paper that no digital tool can replicate. I’ve tried things like Remarkable 2 and many of the other so-called “paper replacements”. Sorry, but they cannot replicate that exquisite feel of a fountain pen nib flowing across paper. I suspect this is why fountain pens are still popular among so many writers today.

Handwriting is in our DNA - from the thousands of years old cave paintings to the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics we’ve been writing for years. Keyboards and typing are relatively modern, and anything you type looks the same—after all we generally use the same fonts for everything.

With handwriting, you’re creating art. It’s unique. Each new note is going to look different from a previous note. You can choose different pens and colours and take them anywhere and just sit and write. It is such a different experience from sitting at a computer screen and typing. That difference will give you different ideas and thoughts.

Funnily enough, I have returned to writing my journal by hand again after five years in the digital journaling world. While it was very convenient to be able to add a photo to each new journal entry, I realised when I was reading through my old planners and handwritten journals there was something so different about what I was reading. I rarely read through my old typed journal entries, but I was captivated by my old-written journals. I could have sat there for hours reliving my life though a handwritten page.

So, there you go, Tom. That is why I have returned to the analogue world.

I would also add, that I have started doing my weekly planning on paper too. If you are familiar with my Weekly Planning Matrix. You can draw out the four squares in your planning notebook and give yourself twenty minutes to think about what needs to be done next week. If feels like you are tapping into a different way of thinking which is clearer, more focused on the bigger picture and in a way more emotional than trying to do this digitally.

I hope that has inspired many of you to go out and get yourself a notebook and pen. Have a go at it. See what happens. You might just fall in love with pen and paper all over again. Just be careful, there’s a whole world out there of notebooks and pens. For me, my trusty old fountain pens and some Rhodia notebooks do the trick. (Although, O confess I’ve ordered some of the famous Japanese paper to test)

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

Stop Being So Strict With Yourself (It'll only end in disappointment)

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 10:00:00 +0900

Are you restricting yourself too much? Attempting to stick to a too-embracing structure? It might be time to loosen up a bit.

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The 2024 ULTIMATE PRODUCTIVITY WORKSHOP

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Script | 310

Hello, and welcome to episode 310 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show.

Having some kind of structure or routine built into your day is important if you want to consistently get the important things done. The trouble starts when you try to stick to that structure or routine too rigidly. It begins to limit what you can do and holds you back from accomplishing the things you set out to accomplish. Plus, if your plan is interrupted by the inevitable “emergencies”, the plan is usually thrown out the window, and everybody else’s problems become the focus.

I’m all for building a structure around your day and week. It’s this structure that will ensure you get the right things done on time every time. But sometimes, something will inevitably come along and stop you from sticking to your routine or structure, and then, if you don’t have built-in inflexibility, everything will come crashing down. Either you drop everything, which leads to a build-up of backlogs, or you’ll stay too rigid and miss an opportunity that could lead to bigger and better things.

This week’s question goes to the core of this dilemma, and I hope to give you some ideas to prevent it from happening to you.

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

This week’s question comes from Andre. Andre asks, Hi Carl, I love the idea of having a structured day, but I am having a hard time sticking to my plan. I never seem to have enough time to get all my work done, and I have a huge backlog of emails and project work to catch up on. It’s causing me so much stress and worry. Do you have any advice?

Hi Andre, thank you for your question.

You are right to create a structure around your day and week. Aside from weekly planning, I would say if anyone wants to become better at managing their time and ultimately more productive, they are going to need some form of structure to their day.

However, as with most things, this can be taken too far. Take time blocking, for example. Time blocking is an excellent way to make sure you have enough time to do the critical things that need doing, yet if you try to micromanage your day—that is, you block your whole calendar—you only need one meeting or one task to overrun by just a few minutes and your day is destroyed. For time blocking to work effectively, you will need plenty of blank spaces.

For example, you may wish to block two hours for some deep work in the morning, say, between 9:30 and 11:30, then an hour for managing your communications and an hour for clearing your admin tasks for the day. That way, if you work a typical eight-hour day, you have four hours for anything else that may come up.

However, this rigidity may also be coming from outside forces.

I love reading contemporary history. My favourite era is between 1945 and 1990. These were transformative years in both the US and Europe. I am particularly interested in how creative people, like Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond books, managed their days.

What was noticeable was with few exceptions, there were no rigid working hours. If you worked in a factory doing physically demanding work surrounded by dangerous machinery, there were laws in most countries preventing you from being forced to work beyond eight hours. For the rest, you worked until the work got done.

And between 1940 and 1980, there were no computers helping you to do your work. If you needed to write a report, you either sat down at a typewriter and typed it yourself (no delete key with typewriters—if you got a page wrong, you began again), or you may have been lucky and were allowed to hand the work to the typing pool for typing up—and then you either needed to handwrite the report or dictate it.

And don’t let anyone tell you that people got less mail in those days. People got a ton of mail each day (often quite literally). It wasn’t electronic mail; it was physical mail, and responding to that wasn’t as simple as hitting the reply key and typing. There were conventions to a written letter. You could never write, “Please find attached the file you requested”. You had to include a greeting and an ending, then sign it by hand, stick it in an envelope and take it to to post room.

There were a lot of late nights in the office getting work finished back then. Probably a lot more than we have today. I also remember in the 1990s regularly having to come into the office on a Saturday to clear files that needed clearing before the start of a new week.

Yet people adapted, and the work got done.

In many ways, we might be attempting to structure our days in the wrong way. Let me give you an example.

I’ve recently been reading a biography of Winston Churchill. Now, Churchill had an unusual structure to his day. He would wake up around 8:00 and while in bed, read the newspapers and deal with his communications. He’d read his letters, call a secretary into his bedroom and dictate the replies.

He would get out of bed at 11 am and take a bath. Often, he’d have a secretary outside the bathroom door taking more dictations—that could be a speech he was preparing or one of the many articles or books he wrote.

Let me pause here. In the 1930s, 40s and 50s, only a privileged few could afford to hire their own secretaries or assistants. Today, it’s relatively affordable to hire a virtual assistant, or you could learn to use the dictation features on your digital devices. This means you could dictate in a Churchillian way—while taking a bath and while reading your emails in bed.

After his bath, Churchill would come downstairs for lunch. This wouldn’t be a sandwich while sat at his desk. It was a full hour affair with wines and champagne. After lunch, he’d walk around his garden, feed the fish in his pond, and often paint. This was his rest time. A time when he spent some time thinking and relaxing.

Then, at 4:30 pm, it was nap time, and again, this wasn’t a quick twenty-minute nap. It was a full ninety minutes. After his nap, it was another bath, then some card games with his guests or family before a full dinner—including an array of alcoholic drinks.

At 10 pm, Churchill would disappear into his home office (or “factory” as he called it), where he would work solidly for the next four to five hours. Then it was back to bed.

If you look at Churchill’s daily structure, it was solid. It got the important work done, and it was conducted on his terms. It was unconventional by the standards of those days. His “class”—the upper class—would usually disappear to their clubs after dinner for meetings and socialising. Yet, Churchill got a huge amount of work done. He wrote almost fifty books in his lifetime, thousands of articles for newspapers and was a full-time parliamentarian.

I tell you about Churchill because his daily structure is a great illustration of what you can do when you work within your own ideals. Churchill was a night owl, not a morning person. He took advantage of that by doing his most important creative work late at night. Tim Ferriss, the author and entrepreneur, is another person who likes to do his creative work late at night.

When people see my calendar, they think I am working too much. Yet, if you look closely, I do my creative work in the mornings, then take the afternoon off (in the same way Churchill did) then return to my work after dinner. I get four or five hours of rest from work every day and can enjoy it in daylight when the cafes are open and when I can actually enjoy living close to the beach. I am also a night owl.

What Churchill did was have some solid structures in his day. These were his wake-up time (8:00 am), lunch and dinner times. If he had guests for dinner, he would stay talking with his guests until late into the evening but would still return to his home office to work until he was tired enough to go to bed.

I fear many people have come to believe it is bad to work after they finish work. But do you really ever finish work? I’m not suggesting you always take work home with you, but if you have backlogs and project deadlines approaching, perhaps giving yourself an extra hour or two in the evening to do a little more work isn’t such a bad thing.

Think about that for a moment. You have the choice of two evils. The stress and anxiety of worrying about all the work piling up and not getting done. Or extra time in the evenings to get on top of the work. One will lead to health issues, and the other is inconvenient.

I remember reading about Michael Dell’s work routines when his family was still young. He would ensure he was home by 7 pm every evening for the family dinner. After dinner, he would play with his kids until they went to bed and then go to his home office to work until midnight.

Hopefully, your days won’t be destroyed too often, Andre, but it is going to happen—that’s inevitable. The key is to be flexible. Over time, you will learn to distinguish between the genuinely urgent and the false urgencies. The thing is, and the reason I told you about Winston Churchill, is you have options beyond nine til five.

Tim Cook is famous for waking at 3:30 am and doing his email—he is clearly a morning person. Former President Jimmy Carter would go to the Oval Office at 7 am every morning to read through the reports he needed to know about that day before having a meeting with his security advisor at 8:30 am.

Productive days are not built by accident. They are built on structure. We can learn from immensely productive people like Churchill and build a structure around meal times and rest.

Insisting you must not work in the evenings is admirable, but if you have outstanding work to be done and a backlog of emails and other messages, what is that doing to your stress levels? Would it not be better for your long-term mental health to spend a few evenings or early mornings getting on top of that backlog so you give yourself less stress and more free time in the long-term?

Thank you, Andre, for your question. And thank you to you, too, for listening. It just remains for me to wish you all a very, very productive week.

Efficiency by Design: Crafting an Organised Life.

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 10:00:00 +0900

How much time do you spend organising and reorganising your work each day? A key question to ask if you are seeking better productivity and time management.

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The 2024 ULTIMATE PRODUCTIVITY WORKSHOP

The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Script | 309

Hello, and welcome to episode 309 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show.

Deciding to get organised and better at managing your time is a good goal to have. After all, when you know where everything is and what needs to be done, you will see an exponential increase in your productivity, and that means, if managed well, your time management will also improve.

However, there is a fine line between spending too much time managing your stuff and not enough time doing your stuff. When you get caught up in that trap, you are lulled into feeling you are being productive when, in fact, you are not getting anything important done.

There are many reasons why this happens, the most common of which is becoming obsessed with tools—the apps and technology that promise to make organising and doing your work easier. No, this does not happen. Sure, a solid set of tools can help, but these tools will never do the work for you. Some of the worst tools will cause you to waste a lot of time organising and maintaining them instead of helping you to do your work more effectively.

Now, before we get to the question, I’d just like to give you a heads-up about this year’s Ultimate Productivity Workshop. This will be held on Friday the 9th and 16th February. Starting at 7:30 pm Eastern Standard Time (A little under two weeks away), This workshop will cover your calendar and task management in week one. In week two, we will look at how to manage email and other communications, as well as the all-important daily and weekly planning. By the end of these two sessions, you will have the know-how to build your very own “perfect” productivity system.

But what’s more special about this workshop is when you register, you get access to four of my mini-courses for FREE, as well as a workbook for all sessons. PLUS, you get a chance to ask me anything about time management and productivity.

Now, places are going fast, so if you don’t want to be disappointed, get yourself signed up now. Full details for the workshop are in the show notes below.

So, what do you need to do to ensure you are spending the appropriate amount of time doing your work and managing the work coming in? Well, before we get to answering that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Kris. Kris asks, Hi Carl, is there a right balance between keeping my tasks and notes up to date and organised and doing the work? I find that keeping everything up to date takes me at least an hour a day and sometimes longer. It’s very frustrating.

Hi Kris, thank you for your question.

I am always very careful with these types of questions because it is a good thing to use a few tools to help you with your organisation. For instance, a well-maintained notes app will do a lot for your overall productivity because note apps today have incredible search functionality. This is far better than when we were trying to keep all our notes up to date in paper notebooks and file folders.

However, because of this search functionality, we no longer need to spend a lot of time organising notes into folders (or notebooks, as some note apps call them) and tagging. All we need to do today is make sure we are making the title of the note easily searchable. That involves ensuring you have a keyword you would naturally search for and perhaps the date in the title.

After that, all you would need to have in your notes app is a simple folder structure, so you have at least the remnants of a system. A simple work and personal folder system would work today because search is so powerful.

The more complex you make your folder structure in notes, the longer it will take you to keep things organised.

One other tip on notes. It’s likely that anything you put in your notes is not going to be urgent. Urgent things are normally things we have to do, and we would put those into our task manager or calendar. This means when it comes to cleaning up what you collected, you can do this once a week. I do this on a weekend when I do my weekly planning.

Another issue I come across is prioritising the task manager above the calendar. If you stop and think for a moment, this does not make a great deal of sense. A task is something that can be done at any time. It may need to be done on a given day, but when on that day you do it is not important. For example, you may need to call a client, but no time has been specified. This means you could call them at 9 am or at 2:30 pm. All that matters is you call them that day.

But if you were meeting a client for lunch, that would be a different matter. You would need to be in a specific place on a given day and time. That would be in your calendar.

In those two scenarios, the lunch meeting would naturally take priority over the phone call.

This means your calendar is at the top of your productivity tools hierarchy.

If I were to choose one tool that was kept up to date at all times, it would be my calendar, and to do that will likely only take two or three minutes a day.

But let’s step back a little here and look at the process for managing your tasks. If you’re listening to this, you will probably be aware of the COD system. COD stands for Collect, Organise and Do. We need to be collecting the stuff we need to do, then allocate a little time for organising that stuff and finally, we need to do the work. The ideal split between organising and doing is 95% of your time doing and 5% organising. That works out at around twenty minutes a day organising your stuff and the rest of the time doing.

You are collecting all the time, and your process for collecting needs to be quick and with a minimum of friction. Here, technology helps you because you will likely be carrying your phone with you everywhere you go. This means your phone becomes your UCT—Ubiquitous Collection Tool.

To ensure that your phone is optimised for this role, you want to make sure collecting tasks, notes and events is as easy as you can make it.

However, once you have all this stuff collected, when will you process it? I do my processing in the evening. It’s quieter, and I can process all the stuff I have collected without distractions.

Now, processing is not about moving all your stuff from your inbox to your folders. The emphasis needs to be on eliminating, not accumulating. Your thinking should be around asking yourself, “Do I really need to do this task?” not where can I put it?

There will always be more stuff to do than time available to do it, so eliminating as much as you can at this processing stage will save you a lot of anxiety and overwhelm—lists have a habit of growing uncontrollably if not checked.

The great thing about focusing on eliminating rather than accumulating is it reduces the need to spend time organising. The delete key is a lot easier to operate than adding additional information and ensuring the tasks are written in a way you will understand what they mean next week.

The thing is, if you get your processing right the first time and you are not arbitrarily adding dates so you don’t forget a task (as opposed to adding a date because the task genuinely needs doing on that date), you will not have too much reorganising to do.

I see a lot of people having to spend a lot of time rescheduling tasks every day because they were being a bit over-ambitious about what they could accomplish in a day. On a given day, that may not seem like a lot of time, but it adds up, and by the end of the week, you will have spent thirty to sixty minutes just rescheduling.

There’s an old carpenter’s saying, “Measure twice, cut once.” Well, in productivity terms, this would equate to thinking twice before dating a task and doing the task once. Every time you reschedule a task, you will mentally picture yourself doing the task and deciding you don’t have time for it right now, so it gets rescheduled. Not a very effective way to manage your time.

Think of organising tasks as collect fast, process slow. This way, you will find yourself less likely to waste time reorganising and rescheduling stuff. There’s a better chance you will get it right the first time. An extra few minutes when you process will save you a lot of reorganising later.

And now the elephant in the room—the tools you are trying to use to organise all your stuff. Be careful here. The more complex and pretty an app is, does not necessarily mean it will be better for your productivity. In fact, I find the more complex an app is, the slower you will be. All those bells and whistles mean more buttons to push.

When I compare my coaching clients’ speed at being able to find things, Apple Notes seems to be the fastest, and that is the simplest. Notion, Evernote and Obsidian may have a lot more features, but all those extra features mean it’s harder to remember where something is stored. And if you become adept at using search, you will find the complexity of getting something into your system slows you down. Avoid these attractive yet complex apps. They are procrastination traps, and it will take a superhuman effort to avoid playing and fiddling with them when you are tired or not in a very productive state.

I hope that has helped, Kris. If you get your collecting, organising and doing right, you will only need around twenty minutes a day to organise your stuff. The rest of the time, you can spend getting your work done.

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

Who Controls Your Time?

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 10:00:00 +0900

Podcast 308

If you’re not in control of your time, who is? That’s what we’re looking at this week.

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The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Script | 308

Hello, and welcome to episode 308 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show.

One of the most common comments I get on my YouTube videos is about who controls your work day. The answer to that question is you. It’s always been you.

Even at its most basic level, you accepted an offer to work where you work at some point, which was a choice you exercised. Similarly, as each day begins, you could choose to stay in bed and fake sickness—not something I would recommend, of course, but you always have that choice.

And, you always have the nuclear button option—to quit at any time—although I hope it doesn’t need to come to that.

The problem with all these choices—choices you make every day—is while you are free to make these choices, you also have to accept the consequences of your decisions. So, what you are really doing is calculating the cost/benefit of the decision you make.

Staying in bed might seem a great idea on a cold, wet morning, but you probably know that by 11 am, you’ll be feeling guilty, and when thought about further, you will likely begin to feel a little anxious about all the things you might be missing out on.

But one thing you should never tell yourself is you have no choice. You do, and you always will.

Let’s put it this way: you may have an important, critical meeting with your CEO arranged at 11:00 am tomorrow morning, but if a close family member—your son or daughter, mother or father—is taken seriously ill overnight, you’re going to choose to be at the hospital with your family. (Well, at least I hope you are)

In that situation, you are exercising your choice. You cannot be in two places at once, and therefore, you have to choose your priority.

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

This week’s question comes from Isaac. Isaac asks, hi Carl, I have tried time blocking, but my boss won’t let me. Every time I sit down to get on with some deep work, he’ll call or message me, and I have to answer immediately. How do you deal with these scenarios?

Hi Isaac, thank you for your question.

One of the benefits of getting organised and in control of your day is you get to clearly see what needs to be done each day. Being able to see everything that needs to be done allows you to prioritise your work.

The problems we face, though, rarely come from the work we have to do. They come from the interruptions and distractions coming at us from other people.

But let’s get serious here. Most of us are not working in jobs that involve the life or death of patients. It’s not like someone in need of urgent attention from us is being wheeled into our offices for our immediate attention. So, let’s get real about how much time we have to do the work that comes at us.

Your boss might like you to respond immediately, but I am sure they can wait, and if you have allowed them to become accustomed to your quick responses, perhaps it’s time to slowly ween them off that expectation.

In my experience, bosses who demand instant attention from their team have been conditioned to expect instant responses. It’s not often your boss’s fault; it’s yours because you do it, therefore they expect it.

In this situation, you have two options. You can have a face-to-face meeting with your boss and explain the difficulties they create when they expect instant responses and how the quality of your work and productivity would improve if they allowed you some breathing room.

The second option is to re-train them. Slowly, over a few weeks, lengthen your response times. Begin with five minutes, then ten, then fifteen and so on until you find the right balance. When I’ve tried this experiment on bosses in the past, I’ve found anywhere between fifty minutes and three hours can be gained here. If you’re lucky, you may find you have a boss who forgets they ever asked you and never chases you up. (Although, I admit they are rare)

However, Isaac, I was a little concerned with your choice of words, “I have to”. Do you? I mean, really, do you “have to”? In life, there rarely are any “I have tos”; these are concepts created by ourselves to create a sense of urgency.

If you’re listening to this podcast, you live in a free society, and that means you always have a choice. When we use the words “I have to”, we are delegating responsibility for our choices to other people. If you do that, you are never going to find a sense of peace or fulfilment. You’ll always be waiting for instructions from someone. It’s never “I have to”; it should always be “I choose to” because that is the truth. You choose to allow your boss to interrupt you.

When you reframe things to “I choose”, you take responsibility for your actions and that will give you a little more assertiveness when it comes to working with your boss or customers and clients.

One of the most effective things I ever did when working in a law firm with demanding clients and bosses was to create what I called “protected time”. I learned this when I was working in sales. If I didn’t have an hour or two each day when I wasn’t available for customers, I would drop the ball on almost everything. I needed that time to sort out the sales admin and to ensure the deliveries to my customers were on time.

When working in a busy law office, I came across the same issue. Always being available meant too many things were not getting done. Sure, I was a hero to my colleagues and clients until they found I didn’t get around to doing what they were asking me to do. I was prioritising the here and now, instead of what was genuinely important—ie the commitments I’d already made.

You cannot sustain that. Allowing all these interruptions is going to catch up with you and not only leave you exhausted and stressed out, but it will also destroy your career.

Now, you’re not likely to be able to suddenly impose one or two hours of protected time each day if you’ve allowed yourself to always be available. You’ve set expectations, and you are going to have to change those expectations. The most effective way to change things is to have a talk with your boss. Explain your dilemma and ask him (or her) to allow you one or two hours a day for deep, focused work. Explain to them how this will benefit them and how it will ensure you will be able to produce better quality work and service to your customers.

You could ignore this advice. But if you want things to change, something’s going to have to change that change must begin with you and the way you approach your day.

The only way I was able to get control was to initiate the “protected time” protocol. I chose the quietest time of the day to do this. When I was in sales, that was from 9:00 to 10:30 am. When I was in the law office, it was 8:30 am to 11:00 am. After that, the phones lit up, and it was go go go.

But I was relaxed. I’d got the most important work done that day, and aside from answering some random questions about ongoing cases, it was plain sailing. Sure, there were some days that it didn’t work; emergencies inevitably crop up from time to time. But you just deal with those when they come up. They don’t happen every day, and if they do seem to happen every day, you can look at your strategies and see where you can make changes.

If you’ve got overlapping commitments on your calendar and no space to get on and do the work you’re employed to do, you’ve got serious time management problems. It’s time to stop, look at your calendar and decide what you can and cannot attend.

I know it’s hard. It’s very hard. As humans, we are naturally wired to please people. But you’re not pleasing people when you let them down by not being able to carry through with your commitments. And then consider the toll on your family life. If you leave yourself exhausted at the end of the day and have to take work home with you, what does that say to your family about your priorities?

I like to think of it this way. I was not employed to be a people pleaser. I was employed to do a job. That could be selling a lot of cars or helping people with their legal problems. That does not mean you should not be polite and respectful, but when someone interrupts you, they are not respecting your time, and that needs to be addressed.

I’ve often said that the best time management hack is the learn to say no politely. The best strategy I’ve found is to say yes but impose your time frame. For example, if a colleague or boss asks you to do something, you can say you will do it once you have completed your current work or project. Then tell them you can do it next week. That often gets them to pause and then say, “Don’t worry, I’ll get someone else to do it.”

That’s not a poor reflection on you; you will soon begin to shine because the quality of your work will improve. You’ll not miss deadlines, and your reliability will increase. It’s a win-win for everyone in the end.

Ultimately, it comes down to you deciding where your priorities lay. I’m reminded of the story of the consultant working for a large famous consultancy who was asked to come in on a Saturday to help prepare for an important presentation the following Monday. She apologised and said, I’m sorry, I cannot come in on Saturday as I have an agreement with my husband to spend Saturday with him and our daughter. Her boss was frustrated at first but accepted her reason. A few days later, he called the consultant into his office and thanked her. Her refusal to come in on Saturday because of the agreement with her family inspired him, and he decided he would never ask his team to come in on a weekend. He even imposed the family rule on himself, which he later credited for saving his marriage.

I’m not suggesting taking action on this with your boss will change the culture in your company, but that story is a good example of how sticking to your principles can earn you a lot more respect from your peers.

I hope that helps, Isaac. And thank you for your question.

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

Master Productivity | What Really Matters.

Mon, 15 Jan 2024 10:00:00 +0900

How much time do you spend organising and shuffling your work? And how much time do you spend doing the work? That’s what we’re looking at in this week’s episode.

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The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Script | 307

Hello, and welcome to episode 307 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show.

One of the great things about deciding to get organised, becoming better at managing time and being more productive is a sense of being in control and on top of everything coming at us. Nothing beats that feeling of knowing what needs to be done and that you have sufficient time today to get it done.

However, there is a dark side to all this. That is elevating the tools and practices above actually doing the work. It’s great that all your tasks are neatly organised in a task manager, and your notes are all perfectly tagged and in their respective folders. But is the return on the time invested in maintaining all that worth it?

I would go as far as to say that with all the technology built into your apps’ search engines, 90% of what you are doing to maintain all these apps and tools is wasted time. You don’t need to spend all that time doing it because a couple of hours spent learning how to search on your devices will render most of these maintenance activities redundant.

And that is where this week’s question comes in. How much time do we need to spend each day organising and processing? The answer to that is probably a lot less than you think.

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 Alysha. Alysha asks, hi Carl, I have been on a quest to get myself organised and become better at managing my time, but all the books and articles I read seem to tell me I have to spend hours each week organising, tagging and filing and I wonder if that is actually the best use of my time. Do you have any thoughts on this area?

Hi Alysha, you make a very good point and one I often find myself despairing at when I see some of the questions I get in the comments section on my YouTube videos.

It seems a lot of people are not actually interested in getting better at managing time or being more productive. They are much more interested in playing with the tools instead of doing the work.

Let me explain. The tools and devices you use to be more productive are around 0.005% of what it takes to be more productive.

To be more productive is about what you are producing. It's not about how well your task manager is organised or how precisely you have your notes tagged or organised.

I mean, let’s be honest here, you can be exceptionally productive armed only with a paper notebook and a calendar. You don’t need anything more. All these wonderful digital tools are great, don’t get me wrong, but if they become the main focus of your whole system, then they become the distraction and prevent you from doing what needs to be done to be productive—that’s doing the work.

Recently, I’ve been re-reading some older time management and productivity books. Books from the late 1980s and early 90s. These books were written before the massive advances in computer technology in the workplace and yet, the problems people were facing back then are the same fundamental problems people are facing today.

There are the parents who are trying to juggle their career with raising their children. There’s the busy executive who is struggling to get their core work done because they are always having to be in meetings or dealing with clients calling them all the time. And there are the people struggling to respond to all the letters and messages they receive each day.

The tools and channels may have changed, but the problems in managing all this work have not. It’s still there, and I am sure it will still be there in fifty or a hundred years’ time.

The thing is, it’s never been about the tools. You can have the best, most advanced tools available today, but if you are not getting on and doing the work, you will still have backlogs and be overwhelmed. If you are not keeping control of your calendar and allowing other people to schedule meetings for you, you will be overwhelmed and unable to do your core work.

I was reminded of this recently when listening to David Goggins on the Andrew Huberman podcast. In one part, they talk about all the supplements and protocols we are supposed to be taking and doing. Yet, unless you put on your running shoes and get out and do the run, none of these supplements or protocols will help you. They should never be used as an excuse not to do the work.

Yet, that is what so many people are doing today. They are using the tools to avoid doing the hard thing. The actual work.

If you have a twenty-page report to write for your boss, open up your computer, click on the Microsoft Word icon and write it. If you need to email a client, open up your email app and write it. You do not need to have a thirty-minute debate with yourself about which is the best tool to use to write the report, and you don’t need to clear your email inbox to send the email to your client.

What I have noticed over the last few years is a lot of people are using their tools as an excuse to procrastinate on doing the hard work. People will spend hours on YouTube or an app-finding website looking for the miracle app that will somehow miraculously do the work for them.

It’s a little like the person who wants to lose weight and get fit and invests all their time and money in supplements and training gear but never goes out and does any exercise. You know that will never work. You’ve got to do the work.

Planning and organising do have their place. It is important to know where everything is and what needs to be done. But that should never be at the expense of doing the work.

Yesterday, as I was recording and editing this week’s YouTube video, my little studio was a mess, and my desktop was covered in footage and screenshots. Everything appeared disorganised and messed up. Yet, the video was recorded, and the editing was done. During the five or six hours I was working on that video, my only focus was the output. I didn’t care about how untidy everything looked. That did not matter. What mattered was the video was recorded, edited and posted.

When I’d finished, then I could clean things up. Move all the stuff from my desktop to the folder and cross off the task in my task manager. Job done.

The focus is always on getting the work done, not how beautifully everything is organised.

One of the biggest problems with digital tools these days is the battle app developers are having to stand out in a very crowded productivity field. In order to stand out, they are adding more and more features, and that leaves us with more and more things to fiddle with.

I see people spending a lot of money on apps like Super Human and Hey email apps. These apps claim to sort your email for you, moving to the top of the list of the emails they think are the most important. Now, I am sure most of the time, they get this right, but the reality is you can do this yourself in apps like Outlook, Gmail and Apple Mail. You do not need expensive apps for this.

But as a new toy to play with, these apps are great. They will stop you from getting on and clearing your backlog and give you something new and interesting to play with. But is that the goal? I hope not.

If you want to clear your email backlog, you have to get on and clear it. No app will ever do that for you.

If you have subscribed to hundreds of newsletters and signed up to get the news delivered to your inbox every morning and are overwhelmed by the hundreds of emails you are receiving, perhaps the problem is not the tool but you. You signed up for these. You can give yourself an hour or two and unsubscribe from them any time.

One of the most common questions I get is about how to organise projects. Now, many projects have a lot of moving parts, and tasks need to be done in order to keep them moving forward so the deadlines are met.

But do you really need a complex system to organise these projects? I have a project at the moment to update my free COD course. I have my notes and the outline neatly organised, and each week, I review the project. Yet this week, the project hasn’t moved forward. Why? Because I am ignoring the obvious thing. I need to do the work. I need to set up my studio and begin recording it.

I can spend the next six weeks shuffling files, but that won’t result in an updated course. The only way that will happen is if I go into the studio and record it.

And that’s the same for you, too. If you want to be more productive, then you need to do productive things. That means doing the work. There is no other way, and there certainly is no app out there that will do that for you.

If your car needs washing, then take your car to the car wash centre.

If you need to clean up your home, then when you get home today, do it.

If your email is out of control, then open up your email and get it under control.

If you need to lose weight, put down the cookie, put on your exercise gear and exercise.

None of this is complex. It might be difficult, and you may not want to do it, but if it needs to be done, you will have to do it sometime. Why not now?

The bottom line is if you genuinely want to get control of everything going on in your professional and personal life, you need to do the work. Planning, organising and searching for better tools will not do that. They are less than 1% of what it takes. The only thing that worked forty years ago is the same thing that only works today. Doing the work.

I know this may not be what you want to hear. But the reality is the miracle tool does not exist, and if it did, you would soon find yourself out of a job.

The most effective way to become more productive and better at managing our time is to develop processes for doing your work so you become more effective and efficient at doing it. That way, you will get faster, and that, in turn, will leave you less overwhelmed and with more time to do the things you want to do.

Thank you, Alysha, for your question, and thank you too for listening.

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

Getting Control Of Your tasks Once And For All.

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 10:00:00 +0900

Are you guilty of attempting to do too much each day? If you are, you may be suffering from something called “hero syndrome”, and it’s not a very productive way to manage your life.

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